Chapter Text
Dad sucked.
Tim Forten kicked the crap out of a few rocks on the ground and looked out into the surrounding trees.
"It's not my fault Johnny doesn't listen," he griped to himself, settling onto a smelly old log. He picked up a pebble and threw it... a whole, like, four feet. "Wasn't like he even got to the end of the driveway."
Johnny Forten, three-year-old, was a total pain in the butt. At ten, Tim figured he shouldn't have to pull babysitting duty anymore. Maybe after this, Dad wouldn't trust him to do it.
Maybe after this, Tim wouldn't bother to go back home at all.
He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. It was cold out here! Maybe because, he told himself, you ran out in the middle of the night, you doofus! Well, okay, so it was only eight o'clock, but it felt later. Darker.
He wasn't going back, though. Not yet. Dad had yelled at him, telling him Johnny could have run into the street, could have been killed, and what the h-e-double toothpicks was Tim doing if he wasn't keeping an eye on his little brother? Tim had just hung his head, let Dad yell, and gone to his room like a good little boy. And gone right out the window as soon as he could pack his PSP and comic books into his backpack.
Dad was going to freak when he finally got finished making sure precious little Johnny was okay and came to Tim's room to yell at him some more.
Served him right.
But it was cold. Really cold, even for April. Maybe he should go home. The woods were kind of creepy at night. Maybe that serial killer the news was talking about was actually real. Maybe he was out here right now!
Tim looked around apprehensively. Wow it was dark! He shivered from more than the sudden cold snap, and the first niggling of fear started growing in his gut. He should definitely go home.
"Mommy?"
He jumped a little on hearing the sad voice. He couldn't see anything this far into the trees. Should have stuck to the side of the woods by the streetlights, dummy.
"Mommy! Please!"
"Is..." He took a deep breath. Might be some lost kid, right? It didn't sound like a serial killer. "Is somebody there?"
Tim Forten never saw what killed him--he was dead in seconds, with little more than a breath to let him know his time was over.
And he wasn't the first...
* * * * * *
While the road wasn't exactly swimming in front of his eyes or anything, Dean Winchester knew that he'd just about reached the end of his driving stamina for the day. He considered waking Sam to take the next leg of the trip, but one look at his exhausted brother, sprawled haphazardly over the passenger seat, had him looking for the nearest exit with a lodging sign. That fucking striga had taken more out of Sam than he was willing to admit, and, only two days after the fact, Dean wasn't quite ready to let the incident go too easily himself.
"Myers, Ohio--13 miles" the sign ahead read, with the requisite gas, food, and lodging logos underneath.
"Good enough," Dean murmured, spurring the Impala on a little faster. The sooner he got there, the sooner he could try to catch up on some of the sleep he hadn't gotten in Wisconsin...
Fifteen minutes later, he was pulling up in front of a neat and tidy little hotel just at the edge of Myers. Mason's Travel Inn, it proclaimed itself. He shrugged. Didn't look half bad, though at this point, Dean would have been happy with a Motel 6.
He looked over at his brother and grinned. Sam had slept through all of Indiana and half of Ohio and that was damn sure the longest sleep he'd had in months. "Aw," Dean whispered with an evil smile. "Well, aren't you cute?"
He leaned in close, his eyes shining. "Sammy?" The call was high and teasing. Feminine. "Sammy, wake up."
Sam frowned, shifting in his sleep. Dean just smiled wider.
"Oh, come on, Sammy. Wake up, honey."
Sam grunted in confusion and opened bleary eyes, slamming back into his seat in surprise as Dean's face loomed over him.
"Jerk," he muttered thickly, still not quite with it, but awake enough to be pissed.
Dean laughed. "Man, you gotta get a better comeback."
Sam rubbed an eye, murmured something that sounded suspiciously like "fuck you," and looked around. "Where are we?"
Dean indulged in an expansive gesture. "Myers, Ohio. Population 4500."
Sam just looked at him for a minute. "Why?"
"Because I'm tired," Dean replied, opening the car door and talking over the squeak of metal on metal. "I'm tired, and I want to go to bed."
"I could have driven--"
"No, Sammy." Dean opened the trunk as they spoke, pulling out their safe-for-prying-eyes duffel bags and locking the rest of their equipment back inside. "Bed. Shower. Sleep." He threw Sam's duffel at him and pointed to the hotel lobby, walking ahead with purpose. "Bed. Now."
"Yes, sir," he heard Sam mutter quietly, a smile in the sleepy tone.
* * * * * *
"Why can't we stay in places like this all the time?" Dean wondered aloud some twenty minutes later. The Travel Inn--which turned out to be the only hotel in town--was clean and welcoming, the rooms spacious. His bed was perfectly not-too-soft and not-too-hard; there was a coffeemaker and complimentary mini-fridge--he was even willing to bet that the shower might actually have a little water pressure for a change.
"Well, you do have to watch your credit rating," Sam stated, deadpan.
Dean snapped his fingers. "Right. Forgot about that."
Sam snorted, turning on the television as he headed to his own bed, and Dean settled back on the headboard, watching idly as a local sportscaster talked about the latest high school basketball scores.
"...Thank you, Larry," said the perky newscaster, turning suddenly, dramatically, serious. "In breaking news, we have a report of another death in Myers. Harold Parsons is on the scene."
Dean sat up straighter and exchanged a glance with his brother. What were the odds, huh? Actually, scratch that. The way Dean's world worked, he should have expected this in some perverted way.
"Well, Sandy, the grim series of deaths continues here in Myers, where another young boy lies dead tonight." Normally, Dean would have expected a nice little photo of the kid, probably a candid where he looked happy and safe. It was a dramatic license thing.
But apparently, they hadn't had time to hunt one up, because the camera focused in on the activity of police and coroner's men behind the reporter instead. "The name of the child has yet to beofficially released," the talking head continued, acknowledging the fact that, in a small town, nothing had to be official to be widely known. "But according to an unnamed neighbor, the boy and his father had been heard fighting earlier in the evening, and the boy was found to be missing some time later." The camera focused back on the reporter, but the action in the background was still drawing Dean's attention. Always looking for clues, even when it wasn't his fight.
"It is not known whether the father is a suspect at this time." There was a pleasant thought. "The community mounted a massive search, and volunteers found the boy's body in a small glade just half an hour ago. The police are not giving out any information at this time, but it appears that this is just the latest in a bizarre string of deaths this week in Myers--"
Great. More dead kids. Dean grabbed his shaving kit and headed for the bathroom, ignoring the worried look Sam gave him as he passed. "I'm taking a shower," he grumbled, the shine of a nice tidy hotel room and the promise of a good night's sleep blown apart by the reminder of Wisconsin.
He let the water soothe away the image of that damned striga feeding off of Sam, and he stayed in a lot longer than he had planned. When he got out, Sam was already asleep again, sprawled out on top of the covers, still wearing his day clothes.
Dean found himself grinning. Seeing Sam snoring away, alive and well, was doing a lot to make him feel better.
He turned off the television, dug an extra blanket out of the closet, dropped it on Sam with neither style nor grace, and got ready for bed.
He must have been even more exhausted than he thought, because he was dead to the world almost the moment he slid under the sheets.
* * * * * *
"You have to take care of your little brother now, Dean." Dad's voice was the same sad, quiet rumble it had been since Mommy went away, and his smile was soft. "We're all he has left."And Sam and Daddy were all Dean had left, too.
Daddy gave him a kiss on the forehead and pulled the covers up over him before walking around Sammy's basinet and sliding into the other bed in the room. They were staying with a friend of Daddy's because Daddy wouldn't go home, even though the firemen had said they could. Dean didn't blame him--he didn't ever want to go back there. It smelled like smoke now, instead of Mommy.
Daddy never turned out the light anymore, and that was okay, too. And Daddy slept a lot, but only on nights like this, when he smelled like the wine they gave the adults at church, only stronger. Dean heard Sammy shift in his basinet as Daddy began to snore, and he rolled over so that he could watch his little brother. Because he was supposed to take care of him--Daddy said.
The basinet must have been here already. Sammy's crib was all burned up now. This looked like it was made for a girl a long, long time ago. It had old sheets that looked like somebody had made them by hand, and green and brown ribbons. There was a bright silver charm hanging off of the bow of ribbon at the end of the crib, and Dean stared at it for a long time. He decided the whole crib looked kind of stupid.
Sammy finally fell asleep, too, so Dean rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. It was dirty-white and boring. Not like his ceiling at home, with the cool glow-in-the-dark stars and planets and stuff. It was boring enough, in fact, that Dean started to drift, and the room seemed to darken around him, even though he knew Daddy had the light on.
"Mommy?"
Dean sat up in his bed, looking around the room that should have been lit by the weird bowling-pin lamp by Daddy's bed. It was dark, and the voice hadn't sounded like anybody he knew.
And it was cold. It wasn't supposed to be cold--Daddy always told him to leave the windows closed and locked. Always. But he could feel the cold. Winter cold.
"Daddy?"
Daddy didn't answer. He didn't even snore.
"Sammy?" Now he was really getting scared. He was supposed to take care of Sammy, but he didn't think he'd be able to find him in all this dark.
Dean felt the air get close, felt his lungs start to burn. He couldn't breathe; could only grip the bed frame, the wood digging into his hands. The darkness around him was changing as he struggled for one last breath...
And somewhere in the darkness, Sammy started crying...
* * * * * *
Dean's eyes snapped open and he let air slide in and out of his lungs for a minute.
Huh.
Well, that sucked.
* * * * *