by David Reed
Supernatural
Bobby Singer’s Guide to Hunting
David Reed
SUPERNATURAL created by Eric Kripke
Art by Anthony Diecidue
Dedication
DEDICATED TO
MY MOM AND DAD,
FOR BUYING ME ALL OF
THOSE ACTION FIGURES.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
A Hole in My Brain
The Banshee of Ashland
This Isn’t Funny
Karen
Demons
Angels
Anansesem
The Crusher
And Then, I Ran
Nishigo Maru
Japan
Rufus
Something Good
The Rules
Where Am I Now?
John Winchester
The Shit List
Tastes Like Chicken
Alphas
Dragons
Names
Omaha
The Departed
Fried Foods
Last Will and Testament
Sam and Dean
Oblivion
The Hidden Memory
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by David Reed
Copyright
About the Publisher
A Hole in My Brain
I THOUGHT I'D DIE BLOODY.
Just seemed the likeliest way, given my line of work. I’ve looked Death in the face (literally . . . he’s actually an alright guy), and, to be totally honest, I thought my ticket was gonna get punched a long time ago. I always figured there’d be some meaning to it . . . that my mark on this world would be more permanent than my blood stain on the floor. Instead, I’m gonna go out a gibbering turnip, mind so far gone that I won’t be able to work a door knob, much less feed myself. Now there’s a sobering thought—I’m gonna starve to death with half a cow in the freezer.
I should back up. This won’t do any good if it doesn’t make sense.
Three days ago—hell, maybe more, I can’t be sure—I was in a place called Ashland, in northern Wisconsin. So far north, might as well be Canada. Town had a slew of disappearances and no leads. There was plenty of evidence, but the local PD just couldn’t put two and two together.
Wait. I’ve gotta back up further.
My name’s Bobby Singer. (At least I still remember that.) In all likelihood, you don’t know me . . . because just about all my friends are dead and buried. As I said, it comes with the territory. If you’re new to the game, I’ll give you the basics: you know all that stuff that you were terrified of as a rug rat? The truly heinous stuff that’d send a chill from your ass to your elbows? Monsters, demons, the boogeyman under your bed—it’s all real. I’ve seen it, I’ve hunted it, I’ve killed it. There’re more people like me—hunters—but not as many as there used to be. Not near as many as there needs to be. Thanks to recent events, we’re a dying species, and I’m the old breed. I’ve learned everything I can about every damned critter that walks, crawls, or flies, and I’m not gonna let that all be for nothing.
Back to Wisconsin. What seemed like an open-and-shut case . . . well, it must not have been. Last thing I remember, I had Ashland in my rearview mirror, heading west for Sioux Falls, where I planned on taking a long bath and watching as much trashy television as I could before the next catastrophe found me. Then, I woke up at home. Actually, ”woke up” might be too gentle a phrase, as if I opened my eyes to the tweeting of birds as the sun rose—no, I scared myself awake, screaming bloody murder, damn near falling off the couch when I came to. Now, I won’t lie to you . . . alcohol may have been a factor. Wouldn’t be the first time that rotgut had done me wrong, but this felt different. The stabbing headache was present and accounted for, but something important was missing: memories.
It was random things, at first. Went to the kitchen, itching for a little hair of the dog, and the damnedest thing happened . . . I couldn’t remember which one was the liquor cabinet. Again, you may not know me, but that’s a big deal. Didn’t take long to find it, but for that minute and a half the world was not right.
Taking stock of things, it was hard to ignore the grenade launcher lying on my living room floor. Not where I usually keep it. Must have been some bender. While trying to remember how it got there, I tidied up, carrying the guns and gear that were strewn all over the house to their proper places. The launcher belonged downstairs, in the basement armory lockup. As much as I wanted to keep it out as a conversation piece, house guests had a tendency to overreact to it. It’s not like I used it for deer hunting. I have a semi-auto crossbow for that. Spinning the tumbler on the armory lock, my mind went blank. I’d opened that locker every day for over a decade, and suddenly couldn’t recall the combination. Somebody’s birthday, maybe? I tried my own, no dice. Tried a few other things, but let’s skip to the punch line—twenty minutes later, I was down there with a blow torch and bolt cutters.
Something was wrong with me. I couldn’t remember where I left my car keys; I couldn’t even remember where I left my car. The driveway was empty. Whatever happened between Ashland and Sioux Falls had left a hole in my brain, and I was leaking memories. In my old life, when I was just Joe mechanic, the diagnosis woulda been Alzheimer’s. But I ain’t just Joe mechanic anymore, and everything I’d learned in twenty years on the job told me that this wasn’t natural.
Only one thing to do: call the Winchester boys. Those two delinquents have a knack for getting out of messes when they’ve got no right to; seemed fair that they’d help me out of one for a change. Of course, to help me, they’d have to answer their friggin’ phones. Those boys have more numbers than a Chinese phone book, but my calls went straight to voicemail on all of them. It’d be a hell of a lot easier to track them down if I could remember what direction they were heading last time I saw ’em, but life’s not that easy. For all I knew they were upstairs, passed out themselves. After that occurred to me, I had to check every room of the house to make sure it wasn’t true—I wasn’t about to let those idiots sneak up on me if this was some kind of prank.
Turns out, it wasn’t. There was no sign of the boys anywhere, no sign of my car anywhere, no clues as to where I’d been between Ashland and my house. In case you’re not catching on to where this is going, I still have no friggin’ clue. And it’s getting worse. I tried to picture my mom’s face this morning . . . couldn’t.
Here’s the rub—I don’t know what happened to me. I don’t know if I can fix it. But what I know for damn sure is that I’m not going down without a fight. I’m not letting everything I’ve learned disappear. So that’s what you’re holding in your hands—everything I know. Anything that’d be useful for the hunters that come after me . . . and that includes you, Sam and Dean. It’s every hope I have of fixing the leak in my grapefruit. It’s a guide to hunting. . . . It’s a guide to me. My last will and testament.
The Banshee of Ashland
YOU KNOW THAT FEELING YOU GET when you’re telling a story, and you know you’re leaving the best parts out? That’s my life now, 24/7. So I apologize in advance if I skip a juicy bit. I can’t remember the things I can’t remember, if you get my meaning.
Let me start by laying out my typical morning routine: wake up with the sun, give myself a once-over with the beard trimmer (next to godliness, and all that), get half-way done making breakfast . . . and then somebody calls with a catastrophe. You can set your watch to it—as soon as the eggs start scrambling, some fool needs my help. Often as not, it’s Sam and Dean. They seem to get in more scrapes than m
ost, which is saying something in this line of work. Up till a few months ago, Rufus Turner was the next most likely caller—rest his soul. The remainder of the calls are from other hunters across the country—across the world, now, if you count my buddy Eli in Budapest. Chased a vamp there, liked the food so much he never came home. Or was it the women? Either way, his appetite is being satisfied. Most of the time, the caller just needs some lore. What do you use to kill a ghoul? What kind of critter sucks the salt right out of ya? That sort of thing. Other times, a hunter needs more . . . direct backup.
It came as absolutely no surprise, then, when I got a call last Thursday a.m., wondering if I’d come check out the disappearances of four men in Ashland. Who called me, that part is a blur. Must have been somebody I trust, though, or I wouldn’t have made the drive. Believe me, there ain’t much worth seeing north of Wausau. I got in the Chevelle, went east on I-90.
As I got close to Ashland, I started getting nervous. The Chequamegon forest just south of town is haunted, everybody knows that. What they don’t know is that EMF is useless in the forest. For you baby hunters, EMF (electromagnetic field) meters are handheld doohickies that can sense when a ghost is present, or has been nearby recently. They’re a hunter’s best friend, saved my bacon more times than my butcher. As soon as you cross into the forest, the EMF meter lights up like Christmas, and not because of the spirits—because of the U.S. Navy. They got a transmitter at Clam Lake that talks to nuclear submarines, messes up our gear but good. That means you’ll get no warning when the spirits get close, so watch your back. I wonder if that’s why ghosts congregate there . . . because they like the friendly vibrations? Damn it, I’m getting sidetracked. Ashland . . .
The missing men were all upstanding types—paid their taxes, prayed regular, nice to their wives. Except for the youngest, that is, who hadn’t yet settled down. I spoke to the wife of the first man to disappear, who might as well have been a brick wall. She had nothing but nice things to say about her dearly departed and no idea what’d befallen him.
The next gal, that’s when I started getting someplace. She told me that her man had been hearing things before he went all Lindbergh Baby on her. But he wasn’t hearing the usual stuff—voices, demonic instructions, none of it—he was hearing singing.
I talked to the young guy’s mom, Bea Engstrom. The name stuck out, because the first girl I ever, well, had relations with, her name was Bea. That particular story doesn’t need to go down in the historical record, though—her name may have been Bea, but she was a C+, max. Anyway, Bea told me the same thing, her son had been hearing singing. He couldn’t get away from it, heard it in his apartment, at work, in the car, everywhere. It was a woman’s voice, in a language he couldn’t understand. Bea sent him to the doctor, thought something might be wrong with his ears. When he got a clean bill of health, he took to drinking, but that just made the singing worse. Five hours later, he was gone.
The last guy to disappear, a Mr. Lavery, his was the strangest case. He woke up one night at three in the morning, got in his car, and drove to the marsh fields outside of town. As he walked into the bog (still in his pajamas, mind you), a deer hunter spotted him, asked him what the hell he was doing. He couldn’t answer. Just got back in his car and drove home. According to his wife, he had no clue what had compelled him to go out to the swamp, only that he knew he had to do it. Of course, when he up and vanished a day later, the first place they looked was the marsh. Police dogs came in all the way from Eau Claire, but never picked up his scent. Lavery never mentioned it, but I’d bet dollars to donuts that he was hearing the same singing voice, and that’s what drove him to take a dip in the bog.
So, I ran down the clues:
SINGING THAT NO ONE ELSE CAN HEAR—this has been reported with ghosts on several occasions, most notably the case of Greta Wilson. Wilson was a famous opera singer in New York City in the thirties, known less for her vibrato than for her ample . . . assets. The lady was stacked, and had a rotating roster of gentlemen callers, one of whom didn’t want to share, so he cut her throat when he found out that she’d been gettin’ around. To an opera singer, that’s the worst death imaginable—having your vocal chords slit. She couldn’t even scream as she was being murdered. Lore says she haunted the back rooms of the club where she was killed, singing horribly (again, she was mostly known for her rack, not her warbling) in the ears of all the young ladies who were about to perform. Since Chequamegon is known to be haunted, singing ghost was my first guess in Ashland, too, except for rule numero uno with spirits: they don’t travel. There are exceptions, but I’ll get to that later. In this case, there was no evidence that the four missing men had been anywhere near each other in the days before their disappearances, so one ghost couldn’t be at fault.
LURING PEOPLE TO THEIR DEATHS—this is a tactic used by crocotta, fierce little bastards who call people by name, often finding ways to convince the victim to kill themselves. Sam and Dean hunted one a few years back that was using telephone and Internet lines to pose as their victims’ loved ones. Dean even got a call from John Winchester. Messed up stuff. The MO fit, but I’d never heard of a crocotta singing to their victims. Maybe this one was just big on musical theater, or maybe I was looking for something else entirely. Also, most victims of a crocotta are found dead, they don’t just vanish.
THE SWAMP—that’s the piece that made the puzzle fit together. Swamps are hotbeds of monster activity, for all the reasons you’d expect. They’re wet, they’re dark, humans tend to steer clear. This particular swamp was also foggy. I visited it my second day in town, when I ran out of other leads. The fog was heavy, the kind that makes you feel like you could suffocate in it. Like you’re underwater on dry land. Now, I’m not what you’d call an international man—I’ve been some places, but not near as many as I’d like—but that fog reminded me of a place I’ve seen a lot: the Guinness Brewery. Never been in person, but I’ve got a book in the bathroom about the world’s most famous breweries. It’s got a whole article about the history of Guinness, going back to 1759 when Arthur Guinness signed a nine thousand–year lease for his factory. That man had confidence in his product. One of the pictures in the book is of Arthur Guinness’s country home on the east coast of Ireland, near a place called Swords (badass name, if you ask me). The house was swimming in fog; the same thick, impenetrable fog that covered the swamp in Ashland. Maybe that’s where Guinness found inspiration for his beer.
FOG—the final clue. It rang one bell in my head, loudly: the Hag of the Mists, also known as a banshee. They’re native to Ireland and Scotland, and manifest as an ethereal woman who sings to those about to die. The lore is sketchy at best, since they’re awfully rare in the States, but most everything fit. Only, I can’t remember a banshee actually killing anyone. They acted more as a warning—a harbinger that bad news was coming. I wondered if a banshee could be operating off the reservation, singing to a victim that she herself was about to kill? Wouldn’t be the first monster acting squiggy this year. I never thought I’d see a lamia or an okami on this side of the pond, either.
One thing I didn’t know about a banshee was how to kill it, so that meant research. This is an important lesson for the baby hunters out there, so listen (read . . . whatever) closely. It’s all right in front of you. All the information you need, all the lore, it’s staring you in your friggin’ face, if you know what to look for. Try the local library, for example. “But they don’t have a section on banishing Irish spirits,” you whine. Yes they do, it’s called the children’s book aisle. Find a book of Irish folk songs, it’ll give you just what you need:
Beneath the moon’s bright eye /
A woman softly sings /
A warning to those who dwell /
In the land of those not yet dead /
Heed her voice /
Or raise your iron.
(Translated from Gaelic)
Plain as day. “Raise your iron,” which I’m sure was prettier in Gaelic, means that they’re vu
lnerable to iron, like most spirits. Of course, that didn’t help me a lick. “Vulnerable to” isn’t the same as “can be killed with.” I could protect myself from the banshee, but had no idea how to permanently gank it. Back to the lore.
In a book of children’s fables, I found a reference to the banshee. The kids in the story were frightened of hearing the banshee’s song, since it meant that death would soon visit their family. One particularly terrified ankle-biter had heard the banshee’s song before, when her grandmother died. She so feared hearing it again that she sang the banshee’s song to herself every night, desperately trying to remember the words, so she’d recognize it if the banshee came once more. When the banshee did return, the little girl sang the song right back at the spirit—the banshee knew the song was being sung for her, and that her own time was at hand. She disappeared into the mists, and was never heard in those parts again. The song was the key. Repeat it back to the banshee and she’ll be banished.
My first reaction: “Balls. I’m gonna have to sing.”
Two challenges faced me: (1) getting the Banshee to target me, and (2) speaking Gaelic. I can read it well enough to translate the old documents, but saying it out loud? I was rusty, to say the least.
Ashland has a population of almost ten thousand—waiting around for the banshee to target me by chance wasn’t going to work. I had to figure out what the connection between her victims was. All of them were men, so I had that going for me. They were between the ages of twenty-four and fifty-one. I was close enough to that. Three were white, one was Native American, so that didn’t seem to be a factor. There’s always a chance with these things that the vic pool is truly random. That’s the worst possible situation for a hunter, since your only hope is to somehow catch the monster in the act, which in a town the size of Ashland or bigger is nearly impossible. A much better situation is when you can isolate what the monster is looking for in a victim, and make yourself the best possible example of that. Monster wants tall guys, you call Sam Winchester. Monster wants pretty girls, you . . . well, I don’t know any of those. Guess I’d call Dean.
