by Tim Waggoner
During his long existence, Conrad had learned much. He was a master of the ancient art of alchemy—perhaps the only one left in the world—and he was well skilled in the runic magic practiced by the Norse people. He had also picked up a great deal of supernatural lore during his time, and he knew that Reapers were beings who appeared to humans at the moment of their deaths and ushered their souls into the afterlife. They were, in a very real sense, the Death Force personified, and a Reaper, or more accurately, the power it contained, could be the final piece of a puzzle he’d been trying to solve for the last three centuries.
He needed to return to the bicycle factory and consult his mistress at once. She would know the best way to lure and capture a Reaper. After all, was she not an aspect of Death as well? Of course, if he expected her to grant him such arcane knowledge, he would need a sacrifice of more substance than a mere piglet. He thought of the farmer who had sold him the animal. The man was in his fifties, but he was still healthy, strong, and hardworking. He’d do.
It looked like he would be making a stop before returning to Kingston Bicycles.
Conrad didn’t question the Reaper’s presence. He assumed it was following the hunter, the one who’d been bitten by the dog and infected with the creature’s taint. The boy was dying slowly, and the Reaper was like a vulture, circling and waiting for its meal to finish the business of expiring before swooping down to claim it. He hoped the boy would survive for a while yet. The longer he took to die, the longer the Reaper would remain, giving Conrad a better chance to capture it.
He was more excited than he had been in decades. At last, victory was within his grasp!
Soon, my lady, you shall tread upon the face of the Earth, and all who behold you will marvel at your beauty and wail in despair. It shall be glorious!
He ran faster.
* * *
Daniel walked through the woods, trailing the Winchester brothers at a discrete distance. Sam had seen too much of him, and he wanted to make sure to remain out of sight, at least for the time being.
Daniel’s kind didn’t worry, at least not in the way mortals did, for they had a different perspective on existence. What mortals saw as terrible tragedies were more like skinned knees and bloody noses to Reapers, momentary pains that had no lasting significance in the face of Eternity. Nevertheless, Daniel had to admit to being... concerned.
He’d been drawn to Brennan because of Conrad Dippel. All beings who defied the natural order and lived beyond their years were violating the ancient pact God and Death made before the birth of the universe. In order for Creation to be a living, growing thing, there had to be Time, and if there was Time, then there had to be a way to mark its passage. For every Before an After, for every Beginning an End, for every Life a Death. Daniel was charged with ensuring this balance was maintained, and he supposed that made him a hunter, too, in a sense. The “undead,” demons, and their ilk usually weren’t so much defying death as continuing to exist in a different way, but a creature like Dippel was a very special, very dangerous case. Even then, it wasn’t Dippel himself that concerned Daniel as much as what he was attempting to do.
The Winchesters had been of assistance so far, destroying both the monstrous dog and the two-headed man that Dippel’s dark combination of magic and science had wrought (even if technically neither creature had been constructed by his own hand), but the brothers still hadn’t figured out that Dippel’s was the mind behind the patchwork abominations. As long as they were unaware of his identity—or for that matter, that he even existed—how could they do anything to stop him? Dippel might simply pull up stakes and move his operation somewhere else. He could be vengeful and cruel, but ultimately he was a practical man, and if it became too much trouble to continue working in Brennan, Dippel would move on. Daniel would be able to track him wherever he went, of course. The necromantic energy that Dippel gave off was like a blazing beacon to him. But the Winchesters would likely be unable to locate Dippel again, at least not without some serious effort on their part, and right now they didn’t have the time to devote to an extensive search. Daniel knew they had more pressing matters to attend to, namely Dick Roman and the Leviathan. Considering how busy the ravenous monsters had kept the world’s Reapers since their release from Purgatory, Daniel would be relieved when—or maybe that should be if—the Winchesters defeated the beasts.
As a Reaper, Daniel was forbidden from manifesting in the physical world, but he was permitted to communicate with the living, provided they were close enough to death to perceive him. The very old, those dying from incurable diseases, those who’d had a near-death experience and survived—he could speak to any of them, and try to convince them to act as his agent in the realm of the living. Because Sam Winchester had been infected with a necromantic taint as a result of being bitten by Dippel’s monster hound, he was dying, and Daniel hoped he would be able to communicate with the hunter soon. He would tell him, and by extension, his brother, about Dippel, and lead them to the ancient alchemist. However, it was a plan Daniel might not be able to enact. For all the battering Sam’s mind and spirit had taken, his mental defenses were still far stronger than an ordinary person’s, and his subconscious was shutting the Reaper out, denying his existence, allowing Sam only shadowy glimpses of him. As long as Sam continued to fight like this, Daniel wouldn’t be able to communicate with him. The hunter’s resistance would erode the stronger the dark taint within him became and the closer he drew toward death, but if he became too weak, there was a possibility he might die before Daniel could speak with him. He supposed he would just have to keep following the Winchesters and gamble that Sam lived long enough to help him take out Dippel.
Dippel himself might be an issue, too. Daniel wasn’t certain, but he thought Dippel might have gotten a glimpse of him while the Winchesters were battling the two-headed creature. Daniel didn’t know if the alchemist possessed the ability to perceive Reapers. He thought it a strong possibility, though, and if that was the case, if Dippel was aware that a Reaper was watching him, who knew what he might do? At the very least, Daniel would have lost the advantage of surprise.
He sighed. Sometimes working for Death could be a real pain in the ass.
* * *
“So, was I right?” Trish whispered. “Isn’t this an awesome place for a haunting?”
Dean had to admit, the house looked pretty damned spooky, and from the expression on Sam’s face, he knew his brother felt the same. It was located a couple miles from the cabin where Trish lived with her father, not far from a small lake. The latter had served as Trish’s excuse when she told her dad that the three of them wanted to leave the cabin.
I thought we could take a walk by the lake, she’d said, all innocence. Maybe skip some rocks or something.
No swimming, her dad had said, eyeing Sam and Dean. They might be younger than Trish, but they were still boys, and it was clear that Walter Hansen didn’t like the idea of them seeing his daughter in a swimsuit.
Trish had rolled her eyes and given him a look. Da-dee! she’d said, drawing out the word, her voice dripping with embarrassed disapproval. She’d gotten permission, and they’d left, but their real destination had been this house.
The structure was an old two-story, the wood light gray and mottled with greenish mold and dark areas of rot, the paint long worn away by time and the elements. A section of roof had collapsed, and half of the house sagged, as if the foundation was crumbling beneath it on one side. Dean didn’t know much about architecture—okay, he didn’t know anything about it—but the house looked ancient, like it was built in the 1930s, and maybe even farther back than that. It was narrower than modern houses, the windows smaller, and instead of a porch it had three stone steps leading up to the front door. The steps were cracked, the door hung half off its hinges, and the windows no longer held even shards of glass. Dean was surprised the house hadn’t fallen down by now. It looked like a dilapidated house in a cartoon, the kind that barely holds together and collaps
es the instant a tiny bird lands on top of it. The land around the house added to its impression of age. Trees had grown up close around it, not as tall as others farther away, but tall enough to indicate how much time had passed since anyone had lived there. There was even a tree growing out of the hole in the roof. The underbrush was thick, and if there had ever been a roadway or path to the house, it was long covered over.
Yet the aura of spookiness the house exuded wasn’t due to its appearance—at least, not solely. There was a feeling in the atmosphere, a cold tingling that had nothing to do with the early spring air. It made the skin on the back of Dean’s neck crawl, and set his stomach to roiling. He remembered something important his dad had told him once.
You know when a place is bad, son. And I’m talking really bad. You can sense it, same way an animal senses danger. We’re animals, too, deep down, and we still have those instincts within us. All we have to do is listen when they try to warn us. Promise me you’ll always listen, Dean.
Dean had promised, and he listened now. He turned to Trish and kept his voice low as he spoke.
“Your dad may not be a hunter, but he knows plenty. Why hasn’t he ever told any of them about this place?”
“He doesn’t believe the stories people tell about this place. The old Herald House.”
“Harold?” Sam said. “Like the man’s name?”
Trish shook her head. “Herald as in ‘Hark, the herald angels sing.’ I guess it’s the last name of whoever lived here.” She shrugged. “I don’t really know.”
“What kind of stories?” Dean asked. He was beginning to fear they were in serious danger of getting in over their heads, way over. When Trish had told them that there was a haunted house not far from her cabin and asked if they wanted to go there and “bust some ghosts,” both Dean and Sam had agreed, trying to act as if it was no big deal, like they were veteran hunters despite their age. That was because they didn’t want to lose face in front of Trish. Dean figured the “haunted house” would turn out to be nothing but a rundown, abandoned building that kids talked about when they wanted to enjoy a shiver or two. He hadn’t expected there to be any real ghosts here. He knew enough about vengeful spirits—and those were the ones that usually stuck around after they died—to know that they were about as far from Casper the Friendly Ghost as it was possible to get. If they were angry enough and could muster sufficient energy, they could affect the physical world. That meant they could kill.
“A long time ago, the man who lived here killed his whole family,” Trish said. “He didn’t have any reason, at least no reason anyone was ever able to find out. One night he just went crazy, got out of bed, went downstairs, grabbed his hunting rifle, went back upstairs, and ordered his family to get up. He marched them downstairs at gunpoint—his wife, son, and daughter—and then forced them outside into the cold night. He told them he was going to hunt them, but if they could run fast enough and managed to get away, he’d let them live. They cried and begged him not to do this, but he fired his rifle at the ground near their feet to prove he was serious. They screamed and took off running.
“The man didn’t go after them right away. He wanted to give them a sporting chance. He waited five minutes or so, and then he started after them. He found his little girl first. She hadn’t gone far before climbing into a tree to hide. Most people figure her mother told her to do it because she didn’t think the girl would be able to run fast enough to get away. She was sobbing and begging for her life when her father killed her with a single shot. He found his boy next. He was running from tree to tree, trying to use them as cover. It took the man three shots before he hit his target. His wife had heard the shots and knew her children were dead. She picked up a large rock and approached her husband from behind, intending to kill him for what he’d done. But quiet as she was, he still heard her. Maybe she let out a sob just as she was about to bring the rock down on his head, or maybe she just stepped on a twig. Either way, he spun around and fired his rifle point blank at her. At the exact same moment she smashed the rock into his head. They both died. Not right away, but they were gone before the sun rose. It was almost a week before the wife’s sister got worried because she hadn’t heard from them. She and her husband came out to investigate, but there wasn’t much left of the bodies by then. The animals had picked them clean.”
Dean looked at Sam. He thought maybe the story had disturbed his younger brother, but instead of looking upset, Sam looked thoughtful.
“If the whole family died, then how does anyone know what happened?” he asked.
Dean hadn’t thought about that. He’d been too caught up in listening to the story. Still, he found himself coming to Trish’s defense, for no other reason than because he wanted her to like him. Really like him.
“The police probably figured it all out later,” he said.
Trish gave him a grateful smile, and Dean felt his cheeks flush. Sam scowled with obvious displeasure at his big brother having scored points with Trish.
Too bad you’ll never be as smooth as your big brother, Sammy-boy! Dean thought.
“So where does the haunting come in?” Sam asked.
“As the years went by, people began reporting encounters with an armed man out here, and stories began to circulate that the area was haunted. People came out to investigate, and soon they began turning up dead. No one could ever locate the shooter, and eventually folks just stayed away.”
Too bad we aren’t as smart as them, Sam thought.
“Over the years, the Herald House ghost became a local legend,” Trish continued. “Sometime in the nineteen fifties people nicknamed him the Rifleman after some old TV show, and the name stuck. Hardly anyone ever comes out this way anymore. Every once in a while a hiker or a hunter—a regular hunter, I mean—goes missing. Sometimes the body is found, sometimes it isn’t. When it is—”
“It’s got a bullet hole in it,” Dean finished.
“Usually several,” Trish corrected him. “Who knows how many people he’s killed over the years? He’s got to be stopped, and I figured since you guys have been hunting with your dad before, you could help me get rid of him.”
Dean exchanged glances with his brother. Sam had an annoying tendency to be honest at the most inconvenient times, but he said nothing now. Dean was almost disappointed. Part of him was beginning to think being here was a bad idea, and he would have liked an excuse to leave, even if it made them look like jerks in Trish’s eyes. He could have backed out on his own, he supposed, but he wasn’t the backing-out type. He was the charge-ahead-and-hope-things-didn’t-go-all-to-hell type. Especially when there was a girl involved.
“You ready?” he asked Sam.
Sam pulled a gallon-sized plastic storage bag out of his jacket pocket. It was filled with table salt. He nodded.
Dean held an iron poker he’d borrowed from Trish’s fireplace. Maybe they’d never really gone hunting with their dad, but they’d picked up a few bits and pieces of lore from him. Salt could be used to temporarily disperse a ghost. Iron did the same thing. If you could find a ghost’s bones, you could pour salt on them, set them aflame, and the ghost would be banished to wherever it was ghosts went. Dean had no idea how something so simple as a little salt and fire could do that, but if it worked, it worked, and that was all that mattered to him. He had a container of lighter fluid and some matches in his jacket pocket, so they were good to go. He hoped.
He turned to Trish. “You should probably stay behind us.”
She scowled. “Why? Because I’m a girl? I’ve got a bag of salt, too!” She removed the bag from her pocket and shook it in front of Dean’s face for emphasis.
“No, because you’ve never done this before,” he said. Although the truth was, he had wanted her to stay back because she was a girl. It was what all the tough-guy heroes in the movies did. But he could tell that wasn’t going to fly with her, so he’d go with the other excuse.
It mollified her somewhat anyway, and she nodded, although she
didn’t look happy about it.
Dean and Sam stepped in front of Trish and began walking toward the Herald House. Dean made sure his younger brother stayed behind him, but as they drew closer to the front door, he couldn’t escape the feeling that he was making a terrible mistake. He was supposed to watch out for Sam. Their dad had drilled that into his head over and over throughout the years, and it had become so deeply ingrained that it went beyond a mere feeling of responsibility. It had become an important cornerstone of Dean’s identity. So what the hell was he doing leading Sam toward a house haunted by a trigger-happy ghost? Was he out of his mind? Neither of them was prepared for this, and impressing a girl—no matter how hot—was not worth putting his brother in danger.
He stopped walking and turned to face Sam and Trish. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think—”
There was a loud crash as the front door burst off its remaining hinge and flew through the air, barely missing them. Dean spun around in time to see a man walk out onto the top step. No, not walk. He emerged from the darkness within the house, pulling himself free from the shadows, almost as if they had given birth to him.
When Trish had first told them about the Rifleman, Dean had imagined the ghost as a cadaverous, chalk-fleshed scarecrow of a creature, with empty dark hollows where his eyes should be, but the man that stood on the front stoop of the Herald House looked almost disappointingly normal. He was of medium height—shorter than Dean, but a bit taller than Sam—and a paunch sagged over the front of his belt. He wore a white button shirt with the sleeves rolled up, black pants with suspenders, and black shoes. His cheeks held a touch of red, he sported a pencil-thin black mustache, and his short black hair was combed and neatly parted in the middle. It looked wet, as if he’d slicked it down with something. His face appeared human enough, all the parts present and arranged in the proper configuration. Of course, his features were contorted into a mask of raw hatred, and he carried a rifle. And there were bloodstains on his shirt... bright red, as if they were still fresh.
