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Summer, Winter, and Autumn have more or less gotten used to their job. Their mentor taught them how to slam things back to their own world, and even how to anchor something in their world for a certain length of time. They’ve met characters and villains from Supernatural, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, the Avengers, and Percy Jackson, just to name a few.
Currently, the three of them are on a road trip to Texas, investigating reports of a familiar-sounding haunted house. The moment they roll into town, Summer realizes where they are. “Richardson, Texas?” she asks, glancing at Winter in the driver’s seat.
Autumn, currently playing navigator, is the one who nods. “Yep. Although,” she frowns, “according to my map it’s supposed to be suburbia, not this rural town.”
Summer takes a moment, then whips out her phone and does a quick google search. Not ten seconds later, she has an answer. “I was right. This is Hell House. An episode from Season 1 of Supernatural,” she clarifies. “According to the wiki, Richardson, Texas is actually a major suburban center. They changed it to a rural town for the episode.”
“So, whatever the monster was in that episode, it’s definitely causing problems,” Winter points out.
“What was that episode, anyway?” Autumn asks.
“A tulpa,” Summer replies immediately. “A thought form. Which is probably why it’s causing problems.” At the confused expressions on her friends’ faces, she elaborates. “Tulpas are ideas come to life. They’re extraordinarily hard to get rid of, because they take on a life of their own.”
“But we can boot it back, right?” Winter asks.
“Hopefully,” Summer says. “I’ll need to check a website before we head in, see which version of the story we’re dealing with.”
“And we need to stop somewhere for food,” Winter adds, “I’m starving.”
They pull into an old-style diner and grab a table, Summer pulling out her laptop the moment they sit down. As she’d hoped, the internet has also slipped into their world, allowing her to actually access the website she needs.
“So,” Autumn asks after they’ve ordered. “Which story are we dealing with?”
“We missed the ghost that strings girls up in the cellar, which is the good news,” Summer replies, scanning the web page in front of her. “The bad news is, now he’s got an axe.”
“Well, that’s fantastic,” Winter mutters.
Summer goes to agree with him when she pauses, hearing an extremely annoying, recorded laugh. Autumn notices her pause and gestures behind her with a look of annoyance. “It’s those two guys back there,” she says. “They keep pulling the chain on that fisherman.”
Summer blinks. Fisherman? She turns around and quickly finds the culprits. The guy facing her has kind of a Bieber-style hair cut, his brown hair falling into his eyes. The second guy has his back to her, but Summer can still see his dirty blond hair and the collar of a beat-up leather jacket. “No way,” she mutters.
“Summer?”
She watches as the man facing away from her pulls the string again, and Bieber stops it immediately, giving his companion what Summer can only think of as a “fuck you” face. He says something, and Summer can almost hear him. I know this episode too well.
“Summer?”
“Both of you, watch,” she hisses. If her memory is right… Sure enough, Bieber spins his computer around, says something else, then the two of them pick up their beer bottles and klink them together.
“Summer?”
She just holds up a finger as Bieber laughs. “He superglued the bottle to his hand,” she says quietly. She watches as Bieber pulls the string himself and laughs along with it, just taking the moment to engrave this in her memory. They used to be able to laugh, she reminds herself.
“Summer!”
“Yeah?” She finally turns around to see her friends alternating between staring at her and trying to peer over her shoulder at the loud pair further down the diner.
“What the hell?”
“They don’t laugh that often,” she says by way of explanation, turning back to her computer.
“They don’t…who the hell are they?”
The question comes from Autumn, and Summer raises an eyebrow at her friend. “We’re in a town that should not be here. Who are the two people I can recognize whether they’re twenty or forty?”
Autumn and Winter share a look, then peer over her shoulder with matching expressions of disbelief. “That’s-”
“Yep,” Summer says, cutting them off. The two of them aren’t wanted criminals yet, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous. They’re young, still figuring themselves out, still suspicious. Although…
Her thoughts derail as she focuses back on her screen and refreshes the page, then curses. “Man, I hate tulpas,” she mutters.
“You say that about basically everything,” Winter points out with a smile.
Summer sticks her tongue out at her friend. “Yeah, but this one I mean it. The story changed again,” she relays. “The tulpa apparently has a fear of firearms now.”
“That’s a good thing, right?” Winter asks cautiously.
Summer shakes her head, closing her laptop and glancing over her shoulder at the guys again. “Theoretically, yes. However, the server this website runs on? Is going to crash later today. The change won’t stick, and they’re going to have to improvise. Which means,” she continues, sliding her laptop into her bag, “if we’re going to slam this place back where it’s supposed to be, we need to do it sooner rather than later.”
“So, no dessert,” Winter says with a smile.
Summer grins back. “Yeah. Maybe on the way out.”
The three of them run into a problem as soon as they arrive at the house. “Damn. Cops,” Winter mutters.
“Can’t we sneak around the back?”
“I’d rather not risk getting caught,” Summer says. “Our options are either bluff our way in, or sneak. We can’t do both.”
“Well, how did the Winchesters get in?” Autumn asks.
Summer thinks for a moment, then sighs and checks the position of the sun. “They distract the cops, then walk right in. And since we didn’t bring anything, we’ll have to wait for them to get here.”
“Which will be…?”
“Not long. We just need to wait for the sun to set.”
The three of them settle in, Summer watching the sky, Winter watching the cops, Autumn playing with her hair. It’s Autumn who asks the question several minutes later. “To slam this thing back to its own world, we need something from that world, don’t we?”
“Yeah?” Summer doesn’t know where her friend is going with this, but she has a feeling she won’t like it.
“The tulpa is a tulpa. It doesn’t bleed.”
“Yeah?” Winter seems like he knows he also won’t like where this is going.
“So how are we supposed to tell it to fuck off?”
Damn it.
“Wait.” Summer looks up to see Winter has had an epiphany. “The Winchesters are coming. We can use them!”
Summer blows out a breath, but nods. “It’ll be a fun conversation, but that should work.”
“What do you mean?” Winter asks, confused. “We’ve done it before.”
“Yeah. In Season 4,” Autumn points out. “Assuming Summer is right-”
“I’m always right.”
“Shut up. Assuming she’s right, and she’s rarely wrong with this show, this is Season 1. Where the Winchesters are…”
“Innocent,” Summer offers, because she can think of no better word. “They’re just looking for their dad.”
“Oh, we are gonna blow their minds,” Autumn mutters.
“Sounds fun.”
Autumn and Summer give Winter a look, but can’t hide their smiles. “Oh, it’s going to be hilarious.”
They wait for an hour or so, and Winter is the one to nudge his friends. “Hey. Look.” Sure enough, the cops seem to have heard something and are making their way into the woods. The moment they disappear from view, the three of them are moving, ducking under the caution tape and into the house. “So,” Winter asks, grabbing his stylus out of his pocket and twirling it nervously from an angel blade to a knife to an iron rod and back to a stylus. “Do we have anything that can actually hurt a tulpa?”
“No,” Summer replies, her gaze moving around the room for the first hints of either the tulpa or the Winchesters. “They’re an idea, and you can’t kill an idea.” She glances over at Winter’s spinning stylus and considers something for a moment. “I think the angel blade’s going to be our best weapon, if we actually have to fight him.” The front door suddenly bangs open, and Summer turns towards the sound with relief. “Thank god.”
The two boys from the diner have frozen just inside the house, both of them holding handguns and Blondie holding the only flashlight. Blondie registers their faces and lets out an aggrieved sigh. “Great. Civilians.”
Summer hears Autumn click on a flashlight and let out a soft whistle. “Damn. Summer, you were right, they’re babies.”
“Told you,” Summer shoots back, “I’m always right.” She turns back to the Winchesters and twirls her stylus into a pocket knife. “Alright you two. There’s not a lot of time before that tulpa shows up, so I’ll make this quick. We need one of your hands.”
The two of them exchange a look, and Summer can still read their bewildered expressions like open books even in the half-light of two flashlights. “Who the hell are you?”
“Hunters,” Autumn tells them. “Sort of.”
“You’re the Winchester boys, right?” Summer says, trying to put them at ease enough that one of them will agree to her request. “Two of the best hunters on the planet.” Another glance exchanged, this one disbelieving, and Summer has run out of patience. “Look, like I said, we don’t have much time. The tulpa is literally going to show up any second, and we need to make sure it can’t hurt anyone else.”
“What do you think we’re doing?”
“Trying to kill it,” Summer replies, “but it won’t work.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Ask them.”
“Ask who?” The boys turn in sync to find the two idiots Summer knew would show up - Ed and Harry. Ed is the one who groans like the universe is working against him. “What is up with you people? You’re gonna ruin our film!”
Summer rolls her eyes. “Ed, do me a favor and shut up. Or better yet, tell these two what happened to your server.”
The future Ghostfacers stare at her, and the boys are sending her equally confused looks. Sam is the one to bite. “What happened to your server?”
“It crashed,” Ed tells them, and the boys exchanged annoyed looks.
“So these don’t work?” Dean asks, holding up his gun.
“Go improvise, Dean,” Summer tells him. “We’re going to borrow your brother for a second.”
“What are you-”
Thankfully, Sam is distracted enough that Summer is able to nick the side of his hand and coat the tip of her stylus with his blood. “Thanks,” she tells him, spinning to the wall of the house and starting to write. Okay, show name, season number…should probably name the whole town, although “tulpa” is shorter…alright, we’ll go with that.
She’s stopped halfway through writing the word “season” by a hand on her shoulder spinning her around. “Okay, who the hell are you three?”
“Look, Sam, we don’t have time to explain,” Summer tells him, but he cuts her off.
“Yeah, that’s another thing - how do you know our names?”
“I told you, we’re hunters,” Autumn speaks up. Summer glances over to see Dean torn between confused and pissed, and rolls her eyes.
We don’t have time for this. “Autumn, Winter, can you two go help Dean find lighter fluid? I think there’s some in the kitchen.”
“The hell do we need lighter fluid for?”
“Think about it, Sam,” Summer says, turning back to the wall. “The server crashed, so your guns won’t do more than annoy the tulpa. And if you can’t kill it, the best way to prevent more people from dying is to stop people from going in the house.”
“So we burn the house? That’s arson!”
Summer pauses as she’s finishing the last word in English and turns to look at Sam with incredulity. “Oh, lawyer boy. You sweet summer child.”
“What?”
She shakes her head and quickly finishes the first half, then nicks herself for the second. “It’s cute how you and your brother run credit card scams, hustle pool, desecrate graves on an almost weekly basis, have a freaking arsenal in the trunk of that Impala…and you’re worried about burning down an abandoned building.” She focuses for a moment, remembering the Enochian alphabet, then mutters under her breath. “What’s a little arson compared with attempting to assassinate the president?”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Don’t worry about it, Winchester,” Summer tells him. “That’s not for another decade or so.” She pauses and swears. “Oh, shit, did I mix up the N and L again?”
She feels Sam lean closer to her, apparently peering over her shoulder. “What alphabet is that?”
“Enochian,” Summer tells him, double-checking her spelling before starting the last word.
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it, Winchester. Just burn the house down. Winter! Autumn!” she calls behind her. “We’re going!” She hears the sharpening of knives from some door behind her, and she spares a second to grin up at Sam. This never gets old. “Prank your brother for me, Sam.” She writes out L-E-A-V-E, and as she finishes the last letter the house flashes white, leaving her, Winter, and Autumn standing in the middle of a muddy field, their car parked a couple yards away.
“Well,” Summer says as she spins her stylus and tucks it back behind her ear, “Winter was right. That was hilarious.”
Winter sends her a grin, but Autumn is frowning at her phone. “It didn’t work.”
“What do you mean?” Winter asks. “The house is gone.”
“We should be in the middle of suburbia right now,” Autumn points out. “We’re not. Which means we need to find the Winchesters again and slam the rest of the town back where it should be.”
Summer swears under her breath. “I knew I should have written the town name instead of just tulpa.”
“Well, now we know for next time,” Winter says, starting to pick his way through the mud to the car. “Any idea where we’ll be able to find the Winchesters?”
Summer bites her lip for a moment, considering. “The trailer park,” she says finally. “That’s their last stop before they roll out of town. But they’ll be there in daylight.”
“So, we find the trailer park, find the trailer - I’m assuming there’s a specific one?” At Summer’s nod, Autumn continues. “Stake it out, and intercept the Winchesters before they leave.”
“Sleeping in the car,” Winter mutters. “Should be fun.”
“Just like marching band,” Summer reminds them, and her friends groan.
“I swear, those bus trips gave me so many cricks in the neck,” Autumn says.
“Hey, we’ve got a whole car this time,” Winter points out. “Although, no shoes on the seats. I don’t think any of us want to clear up mud.”
They manage to find the trailer park with ease - this version of Richardson, Texas is thankfully small, and Ed and Harry’s trailer is distinctive enough for Summer to know they have the right location. Once they’re parked, Autumn sets an alarm for sunrise, and they watch for the Winchesters in shifts from there.
They show up in the late morning, close to noon, as Summer’s keeping watch. “Hey.” She nudges her friends awake and alert as the Winchesters talk to the future Ghostfacers as the latter finish with their last preparations to leave. After a minute or two of conversation, Ed and Harry roll out, and Sam and Dean head back to the Impala. And again, Summer is treated to a miracle as both boys laugh, their expressions pure joy, without any of the cynicism that will come their way in a few short years - hell, a few short months. It’s as the two of them lean on the roof of the car that she knows their moment has arrived. “Alright, here we go.” The three of them exit the car, and Summer calls out to the brothers before they can leave.
“So how was your night?” Summer does not relish the fact that at the sound of her voice, the laughter drops off their faces and their hands drop behind their back, reaching for the guns she’s almost certain they have. “Whoa!” Summer holds up her hands, gesturing for her friends to do the same. “We just need to talk to you. Five minutes.”
“Maybe a little more,” Winter adds, and Summer raises an eyebrow at her friend.
“Winter. Later,” Autumn hisses, and Summer’s two friends fall silent, letting her take point on this.
Sam and Dean’s hands come away from their backs, and Summer slowly lowers her hands. “Okay. Thanks.”
“Who are you people?” Sam asks before Summer can figure out how to ask them for blood without sounding like a witch. “You were in the house with us last night, then you just…vanished.”
So that’s what it looks like from the other side, Summer muses. Cool.
“You said you were hunters,” Dean speaks up, and Summer can read the suspicion in his eyes. “Said that’s how you know our names.”
Summer nods, trying to remember what other hunters the boys know at this point in their lives. The list, unfortunately, is small, and Summer knows it’s only going to get shorter as the years go by. “Yeah. We’ve heard about you and your dad criss-crossing the country.”
“How?” Dean’s question is short and to the point, and Summer hates it.
Autumn jumps in with a bone. “Same way you two hear about hunters. Word of mouth, through the grapevine.”
Summer nods, jumping on the raft her friend has thrown her. “Yeah. Yeah, heard you two helped someone out with a demon a while back, heard you were looking for your father.”
“You know where he is?”
Sam just about pounces on that last bit of information, and Summer remembers a second too late that they’d just met up with their father in the last week or so. Shadow. I think. She just shakes her head. “Can’t say I know where he is, I’ve just heard the stories.”
The boys share a look, then Dean turns towards them with a charming grin that immediately has Summer on edge. “You know, I don’t think we caught your names.”
Summer hesitates. This is Season 1. There’s so much the Winchesters don’t know about the supernatural, despite them hunting for over two decades. Hell, they don’t even know the name of the demon they’ve been hunting, let alone its freaking rank. But, Dean’s not asking for a sneak peak at the future. He’s just asking for names. Summer can give him their names. “I’m Summer,” she says finally. “These are my friends, Winter and Autumn.” Sam frowns at hearing their names next to each other, and Summer moves the conversation along. “Look, we actually came to ask you two a favor.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?” Dean doesn’t look too suspicious, not yet, which means Summer has to be very careful about how she phrases this.
“We need some of your blood.”
“Wow, Autumn, sugarcoat it, why don’t you,” Winter mutters in the second of stunned silence. “And you told me to shut it.”
“Well, we had to ask!”
“Yeah, but now they’re gonna think we’re witches!” Summer hisses at her friends.
“Are you?” She turns back to the Winchesters to see them watching her warily.
“No,” Summer tells them.
Sam’s eyes widen, and he focuses on her. “Wait. In the house, before you guys vanished. You wrote with some of my blood on the wall.”
“She did what?”
“Chill, Dean,” Summer tells him, hoping Sam is about to agree to their request. “Yes, I did. We needed to make sure that house stayed where it was supposed to. That’s what we need to do for this town. I would have done it already, but I was in a rush in the house, and it was easier to just write ‘tulpa’ than ‘Richardson Texas’.”
“What do you mean, make sure things stay where they’re supposed to?” Dean asks.
Summer sighs, trying to figure out how to explain this to them. “Look, we told you we were hunters. And we are. We’re just, a special kind of hunter. We’re like the supernatural security guards, making sure things stay put.”
“And how do you do that?”
“The way y’all normally make things stick,” Summer tells Sam, pulling a pocket knife out of her pocket. “Blood.” The Winchesters exchange another look, and Summer knows the second she sees Dean’s face that Sam has agreed to her request.
“Sam-”
“Dean. She’s already done it once. And I…” He hesitates, then adds in a lower tone that still carries, “I just…I have a feeling.”
Summer blinks and frowns, then her expression clears. She’d completely forgotten that Sam was psychic. Well, it’s working out in my favor at least. Sam offers her his hand, and Summer grabs it and drags him over to one of the trailers. “Need a writing surface. Can’t use Winter’s car, and if I touched Baby I think your brother would kill me.” Summer nicks the side of his hand again and looks up to see a confused expression on the younger Winchester’s face.
“Baby?”
Summer stares at him for a moment. “The Impala?” Sam’s confusion clears, and Summer just shakes her head, spinning her knife into a stylus and starting to write.
“Wait. Didn’t you just have a knife?”
“It’s called sleight of hand, Winchester,” Summer tells him, making sure to write out the entirety of ‘Richardson Texas’ this time. She’s taking no chances. As she’s starting in on the Enochian, Sam asks a question.
“Okay, I get why you have to write the name of the town. But what’s this supernatural season one stuff about?”
Summer freezes for half a second, then keeps going, her brain trying and failing to think of a rational explanation Sam will accept. Eventually, she just gives up. “It’ll make sense in a couple years.” She pauses, then amends her statement. “Well, more like five or six. Basically, don’t worry about it.”
“Wait.” Sam has a hand on her shoulder and turns her to face him, his eyes bright with realization. “Are you saying…you know the future?”
“I know one future, Winchester,” Summer corrects him, turning back to her letters. “And no, I’m not telling you, cliff notes version or otherwise.”
“But-”
“No,” Summer cuts him off. “And put your puppy-dog eyes away, kid. Those won’t change my mind.”
Sam sputters. “Kid? You can’t be that much older than me!”
Summer rolls her eyes and has no qualms about bursting his bubble. She points first at him, then at herself. “Twenty-two. Twenty-five. Your brother’s only a year older than me at the moment.” She turns back to the trailer, trying to finish Richardson, when Sam’s voice stops her.
“How do you know how old we are?”
“I’m special,” Summer tells him.
“That’s not an answer.”
“I’m well aware.” Summer huffs out a breath, then decides that, no matter how cute this boy might be, he’s not getting this explanation. Not this year, not today. That can wait, at least until they’ve met angels.
“So, how do you know our ages?”
“Look, Sam,” Summer tells him, turning to look him in the eyes. “You’re not getting an answer to that question. Or any of the other questions you have for me. I’m sorry.” She turns back to the trailer and writes the last two letters, and the entire park vanishes in a flash of white.
“What, no warning?” Winter teases, and Summer shakes her head.
“Sam was getting nosy. I didn’t think I could handle any more questions.”