“Especially without a receipt,” she said.
“Some customer service!” Samuel growled, appearing in the doorway armed with a baseball bat. He swung high toward the woman.
“Please, you’re going to use an instrument used in a game on me?” she sneered.
“No, I’m going to use this.” Samuel pulled a salt-filled sawed-off from his hip and shot just shy of the woman’s left shoulder.
“Salt? Really? You think I’m a demon?” She smirked, then stepped up to Samuel and took a large sniff. “You’ve been dead, old man.” She pushed out her hand and Samuel started to gag. “You remember not being able to breathe? That’s right, you do. And you were dead a while. So interesting... You and I will have to have a talk some time. Right now, however, I’m going to have a little—what do you call it?—barbecue.”
With another wave of her hand, a fire started on the storeroom floor in the corner. The woman stepped to the doorway and spread a powder along the floor and the doorjamb.
“It was time I cleared out my inventory anyway.”
And with that, she disappeared through the door.
Samuel struggled to move but seemed to be held fast in place in the doorway. Sam was still pinned to the ceiling, fighting for breath. The flames spread, catching on the boxes of merchandise and reaching higher.
“How is she keeping us here?” Sam choked.
“Look for a spot of blood. She got some on you somehow. Wash it off!” Samuel managed.
Sam struggled to move at all, much less look for a spot of blood. After a few seconds he managed to prise his left arm off the ceiling and found a dot of dark-red blood on the inside of his wrist.
“How am I supposed to get it off?” he called.
The fire had climbed the tower of boxes and now reached the ceiling. The flames were creeping toward his toes.
“Spit!” Samuel shouted.
Sam tried to muster saliva from his dry mouth. He spat on his wrist, and felt the invisible restraints loosen a little bit. Fighting to get his arm down by his side, he managed to wipe his wrist against his pants. He promptly fell face-first to the floor.
Without flinching, Sam sprang back onto his feet, and stamping on the spreading flames, he moved to his grandfather’s side. He grasped his left wrist and wiped off the blood he found there.
Both free they staggered into the store, which was already filled with a thick acrid smoke.
On the floor by the front window they found the girl. Her neck lay at an unnatural angle. Sam bent over and checked her pulse anyway. She was dead.
They broke through the front door and out into the street. Still coughing, eyes streaming with the effects of the smoke, they dived into their van. Sam pulled away just as the fire trucks turned the corner.
“That was some powerful witchcraft. I’ve never seen a binding spell like that before,” Sam observed.
“She must be the witch we want,” Samuel said. “It needs someone that powerful to create something purely evil. She’s strong, and I bet she’s looking to get stronger.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked.
“Witches act like a magnet; the more witches that are around, the more power they have collectively. Someone who can cast that spell, and keep us there for that long, she’s not playing around.”
“What was the blood-binding spell? I’ve seen binding spells but never one where the person could leave the room and it still stayed in place. The only thing I know that can do that is a devil’s trap,” Sam said.
“Yeah, you probably don’t want to see that spell again either,” Samuel stated dryly.
“Why? What is it?” Sam asked.
“Witch menstrual blood,” Samuel replied with just a hint of a smile.
“Agent McBrain,” Dean introduced himself, leaning over the grimy desk of the county coroner. “I need to see all the bodies that have shown up in the past two weeks. You know, the ones killed by the same Salem serial killer that everyone here seems to want to ignore.” He took back his badge and waved his hand toward the back of the basement office. “And I need to see them now.”
The elderly white-haired man behind the desk scooted out of his chair without a word and led the way to the refrigerated section of the laboratory.
“Not very chatty, are ya?” Dean observed.
“Not much to say,” the old man responded as he pulled out one of the body-sized stainless steel draws in the wall. “She was the first brought in. No identification on ’em ’cept a couple of tattoos.”
Job done the old dude shuffled back to his chair.
Dean examined the first young girl. A slit ran from one side of her neck to the other: it was clean, not too deep, and brutally precise. He looked for any signs of witchcraft on the body. There were no charcoal smudges or flakes of herbs, and it didn’t seem like she had been anointed for a sacrifice. But Dean noted she had defensive wounds on her hands and arms, as if she had tried to fend off her attacker.
This wasn’t a clean ritual, this kid had put up a fight.
Dean bent down slightly to get a closer look at the neck wound. As he carefully adjusted the tilt of her head, he noticed something very weird. Not only had her throat been cut—her neck was completely broken.
“This wasn’t in her report?” Dean called to the old man. The old grouch looked up, then came shuffling back toward Dean.
“What?” he asked.
“Her neck is broken. It wasn’t in your report,” Dean said. “You don’t think that’s an important thing to include? She looks like a Raggedy Ann doll!”
The old man shrugged.
Looking back at the body, Dean noticed something on the girl’s collarbone. It was a small “I Heart NYC” tattoo. Chief Wiggum was right about one thing—she was a transient. But what was she doing in Salem?
Dean checked all the other bodies. Every one of them had a broken neck. Dean sighed. Something rotten was in Salem. He had a bonafide case on his hands and that was the last thing he needed right now. All he wanted was a Necronomicon and a witch and to get his brother back—was that too much to ask? Now he had ten dead bodies, and—His cell phone rang. Lisa’s number flashed insistently at him on the tiny screen—one pissed-off girlfriend.
Dean answered, “Hi babe!”
“Hey Dean. Where have you been? Is everything okay?” Lisa’s voice sounded worried.
“I’ve been, um, just around. Everything’s fine—no need to stress,” Dean said sheepishly. He really needed to come up with some good excuses for this sort of thing in advance. “How was the sightseeing?”
“It was great! I love hanging around with my pre-teen son and a girl who is coming on waaay too strong.”
“So it’s been good?” Dean said.
“No, not exactly. Are you done yet, I thought we were meeting back at the inn for lunch?”
“Okay, I just have one stop to make first,” Dean said.
“Dean—what’s this all about? Are you working a case?”
“Um, no. I don’t think so. I mean, I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t mean to what?” Lisa’s voice was worryingly calm.
“Nothing. Nothing,” Dean retracted quickly, sensing this was not something to get into over the phone. Especially standing in a morgue surrounded by brutally murdered young women. “I’m coming back,” he finished.
“Can you come back straight away, no stops,” Lisa said. “Ben and I are waiting for you. He wants to see the clipper ships. Today.”
“Great. Clipper ships!” Dean tried to infuse his voice with enthusiasm. “I’m on my way!” He clicked off his phone and with a last glance at the dead girls, headed for the exit. As he marched past, he noted the old coroner was paging through a Lands’ End catalog.
“Hope ya find the people that are doing this. Last time they didn’t catch anyone,” the man observed, attention still apparently on the fleece jackets in front of him.
Dean stopped in his tracks.
“What do you mean ‘last t
ime’?”
“March of eighty-three, five dead girls. Was quite the hubbub.” The old man looked up, meeting Dean’s stare.
“March of eighty-three?” Dean repeated. Maybe it was only coincidental, but that was the same month and year that Sam was born.
Dean stepped out into the hot, hazy afternoon air. The atmosphere felt thick around him. He tried to put one foot in front of the other, but felt woozy. Both his knees failed to bend and he half-fell onto the hot cement steps. His cell phone rang again. Fumbling, Dean pulled the phone from his pocket. The screen read: SAM.
That couldn’t be. Dean stared at the number and the flashing phone sign. He hit the answer button.
“Hey Dean, it’s me, Sam. Remember? Your brother,” a voice on the other end of the line came through. Dean knew he was hallucinating. He must be hallucinating.
He opened his mouth to speak but the phone kept ringing. Dean pulled the phone away and stared intently at the screen. It now read: LISA. He took a deep breath and accepted the call.
“You’re on your way, right?” Lisa asked.
“Yeah, be there in a few.” He hung up. That was weird. He’d had dreams, but never hallucinations. He stumbled to his car, got in, and drove off.
Across the street, Sam watched Dean pull away.
“He do that a lot?” Samuel asked. “Have girly dizzy spells like that?”
“Nope. I’ve never seen him do that before,” Sam said, a slight look of recognition flickering across his face. There was a little something deep down there. A second later the grain of feeling, whatever it was, had disappeared again.
TWENTY
As Dean pulled up in the car he saw Lisa and Ben standing on the sidewalk, looking expectant. He tried to put on a poker face, but the phantom phone call from Sam had shaken him. However, he needn’t have worried about Lisa picking up on his discomfort.
“Hi, remember us, the people you’re on vacation with, at your suggestion?” she began. Not waiting for Dean to answer she pushed Ben toward the car. “Good, because you and Ben are going to go see the clipper ships together.” Ben jumped into the passenger seat. “Do not feed him any crap.”
“Do fried Twinkies constitute crap? How about beer dogs? I think I saw hotdogs fried in beer,” Dean said, trying to lighten the mood.
“No and no. Have fun,” Lisa said, kissing Ben and giving Dean a significant look over her son’s head, as if to say, “Remember fun?”
Dean nodded. Fun wasn’t really a concept he was comfortable with right then. He drew a breath. For Ben he would have fun. What could go wrong?
A short while later they arrived at the clipper ship that was docked on the other side of the blue-green bay. As soon as the car stopped, Ben jumped out and ran ahead.
“Hey buddy, keep your cool in check,” Dean called after him.
“Do you think there are pirates?” Ben asked as Dean caught up.
“Not sure there were pirates back in Puritan times,” Dean said. He really didn’t know—it was the kind of thing Sam would have known. “Let’s go get tickets for the tour and we can find out.” Tours. Tickets. Jesus, Dean thought, this “fun” is turning into Mr. Rogers’ nightmare.
Dean noticed that there weren’t a lot of other people walking up the gangplank to the ship. It seemed as though most people—even tourists—knew to stay away from such tacky crap. The ship wasn’t even seaworthy; Dean noticed it was half-grounded on the pier. The thing wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. That was good, however. Dean wasn’t too fond of the open water and he definitely wasn’t fond of puking on his shoes. In high school he’d taken a boat trip on the Mississippi, and the unpleasant memory came back to him as soon as he set foot on the gangplank.
Ben handed him a ticket with a Jolly Roger skull and crossbones on it.
“This is going to be great,” Ben said, leading the way to the gloomy anteroom which was the start of the tour. “And it looks like we have the whole tour to ourselves!”
“Are we late?” a voice said.
A pudgy old woman in a clinging powder-blue belted leisure suit, who clearly thought she was Super-Grandma, stepped into the room behind them. She held the hand of a little girl, about five years old, with a face like a mashed potato and a mouth rimmed with a red candy coating. The little girl’s sticky-fingered other hand grasped at Dean’s pant leg.
“Hands off the threads, Veruca Salt.” Dean cringed and stepped away.
“Dakota darling, leave the man alone,” Super-Gran said mildly.
“Ahoy there! Are ye all ready for a tour of the creakiest, creepiest ship to ever set sail the high seeeaass?” An old guy in a pirate costume leapt out from behind a plastic barrel.
“Ahhhh. Memaw!” The little girl screamed and pulled her grandmother back out toward the ticket counter.
“Guess not,” Dean observed under his breath.
“We are,” Ben said.
“Argh, grreaaat!” the old man said.
“That was a little more Tony the Tiger than Jack Sparrow,” Dean noted.
The guide gave him the evil eye.
“You can be me grommet. Would ye like that?” he asked Ben.
“Totally!” Ben said. “Can we see the Gibbet first?”
“Ye know a lot about pirates, mate,” the man said. “Just don’t get too pushy. I got a system,” he added, without the accent.
“We’re going to start foreword on the ship at the forecastle,” he continued, re-discovering the accent. “This is where the sayy-lors slept.” The pirate guide led the way as they walked toward the front of the ship.
Ben turned to Dean and shrugged.
“There’s a lot on the Internet. Pirates are cool,” he said.
After walking through a narrow hallway they entered a small dusty room with bunkbeds attached to each wall.
“’Tis where the picaroons slept,” the man said.
“Hey dude, you don’t need to do the accent the whole time. I mean, we appreciate it and all, but, ya know, not necessary,” Dean told the guy. The mock-pirate regarded him for a moment with tired eyes.
“Really? ’Cause this day sort of sucked,” he admitted.
“Yeah. Relax. Just let us wander around,” Ben said.
The guy nodded gratefully. “Okay. Just don’t tell my boss. You guys seem cool, so how about I show you some of the places that the public doesn’t get to see? I’m Teddy, by the way.” He shook hands with each of them.
“Dean and Ben,” Dean said. “Nice to meet you. Yeah, totally—show us the good stuff. Right, Ben?”
Ben nodded eagerly.
They followed Teddy to the main deck. Ben ran around pointing out where the swords were kept, and how the sails were steered. Teddy then led them down to the deck below, where the cannons were kept. It was a large nearly bow-to-stern open floor with imposing black cannons sticking out of a line of holes on each side of the ship.
“Do these work?” Ben asked, running toward one.
“Aw no,” Teddy said smiling, “these cannons have all been cemented up for decades. They used to shoot twenty-four pound balls. Boys like you would run up and down bringing gunpowder from the bottom of the ship to set them off.”
“You still have the cannonballs?” Ben asked.
“Gosh, no. They melted down whatever was found a long time ago.”
“So what’s this?” Ben asked, rolling a large cannonball across the floor.
Teddy looked surprised.
“That isn’t supposed to be there—where did you find that?”
“Yeah, I suspect we shouldn’t be here either,” Dean said, pointing out of one of the cannon holes. Teddy ran to the hole and peered out.
They were in the middle of the open sea.
“How the holy hell did that happen?” Teddy cried.
“I think he might be able to tell us,” Ben said, pointing to a tall, thin figure at the other end of the deck.
The figure limped toward them. As it moved closer, Dean could see it was a man. He appear
ed slightly translucent at first, but with each step he took, he became more and more solid, until he stood about twenty feet in front of them. He was dressed in a ruffled high-collar shirt with knee-high swashbuckler boots over tight trousers. A long silver sword hung from his belt.
He didn’t look happy.
“Nice shirt,” Dean observed.
The ghost turned his milky eyes toward them.
“Dean?” Ben had backed up against Dean, his eyes as wide as saucers.
“You know how you keep bugging me to teach you how to hunt?” Dean said calmly.
“Yeah,” Ben said.
“Hunt? Hunt what?” Teddy was frozen to the spot, staring at the pirate.
“Pissed off pirate ghosts,” Dean replied.
“What do you do first?” Ben asked, shuffling around behind Dean.
“Run!” Dean yelled as he pushed Ben and Teddy toward a door in the aft of the ship.
“Arrgh, ye scalliwags ain’t going to gull me!” the pirate shouted. Dean looked back to see him limping after them.
“No one is gulling anything with kids in the room,” Dean said, pulling an iron knife from his jacket and swinging at the pirate. His reach was too short, so he threw the knife at the apparition, but Captain Scalliwag was quicker than he looked and swiftly side-swiped it away with his sword.
“Through there. Now!” Dean directed Ben and Teddy toward the door.
“But ghosts aren’t real!” Teddy screamed, tripping over the threshold.
Dean pushed Ben through after Teddy, then leapt through himself. He spun around and slammed the door behind him just as the pirate’s sword blade cracked through the wood.
“Looks pretty damn real to me,” Dean said, ushering them forward into the dark of the ship.
TWENTY-ONE
“How did that happen? And what do we do now?” Teddy cried as he led the way down some steps.
Dean shook his head. “I don’t know. We could have passed through a portal of some sort. Could be a curse, a spell... Has anything like this ever happened before?”
Supernatural: One Year Gone Page 11
