Chapter Text
The Witches Tree
The angel Castiel was perplexed by Dean’s insistence on a life of sin after his stint in Hell. In his experience, near death - or in this case, several months of death - experiences tend to have a reforming effect on the patient. Not so with Dean Winchester. As soon as they’d hit town, Dean announced that he was in the mood for a good time, not an investigative time. Dean had checked out the gentlemen’s club across the street as they pulled into the motel. Sam prayed silently not to suffer a repeat of Vegas.
Cas did not take this opportunity to restore their suppressed memories of their Mardi Gras grunch hunt a month earlier. It was unlikely they would ever have to worry about their missed court dates. The end of the world was nearly upon them, and Castiel knew their likelihood of survival was low. Castiel informed Dean that his “good time” would have to wait. Sam grunted in agreement. Dean swore to himself that neither Sam nor Cas knew what fun was.
An outbreak of sudden, intense tornadic activity - the meteorologists didn’t want to call them tornadoes, but they were - had hit the city of Louisville night after night, for twelve nights, since April 1st. The whirlwind blew up out of nowhere, often out of a dry sky, and ripped down the length of a street within seconds. As suddenly as one would appear, it would vanish, leaving a trail of trees uprooted, windows shattered, cars upended, roofs torn off, and people hurt. Most of the disturbances had only caused property damage, but they were steadily intensifying, and the death toll now stood at three. No one knew where the terror would strike next. By the time the sirens blared out the warning, the disaster was complete. Stormchasers and meteorologists from all over the country had descended on the city. The President solemnly promised FEMA aid. That spring, the Winchester brothers were looking for signs of the apocalypse.
“So, according to this guy online, back in the 1800s, there was this tree where witches gathered to cast spells. The city planning committee wanted to cut down the tree for a maypole…yeah like you’d dance around in the old days. The head of the coven swore that if they did disaster would follow. Sure enough, there was a huge tornado that tore through the city. Killed 115 people.”
“Do you think this has anything to do with what we’re looking for? Might just be some freaky weather."
“Well, they called it ‘the Storm Demon’ at the time, said the cloud was black as night, and you could see witches riding in it. This is really unusual, Dean. There could be an opening.”
“Do tornadoes mean the Apocalypse? We could stop back in Kansas and wait for the wizard of Oz."
“Well, the Apocalypse of Thomas probably describes tornadoes or whirlwinds, and if you read Jeremiah chapter twenty-three nineteen…”
“Uh, that’s fine, I could do with some action. Get Cas. CAS.”
They made a pit stop on the way to check out the Witches’ Tree, as locals described it, but not to any place of depravity unless you count the sin of gluttony. Dean had caught sight of a red and white little trolley and the line of people circling it, and he knew. Dean had an instinct for the best dive diners and bars anywhere he and Baby rolled up. His stomach grumbled. It was chow time, and Sam’s nerd lore could wait.
The Ollie burger was worth the detour. Sam reviewed his notes, mostly pulled from a tourism website and poorly cited, if at all. “Maybe it’s nothing,” he thought. The ghost tours described insubstantial paranormal stories spun out of the history of downtown’s crumbling mansions, but there was often a kernel of truth in urban legends, as they proved time and again. There was a real tornado in 1889, an unprecedented outbreak of storm cells so dark they’d turned the daylight black. The twister barrelled straight through the city from west to east. A bolt of lightning had split the sky and splintered the stump that remained of the witches’ tree. According to one questionable news account, a gnarled giant of a tree had sprung from the stump the moment the lightning struck, restoring the witches' source of power and connection to the earth spirits they claimed to worship there. It was impossible, of course, Sam knew you could carbon date the tree. Did details from the story point beyond Victorian spiritualism to something darker? Powerful voodoo, maybe, or demons freed from the Pit dispensing mayhem on mankind.
Sam, Dean, and Cas arrived just as a small group of tourists were leaving. Despite the tense atmosphere in the city, visitors had increased. Nonprofits arrived with food and donated items for the victims, but disaster tourists also flooded in. Phony psychics claimed to be able to predict the next storm for a donation. Nude women had formed a Wiccan sit-in at the nearby Universalist church. Dean was truly sorry to have missed that service. In the group ahead, two women paused to toss plastic party beads as high as they could into the tree’s branches. One strand caught in the leaves, the other hit the pavement underneath. “Next time,” they laughed, and hurried after their guide. The man shot a nasty look over his shoulder at them. Sam caught it, but couldn’t imagine why this stranger would be offended by them.
Dean bent down and picked up the beads. “Huh,” he said, and scratched his head. He’d always wanted to go to Mardi Gras. Maybe next year, if they survived this, and there was still a Mardi Gras.
Castiel approached the tree. It was gnarly, to put it mildly, a thick bulbous growth of wood towering as high as the three story house behind. It looked like a pile of warts from the roots to the branches. “Like a witches’ nose” Cas thought, “or cancer.” Trinkets were tucked into its nooks and crannies, bells, horseshoes, crystals, ceramic figurines, yard gnomes, strings of beads, notes, and an orange traffic cone littered the trunk and branches.
“Voodoo, you think?” Sam asked. Disturbing images flashed across his mind as he stared at all the Mardi Gras beads, but he focused on the talismans and small hex bags tucked into the wooden warts of the trunk. Most were probably New Age nonsense, but any one could be the real and potent work of a witch. Moreover, what about the tree itself?
Castiel sensed a power in the tree. Ancient and sinister, there was a living core under all those lumps.
“It’s the Elephant Tree,” Dean suggested with a grin, and Cas shook his head. “No, there are no elephants native to this region,” he replied. “It is a portal of some kind, however. I can’t tell where it goes, but there is a dark energy within.”
The tree positively pulsed now. Something in it responded to their presence in a way that it had not to the hundreds of people who passed by each day. Was Cas’ angelic power drawing out this hum of bluish-green energy now glowing through the cracks of the trunk? The street was deserted. The leaves on the trees perked up with a sudden storm breeze. “Oh no,” Dean thought. If trouble was about to blow in, he'd better move Baby. Castiel, deep in thought, noticed an object impaled on a sharp piece of bark. A Christmas ornament shaped like an angel, dipped in black resin. It was marked with drops of red wax. “That’s odd,” Cas thought, almost recognizing the mark. If he’d been human, he might’ve noticed a cold pit of anxiety in his stomach, but he brushed that aside. With a hop, he plucked the item from its stake for closer examination.
The tree’s pent up core of energy exploded like a bomb. The sky went from sunny afternoon to blackest night in a moment. Thunder crashed overhead. A sudden 100 mph wind gust flattened every blade of grass and stripped the leaves from the trees. A flying branch took out Baby’s windshield. Blue light flashed out from a giant crack in the tree itself, revealing a space inside beyond the dimensions of this world. The energy pulse was enormous. When they regained consciousness, neither Sam nor Dean could believe that the street was still there. They hardly believed that they were still alive.
Alive, but not unharmed. Sam hit his head on the curb of the stairs leading up to the house behind them, and he felt a wet knot swelling up under his hair. Dean had bloody gashes down his forearms from where he landed on the pavement.
With a few groans, the boys lifted themselves to their feet. Dean moaned at the sight of Baby’s shattered windshield. Dazed, they stumbled towards the car and somehow got in, grateful that they had left the keys on the seat. Dean’s hands were shaking too hard to unlock anything. Sam stared straight ahead, stunned. “He’s got a concussion,” Dean thought. “There’s got to be a hospital near here.” He needed to take a few deep breaths before he could drive, he knew that. Every limb trembled. He slumped back. A few moments later, he was jarred upright by a sudden realization. “Where’s Cas?,” he exclaimed. Sam turned his head towards him but said nothing. “Cas?” “CAS?”
Dean pulled himself back out of the car and searched for his friend.