Chapter Text
Sam stared into the mirror and tried to breath.
“Take me home,” Constance said again, more forcefully, glaring at the back of his head.
Sam breathed heavily through his nose. “No,” he said firmly. Constance’s lip dropped into a pout. Her eyes flew to the mirror to make contact with Sam’s. The locks on the doors dropped down into locked position. Sam stared at the lock on his door, then grabbed it, pulling at it with both hands. The lock didn’t budge. The accelerator pushed down without being touched and the steering wheel turned to the right. The car sped off with Sam and Constance inside it. Sam pounded at the door, breathing deliberately through his nose. The woman in the back seat flickered for a moment, like the image on a television experiencing a slight interference. She smiled cruelly.
The car squealed onto the grass in front of an ancient home. The house was missing doors, had cracked windows. Constance stared at the house longingly. “Don’t do this,” Sam tried. The woman shook her head and flickered again. “I can never go home,” she said, and she seemed so human that Sam almost would have believed that she was. Sam stared at the ramshackle house, then at the woman’s expression. “You’re scared to go home,” he realized. He pulled a deep breath into his lungs, then turned and looked into the back seat. Constance had disappeared.
He jostled the lock but it was still in place. He turned to try the other door, but- oh. Constance stared directly into his eyes from the passenger seat. She jolted into his lap, the movement somehow supernaturally smooth, and pushed him back against the seat. Sam cried out in pain.
“Hold me. I’m so cold,” Constance said, balling her fists in his shirt. Sam winced and lay still.
“You can’t kill me. I’m not unfaithful. I’ve never been,” he forced out. Dad had taught him and Dean that reasoning firmly with spirits could usually get them to leave you alone, but Sam seriously doubted that advice now. Constance pressed down onto his legs and he let out another sound of pain. She flickered down so her mouth was beside his ear.
“You will be.”
Sam kicked his legs and groaned. Constance’s hands massaged his cheeks. She was right- she was cold. She sealed her lips over his, and Sam peeled his eyes open, desperately reaching for the keys in the ignition. She could kill him now. She pulled away and gazed at him, flickering again, but the flicker was different this time. For just a moment, she was a skeleton, and then she was gone. Sam let out a heavy breath. He breathed in, then screamed. A searing pain was tearing through his chest. He desperately pulled down the zipper of his jacket and looked down. 5 shallow, wide holes were dug into his flesh. As he looked down, a hand appeared, fingers appearing in each of the holes, and he threw his head back as the pain intensified. A grotesque, skeleton-like version of Constance straddled his lap, staring down at him. Sam screamed as her fingers dug further into his chest. His blood pounded in his ears.
Suddenly, a crash joined the pounding- the sound of four gunshots and glass shattering. Constance disappeared, then reappeared a moment later to be met with more gunshots. She disappeared once again. Sam let out something between a moan and a breath and grabbed at the steering wheel. “I’m takin’ you home,” he grunted. He pressed the accelerator to the floor and the car rolled towards the house.
“Sam!” he heard but didn’t listen to Dean yell from behind him. He crashed through a rotted wooden fence, then slammed through the house’s empty doorway. He flew through the deteriorated living room, the headlights flashing off of stray bits of metal. Finally, he hit a wall of furniture and the car came to a stop.
“Sam?” he heard Dean yell.
“Here!” he replied. The crash had left him just fine, but there was quite a bit of splintered wood on the roof of the car..
“Are you okay?” Dean asked, leaning through the shattered passenger side window.
“I think,” he groaned. Now that the adrenaline in his system was fizzling out, the pain in his chest was worsening rapidly.
Dean pried the passenger door off of the car. “Can you move?”
“Yeah. Help me?” Sam replied. Dean grabbed his hand and pulled him up. Sam crawled over the seats and stood up, his breathing labored. Dean half- carried him, a hand around each of his shoulders. He leaned Sam back against the car. Sam looked up to see Constance standing not ten feet away from them, a picture frame in her hands. She looked down at it sorrowfully. Her eyes flicked back up to them, and Sam saw no sorrow, only anger and offense. Sam did his best to stare back at her with the same level of determination, but his chest still heaved with a combination of pain and frantically trying to catch his breath.
Constance threw the photograph onto the floor and walked around it without looking down.
Before Sam could move, a dresser from the other end of the room flew from its place. Sam groaned as it slammed into his stomach, combining with the pain in his chest to form a burning sensation throughout his entire torso. He cried out as he tried to push it away, throwing his head back. He finally gave up and leaned his head forward to find Constance standing in front of them once again.
A light fixture behind her flickered frantically, and the distinctive sound of clinking glass filled the room. Constance’s brows furrowed and she blinked. She turned to the stairs. It was now that Sam noticed the sound of running water and the streams of liquid running down the side of the staircase. Sam watched as Constance’s eyes followed the stream upwards before fixing on something behind the wall at the top of the stairs. She stepped back, her form floating slowly away from the stairs, and Sam bent to try and see what Constance still stared at.
“You’ve come home to us, Mommy,” a pair of small, whispery voices called from upstairs. Of course. It was Constance’s dead children.
All of a sudden, two children, the tops of their heads not even reaching Constance’s waist, appeared just behind her. She looked down at them, her brow knotted, her eyes wide, and her mouth open in pain and regret. The two children surged forward and wrapped their arms around their mother. She screamed, flickering between a skeleton and a spirit, before all three forms disappeared in a flash of blue flame. It then appeared that the family’s skin had been peeled off, each member all muscle and bone. Constance still screamed and snarled, until all three spirits fell to the ground and disappeared in another flash of blue that receded down to a puddle of water on the floor and almost totally absorbed into the carpet like water down a drain.
Sam let out his breath, shaking his head in relief. He and Dean each braced two hands against the dresser pressing into their torsos and flipped it away and onto its front. Sam stepped gingerly, careful not to move his arms and cause a stab of pain in his chest, and walked to the small damp spot remaining on the floor.
“So this is where she drowned her kids,” Dean said in amazement. Sam nodded.
“That’s why she could never go home.” He smiled a little. “She was too scared to face them.”
“You found her weak spot. Nice work, Sammy,” Dean said, slapping him on the shoulder.
Sam laughed, groaning a little bit because it hurt. “Yeah, wish I could say the same for you. What were you thinking shooting Casper in the face, you freak?”
“Hey- saved your ass,” Dean replied, pointing at Sam. “I’ll tell you another thing. If you screwed up my car,” Dean paused, leaning over and examining the front end of the Impala. “I’ll kill you,” he finished in perfect seriousness.
Sam looked back at him for a moment, then broke down into laughter, shaking his head. Dean just stared at him in disbelief before turning back to his car.
The Impala rattled down the street, one headlight out, a couple windows missing, and the roof dented. Luckily, the car’s radio had not sustained any damage.
Sam considered the coordinates in Dad’s journal, plastic ruler in his hands and a flashlight tucked beneath his chin. 35-111. He pinpointed the location on the map in his lap. “Okay, here’s where Dad went. It’s called Blackwater Ridge, Colorado.
Dean nodded. “Sounds charming. How far?”
Sam glanced at the map’s legend, then at the ruler in his hands. “About 600 miles,” he answered, taking the flashlight from under his chin and resting his head on his hand.
“Hey, if we shag ass we can make it by morning,” Dean said with a grin.
Sam looked at him. “Dean, um-” Dean looked back at him with wide eyes. He glanced at the road, then back at Sam.
“You’re not going.”
“The interview’s in, like, 10 hours. I gotta be there.”
Dean just closed his eyes in frustration and looked out the opposite window. He pressed his lips together and stared at the road. He nodded, and Sam could see his Adam’s apple bob in his throat. “Yeah,” he said thickly. “Yeah, whatever,” he said with a hesitant laugh. “I’ll take you home,” he said, his cheerful demeanor significantly doused. Sam looked at him, then back at the map. There was nothing he could do.
Dean pulled the Impala up in front of the apartment. Sam grabbed his bag, pushed the door open, and heaved himself out of the car without looking back at Dean. He pushed the door closed, then hesitantly crouched down to look through the window. He looked at Dean. Dean looked back at him and nodded to fill the silence. Sam gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Maybe I can meet up with you later, huh?” he asked through the window.
“Yeah, alright,” Dean said.
Sam didn’t have much else to say, so he stood, gave the door of the Impala two fond taps, and walked towards the door. He heard the car start back up behind him.
“Sam!” he heard Dean yell suddenly. He hadn’t said Sammy. He had said Sam . Sam turned around immediately. Dean had an arm draped across the back of the front seat. “You know, we made a hell of a team back there,” he said with a grin.
Sam nodded and smiled a little back. “Yeah.”
Dean put both hands back on the steering wheel and shifted gears. He pulled the car away. Sam watched him go.
Sam twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open. “Jess?” he called, depositing his key into his pocket. All of the lights in the apartment were turned off, and he couldn’t hear anything. “You home?” No response. Jess must have gone out. He stepped quietly through the bedroom door, taking a bite out of a granola bar. The bed was empty. Sam plopped his bag down on the floor and sat on the bed, looking out the window. He let out a breath of relief and fell back onto the bed, his eyes closed and his arms behind his head. He was home at last.
Sam yawned and settled into the duvet. He let out a heavy breath and let himself sink into sleep. As he slowly floated out of wakefulness, he was brought back harshly to reality by a drop- no, two drops- of liquid falling onto his face. He twitched, trying to shake it off, then opened his eyes.
His mouth stretched open, attempting to swallow enough air so that he wouldn’t pass out, his eyes widening as confirmation that he wasn’t dreaming, and there was Jess, on the ceiling, her hair spread across the ceiling and her mouth open, eyes black and empty, a red gash in her nightgown. Sam clambered backwards on the bed, away from her, away from this .
“No!” he yelled. Yes her vacant eyes seemed to say back to him.
Fire gushed from her sides, lighting her horrified face and tearing across the ceiling.
“Jess!” Sam yelled, sliding off the side of the bed and shielding his face with his arms. The flames devoured his girlfriend’s hair.
“Sam!” he heard a voice call from the doorway. He covered his face with his hands and curled his legs into his chest.
“Sam!” he heard again.
“No!” Sam yelled. “No!” This was all he could say. No, this wasn’t real. No, this was a nightmare. No, his girlfriend wasn’t on the ceiling being burnt to-
Two arms wrapped around him. “We gotta get out!” someone said into his ear- Dean. Sam didn’t move.
“Jess!”
He was herded towards the door of the bedroom.
“Jess!”
He caught one last glimpse of a fire-encased body.
“No!”
He was shoved out of the door.
Sam took a gun into his hands, slowly loading it. Dean joined him by the Impala. Sam looked at him, then back at the gun. He nodded and swallowed, shoving the gun back into the trunk- an agreement. “We’ve got work to do,” he said, and he slammed the trunk shut.