“Second time somebody mentioned white mist before seeing something... weird,” Sam said.
“So, that’s significant, right?”
“Maybe,” Sam said. “Have to ask. Any illegal substances involved while you were hanging out in the park?”
“Drugs? No!” she said defensively. “Steve swiped some beer from home, but I didn’t have any. Wasn’t in the mood. I was thinking about...” She shook her head, as if she was mentally shifting gears. “I was sober. Completely.”
“Your father tell you the car that hit Steve vanished?” Dean asked.
“No,” she said. “He said it was a hit and run. Steve was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Vanished how?”
“Into thin air,” Sam said. “According to a witness.”
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Things appearing and disappearing.” She leaned forward and whispered. “My father said you guys think a terrorist is testing a hallucinogen.”
Dean tried to hide his surprise.
“He told you that?”
“Yep,” she said, still hushed. “He’s all about total communication with his daughter. Figures I’ll reciprocate.” She shrugged. “But he sounded skeptical.”
“We got that,” Sam said.
“Whatever it is, you think the car is connected to the headless horseman?”
“Possibly.”
“But what do they have in common? Anything weird about the car?”
“Before he died, Steve said the car had no driver.”
“Hadn’t heard that either,” Lucy said somberly. “Horseman without a head. Car without a driver.”
“Otherwise, it seemed like a normal red car.”
Dean added, “With a white stripe on the hood.”
Lucy grabbed Dean’s wrist, her green eyes widening.
“What?”
“Red car with a white stripe,” he repeated.
Her grip tightened.
“Oh, my God! What—what kind of car?”
“Is that important?”
“What kind?”
“Older model,” Dean said. “Muscle car. Sixties or seventies. That’s all we know.”
“Could it have been—? No, that’s not possible. It’s crazy.”
“What?”
“A ’68 Dodge Charger?”
“Maybe,” Dean said. “Why? Have you seen it?”
Lucy released Dean’s wrist. She glanced down at the table, nibbled on the edge of her thumbnail. When she spoke again, her voice was so soft Dean had to strain to hear her words.
“That was Teddy’s car.”
Before Dean could ask about Teddy, she slipped out of the booth, rushed across the diner and out the door without looking back.
SIX
“What just happened?” Sam said.
Dean stood, removed thirty dollars from his wallet and slapped it on the table. He glanced wistfully at his halfeaten meal.
“Damn,” he said, “That cheeseburger was good.”
They found her in the parking lot, pacing behind a row of cars, still nibbling at the edge of her thumbnail. Dean had the impression she wanted to run away but was fighting the urge. He looked sideways at Sam, who shrugged.
“Lucy?” he called. “Everything okay?”
“Fine,” she said, her voice pitched higher than usual. “I’m—it’s fine. It’s insane, right? Can’t be Teddy’s car.”
“Teddy?” Dean said.
“Teodor Kucharski,” she said. “He is—was my boyfriend.”
“Let us talk to him.”
“You can’t,” she said. “He’s dead. He died a year ago.”
“Sorry. I...”
“It’s okay. I’m fine.”
Cleary, she wasn’t fine. Dean looked at Sam and whispered, “Vengeful spirit?”
Again Sam shrugged.
“The car,” Dean said, taking a few steps closer to her. “Who has it now?”
“That’s the thing,” she said, finally making eye contact. Her eyes were red, her cheeks moist. She’d been quietly crying since she hurried out of the diner. “Teddy was driving his ’68 Dodge Charger the night he died. The car was totaled. So, this... vanishing car couldn’t be his. Could it?”
“Don’t know,” Dean said. “Maybe somebody fixed it.”
She shook her head. “I was in that car when it crashed. We all were.”
“We who?” Sam asked.
“Teddy, Steve, Tony, and me,” she said. “I broke my arm against the dash. Tony broke both legs. Steve needed surgery on his hip. I managed to climb out the passenger window. They needed the Jaws of Life to get Tony and Steve out. But... Teddy... he got the worst of it. Steering column crushed his chest.”
“That’s horrible,” Dean said.
“It was stupid,” she said. “We were all stupid. Drinking. We let Teddy drive. He loved that car, inherited from his dad. Washed and waxed it every week. Kept it spotless. Nobody else could drive it. Ever. That night... well, it was the same as always, except we’d all been drinking. Goofing off. None of us should have gotten behind the wheel. But Teddy... It was always Teddy. I have nightmares about the accident. All the time. I wake up as if I’m about to go through the windshield. Sometimes I wake up screaming.” She wrapped her arms tight around herself, shuddered and shook her head. “So believe me, that car was totaled.”
“Listen,” Sam said. “It’s getting dark. Let us give you a ride home.”
“Take me to Tony’s house,” she said, wiping away a fresh tear. “You should talk to him about the headless horseman. He can confirm what I saw.”
She’d already put herself through an emotion wringer. Dean had no desire to make it worse. Not like they needed her to make introductions. “That’s okay. Just give us his address.”
“No,” she said quickly. “It’s fine. I want you guys to figure this out before I start thinking I really am nuts. Besides, Tony lives a couple blocks from me. I can walk home from his place.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Dean said.
A silver Lexus pulled into the diner’s lot and parked in a spot close to where the trio was walking towards the Impala. Before they could walk around the car, a tall middle-aged man in a charcoal-gray pinstriped suit, with more salt than pepper in his hair, climbed out of the car and placed a hand protectively on Lucy’s shoulder. Though he spoke to her, his suspicious gaze lingered on Dean and Sam.
“Lucy,” he said. “Everything all right here?”
“Fine, Uncle Alden,” she said, smiling at him. “These men are with the FBI.”
“Agent DeYoung,” Dean said, resisting the urge to pull out his fake ID.
“Agent Shaw,” Sam said with a slight nod.
Uncle Alden raised an eyebrow. “FBI?”
Maybe that was an ID-flashing moment after all, Dean thought.
“It’s cool, Uncle Alden,” Lucy said. “They’ve already talked to Dad.”
“I see,” he said, nodding without surrendering his suspicions yet. He held her chin and tilted her face up. “You’ve been crying.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Talking about Teddy. That’s all.” She cleared her throat. “Agents, this is Alden Webb. Friend of my father. He’s the warden at Falls Federal Prison.”
Webb offered his hand, shook each of theirs.
“Chief Quinn spoke of resentment in town about the prison,” Sam offered.
“There was some... concern when we opened the supermax wing. But that’s in the past,” Webb said. “The town and the prison have reached... an accommodation. They know the prison is here to stay but the inmates—especially those in supermax—represent no threat to Clayton Falls. There’s a peaceful coexistence.”
“Anyway, Uncle Alden, the agents were about to drive me home,” Lucy said. “So, enjoy your meal. And I’ll see you later.”
“Certainly,” Webb said, nodding to them. He gave Lucy a quick hug and a peck on the cheek. “Take good care of this one, gentlemen.”
“You bet,” Sam said.
Dean nodded and, after Webb entered the diner, led the way to the Impala. As they climbed into the car, Dean asked Sam, “You get the feeling he’d like to toss us in a cell?”
“Don’t take it personally,” Lucy said, chuckling. “He’s suspicious of everyone. Says it’s part of his job description.”
She directed them to Tony Lacosta’s house, which was a little over a mile away from the diner.
“Right there,” she said. “Yellow siding, white trim and posts.”
“Got it,” Dean said and pulled in at the curb. The house had a covered front porch with a white railing three steps up from the ground. Behind a few small shrubs, he spotted a latticed porch skirt. He flashed back on the image of the young woman’s body they’d discovered under the Machete Mime’s farmhouse.
“There he is.” Lucy led the way up wooden steps to the porch.
Tony Lacosta sat on the first of two white Adirondack chairs, asleep with his crossed feet propped up on the porch railing. When Lucy unceremoniously knocked his feet down, he jolted awake and jumped out of the chair.
“What the hell!? Lucy?”
“Are you stoned?” she asked.
“No,” he said quickly. “Yeah. Maybe. Had a few brews. Who’s asking?” He glanced at Dean and Sam in their FBI suits and leaned closer to Lucy before whispering loud enough for all three of them to hear. “Jeez, Luce. Narcing on me with the FBI guys?”
Lucy punched his upper arm.
“I asked you to meet me at the diner!”
“Oh, right. Damn, I forgot.”
“Forgot? I called less than an hour ago!” She shook her head in disappointment. “You’re such a jackass.”
“Don’t be a bitch,” Tony said. “Besides, what’s it matter? I saw the same thing you saw.”
“That’s the point!” Lucy said, exasperated. “Everyone thinks I’m crazy. I thought you had my back.”
“I do,” Tony said, chagrined. “I saved your ass in the park, didn’t I?”
Lucy sighed, dropped down in his chair while he stood looking down at her.
“Yes. I was an idiot. That thing would have lopped off my head if you didn’t drag me out of there. Sorry, Tone.”
“Apology accepted,” he slouched against the wooden post beside the stairs. “Sorry about not meeting you.”
“Okay. So tell Agent DeYoung and Shaw what we saw.”
“DeYoung and Shaw, huh? Like a Styx reunion.” When he got no reaction to his quip from Lucy, he continued. “Fine,” he said, focusing on Dean and Sam at last. “Lucy’s right. This sounds crazy. But it happened...” He told them his version of the headless horseman story, which basically matched Lucy’s with the significant exception that his back was turned when the horseman supposedly appeared out of nowhere. “When I turned around it was already there. Freaky as hell. Looked like it was out for blood, so we bolted.” The rest of his account matched Lucy’s and offered no additional information.
“Any idea why the horseman continued after your friend?” Sam asked. “Instead of you two?”
Tony shook his head. “Totally random. When I pulled Lucy with me, I guess I forced him—it—to make a decision. Maybe it knew it couldn’t chase all of us if we split up.” He shrugged. “Could have come after us. Steve kept running straight ahead. Thing didn’t have a head. No eyes. Maybe it was easier to keep riding straight.” He shook his head, ran his hand through his dark hair. “Hey, you guys want a beer or something?”
Dean thought a beer sounded like an excellent idea, but they had to keep up their cover. Especially since they would be hanging around Clayton Falls for the foreseeable future.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that,” he said. “But thanks for your help. Both of you.”
“No problem.”
“Thanks for the ride,” Lucy said. “I’ll hang here for a while.”
“Cool,” Tony said. He sidled past Lucy and plopped down in the matching chair.
As Dean walked back to the Impala with Sam, he glanced over at his brother and said, “Could go for a beer.”
“Figured.”
Ten-year-old Daniel Barnes lay in bed with the covers pulled up to his chest and asked his mother to check the closet.
She opened the folding doors wide, slid the clothes on plastic hangers to either side and declared the closet empty of bogeymen. “However, there is a lot of boy clutter on the floor.”
“Mom!”
“Just saying, Danny. Wouldn’t hurt you to clean up this mess every once in a while.”
“I don’t have anywhere to put my stuff.”
“Because you have too much stuff.”
“Check under the bed now,” he instructed her.
This was his nightly ritual: cup of water, closet check, bed check, nightlight on, kiss goodnight. The repetition comforted him. He watched as his mother got down on her knees, lifted the edge of the covers and peered under the bed.
“Oh, no!” she said.
“What?”
“They’re back,” she said in mock terror. “Dust bunnies!”
“Is that all?” he asked, smiling.
“And some fallen action figures,” she said, climbing to her feet to stand at attention. “Otherwise, all clear.”
“Okay, then.”
She leaned over and kissed his forehead.
“Time to go to sleep, young man.”
“G’night, Mom.”
“Goodnight, honey.” She switched off the bedside lamp. The darkness triggered the sensor in his nightlight, which flickered on in response and spread a warm glow of illumination across the floor.
“Love you,” she said as she leaned against the doorjamb.
“You, too,” he said and succumbed to a yawn.
Quietly, she slipped out of his room and closed the door.
In a few minutes, Daniel slipped into a light sleep, unaware that a light wind had begun to gust—until the branches of the white oak tree outside his bedroom window began to tap repeatedly against the glass. He opened his eyes, completely awake now but unsure what had roused him. A moment later, he heard the tap, tap, tap-tap on his window. He sat up in bed and looked out into the night sky. In his mind, the tree branches transformed into monstrous arms swaying before him, the tips of the branches now hands reaching for him, blocked only by a thin layer of glass...
“Mom!” he cried out.
A few seconds passed.
Tap, tap-tap, TAP!
“Mom! Where are you?”
He heard a rush of footfalls from the hallway outside his room. His mother burst into the room, looked left and right for any potential threat before her gaze settled on him.
“Daniel? What’s wrong?”
“The tree... it was moving...”
She approached the window and stood there for a few moments. Suddenly, the tip of a tree branch swayed far enough to scrape along the windowsill. To Daniel’s ears it sounded like fingernails—or claws. He shuddered.
“It’s nothing,” she said in a soothing voice. “Getting breezy out there. The tree branch brushed your window, that’s all.”
“It scared me,” Daniel said. “Looks creepy.”
Hands on her hips, she stood over him and shook her head. “Daniel, you’re perfectly safe here. You can’t be afraid of every little shadow and bump. Okay?”
“Okay,” he said glumly.
“Be a brave boy for me?”
Daniel nodded. “I’ll try.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” she said and kissed his forehead again. “I’ll ask your father to trim that tree in the morning.”
“Okay.”
This time, on her way out, she left his door ajar, so she could hear him better if he called for her. Accepting the compromise, Daniel tried to sleep again. He rolled onto his side, back to the window so he wouldn’t see the shadows, and drew his knees up close to his chest.
Wind and shadows, he told himself. No reason to be scared...
Another yawn, wider than before
, and he was drifting off to sleep much sooner than he would have expected after his scare.
With his eyes closed and sleep tugging him down into unconsciousness, he failed to notice the nightlight flicker and wink off. Seconds later, he was oblivious as a splotch of darkness in an upper corner of his bedroom uncoiled and drifted toward him like tendrils of obsidian and impenetrable smoke. The darkness flowed across his bedcovers, passed over his face and gathered over his bed’s headboard. Slowly, as the darkness condensed, a shape began to emerge, like a silhouette, but in three dimensions. First a head formed, dark and unknowable and, beneath it, a pitch-black arm extended from the center mass, the tip stretching to coalesce into a hand and shadowy fingers that splayed across the boy’s forehead.
Outside Daniel’s home, the wind picked up, gusting as with a coming storm and the white oak’s branches stirred and swayed and became agitated, reaching for the house and the boy within...
Dean brought a cold six-pack of beer back to the motel room, stuffing a few bottles in the packed ice bucket to keep them chilled. Considering he had two other six-packs, he needed a much bigger bucket. Or an ice chest. The local supermarket would have a cooler. He sipped from a bottle as Sam perused old news stories on the laptop computer.
“Found it,” he said eventually and spun the computer around for Dean’s benefit.
“That accordion was a ’68 Dodge Charger?” Dean asked.
“That’s what it says.”
Dean peered at the screen.
“Color matches. Cherry red, white racing stripe.”
Sam turned the laptop around again, scrolled down through the story.
“Hit a retaining wall. Driver’s side took the brunt of the impact.”
“Even if it was possible to repair that damage,” Dean said, “doesn’t explain how the car can disappear. Could be a lookalike car but unless it belongs to a magician...”
“Maybe it’s a vengeful car, not a vengeful spirit.”
“All we need. Car with a grudge. Christine comes to Clayton Falls.”
“Kid lived with his paternal grandmother,” Sam said, relaying information as he skimmed through articles. “Mother died in childbirth. Father and son lived in New Jersey. Father died five years ago. Massive heart attack. Heavy smoker. Grandmother only surviving relative. Took the boy in.”
Supernatural 9 - Night Terror Page 6
