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"Yeah, yeah, I got it." Phone tucked between his ear and his shoulder, Sam set his laptop on the end of the bed and unfolded the map of upstate New York out over the room's tiny table. "Watkin's Glen, south east of Rochester." Retrieving a pen from under the billowing sheet of paper, he flattened the map and circled the town. "When's it supposed to happen? The 24th? Christmas Eve? No, no, it's okay, we didn't exactly have plans. Right. Thanks Bobby. Yeah, Merry Christmas to you too." He hung up, straightened, and sighed. "Bobby found us a hunt."
Stretched out on the bed, Dean continued cycling through the three channels available on the motel's ancient, static prone television. "Oh joy."
"It's in upstate New York."
"Yeah, by Rochester, I heard. So not looking forward to that at this time of the year." He squinted at the screen, realized that what he'd thought was a beer commercial was actually Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune, and thumbed the remote again. "What is it?"
"Some kind of seasonal spirit." Sam sprawled in the chair and stared thoughtfully at the hole in the toe of his left sock. "Shows up every seven years on the 24th of December and lures a bunch of kids to their doom."
"Doom?"
He shrugged. "Bobby says it usually leads them off a cliff."
"Yeah, that's doom. Also splat. " When Sam gave a disproving grunt, Dean tossed the remote aside. "Fine. I'm appalled. And," he continued before Sam could respond, "if it happens every seven years, why hasn't anyone dealt with it before?"
"Apparently it shows up in different place every time. It seemed completely random but Bobby finally got enough places to come up with a pattern. He says we can consider it an early Christmas present."
"Oh yeah, because nothing says happy holidays like spending the night before Christmas offing a homicidal spirit."
"Not the night before, the afternoon. It happens in broad daylight."
"Broad daylight?"
Sam shrugged.
"And no one tries to stop it?"
"Apparently, everyone in town gets, I don't know, mesmerized by the thing and then after..." Sam shook his head, voice trailing off.
"After?" Dean prodded.
"Well, all Bobby would say was that the official stories cite mass hallucinations and possibly heavy drinking."
"And the unofficial stories?"
"Mass hallucinations and definitely heavy drinking."
"Wonderful. Do we know what this thing looks like?"
"All Bobby said was coal black eyes."
***
Dean fought the Impala around yet another iced-over curve and fishtailed down the short straight section before doing it again. "What the fuck is up with this road?"
"It's a tourist area." Book balanced on his lap, Sam adjusted to the swaying of the car with the ease of long practice. "Curves are picturesque."
"In the summer!" Dean spat, fighting through another fish-tail. The glare of the noon sun off the snow was making his eyes water even behind his sunglasses.
"Well, it's not like we can go off the road. Those snowbanks have got to be six feet high." Sam glanced out the window. "I think I just saw a sign for Watkin's Glen."
"You think?"
"It was mostly buried but it looks like we're close." He grabbed his book as it slid sideways. "Now, the way I see it, our biggest problem will be staying out from under this thing's thrall."
"Thrall?"
"Yeah, it means..."
"I know what it means, dumbass. I've just never heard anyone actually use the word. Thrall," he repeated snickering.
"It's a perfectly good word."
"Okay."
"It's entirely accurate."
"I said okay."
"Fine."
"So you have an idea?"
"For what?"
Dean grinned. "For keeping us out of thrall."
"Shut-up. And yes. There's a charm I need to draw on your forehead."
Dean took his eyes off the road just long enough to glare across the car. "On my forehead? I don't think so."
"You'll be drawing the same charm on me."
"Damn right I will."
Sam rolled his eyes, reached out and turned the radio on. "If we're close we might be able to get the local station."
"He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake. He knows when you've been bad..."
"Just shoot me now," Dean muttered, turning it off it again.
***
"I feel like an ass."
"Don't rub it!" Sam glared across the top of the Impala as he dragged the duffle bag of weapons out of the back seat and draped it over his shoulder.
"I can't believe you could only find a green marker!"
"The colour doesn't matter but it's not going to work if you smear it all to shit."
"Oh yeah, easy for you to say it doesn't matter, yours is up behind your hair."
"So wait until it dries and put a hat on."
"I hate hats. I look dorky in hats. Besides, it messes with the look."
"The look of freezing to death? You know you lose forty-five percent of your body heat through your head," he added coming around the car.
Dean's lip curled and he shifted the weight of his own duffle. "Well thank-you, Al Roker. I guess it's a good thing I'm so hot to start with then. What now?"
Sam stared out over the small snow-covered town gleaming in the sunlight. Houses were covered in Christmas decorations, holiday shoppers bustled cheerily down the main street, and smoke curled from a few chimneys up into a brilliantly blue sky. It looked like a Christmas card – pretty and peaceful. "We go looking for a bunch of kids being led to their doom."
They found a large group of kids in the local park. Some of them were skating on an outdoor rink, some of them were having a snowball fight, and some of them were building a snowman. As Sam and Dean came closer, a tiny girl dressed all in pink and white rose up on her toes and placed an old silk hat on the snowman's head.
"Uh, Dean..."
"I see it."
It looked like a whirlwind rising up around the base of the snowman. As the Winchesters watched, the three rough balls of snow began to differentiate, becoming arms and legs. The face absorbed the button nose and morphed into a widely smiling, vaguely male visage. Actual teeth chomped down on the corn-cob pipe as it bellowed, "Happy Birthday!"
The children cheered.
"Remind me to have a word with Bobby," Dean yelled, digging into the duffle bag. "The descriptions weren't coal black eyes, they were eyes made out of fucking coal! What the hell is it doing?" he demanded as he straightened.
"I think it's..." Sam frowned. "...dancing around."
With a wild laugh, the snowman snatched up a broom leaning against the boards of the rink and, waving it over its head like a baton, slid across the ice. Shrieking with glee, the children followed.
"That is seriously freaky." More than a little creeped out, Dean turned to his brother. "So, how do we stop the thing?"
"Well, the sun's pretty hot, maybe it'll melt away."
"Doubt that. Flamethrowers?"
The snowman laughed again.
"Flamethrowers," Sam agreed.
"Come on, Sammy! He's starting to run!"
For a possessed snowman, the thing could really motor. Waving the broomstick, it headed into the village, children racing along behind, the Winchesters bringing up the rear. When it reached the town square, Dean waved Sam to the left while he went right. "We'll catch it in the crossfire!"
The snowman chortled and picked up the little girl in pink, setting her on one broad shoulder as it skipped about, running here and there shouting, "Catch me if you can!"
"It's mocking us!"
"Yeah, I heard it!"
"We've got to get it to put down the kid!"
Sam shot him bitch-face number three. "You think?"
They raced after it as it lead them through the streets of town, right to the traffic cop who didn't even blink at the snowman or the kids but aimed a familiar glare at the following Winchesters.
"What happens if we draw the charm on the cop?" Dean demanded.
"You think he'll just let us do that, Dean?"
"Nah, probably not."
In the end, they didn't pause for even a minute when they heard him holler stop, they just kept running.
They thought they had it when they reached the sledding hill on the outskirts of the village but the snowman moved the little girl over onto his back and threw himself onto his belly. The kids in his parade, all young enough for snow pants, screamed in glee and slid down the hill on their collective poylester covered butts.
"Fucker's really moving," Dean grunted and grabbed a toboggan off a stunned teenager, snapping, "Police emergency."
"Dude, like why do you have a Christmas tree drawn on your forehead?"
"It's not a Christmas tree, it's a... Never mind!" Dragging the toboggan to the top of the hill, Dean yelled, "Sammy, move your ass! I got us a ride."
Sam rolled his eyes but threw himself down behind his brother, giving them a good solid shove to break the initial inertia.
"See if we can herd him over to that jump!" Dean nodded toward a distant wedge of snow as he leaned and the toboggan began to curve to the left. "Maybe the kid'll fall off!"
"What if she gets hurt?" Sam demanded, flamethrower in one hand and the other clutching a desperate handful of Dean's jacket.
"Beats going off a cliff!"
Two adult men, two large adult men on a well-waxed toboggan, had gravity in their favor, and they soon began to catch up to the snowman, cutting through its attendant herd of sliding children with only a few minor mishaps.
Coming up on the snowman's right side, Dean yelled, "Steer!"
"Steer? It's a toboggan!"
But Dean was already up on one knee, flamethrower aimed at the snowman's feet.
"Dean! The little girl!"
"Relax; I know what I'm doing!" He let off a short burst. The flame barely licked the possessed snow, but it was enough to send the belly sliding snowman to the left and over the packed jump. Still laughing, the little girl went one way and the snowman the other. Dean had just enough time to punch the air before the toboggan hit a patch of ice and began to spin out of control. "Sam, I said steer!"
"What part of toboggan do you not understand?" Sam snarled as they turned sideway to the hill and the lower edge caught.
When Dean dug himself out of the snowbank, the snowman was just lumbering up onto its feet, the little girl a full ten feet away. "Sammy, flamethrower!"
"Oh man, I have snow down my pants..."
"Now, Sam!"
They hit it with both flames on full and, as a dozen children screamed "No!", they melted it down – legs, body, head. The button nose, the eyes of coal and the corncob pipe all sank, but the hat floated on the puddle.
Flamethrowers off, Dean took a deep breath. "Okay, that was weird. Even for us." He turned to look at Sam and frowned. "What?"
One hand reaching back to dig the snow out of his jeans, Sam had frozen in place. "Do you hear that?"
"What?"
"I don't know. It's like a heart beat. Sort of a thumpity thump thump, thumpity thump thump."
"I don't hear..." And then he did. "Sam. Look."
"I see it."
The whirlwind had returned. It swirled over the puddle, lifting the hat and reforming the snowman under it. The eyes, the nose, the pipe... "Happy Birthday!"
"Why does it keep saying that?" Sam muttered, hoisting his flamethrower up onto his hip.
"We've got a reconstituted homicidal snowman here and you're worried about its dialogue?" Dean shook his head. "Dude, perspective."
"Yeah, I guess. The hat?"
Dean nodded grimly and thumbed on his flamethrower. "The hat."
As the hat burst into flame, the snowman shuddered, froze, and became three variable sized snowballs, slightly melted on top and lightly covered in ash. Just to be on the safe side, Dean knocked the top snowball off and stomped it flat.
"Dean, over there." Sam pointed at a sign only just barely visible from where they were standing.
Danger. Unstable cliff edge. No Trespassing.
"You figure that's where he was taking the kids?"
Dean nodded. "Fits what Bobby told us. Looks like we were just in time."
"Mister?"
He smiled down at the little girl dressed all in pink and white who stared up at him with wide eyes... and kicked him in the shins. If he'd stopped to consider it, he'd have assumed the Hello Kitty snowboots would have cushioned the blow. He'd have been wrong.
***
"Hey Bobby." Sam stretched out his legs and stared happily down at the new red and green striped socks he'd unwrapped that morning. "Merry Christmas. Yeah, we dealt. No, it turned out to be a possessed snowman. Seriously. Trust me, we deserved a drink. Yeah, uh huh..."
He was scribbling notes when Dean came out of the bathroom, towel around his waist and his Christmas soap-on-a-rope in one hand. "I heard the phone. Who called?"
"Bobby. Apparently there's been a sighting of three singing chipmunks in Albany..."