Chapter Text
“C’mon, Sammy, this is gonna be fun!”
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t get all excited. You might pull something.”
“Bite me.”
Dean laughed and followed the tour group eagerly. Sam did so reluctantly. The older brother grinned like a Cheshire cat, bouncing up and down like the kid he was at heart. He was having so much more fun than he had in… well, it had been a while. Meanwhile, Sam readjusted his lighted hard hat and shot his brother an annoyed glare.
“Don’t be such a sourpuss, Sam,” Dean teased, readjusting his own lamp so that it shone directly into his brother’s face. To his delight, his little brother groaned in irritation. Dean smiled.
Alright, this wasn’t exactly his childhood dream of being a fireman, but it came pretty damn close. This little trip almost felt like reenacting Temple of Doom. Of course, Dean had already claimed the role of Indy, which would make Sam his sidekick Short Round. Which didn’t exactly sound right, what with Sam being a giant and all that. But Dean didn’t care.
This was frigging fantastic.
A few feet away the other participants of the tour quietly exchanged hushed whispers and oohs and aahs at basically everything the tour guide told them about the history of the Smallville Salt Mine they were currently visiting. Apparently, it had been opened in the nineteenth century, and hundreds of workers had mined about four tons of salt every day back then. The mine had been kept in service to date, and the mining had multiplied many times over thanks to modern machinery. The old tram-like transportation system stretching for miles in the underground tunnels was still in operation for tourists.
There were probably a few more interesting facts to learn. Despite his excitement, Dean only half-listened to the guide’s jabbering, too busy pricking up his ears for potential dangers. Much to Dean’s chagrin, they weren’t here for fun after all, not really. When Dean noticed Sam was sighing for the thousand-and-eighth time, he elbowed his brother in the ribs. Sam just rolled his eyes. Dean chuckled and turned his attention to the tour again, at least some of it.
They were just passing a few information boards that were, unlike many other mine shafts they had already walked through, dimly lit by industrial-style lamps. Aside from this place, great parts of the underground complex were left pitch-black. Well, not where people were actually mining, but a few closed tunnels and the parts that were open to sightseers were mostly unlit to create the perfect adventure atmosphere – hence the helmet-mounted lamps. Dean didn’t really mind the dark, but he thought it was kind of unnecessary. The mine was creepy enough even without such show effects for tourists. He did mind all the walking though. After all, he was still a little sore from the beating Cas had given him just a few days ago – maybe they should have booked the full railway ride tour instead of the mostly walking safari? Well, hopping off a moving vehicle, which they probably would have to do at some point, would be so not convenient. So, walking it was.
When the guide gathered the group of about two dozen people in a semi-circle, Dean positioned himself right in the middle whereas Sam squashed as close to the wall as possible.
“Everyone, listen up, please!” the tour guide called out, her cheerful smile illuminated by the yellowish hue of the lamps. “Remember that elevator we took to get down here? We’ve now walked about one point five miles from there into the heart of the mine. Took us a while, huh? Anybody want to guess how deep below ground level we are right now?”
“788 feet.”
Dean’s gaze flicked to the side where he could see his brother’s shocked expression at his own active participation in the tour. So, he had done his research despite complaining all day long about how taking this case was a mistake. Attaboy. The older brother grinned when Sam flushed from embarrassment.
“That’s exactly right!” The tour guide beamed at Sam, who now looked impossibly small for his size. “Pretty far down, huh?” she asked overly enthusiastically, directed at the tiny crowd of people who, as expected, murmured in awe. “Okay guys, are you ready for some fun? Next stop is the historic mine railway that takes us right to the old slides!” Some younger tourists cheered in prospect of the upcoming adventure, and Dean chimed in. “We’re walking!” exclaimed the tour guide in a tone so upbeat that even Dean started to think of her as annoying.
Yet, a railway ride and underground slides sounded awesome.
He couldn’t help but grin as the group followed their guide again, the quiet chatter of an elderly couple echoing off the faint-pink walls, which sparkled brightly whenever someone pointed their light at them. Dean really wished they could stick around and enjoy the rest of the tour – he wanted the full miner’s adventure and the salty keepsake he’d been promised after all. And the brochures had said something about a lake inside the salt mine, a literal watery miracle hundreds of feet underground they would reach at the end of the tour – how cool was that? However, the brothers quickly fell about ten feet behind the other guests to make it easier to sneak away when the time came.
As Dean noticed the light on his hard hat flickering, and his breath coming out in a small cloud, he knew that now was the time.
Well, that was fast.
“Psst, Sammy,” he muttered and tugged at his brother’s sleeve.
Now?
Yeah, now.
On instinct, Sam halted his movement at the same time as Dean did. They stayed completely still, waiting for the group to veer off. For a good two minutes, neither of them dared to move, closely listening to the sounds echoing off the walls. The tour group’s steps slowly faded away but could still be heard for a while. No one noticed the two of them had stopped walking. That was easy, Dean thought, earlier having wondered about whether the tour guide would interfere with their plans. Apparently, no one seemed to expect tourists to just wander off. Well, the Winchesters weren’t really tourists, were they?
Dean finally rolled his shoulders, let go of Sam’s sleeve and then did a silent 180. He quickly observed every single shadow surrounding them before coming to a halt face to face with his brother. Sam’s head slowly turned to the right, taking in his surroundings as well – nothing but uneven, pinkish salt walls, no ghost, yet – then pivoted back in Dean’s direction. When the tour group’s laughter finally petered out, their noisy steps ebbed away, and the lights of their helmets were no longer in sight, both brothers exhaled a breath of relief.
“Phew, I think we’re clear,” Dean said. He couldn’t hide a wee bit of disappointment in his voice at the abrupt ending of their tour. He’d really been looking forward to their little salt mine adventure.
“Guess so. But Dean, why are we even here?”
Dean huffed, tapping the barely flickering light on his hard hat. “There’s a ghost to gank, you know that.”
There was, at least that’s what a local blog said. Apparently, no one had been killed (yet), but a weird apparition had spooked some tourists. The website reported that witnesses claimed to have seen a translucent shape that looked like a young man in the dark drifts. Some people had described the spirit as awfully haggard and pale, with dirt streaks all over its face, a miner’s cap on its head and a shovel in its hands. Best guess was their ghost used to be a miner in this place. Dean had been enthralled right out of the gate. A ghost? They hadn’t dealt with one in forever, always being too busy with bigger baddies, most of whom he fondly called winged dicks – Cas excluded, or well, even their angelic friend had been a foe on occasion. So yeah, a simple haunting was nice for a change.
After a standoff of five seconds, Sam moaned. “Yeah, but we don’t even know who it is. Or if there’s a ghost here at all.”
The cold spots and flickering lights they had just experienced at close quarters were a pretty good clue, but in fact they really didn’t know. It had crossed both their minds that there wasn’t anything supernatural down here, but that it was all just a hoax fabricated by the salt mine company to make it even more of a tourist attraction than it already was. Still, if there was a real ghost inside this mine, the brothers didn’t want to wait for it to turn vengeful someday.
Research at the local library had yielded that eighteen people had died in the salt mine over the course of the last 150 years, the last one about forty years ago. Countless more had been injured. One miner had simply disappeared, and his body had never been found. Apparently, safety precautions had been an alien concept back in the day. This didn’t exactly make it easy to narrow down the circle of suspects. They couldn’t be sure who their current troublemaker was, but Dean was confident they would get some answers tonight.
“So, let’s find out. We’ve looked into cases for less,” he said, quickly surveying the area for threats again.
Sam clicked his tongue. “If this even is a case. Dean, why isn’t this freaking you out?” He arched an eyebrow, obviously waiting for a response. When Dean just looked at him quizzically, he rattled off, “Total darkness, tight spaces, hundreds of feet below the ground, no cell reception, no weapons allowed… you want me to continue?”
Dean smirked, pulling a small knife out of his boot. “I came prepared.”
Of course, he’d brought a few things, just the necessities, smuggled into the mine inside his pockets – a tiny can of lighter fluid, a lighter, a box of matches as backup, and an inconspicuous blade with an iron core. Apart from that though, Sam and Dean were basically civilians tonight. This time, they’d even passed on salt because, seriously, the stuff was all around them. They might not even actually hunt tonight but just gather some more intel on their ghost. Research, basically.
“Alright, you got your little pig sticker that will do close to nothing to a ghost.” Sam looked around again, pointing the light on his hard hat at the salty walls. There was nothing to see. Then he faced his brother again, sizing him up from head to toe. Dean stashed the knife, then put his hands on his hips. Sam was eyeing him, looking both amused and pissed at the same time. “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Dean,” he said. “But we look like… like inmates. Like back when Deacon made us take care of that haunting in prison, remember?”
Dean’s face lit up because that case – what, a decade ago? – had actually been fun, well at least for him. “Oh yeah. Poor Tiny. But these duds are totally different.”
Sam gesticulated wildly between them. “They’re overalls! Same thing.”
Dean looked down at himself, actually quite pleased with the overalls they had been forced to put on over their regular clothes before starting the tour. Get a real miner’s experience, the website had said. Dean was thrilled. He pointed a finger at Sam. “Hold up. For one, they’re not bright orange, they’re gray. Ugh, orange really isn’t your color.” Dean shot his brother his best impression of a grossed-out shudder, then broke into a grin. “I’m thinking more like Ghostbusters.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. Whatever.”
“Sam, why do you even care? No one but Casper to impress.”
Even in the sparse light of their helmet lamps Dean noticed how Sam’s shoulders dropped. His little brother looked helpless when he said, “Well, back then I thought this was your dumbest idea ever, hunting a ghost in jail. But then you always go and up the ante.”
Dean couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit offended. “Come on, now you’re going overboard! This, here? This doesn’t even make it into the top twenty of my dumbest ideas.”
And that right there was nothing but the truth. Between hunting in a prison, in a psych ward, in a crashing plane, in a bank vault, in sewers and cursed buildings, in schools, and a million other ridiculous places present and past, a salt mine definitely wasn’t that dumb. This was a frigging tourist spot, nothing more.
“Uh-huh…” Sam shrugged. “Anyway, I’m still not sure this is a good idea. Hunting a spirit that hasn’t even hurt anyone—”
“Yet.”
“Yet,” Sam repeated. “When the world is currently facing yet another disaster caused by us… I mean, don’t we have bigger fish to fry?”
Dean sighed. He’d anticipated this argument ever since they had agreed on taking this case. Well, Dean had agreed, and Sam had griped. The whole two-and-a-half-hour drive from Lebanon to this place had been filled with uncomfortable silence and, on occasion, annoyed groans from the passenger seat. It could as well have been three hours, but Dean had floored it in his excitement to get to the mine. The fact that they didn’t even need to cross state lines for this was one more bonus in Dean’s view.
The older brother met Sam’s gaze, giving him a quick smile. “We always do, Sammy. What you just described sounds pretty much like our usual deal.”
Another undeniable truth.
Sam didn’t seem satisfied with that answer at all. “Dean, how can you be so calm about this?” He raised his voice, the words booming in the tunnels. Great, that’s just what they needed, a fight in the dark tombs of a haunted salt mine. “We—I unleashed real evil into this world and now she’s wreaking havoc on earth! While we’re here playing ghost facers, she could be killing thousands of people.”
Dean quickly looked around to make sure no one had heard Sam’s yelling, then focused on his brother again. “Ghost facers,” he muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes.
Yeah, Sam wasn’t entirely wrong. Amara was out there, doing whatever twisted things ancient, powerful, corrupted creatures did for fun. The thought sent a shiver down Dean’s spine – or maybe it was the ghost they were hunting? He didn’t spot anything in the darkness though. The spirit still seemed to be hiding. He released a slow breath.
“Don’t you think I know that? Hate to break it to you, but we have no leads. Zip, zero, nada. Cas has come up empty so far, and pretty much everyone else we know currently kinda isn’t on our team. She’s in the wind. Right now, there’s nothing we can do.”
“But—”
Dean scoffed. “But what, Sam? Let’s just do what we’re good at. Just a little salt ‘n’ burn to get back on our feet. And then we’ll go back to tracking down the Darkness. I’m sure she’ll still be there when we’re done with this.”
He really, really, needed a vacation, and a simple hunt like this was as close to some R ‘n’ R as they would get. In the past weeks crap had piled up thick and fast. They’d lost people – Charlie – not having any time to mourn her. Then Dean had slaughtered a bunch of psychos, oh, and he’d killed Death, the Death. And a minute later, Sam’s and Rowena’s secret spell work had finally gotten rid of the Mark of Cain, which was great – but whoops, that had led to releasing an enormously powerful evil force on the world, probably much more dangerous than anything they had ever faced. Just last week they had gotten a taste of her power in the form of a freaky rabies-spell contaminating an entire city. Everything was just peachy. Well, they’d gotten Cas back, but that was about all the good news there was.
The past weeks had been rough, even by their usually pretty low standards. But the last time they had seen their latest enemy number one she had been just a baby. They could take a few days off to deal with other kinds of supernatural creatures that were roaming the earth, right? That was their job after all.
Dean felt his brother’s glare, but the heated anger went out of Sam’s posture in a rush when the temperature around them suddenly dropped.
“Dean,” Sam whispered.
And just like that, their conversation was over. Dean froze, adrenaline and years of hunting experience kicking in. His skin prickled, and his blood pumped loudly through his veins as his mind zeroed in on whatever was coming at them. Without another word he went into hunter mode. There was no hesitation when Sam did the same beside him, positioning himself so that he was back to back with his brother, hands at the ready as if he were holding a weapon – which he wasn’t. They really should have thought this through some more, Dean thought, a sliver of regret passing through his mind.
Swoosh.
“There!” Dean whisper-yelled and gripped Sam’s arm.
So much for research. Apparently, there was something supernatural here after all, and it wanted to play. He’d just seen a faint white something wafting across the shaft, moving away from them. It disappeared into another pitch-black tunnel forking off from the one they were currently in. A split-second later, both brothers darted forwards in sync, chasing after the ghost. This thing was fast, fleeing – floating away? – from them at an incredible speed. But the brothers had no time to spare, so despite the unfamiliar, dark grounds they were running almost as fast as they would in broad daylight. At least the tunnels had a decent clearance height, so they had enough space to move. There were about five feet of air above their heads, as well as to either side.
“Dean!” Sam shouted mid-sprint, “It’s leading us to the old parts of the mine… the closed tunnels.”
Dean just nodded, understanding exactly what Sam was getting at. Whatever the ghost was up to, it was luring its prey away from the busy places inside the maze that was the mine – closer to areas where no soul would wander accidentally. It wanted them alone. It was a good thing that Sam had been mindful enough to bring a map of the underground tunnels, so they could always find their way back to the entrance.
After a few minutes, they were still running. Their head mounted lights were bouncing off the walls and occasionally off a pale, flickering form, almost creating a strobe light effect. It was nauseating. Dean’s legs and chest were burning from the sudden cardio exercise. The brothers kept running anyway, turning corners, and almost tripping over pebbles and rocks or each other a dozen times. Dean was panting heavily, as was Sam only one step behind him. The ghost wasn’t slowing down.
“This… must be a… trap,” Sam gasped for breath, but they kept going. They were so close to catching up with the creature, they couldn’t stop now. Maybe they could talk to it, or at least find out who it was. Mid-run, Dean looked back for only a split-second, his lamp illuminating his brother’s pale features and his comically widened eyes. Why was he looking like—
Oh.
That was the exact moment things went sideways.
One second, Dean had solid ground under his boots, the next moment the earth seemed to have ruptured below him, eliciting a gasp of surprise from him. It happened in the blink of an eye; Dean’s insides didn’t even have time to perform a somersault. He vaguely registered Sam’s hand making a hard grab for him, but both their momentums sent them tumbling forward anyway. The last thing he felt was the pull of gravity.
And then nothing.
To be continued…