Chapter Text
"Attack the story like a radiant suicide, utter the great NO to life without weakness; then you will see a magnificent cathedral, and your senses, vectors of unutterable derangement, will map out an integral delirium that will be lost in the unnameable architecture of time."
Michel Houellebecq, H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life
Sam's hand creeps towards the volume dial - and Dean snatches it from the air, quick as a dive in front of a bullet. As though the world needed saving, and only 1980's Jon Bon Jovi himself could pull the whole thing off.
"Don't even try." Dean says, and it's the voice he reserves for monsters. For apocalypses.
Bon Jovi's raspy tenor croons from crackling speakers:
I don't need no needle to be giving me a thrill /
Sam rolls his eyes but, with a pained sigh, settles back against the bench seat. Radio heist spectacularly thwarted. "Have you heard a word I've said in the last ten minutes? Serious question. Like one word."
And I don't need no anesthesia or a nurse to bring a pill /
Dean glances up long enough to catch the tail end of Sam's martyred expression - lit up all dewy from the laptop balanced across his lap. The under-lit glare presses his features even flatter. Like a statue.
An angry statue. With zero respect for the classics.
"I can multitask!" Dean protests, to Sam's continued and heavy silence. "C'mon, you friggin' killjoy - when's the last time they played Bad Medicine on the radio? It's always… Livin' on a Prayer or some other hit."
Sam shakes his head - more amused than annoyed - and adjusts the screen to find a better angle for his orangutan height. "Yeah, and you make us listen to those too. Your glam rock obsession isn't gonna beat out the…" he squints at his screen, "the thirteen Simsbury suicides on my priority list."
Dean responds (respectfully) (tastefully) by turning up the volume until the windows rattle in their frames, belting: "Oh, oh, oh, shake it up, just like bad medicine - "
"Oh my god," Sam surrenders, and goes back to scrolling through the Hartford Courant's coverage of the recent deaths.
But it's soon enough that Sambora's final guitar licks fade; Dean smirks at Sam's hopeful glance up, but dutifully lowers the volume as the next song begins.
"Okay, Poindexter. Suicides. Salsbury. Go."
"Simsbury." Sam corrects, and Dean catches the shifting of light as Sam swaps tabs around on his screen. Their hotspot must be logging some serious gigs - Sam had been in research-mode half the winding drive from their last case in Harrisburg.
Dean covers an eye roll with a yawn, and says, "Alright, I'm with you. A bunch of locals punching their tickets the last six months. What are we thinking? Siren? Demons?"
Sam shrugs. "Yeah, maybe. Timeline is a little weird, though. Why the last six months specifically?"
"Well, it's New England. Lots of indigenous burial grounds. Could be a haunting. Did a bunch of those with Dad back in the early 90's."
Sam scrubs a hand down his face and mutters under his breath: "Yeah, like I'd ever forget five months straight of Friendly's burgers."
Dean mimes a shiver in the driver's seat. "Brrr, Little Orphan Sammy. Yeah, I remember you being real upset about all those Raspberry Sherbets."
"Shut up." Sam replies, no heat to his voice. "Anyway - yeah, there were a few indigenous Wappinger bands around the area, but I already looked in to it. No recent construction projects on their land, no reports of grave desecration. At least not in the last six months." He clicks around a few more times on the latest article, then shuts his computer lid with a sigh. Frustrated.
"We'll hit the Sheriff's office." Dean placates. "You know there's a bunch of shit the articles leave out. You did good. Finding a case." He adds, if it wasn't obvious.
Some of Sam's spikiness gets smoothed off, and he nods. Slides the laptop into its sleeve and powers off his hotspot. "Yeah." He agrees, eventually. He drums his fingers thoughtfully on his knee for a moment, and then his eyes narrow and he throws a look back at Dean. "'course you're only saying that 'cause now you're thinking of Friendly's shakes."
Dean barks out a laugh, and says obligingly: "Haven't had a Hunka Bunka PB Fudge in twenty years. Gotta make up for lost time."
Sam laughs, and the Impala fills with it.
It's been a quiet couple weeks. Good. Happy. Easy, even. They're sweeping their way northeast after a couple textbook hunts in the Bible Belt. No apocalypses on their radar; Cas has been mostly silent - which has been nice, since most cases he hands them end with the Winchesters nearly losing a few fingers. (Or other appendages Dean is particularly attached to.) Overall, it's been an easy couple weeks. All quiet on the Western Front and all that.
And so, for now: Bon Jovi on the radio. A milk-run of a hunt. Fast food sundaes on his mind. Brother in the passenger seat.
It's good. It's all good.
A few more winding hours on the CT-10, chasing the Farmington River on their climb north. The two-lane highway is surrounded by so much cloying green, Dean doesn't know how the asphalt doesn't get swallowed. They're a long way from the dusty Midwest.
He and Sam chat amiably, but mostly drive in comfortable silence. Enjoying the lull between cases. Dean wonders if it's not too late in the season to catch a Rangers game if the next case pulls them back south. He can't remember the last time they had free time. Might as well as put fraudulent credit cards towards something fun - for once.
Sam glances at the GPS app pulled up on his phone, and lets Dean know they're only a few miles from the motel he'd scoped out. Dean nods, pretty damn ready to get out of the car and stretch his legs.
The area's rockier now, as they start to skirt the Talcott Mountain ridgeline. Still plenty of trees, but now the expanse is broken up by blocky cliffs and drop-offs - roots of burgeoning trees holding messy chunks of cliffside together.
They're approaching one enormous example: a bright red maple that towers over its green-brushed brethren. Dean's not sure he's ever seen such a red color outside of fall - outside of blood. It's interesting enough to catch his eye, especially set across the backdrop of the old-growth Belden forest stretching out a few dozen yards under the cliff.
Occupied, Sam only spares it a cursory glance. He'd dragged their box of badges from the backseat and is currently flipping through various departmental aliases, murmuring softly to himself.
No traffic on the road, sun dappled on the car. They come up to maple tree quickly enough, and Dean spies a low wooden fence stacked loosely a decent few yards around the maple, a small gate tucked up at the front with a shiny padlock - new enough to catch the midday sun.
They pass the odd tree, heading further down the highway. CCR's on the radio - halfway through Lodi.
Rode in on the Greyhound / I'll be walkin' out if I go /
Dean thinks he saw something swaying in the tree -
I was just passin' through /
He glances across Sam to peer out the passenger side mirror, squints to find the bright splash of red and
"-ean!"
Dean blinks - and the world has shifted. The acrid odor of burnt tires fills his head like exhaust, and the road is gone. Now his world is all smeared greens and browns and blues - and he's not where he remembered, in the driver's seat, and his neck hurts, and the song on the radio is wrong - and -
and -
"Dean!" Sam's voice is almost as physical as a slap across the face, and Dean shivers and -
What the fuck -
Dean's half-shoved into the passenger side - his brother is stretched out almost across him, hands on the wheel and his left foot stomped against the Impala's parking brake - hard, like he doesn't trust the car not to go.
They're off the road in a shoulder ditch, just a half foot from crunching the bumper on a granite slab. Dust swirls like sepia smoke around the Impala, sticking to her freshly-cleaned windows. A Heart song now pumps through the speakers, something about the night going by slow. Dean feels a bruise forming where Sam must have ripped him against his seatbelt in his struggle to get to the brake and stop them from their slide into the ditch.
Sam's eyes are huge on his, and he maneuvers Dean around so he can reach the gearshift to put the Impala into actual park. Dean's throat undulates as he tries to remember how to flip the switch in his brain that controls speech, but Sam's already ten miles ahead of him -
"Dean, what the hell, man?" Angry words - but there's no anger, only fear. Sam slaps a shaky hand against the volume dial and the song cuts out, leaving only silence and the quiet clicking of the Impala engine - Dean's heartbeat in his ears.
Dean's tongue untwists and he hears himself croak: "What happened?"
Sam flounders for a second, and then says, "You're asking me? You just suddenly… I don't even know what just happened. The Impala just started drifting into the other lane, and I thought you were fucking with me. And then you went into the shoulder and I had to yank you out of the way to get to the - what the hell, Dean? You were just like… not there."
Dean jams his finger into the seatbelt release and he's hauling himself out of the Impala before he even consciously realizes he needs to be outside. He hears a muttered curse from his brother as Sam also battles his seatbelt to follow Dean out.
Dean's hands shake, and his neck hurts - whiplash? He takes a step away from the Impala. She looks… okay. Dirty, now. But no blown tires, no belching black smoke under the hood.
He'd… lost control of his car? Mid-drive?
"Dean." His brother says, and Dean reluctantly lifts glassy eyes over. Sam is on the other side of the Impala, hands balanced on the edge of her roof. Looking at him like he's about two seconds from belting Dean down in the backseat and driving to a hospital. Or insane asylum.
"I'm fine." Dean says. Thinks he means it, even.
Sam's brows pull together and his hair is in childish disarray. It makes him look years younger when he squints over at Dean and says: "Christo."
"Oh, fuck off."
A minivan curls up the south bend of the CT-10, slowing as it comes across them on the wrong side of the road. Dean squints into tinted windows, sees only the harried expression of a middle-aged good Samaritan, and he waves the car on, yelling loud enough to carry: "We're good! Just overheated a bit!"
The balding man holds up a hand to acknowledge, and speeds up towards town.
When Dean looks back at his brother, Sam's expression is edging towards relief, but suspicion still twists his mouth. "The car did not overheat."
Dean scoffs, and then steps around to the other side of the car to join his brother. No blown tires or damage on this side either. "Yeah, but what was I supposed to tell Mr. Citizen's Arrest over there? Sorry, I blacked out for a minute and almost smashed our brains against the dashboard, don't wait up!"
Sam's jaw works for a second. "Is that what happened?"
Dean slaps his palms down on the Impala's hood. "I don't know what happened. I was driving, and then suddenly you're yelling my ear off and we're in the dirt." His shoulders hunch up towards his ears but he forces them to relax - not sure why he's so defensive.
Sam seems to have the same realization, and backs off slightly. Tries to wrangle calm enough for the both of them. "Okay. I get it. Just… man, Dean. That scared the crap out of me."
"Yeah, no kidding. I'll have to check Baby out when we get to the motel. Make sure we… I didn't fuck up anything under her skirt."
It startles a bruised chuckle out of Sam as he begins to walk around the Impala towards the driver's side - Dean's side. "You're still gross, so guess we can rule out possession."
"Shut up, I wasn't possessed." Dean bitches, but he's not sure why he thinks that. "And what the hell do you think you're doing?" His eyes narrow as Sam starts to slide into the driver's seat. Dean, annoyed, yanks open the passenger door to continue arguing with Sam face-to-face.
"Get in the car." Sam says, already clicking on his seatbelt. "You're not driving. And you - of all people - won't risk your 'Baby' just to prove a point."
Dean curses, mutters something nonsensical about shoving proof up Sam's ass, but he swings his legs in and pulls the door closed on hinges that shriek.
The car's still running, and Sam gingerly eases her into reverse. The tires catch on loose gravel and fling a few rocks back against the wheel well. Dean winces at the sound, but Sam successfully back up to the road, straightens out, and resumes their drive into Simsbury.
Sam's silence is loaded. Dean can sense his brother watching him out of the corner of his eye. An investigator carefully flipping through his stack of questions, looking for the right one to pull.
"Did you see anything?"
Dean snorts, and finally reaches to snap his seatbelt into place. Hates sitting in the fuckin' passenger seat. "What, like a ghost floating in the middle of the street? Think I woulda mentioned."
Sam bristles, but doesn't rise to the bait, and it punches holes in Dean's sails - leaving him feeling shades of embarrassed and twitchy.
"Sorry. I'm just… yeah."
Sam nods at the road, instantly absolving, and it makes Dean feel even shittier. "What's the last thing you remember before…"
Dean frowns, looks down at his hands. He feels fine, looks fine - except for the weird whiplash feeling at his neck. Unsurprising because - oh, yeah - he almost just totaled the fucking Impala. His favorite thing in the world. And he only owns like three things.
Last thing he remembers?
Guitar riffs of Lodi on the radio… Green-drenched stretch of road, rocks and cliffs…
A flash of red sprouts in the back of his head, but without any memory to connect it to, it fades away. Everything else is just a blankness.
"I dunno." He replies after a moment. "But I get the feeling our string of easy cases just got its terminal diagnosis."
"Sheriff Marshall?"
Sam catches the Sheriff's eye as she strides past the hallway in the back of Reception. The woman - mid-50's, sensible haircut and even more sensible shoes - pauses mid-bite and Sam is horrified to see she's eating the real life equivalent of a cartoon doughnut - pink-iced with rainbow sprinkles.
On cue - his brother snorts loudly, and Sam kicks at Dean's ankle hard out of view of the receptionist checking them in.
The Sheriff - to her credit - swallows her bite quickly, and folds the other half of the doughnut into a napkin. Steps into the room.
The receptionist - Phillip, or Colin or something - spins around on his chair, and spots his boss. "Hey Sheriff - just about to give you a buzz. We got Agents Fogerty and Cook here to speak to you about the… you know."
Sheriff Marshall draws level, and inspects the proffered badges with a professional eye. Dean grins wolfishly when the Sheriff flicks her eyes up to compare the photos. She nods, and they tuck the badges back into their suits. "Well, Colin, unless you think the feds are here about the Crawford cat sleeping in the fire engine again, I'm takin' a stab they're here about the suicides."
"That's right." Dean says, drawl ironed out of his Fed voice. But then the real Dean shines through like a crack of sun: "Though I'd like to personally requisition one of those doughnuts for closer inspection. Ma'am."
Thankfully the Sheriff smiles, and jerks her chin back in the direction she was heading before they flagged her down. "Got a box in the back. C'mon." She turns and heads out - Sam quickly scrawls in the time and date in the sign-up form Colin pushes at them, and then follows Team Doughnut down the hallway.
"Dude, doughnuts?" He mutters, ribbing Dean in the side with his elbow.
Dean pouts exaggeratedly. "I'm fuckin' starving. Your fault."
"How is it my fault?"
"I… give me five minutes and I'll think of a reason."
Sam rolls his eyes, but then they're piling into the Sheriff's office, and their Fed masks slide back into place.
His brother helps himself to one of the doughnuts in the box - a powdered sugar spectacle that Sam knows Dean specifically opts for because the next dry-cleaning run is Sam's. Sure enough, one bite in and a layer of sugar dusts Dean's collar - a constellation on a pinstriped navy sky.
But something else pings Sam's radar - an odd red splash, like a sunburn, or maybe a scrape from a seatbelt - peeking out at Dean's collar, but before he can do more than file it away, the Sheriff is speaking.
"Figured some agency would be rolling into town about now." She says, and starts digging in one of her desk drawers. She pulls out a thick manila envelope, but sets it in front of her on the desk without opening it.
"Nothing territorial." Sam says smoothly, "Just want to see how we can support your investigation."
Sheriff Marshall flips her hands open on the table like a shrug, before leaning back in her worn leather chair. Crosses her arms. "Investigation's a strong word. Pesky problem with suicides is there usually ain't a victim to follow-up with."
"Sure," Dean says agreeably, spewing powder. "But we've been in the game long enough to know a lot of details don't make it into the Sunday Funnies. Any hard-copy files you got would be a huge help." He nods his head over at Sam, "My partner here loves reading. The more the better. He's all analog, baby."
"Thanks." Sam replies dryly, but turns back to the Sheriff. "Maybe you can give us a brief rundown first?"
The Sheriff pauses. Bites the inside of her cheek, considering. "Alright." She says after a moment. She pushes the hefty file over the desk towards Sam. He pulls it to the edge, but lets it sit. "Thirteen suicides. Youngest was 22, oldest was 81. Four women, nine men. No relation to each other. All of them lived in the town proper, but no common locations to demonstrate a pattern."
The Sheriff's phone vibrates against the desk, and she gives an apologetic wave before picking it up. She reads a few lines of text, responds tersely, and sets the phone back down. "Sorry. Short staffed. Where were we?"
"The articles didn't report a common cause of death. If any updated reports were sent through to our office, we were probably on the road already." Sam lies smoothly, even sliding in a bureaucratic wince.
Marshall sighs, and pulls the file stack back across the desk towards herself. She flips it open, pulls the top sheet to stack on top of the folder, then slides both back to the brothers. It's a list of causes of death - and they run the gamut: pills, hanging, gun shot, knives. One that makes him grimace - one of the woman had bashed her head over and over on a slab of rock, and didn't stop til her head was pulp and prayers.
"So no single cause of death." Sam sums up, passing the paper over to his brother.
"No single… cause." She says cautiously. "Close friends and family all reported odd behavior in the days leading up to the death."
"Odd?"
"Transcripts are in the file." She replies evasively. "But weird brown-outs. Not sounding like themselves. Insisting on… " She trails off. Grimaces.
"Insisting on?" Dean prods, brushing crumbs off his knee and dusting his hands together.
A haunted look passes behind the Sheriff's eyes. She leans forward, and says a little quieter - like she's worried someone's listening in the hallway: "There's a detail we didn't include in the press statements. We didn't want a bunch of… weird death-obsessed, paranormal thrill seekers running around town. Causing more problems."
Sam exchanges a glance with his brother, who quirks up one of his brows minutely. Yahtzee.
"We're not interested in making a spectacle of the deaths, if that's your worry." Sam reassures her, and a modicum of relief smooths the Sheriff's stress lines.
"Well… thanks. Though I think half the town is buzzing about it anyway. Hard to keep it under wraps, it being so public and all."
Dean frowns. "The deaths? They were public?"
"Not exactly. But they were all at the same location. The same place that most of the victims are reportedly babbling about before they took their lives." She pauses, and meets both of their eyes before she continues: "I assume you both saw that huge red maple on your drive into town?"
"Nope," Dean replies, at the precise same time Sam says: "Of course."
Sam switches his gaze to his brother, frowning. But Dean's returning glance is nonplussed, as confused at Sam's answer as his own.
The Sheriff bounces her attention between the two, but addresses Sam when she replies: "For whatever reason, that's ground zero for the suicides. Every one of them."
Sam still has a weird feeling, but stows it for now. "That's… interesting. Any significance to the tree? Historical?" He fishes.
The Sheriff only shrugs. "There's not a story about it, or anything. No Paul Revere hitching his horse to the tree, or witches hanging from the branches or anything. Used to be the spot for local kids to drink beers and vomit-worthy mixers back in the early aughts, but now they mostly do that in the new park on Elm." She rolls her eyes, with all the sanctity of a public servant who spends most of her work hours helping cats out of fire engines or taking beers off minors. "The tree's not off-limits, usually, but we've discouraged visitors and locals from going there the last few years. The cliff side is eroding some, and it's not safe to walk there from town along the highway."
They ask a few more follow-up questions, but don't find any more meat for their potatoes. The Sheriff's office doesn't have the manpower to station a squad car at the tree 24/7. They'd tried to set up a trail camera at the site, but for whatever reason - Sam and Dean exchange glances - localized signal interference always fucks with the camera quality. The footage is unusable.
Dean snags another doughnut on their way to the Medical Examiner's office.
"Definitely our kind of thing." Dean says, and balls up his napkin to toss in one of the morgue trash bins.
"Yeah, I'll say." Sam agrees, and pulls a eeugh! face as Deans swallows the last of his second doughnut. "The fact you can eat in a room full of formaldehyde and body parts is just... yick."
Dean rolls his eyes and wishes he'd snagged a water bottle out of the Impala on their drive over. "Shut up, there's not - oh, hey." He interrupts himself, spotting a jar on one of the tables stacked against the back wall - with an honest-to-god pair of eye balls floating in it. "That's fucking gross." He adds, delighted.
Sam's phone buzzes in his pocket, and he checks the screen.
"Hot babes in your area?" Dean says, when Sam goes to drop the phone back in his pocket.
"Sheriff Marshall texting us her contact." He angles the screen towards Dean, who has already lost interest, "Usually you don't hit on chicks with badges, but hey, it's a new day."
Dean laughs, glad that Sam's no longer fussing over him now that a few hours have crept by since the weird car-freak-out. "No, but I do like a lady with a gun. Kinda cancels out my aversion of authority figures."
Sam snorts, and futzes with his phone for another second before stowing it back in his jacket. "Anyway," he says, "we can probably rule out a siren."
"Yeah, you mean beyond the general lack of stab-stab or big grand gestures of love?" He rubs at an itch in his eyebrow. "Quiet suicides ain't their usual M.O."
Sam checks his watch, then glances out the door towards the hall. "We'll check the corpses for sulfur, I guess. Sheriff Marshall said there were two bodies in storage. Check for EMF, too."
Dean taps his back pocket where he's stuck the EMF detector on their way out of the motel, but doesn't have high hopes. "Not sure what the demon angle would be." He admits, though the odd behavior does lend some credence to the theory. "Seems like a waste of a meat suit. I guess we can double back to the Sheriff's tree and see if there's anything… I don't know, demony."
He means it seriously, but Sam's brows tighten once again. "You really don't remember the tree?"
A prickle of something lines the inside of Dean's head - like a barbed wire ball rolling around and scratching his gray matter. "No. But that's right around where I blanked out, right?"
Sam pokes his tongue against the inside of his cheek and is silent for a moment. "I don't know. You were humming CCR when you drove past it. Didn't get all… weird, until after."
Dean scoffs to cover his discomfort, not liking Sam's worry-train getting shoved back on his tracks. "Dude, I didn't get possessed by a demon." He jams a thumb against the anti-possession tat - hidden under his Fed threads - "And I don't have any urge to go off myself looking at pretty leaves. Okay? Buzz off."
Sam's mouth presses flat, and his eyes slide past Dean to the hallway again. Dean frowns, but his brother is already pushing around him and heading out of the morgue the ME's assistant had parked them in. Dean watches his brother push open the glass doors, then yank open a door in the hallway labeled BREAK ROOM. Dean goes to follow, confused, but Sam's already walking back into the hallway - something palmed in his hand.
"Get hungry for - oh my God, seriously?" Dean demands, as Sam unfurls his hand to reveal a bunch of salt packets. "You're always tellin' me to watch my sodium intake - "
"Just humor me." Sam interrupts, calm in the face of Dean's low-grade defensive panic.
"Fine." Dean snaps waspishly, and lets his brother rip open one of the salt packets to sprinkle it liberally on Dean's raised palm. There's no reaction as the small grains hit his skin and roll off onto the formaldehyde-sticky floor. "You owe me ten bucks."
"I didn't bet you - "
The door whisks open, and a frazzled-looking man in a lab coat pours into the room. "Agents, I cannot apologize enough for the delay."
The ME - presumably Dr. Siejas - sticks his hand out to shake Sam's. The ME is corpulent to the point of bursting, and Dean quickly wipes the salt off his palm before the man turns to shake his hand in turn.
"Dr. Siejas - call me Roy." He says quickly, and then light enough for a man his size, darts away to grab a stack of folders over by one of the computer terminals. "Sheriff Marshall said you'd be swinging by to take a look at the bodies. Apologies," he says again, "I was at a teeth cleaning. You wouldn't believe how many people die annually due to poor dental hygiene."
"I'd guess a lot more than people who blow their brains out over a tree."
The ME pauses in his file-searching, and peers at Dean over his thin-framed glasses. Dean smiles innocently, and the man turns back his search. Sam throws him a dark look, and then crosses over to join Dr. Siejas.
"Sheriff Marshall's investigations didn't find any connections between the victims." Sam says, "We wanted to view the bodies ourselves. See if you'd been able to find any medical commonalities between the deceased."
"Any sort of weird odors, odd powdery substances." Dean adds.
"Substances? Like drugs?" Dr. Siejas asks, "Two of the individuals took their own lives with pills, but they weren't the same medications."
"Were they from the same hospital?"
"We only have the one hospital. Small town." The ME adds distractedly as he finally pulls out the thick file he'd been searching for. He hands it to Sam, apparently not appreciating Dean's earlier crack at the dental industry. "All the victim's medical records." He says triumphantly. "Just picked them up this morning."
Sam frowns at the man, "They hadn't looked at these?"
Dr. Siejas just shrugs. "They checked for mental health scares, institutionalizations. Nothing popped. These folks didn't die from cancer or brain bleeds - didn't feel relevant to the investigations at the time."
Sam catches Dean's eye and passes him the unopened file. "And now?"
The Simsbury Medical Examiner doesn't reply for a long moment. Then he says: "Thirteen deaths? I think it's time we start looking at everything."
The lie pings off Dean's bullshit detector. "There's more to it than that. Eh, Roy?"
The man flinches. Definitely won't be winning any poker games anytime soon. "I…"
Sam steps in, the soothing slide of balm against a wound. "Inter-town politics don't concern us. We're not here to make trouble. For anyone." He adds meaningfully.
Dr. Siejas drums his fingers nervously against the cool examination counter. Searches Sam's expression, then Dean's. "It's not… I didn't… Look, I know I should have recused myself, but I… I just felt like I owed it to her. To help."
"Her?" Dean and Sam ask in unison.
Dr. Siejas bites his bottom lip hard enough to press white teeth marks into the skin. After a second, the truth pours out: "Angie Borroto. The last victim. She was my sister's youngest."
"I'm sorry." Dean says. And means it. He remembers the name from the file - kid had been 22. Home for spring break, Angie was a college athlete at LSU. A early morning delivery driver had found her swinging from the maple a few days prior.
"Thanks." Dr. Siejas replies woodenly.
"I know it's a sensitive subject, Roy." Sam says, as kindly as one can to someone with a dead family member decomposing just a few short feet away. "I'm guessing she didn't show any signs of suicidal behavior before this?"
The man shakes his head hard and fast. Like he's pushing the accusation straight out of his mind. "No." He says strongly. "Angie was a real good kid. She is… was in her final year of college. She was happy. Excelling at school. Had friends. One of the soccer team's alternate captains."
Sam nods sympathetically. Dean tries to follow suit, but feels his eyes slide over distractedly to meet the floating eyes in the jar behind Dr. Siejas.
"Athletics meant the world to her. She and my brother-in-law were in a car accident when she was in her early teens. He didn't make it. Drunk driver hit them when they were out of state at a soccer tournament. It was touch-and-go for Angie; she flat-lined twice in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. They brought her back." He spreads his hands wide. "Full recovery. It was a miracle." His voice cracks on the last word and he looks horrified.
"My partner and I can inspect the bodies alone." Sam says kindly. "I'm sure you have paperwork to catch up on after your appointment."
Dr. Siejas latches on to the excuse like a life line. "Thank you, yes, that would be very… yes, that would be fine, I think. You two being federal agents and all…" The ME grabs a stack of paper by his elbow almost at random, and after telling Sam the morgue fridge bay numbers for the two corpses, he departs so quickly he nearly leaves a cartoon dust cloud in his wake.
Dean widens his eyes meaningfully at his brother, "Man, almost too easy."
Sam pulls a bitch face, but grabs one of the autopsy aprons off the rack and tosses it to Dean - who snatches it with a smirk. "Just saying. Hate when they hover and try to pick my brain about job opportunities at Quantico. Makes it twice as hard to check for EMF."
"Yeah, you're a real stealth savant, double-oh-seven. Apron up. We'll check for sulfur first." Sam says, already pulling the rubbery apron over his clothes. Turning away to the morgue bays.
Dean obligingly ties the apron, and grabs the box of latex gloves by the sink. The rubber apron must have caught against his hair at his neck line, because he feels
"- not getting out of autopsy duty that easy. Dean?"
Dean blinks, and almost falls on his ass. A wave of nausea makes his stomach clench, and he's dizzy - so dizzy, and the room swirls, and his hand is cold - he's -
touching cold metal, has his fist curled around the door handle to the exit, the box of gloves missing from his grip, and -
wasn't he in the middle of the room, heading towards his -
And there's a weird pulsing in his mind, and his neck itches, and he turns his head to scratch it against his shoulder, but he turns a little too much, catches Sam's eye -
and Sam's watching him with worried eyes, hazel thin-as-glass in the bright lab lights, and he's frowning and his mouth is moving, but there's no sound, and -
Dean's brain finds the connections to his mouth and he hears himself say: "Huh?"
Sam gives him a weird look, like he's been speaking for a while, and says: "I said it's not the time for a bathroom break, dude. I don't like poking the bodies either, but faster we do it, faster we can get you some cholesterol. Deal?"
"Yeah." Dean answers automatically, then shakes his head - feels like there's a rustling by his ears, in his mouth, against his eye lids. What was he doing? Should he be here? Isn't there some other place he's supposed to be? And the -
The moment clears, and Dean suddenly snaps back into focus. He drops the door handle like he's been electrocuted and takes a big step back from the door. His foot collides with something, and the box of gloves skids halfway across the room. He must have… dropped it?
"C'mon, man." Sam complains, and crosses over to pick up the box. "Germs."
The correct version of Dean Winchester clicks into place, and he says - brushing off the weirdness - "Whatever, they're dead. Not like we're gonna kill 'em twice."
"Real nice, Mr. Sensitive."
Dean barks out a laugh, and steals a pair of gloves from the proffered box - snaps 'em on like a surgeon. His brother is eyeing him again, something unreadable behind his eyes. Shuffling puzzle pieces around on the coffee table, waiting for things to click.
"Well, Sammy." Dean declares, and some of the fog clears from Sam's gaze. "Let's get to poking."
They pull both bodies out, lay 'em side by side on two rolling lab tables they push together. Dean schools his features carefully, but the younger woman - 22, soccer player, bright future, all that - starts to depress the fuck out of him. He and his brother are silent as they wave the EMF reader - nothing - and check for sulfur, check for weird marks. Anything.
"Hm." Sam takes a step back, and frowns, like he's trying to see the bigger picture.
Angie had hung herself, right from one of the tree branches. Her neck is a nasty and lacerated mess, though at least she'd broken her neck and hadn't suffered. (Doesn't feel like the correct usage of small miracles, but Dean's at least relieved she didn't hang for agonizing minutes.)
The other body - Jerry Burns - had siphoned gasoline from his car and managed to drink down an entire quart before he died. He was found leaning back against the trunk of the tree, chemical burns all down his front. His body still smells faintly like gas, which makes it harder to detect any sulfur, but both bodies come back clean of signs of demonic possession.
"What else could compel someone to kill themselves?" Sam muses, as he lays Angie's arm back flat against the table.
"And why?" Dean adds, and finally joins Sam in maneuvering Jerry's body to look for other clues. Touching cold corpses always makes his skin crawl. Like he's picking up lunch at the deli counter and finding a human heart wrapped in butcher paper.
He lifts Jerry's calf, and feels an electric snap at his neck - like the table shocked him. He drops the leg on instinct, and it hits the table with a bang that makes them both jump.
"What?" Sam asks, eyes wide, but Dean just shakes his hand out, like he does when the Impala doors release a static discharge against his palm.
"Table shocked me I think. Sorry." He adds, directing the apology to the dead man on the table.
Sam rolls his eyes, but jerks his chin back at the man's cold pale legs. Dean grabs one, Sam grabs the other, and they lift at the same time to check the underside of the man's calves and thighs.
Right on the back of Jerry's left thigh is a rash. Fuzzy and indistinct, like a pen smear or an ink blot test, is a blurred mark of a noose.
Sam and Dean exchange surprised glances. Sam lowers the other leg and tugs his glove off to grab his phone out of his pocket. He snaps a picture of the mark. "That's… a noose, right?"
"Yeah, I think so." Dean agrees, and twists the leg a little more to get a better look in the bright lab lights. It looks more and more like a noose, and it's a little more red than black, now that he's really looking. It doesn't look like tattoo ink - not that Dean's an expert. Almost more like… thin lines of red-black blood overlapping over and over. More scar-like, except for how deep the color is.
"What the hell?" Sam says, and Dean looks up - sees his brother is now looking down at Angie's corpse.
Right on the woman's upper arm is the same identical mark, also covered in rashy red skin.
"What is going on?" Sam asks, and Dean lowers the other victim's leg to the cold table. "That was not there thirty seconds ago."
Dean can only shake his head. "I have no fuckin' idea."