Supernatural_Bobby Singer's Guide to Hunting

by David Reed

  I took another look through the files of the missing guys, still got bupkis. Then I re-read my notes from talking to Bea, the youngest guy’s mom. She’d left his room just as it was, in case he happened to just waltz back in like he’d never gone missing. Hanging from the wall was a deer hunter’s orange vest. Not an uncommon sight in Wisconsin. Mrs. Lavery had told me that her husband was spotted in the marsh by a deer hunter. What if the victims were all deer hunters, and all of them had been hunting in the marsh in the days before their disappearances? The banshee might have spotted them, followed them home, then lured them back to her swamp.

  I called Mrs. Lavery, found out the name of the hunter that’d stopped her husband from disappearing the first time: a man named Bill Henderson. Didn’t take much effort to track him down at home, where he was holed up in his study, ashen and jumpy. “You been hearing things?” I asked him. The look in his eyes was enough to confirm my suspicions. The banshee was after him, already whispering in his ear.

  You’ve got to jump on opportunities like that. A minute later, I had him surrounded by a pentagram of iron golf clubs, I’d salted the windows and doors (just in case), and I gave him an iron-pellet shotgun. If he heard the voice again, I told him to blast iron in the direction of the singing. With Henderson safe, I moved on to the next step: making myself a target.

  I’d already been to the swamp, so I should have been familiar enough to the banshee. I walked out of Henderson’s house, got several yards clear of any iron, and waited. If she couldn’t get to Bill, I hoped she’d come after me instead.

  Then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. The bitch musta really had her heart set on Bill Henderson. I decided to wait out the night in the backseat of my Chevelle, turned the radio on as I tried to fall asleep, but the song was weird. The words sounded like gibberish. Hell, it sounded like Gaelic—and that’s exactly what it was. The banshee was starting in on me through the radio.

  Overplaying your hand is easy to do as a hunter—you think you’ve got the critter figured out, you think you know all their strengths and all their weaknesses, but often as not you’ve got big blind spots in the lore, and as soon as you come at the monster they’ll throw a curveball. I wasn’t going to run right to the swamp. I was going to play hard to get first. A leisurely breakfast at the local diner. A trip to the gun shop for some socializing. A stop at the liquor store to replenish my whiskey stores. All the while, I listened closely to the voice singing in my noggin, trying to make out and memorize all the words. The banshee’s warbling started to get to me—I felt a powerful compulsion to go down to the swamp, but held back as long as I could. Dinner at a French place—’cause I may not seem cultured, but it ain’t all bratwurst and Budweiser at Casa Singer. And then, finally, I moseyed over to the swamp, to see about killing the banshee.

  It was getting dark by the time I parked, which was regrettable but necessary. Spirits are most active at night, which should be obvious from every ghost story you’ve ever heard. Not that they won’t rattle some windows during the day, but their main goal is scaring the piss out of everyone they can, and that’s most effective at night. There’s something primal about our fear of the dark—of the night. I’ve seen grown men whimper like babies when something makes a bump after the sun goes down.

  I left my Chevelle in a gravel lot near the bogs. The lot was intended for hunters and wilderness-minded folks who wanted to spend a day in the Bad River watershed (where do they get these names?), but from the overgrown state of the place it was clear the lot wasn’t used much. There was at least one other set of tire tracks in the gravel—maybe from one of the victims? But then where were their cars?. I brought a shotgun and enough iron shells to handle my business, then set out into the mire.

  The beam from my flashlight started fritzing out, which is a surefire sign that otherworldly crap is about to go down—if there were cold spots (another solid indicator that there’s spirit activity nearby) in the marsh, I wouldn’t have known, the whole place was freezing as it was.

  Then, I heard the weeping.

  It wasn’t like anything you’ve heard before, not like some teenager with a cheatin’ boyfriend—this was a wail of anguish like what you’d hear in hell (wouldn’t know about that myself, haven’t been personally, but friends say it’s not worth a visit).

  Most of the bog was shallow water with long grass and trees growing out of the muck, but I came to a deeper section—more like a pond than a swamp. The wailing was coming from the middle of the pond, and I could have sworn that the water was bubbling at the center, like it was boiling. I trained my gun on the water, and turned to Sam and told him—

  Wait.

  Sam was there. Sam Winchester. What the hell is . . .

  This isn’t making any sense. Sam and Dean were there with me. They were hunting the banshee too. . . .

  I turned to Sam, told him that the banshee was gonna come at us any second, to get ready with his phone, ’cause, see, I had sung the banshee’s song onto the voice recorder on his iPhone doodad, and . . . this is all coming back in pieces, now. . . .

  The banshee did come at us, but it wasn’t what we were expecting. It was—there were two of them. A banshee and something else, something I’ve never seen or heard of before. A woman, but it was like she was liquid. Like a river flowing into the shape of a person.

  How long were Sam and Dean with me? The whole time? I don’t remember them being with me before the swamp. Did they call me to Ashland? Where the hell are they now? I’m calling them again. You can wait.

  No answer.

  Back to the banshee, and the . . . other thing. The banshee was singing, Sam hit play on his phone, my baritone rendition of the Hag’s song came on, and . . . the thing smiled. Not the banshee, the other woman. The banshee splashed and flailed, sending water and steam flying in her death throes. Just like so many other critters that I ganked, she didn’t go quietly.

  Chunks of this are missing. Chunks of it don’t piece together right. The other one, the river woman, she came at Dean, didn’t even touch him and he ratcheted into a tree, pinned by nothing but the force of her mind. She hurt him bad, I could tell. Internal bleeding, maybe, but injuries like that are hard to suss out without a trip to the ER. Sam, being Sam, charged in like a bull and got himself thrown face-first into the water. It don’t happen often, but I found myself frozen solid, took me a solid five seconds before I remembered I had a sawed-off in my hands. I pelted her with the chambered shell, didn’t even make her flinch. That’s when—she looked me in the eye. Like she recognized me. That look you get when you see something you’ve always wanted, and it’s right there in front of you . . . like she wanted my head on a platter. And then . . .

  I was here. On my couch.

  I could’ve sworn I remembered the end of that story when I started telling it. I could have sworn Sam and Dean weren’t in Ashland with me.

  What is happening to me?

  This Isn’t Funny

  I JUST CALLED RUFUS'S CELL PHONE. Forgot for a minute that he was gone. Chances are, he wouldn’t have been able to help me, but it’d do me some good to get all this off my chest—which I reckon is why I’m writing this.

  I’m gonna get a drink.

  I’m back. Don’t feel any better.

  What do I do? Drive back to Ashland, find that bog? Use my fake FBI credentials to put out an APB on Sam and Dean, see if they turn up anywhere? I just . . . I can’t shake the feeling that the answer’s in my head, that I could fix this if I could just knock the right memory loose. Guess that means I’ve gotta keep writing.

  Somewhere between the bog and here, I musta taken some kind of blow to the head. I musta lost my car. I musta lost Sam and Dean. If I can figure out any one of those things, maybe the rest will click into place. I got no clue on the Total Recall front, no answer from the Winchesters, so I guess it’s time to LoJack my ride.

  The Chevelle’s been in my collection for decades, though it wasn’t always my go-to vehicle. I got
it as a junker, a total loss from some kid in Pipestone, Minnesota. He’d somehow managed to total the car while driving ten miles an hour in the parking lot of a grocery store. Takes ingenuity to be that stupid. The hull of the car sat in my junkyard (did I tell you I own a junkyard?) for near-on five years before I got the notion to rebuild it. If memory serves (and it hasn’t, recently), I did it to impress a girl. Back in the day, it was a sight to see. Paint on the doors matched, no rust, no dents. As I got older, I got rougher around the edges, and so did the Chevelle.

  That car has been with me for longer than any person I’ve ever known, if that gives you any clue as to how many years I’ve owned it. Longer than I knew my wife (may she rest in peace), longer than I knew Rufus or John Winchester. Longer than I knew my own mother. Right now, the Chevelle’s not in the driveway—but I got back to Sioux Falls from Ashland somehow, and I ain’t sprouted any angel wings, and I ain’t got a bus ticket in my pocket. I think it’s time to do a little junkyard reconnaissance, see if I can find any clues as to how I got here. If I don’t finish this story, it’s probably because I forgot why I was writing it.

  . . . . .

  It's worse than I thought.

  Didn’t notice it before, but at the front gate, some damn fool slammed into my Singer’s Auto Salvage Yard sign, bent the supports back a ways, scraped some paint off—paint that matches the Chevelle’s. Guess the idjit was me.

  I followed the tire tracks into the junkyard, past a banged-up Chevy that I had up on blocks. Ain’t on blocks anymore. Lucky it wasn’t the Impala, or Dean would’ve had a fit. The tracks twisted around a bit, snaking to the back of the yard, where I found a crumpled up heap of metal. What used to be two cars is now one tangle of steel and glass—totally jacked. One of those cars used to be my Chevelle. How I walked away from that wreck, I can’t even start to guess. I’d say I had a guardian angel on my shoulder—if I didn’t know for a straight fact that angels are all rat bastards. Castiel being the exception who proves that particular rule.

  That’s all mysterious enough on its own, raises some questions I don’t got answers to, but it’s just the tip of the damn iceberg. What’s really got me rattled is what I found next. Scratched out in big messy letters on what’s left of the Chevelle’s windshield—one word.

  “Karen.”

  This ain’t fair.

  Karen

  I'M ALREADY PLAYING without a full deck, now they (or it, or whatever) are dragging my dead wife into things. My dead wife twice over, I should add.

  Damn it.

  “Karen” was written in giant letters on the windshield, and, as far as I can tell, I’m the one who drove the car back here. So what does it mean? Is it a warning?

  Karen. What can I say about Karen? Do I write down the hunter version of my life with her, all the facts about the terrible thing that happened to her? Do I treat this like a “case”? Or do I use what might be my last words to write down everything she meant to me? Do I tell you that she spent so much time on her hair, getting it just right? That she’d find me on the couch after she took a shower, smelling like some kinda flower that I could never place—and that it’s always the first thing I think of when I remember her? Or do I tell you that she taught me to cook, and that it changed my whole damn life? That she told me to get over myself when I was mad about some stupid thing.

  It all comes back to one question—do I think I’m gonna survive this? If not, then I may as well give you the sappy version. But I’m not near giving up. So I’ve gotta press on.

  I met Karen when I was still a young man. I had ambitions like anybody else, but not huge ones. I wanted to work on cars. I wanted to be comfortable and done at five and have a beer in my hand by five-thirty. Not asking for that much, in the grand order of things. A simple life. First time I saw Karen, I regretted all of that. I wished I could have been somebody interesting from the city, somebody with a fancy job and a fat wallet. None of that mattered to her at all. “I thought you’re giving us the non-sappy version, ya blowhard,” you say. Yeah, this is going somewhere important, so quit yappin’. She wanted the simple life that I had. We were happy together, which is damn rare, if you ask me. Karen didn’t want anything from me that I couldn’t give her.

  So when she came at me with a kitchen knife, I was surprised. Caught her hand just before she sank the blade into my chest; was so busy fighting her off that I didn’t notice the stink of sulfur on her. All I could see was the little engraving on the knife’s blade, near the hilt: “From Bobby.” Now there’s some irony or what have you—she was about to murder me with the knife set I gave her for Christmas. After I threw her clear I was able to get a good look at her. She was the same woman I’d loved for years, but her eyes were black as a hole in the ground. Wearing the same clothes, the same earrings, but something deep inside had rotted out.

  The thing that was possessing her didn’t have a reason for comin’ after me. It did it for the sick, lunatic fun of it. How it came to be in Sioux Falls, I’ll never know. Pit stop on the way to the Pit, maybe. What was damn clear was that the thing wanted to play games with me before it killed me. A cat with a mouse. I’d like to think that I could have handled myself, even then, before I knew anything about the supernatural, but I won’t lie to myself. I had no idea what I was facing, no clue what to do to protect myself. Kinda like my situation right now. The difference was, all I wanted to do was get Karen back. Because even if she killed me, I woulda spent eternity regretting not helping her. My wife was . . . broken, and I couldn’t fix her.

  I dodged the knife when she threw it, but that was just the beginning. She came at me with an axe, found one of my hunting rifles lying out—she wouldn’t let up. It wouldn’t let up, the thing inside her. No sugarcoating it, it was the worst day of my life, and I’ve seen downright godawful days.

  So . . . I fought back. It took hours to accept it, but there it was. I told myself I had to do it, for her sake. I thought she musta been sick, something not right in her head. If I could just get her down, take her to the hospital, docs would figure out what was wrong. But I had to get her down first, and I knew it wasn’t gonna be easy. I had no idea.

  I’d been hiding out in the junkyard. The evil sonofabitch was inside Karen’s mind, knew things she knew, but even Karen didn’t know the ins and outs of the yard the way I did. When I decided it was time, I came back to the house, had a shotgun with birdshot loaded (pheasant season). I told myself I wouldn’t have to use it, that the crazy would have boiled off by the time I found her. Wrong. When I found her in the living room, she had the butcher knife in her hand, the one with the engraving, and she was screaming like . . . like hell. It musta torn up her vocal chords something good to make that sound, but the bastard didn’t care. I told her to drop the knife or I’d shoot. My hands were shaking so bad, it wouldn’t take a four-year-old to tell you I was bluffing.

  Then she turned the knife on herself. Pressed it against her skin, told me she’d gut herself if I came another step closer. Maybe you got a wife or a husband. Picture them giving you that choice. Tell me it don’t eat you up, make the whole world seem . . . wrong.

  I dropped my shotgun. Same as any man would do. Karen laughed at me. Cackled. The knife in her hand hanging low and deadly, ready to swing. I knew I had to get it from her, that I’d never have the upper hand as long as she had that knife. Shoulda taken a shot when I had the chance. Would have saved me from what happened next.

  At the time, my house was different than it is now. Nowadays, it’s mostly library, with the odd room having a sink or tub or bed mixed in with all the lore books, charts, maps, bibles, and holy books from every different church there ever was. Back then, it was a home. The living room was done up nice, with proper paint on the walls and furniture to match it. All of it Karen’s doing. There was this one chair, called something French that I can’t recall, that was her favorite. It stretched out just long enough for her to curl up and read a book on a lazy summer day. She’d get so caught up in the stori
es that the ice would melt in her tea before she took a sip. I had to throw that chair away on account of all the blood.

  I moved as quick as I could, but she was faster, impossibly fast. My hands were on her arm, but my grip didn’t hold—the knife swung and tore into my left bicep. I’ve still got the scar where it sliced down. All I felt was a warm rush as blood soaked my whole left side, spurting in time with my heartbeat. Arterial. Deadly.

  While I was distracted, she swung again. A jagged line carved into my chest, not deep enough to do any real damage, but scary enough to knock me on my ass. This woman was supposed to have my . . . this was Karen. And now my blood was on her face, and she was smiling a monster’s smile, red specks on her pearl-white teeth. A shark, circling.

  It took every ounce of strength I had to get back on my feet. And I don’t mean physical strength, I mean I was ready to give up. I’da died, gladly, a hundred times over, to not have to do what I did to Karen.

  She swung again, and I put my hand in front of the blade. My left hand, which was already close to useless ’cause of the blood loss. It wasn’t so numb that I didn’t feel the knife stick into my palm, though. The blade dug into my flesh, sent a shock down my spine, made my whole body light up with nerves I didn’t even think I had, all of ’em screaming out with pain. But it worked. The blade stuck in my hand, and she was surprised enough that she hesitated before pulling it back out. I fought through the pain, pulled the blade outta my own hand—it was slippery with blood, my blood, and nearly spilled out of my good hand.