Chapter Text
Dean Campbell
2:06 AM, 4 miles outside Damariscotta, Maine
The house was dark and powerless. Somewhere in the massive storm mother nature had cooked up while he and Jo scrambled up the long driveway to the imposing building the power had been knocked out. Now they were hunting the ghost of eighty-five year old Myrna Norwich in the dark with nothing more than eerie shadows and lightning flashes for company. Myrna Norwich had been a typical kindly old woman living in this house about an hour away from a quaint coastal town. Then, one frosty Maine evening, she'd made the mistake of taking in two younger men who claimed that their car had broken down. Myrna had let them inside and wandered upstairs to get dressed so she could drive them into town. When she returned the two men shot her full of lead and staked her body by the road. Since then Myrna's spirit roamed the nearby roads and her house, killing any young men who came too close.
The only lore Dean and Jo had been able to find on Myrna's burial was that the young men had come back two nights later, when they'd heard a police dispatch reporting the discovery of the body, and had somehow spirited the body away only to bury it in Myrna's own basement two days after the police had left the home alone. It sounded like some kind of ridiculous fairy story but it was the only lead they had so they were checking it out. So far the house had proved a bust but Dean was wary, keeping an eye out for any sign of the vengeful Myrna Norwich. "Dean, get your ass over here!" Jo's demanding voice cut through a rumble of thunder like it was nothing and Dean sent another wary glance around the kitchen he was standing in before heading in her direction.
Jo had gone downstairs to look for the body while Dean scanned the upper two floors so that meant that he had to carefully descend down half rotten wooden stairs to get to her. Jo was kneeling on the damp earth, apparently the basement had a leak or two, next to a body. He was young, male, and a good three or four inches taller than Dean. The only wound on him seemed to be a red welt on the side of his head but he was entirely unconscious. "He still alive?" Dean asked, glancing around warily for the ghost that had probably done this.
"Yeah," Jo replied, flipping blond hair effortlessly over her shoulders. "I had to shoot Ms. Norwich before I could get to him though."
"Any idea why he was here?"
"Guess," Jo replied, flicking her head toward an old shovel, a gasoline can, and a bag of what Dean guessed was rock salt.
"Another hunter huh?" Dean asked, giving the young man on the ground an appraising look.
"Not a very good one," Jo returned with a derisive snort. "Listen, you watch Sleeping Beauty here and I'll work on digging up Norwich."
"Fine by me," Dean said with a shrug and Jo rolled her eyes before snatching up her shovel and beginning to dig in an already started indentation. The entire time Jo was digging Dean watched for signs of the mysterious Myrna Norwich but she never showed up. Or rather, she avoided them up until the point that Jo unearthed her body. Then there was a whoosh of cold air as Myrna Norwich simply glided through him and lunged for Jo. Jo screamed and tumbled back. Myrna took advantage of the blonde's distraction to snatch up the shovel and swing it down toward Jo. Dean managed to get a blast of rock salt into the irate ghost so that the shovel clattered harmlessly against Jo's upraised arms. "Hurry it up," he snapped at Jo who glared stubbornly at him.
"I'm trying," she snarled, scrambling for the rock salt to spread on the bones. She had just finished salting the body when Myrna returned. This time the woman went straight for Dean, throwing him aside like he was simply made of string. Then she was lunging for Jo again, this time with a pick axe she'd gotten from who knows where.
"Look out," Dean yelled and then gaped as the pick axe stopped in midair. Myrna just kept on swinging but the pick axe just hung there as if lifted by an invisible hand. Jo stared too, eyes wide, as Myrna shrieked furiously. Then Dean noticed that the unnamed hunter was awake, a hand lifted and sweat dripping down his face. Myrna snarled and lunged at the younger man as Jo hurried to cover the body and gasoline and light it up. Myrna had just thrown the unnamed hunter into a wall when she burst into flames. Myrna shrieked her fury and Jo let out a triumphant whoop as Myrna vanished. "Nice," Dean said, grinning at her before kneeling next to the unconscious hunter and pressing two fingers to his neck.
"Still alive?" Jo asked, closing the gasoline can.
"Yeah," Dean replied, mirroring their conversation earlier. "Just out of it."
"So what exactly do we do?" Jo questioned after a moment. "Leave him here?"
"Bobby'd have our heads, not to mention your mother," Dean said, making Jo giggle. "No, we'll take him with us."
"Great," Jo replied with an eye roll. "You're carrying him then."
"Thanks a lot," Dean called after his girlfriend who simply flipped him off, snatched up the rest of their things along with the unconscious hunter's, and practically skipping up the stairs.
Sam Winchester
1 hour earlier
"Yeah, I'm sure this is the place," nineteen year old Sam Winchester grumbled, tucking the cell phone between his left shoulder and ear. "The hotel manager and a few of the townspeople saw Dad two days ago."
"Ok then," the concerned voice of Pastor Jim Murphy said over the phone. The mild mannered hunter and pastor from Blue Earth, Minnesota had known Sam since the boy was small and was practically a second father to him. "Be careful then Sam."
"I will," Sam promised. "I'll call you in twelve hours and let you know what I've found, all right?"
"I'll be waiting for you to call," Jim promised and then hung up the phone. Sam smiled and shoved the phone in his pocket before flipping on his flashlight and heading into the house. The only sinister thing he'd been able to dig up about its history was an old woman, the last owner, who'd been killed forty years ago. His guess was that the woman had been an unquiet spirit and his father, John Winchester, had come to do a simple salt and burn. Sam had been tracking his father for four months, ever since Jim had come down to Stanford to tell Sam that his father had gone out on a hunt and simply vanished. Sam had packed up immediately, kissed his new girlfriend Jessica goodbye, and taken off on John's trail. Up until this case the trail had remained cold but now, on advice from a girl named Ruby, he'd come up to this tiny town in Maine only to find out his father had been there, at least of two days ago, and asking questions about the murder of Myrna Norwich.
Thinking hopeful thoughts about returning to college and Jessica, he headed into the house. There was no sign of John Winchester on the first or second floor so Sam warily headed for the basement. In his experience of hunting everything nasty always lived in basements. The steps were old and about half rotten and Sam tested each one as best as he could before stepping on it. It was with a sense of relief that he stepped on the damp basement floor. He swept the flashlight beam across the basement floor but on first glance saw nothing. That was odd. John Winchester may have been obsessed with finding the thing that had killed his wife and Sam's mother, Julie, but he always finished the jobs he started. All records showed that Myrna Norwich was buried in her own basement, as per an odd last request, so John would have come here, dug up the grave, and salt and burned to body. This wasn't like his father at all.
Mildly worried, Sam turned and hurried back up the stairs and out of the house to his truck. The vehicle was a gas guzzler and the kind of monster that would have environmentalists screaming in rage over its carbon footprint. It broke down frequently, creaked and groaned constantly, didn't have working air or heat, and wasn't the kind of vehicle Sam would have normally consented to drive except for the fact that his father had given it to him. Sam and John weren't particularly close but Julie had died when Sam was just a baby so John was the only family he had. Therefore Sam treasured the truck and had taken offense when Tony, a friend from school, had suggested he "sell the old piece of junk." Sam pulled a gasoline can, bag of rock salt, and a shovel out of the back of the trunk, thankful that he'd stopped at Pastor Jim's and stocked up before coming here.
He had to take two trips down to the basement so he could carry the flashlight in one hand and the supplies in the other. He would have liked to turn the house lights only but anyone driving by the Norwich house might notice the lights and decide to investigate. Sam couldn't afford to be arrested or shot because someone wanted to know why a light was on in an abandoned house. Once everything was in the basement he began scanning the place for any sign of a grave. It didn't take long. Most of the floor was completely smooth but there was one second, about four and a half feet long, that was a hump near the far wall. The hump could only be one thing. Sam grabbed his shovel and started digging. He didn't get far.
Myrna Norwich lunged out of nowhere, shrieking like a mad woman. Sam ducked the first swipe of the broom handle she held in ghostly hands and automatically swung the shovel at her, not that it did any good. The shovel simply flew right through her. Sam stumbled back a step, off balanced by the momentum of the shovel. That was how Myrna got him. She simply rammed the broom handle into his temple before he could catch his balance and everything turned black.