Tecumseh

By Tidia & MOG, May 2006

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Chapter 13/18

“Is this where I question the wisdom of letting you guys use my hotel room as a staging area?”

Cracker had returned from meditating in a small park next to the hotel to find Sam and Dean sorting through an array of equipment spread out on the bed and floor. The variety both intrigued and concerned him.

Among the items, he saw narrow, silver-tipped arrows, a gun-cleaning kit, silver throwing stars, two IV bags with the letters ‘H.W.’ scribbled across them, and one from a different manufacturer marked in another handwriting labeled ‘gin’.

Dean scooped up the last one and tossed it aside. “Oops. This one’s from Frankie.” He winked at Cracker. “Different kind of holy water.”

The psychic raised his brows as he recalled Dean’s comment from a few hours earlier. “When you said supernatural weapons I figured you were maybe talking sage for purification, maybe a crucifix. Can’t ever recall needing a crossbow on any of my cases.”

Dean finished pouring salt into several small drawstring pouches. “It’s understandable,” he said with a grin, “the easy jobs usually don’t require it. So you all sparkly clean now?”

“The meditation was a cleansing of my energy, man. Unlike some people, I took my shower this morning.” Cracker shot Sam a wink and the younger Winchester ran with the set-up.

He spoke quietly to Dean. “Yeah, dude, I wasn’t going to say anything, but uh…”

Dean narrowed his eyes at his brother. “You two are so full of shit.”

He snatched up the sawed-off shotgun, verifying it was loaded. Sam and Cracker suppressed their laughter as they caught him, a few seconds later, surreptitiously doing a smell test of his t-shirt.

Cracker watched Dean lay the shotgun into the bottom of the small duffle bag they were packing. “You don’t think anybody’s going to hear that?”

Dean shrugged. “The place is being remodeled…they’ll chalk it up to construction sounds.”

Cracker shot him a doubtful look, but accepted the theory. Sam secured their unused equipment back into bags and cases and gathered it all up.

“We ready?”

Dean shouldered the duffle bag and flashed a grin as he headed for the door. “Willing and able.”

He held the door open for Sam and Cracker, waiting until they were passing him to speak. “Ladies first.”

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Cracker parked his Explorer in front of the Wheelock and barely acknowledged Dean and Sam as they gathered their equipment from the back of the SUV. The psychic’s focus was already drawn towards the front yard of the mission.

He slowly walked through the trees, shaking his head. “Man, I don’t know what these maples have witnessed over the years, but they’re harboring some pretty harsh energy. I mean, these are some seriously pissed off trees.”

He glanced at the two men with him. “You don’t feel that?” His gaze shifted from Dean to Sam. “You feel it, don’t you?”

Sam hoped his resulting expression of surprise was interpreted as ignorance. He had felt something, but he made himself believe it was adrenaline – anticipation of the hunt. He was saved from answering by Dean quickly moving between him and Cracker.

“Yeah, well, unless they start huckin’ stuff at us, the only thing I care about is cleaning that place for ten grand.” Dean looked at his brother. “Sammy, take rear, I got point.”

The entry way was just as Dean and Sam had seen it the previous day, - remodeling dust and general disarray. Following Cracker’s advice, they moved upstairs. Dean wasn’t surprised when the needle of the EMF meter peaked into the red zone as he hit the top step. He flipped it off and slipped it into his pocket.

Cracker moved past him, heading down the left-hand passage of the hallway to the main room. “This way.”

Dean exchanged a glance with Sam, before addressing the psychic. “You came in here this morning?”

Cracker shook his head in a distracted way. “Didn’t need to. There’s more weird vibes coming out of this back corner than from the first ten rows of a Phish concert.”

As he walked, he absently dug into a messenger’s bag slung across his chest and pulled out a Bic lighter and a small bundle of sage wrapped with purple string. As if drawn by an invisible cord, Cracker continued on to the back of the old dormitory.

Dean forced himself to look up at the stained glass window he was sure he’d seen move the day before. It sat totally still, locked into the frame. It didn’t prevent Dean from tightening his grip on the salt-primed pistol in his hand.

Cracker stopped outside the small room where Dean and Sam experienced the malevolent energy. With the Bic, he touched a flame to the sage. Moving in a wide circle, he wafted smoke out toward the walls of the main room. “We ask all that is good, kind and beautiful in the universe to help us today.”

Dean paced two of the perimeter walls. He’d positioned himself to be closest to the room where he’d seen the dark spirit hanging over Sam’s shoulder. No way in hell would that thing get close to his brother again.

Sam stood with his back to a window, unconsciously shifting from foot to foot. He knew Dean had purposefully taken the far position. It was one of the few times Sam didn’t mind his brother’s overprotective nature. The physical sensation of blood splattering against his skin was still fresh in his mind, and it stirred painful memories of Jessica.

His forced his attention to the task at hand. His eyes never stopped scanning the room, while he listened to Cracker’s monologue for protection and cosmic assistance.

The psychic laid the smoldering bundle of sage on the floor and retrieved a small pouch of ground tobacco flakes from his messenger’s bag. He followed the circle he’d made while smudging, sprinkling the tobacco onto the floor.

“We ask assistance from the Creator to--”

A bang and clatter to his right pulled his focus immediately to a window on one wall. He and Dean stared as Sam shoved a plastic sawhorse out the now-open window, before slamming it shut. Sam turned back to find himself the center of attention.

He picked up the sawed-off shotgun he’d leaned against the wall and looked at them innocently. “What?”

“Any other equipment you’d like to drop out the window?” asked Cracker.

“Just that one piece,” answered Sam, hitching a thumb toward where the sawhorse lay, two-stories down.

Cracker began again. “We ask assistance from the Creator to guide those who have not found their way home to their place of peace and rest. We ask those who are here in this space to come forward so they can complete their journey and rejoin the Creator.”

He stopped abruptly and stared in the direction of the hallway. A grin spread across his face. “Hello ladies.”

Dean and Sam followed Cracker’s line of sight - three figures stood side by side. Sam blinked as his eyes tried to adjust to seeing through forms that his brain told him should be solid.

Clearly Native American in their facial features, the girls wore their hair in long pigtail braids. Although dressed in jumpers with white, long-sleeved shirts, and heavy stockings and ankle boots, Sam couldn’t help but notice an all-over grey tone that enveloped them. It gave him the impression that they’d kept the dreariness of their death as a mantle upon them.

Cracker spoke in a soft, gentle tone. “The Great Divide is there before you for you to cross. The Great Spirit protects you. Follow the good road to join your ancestors.”

Holding hands, the girls moved silently toward the psychic. Cracker continued his quiet communication. “The pain that followed you from life no long holds you. Now there is only--”

He inhaled sharply at the same moment the girls opened their mouths and screamed. Sam raised his shotgun, scanning the room for a target. From the corner where he maintained guard, Dean did the same.

“What is it? Whaddya we got!” yelled Dean. “Is it Beets!”

The girls’ images faded, only to be replaced by unearthly whispers filling the hollow space of the large, empty room.

“mat-ou-oui-sah elene…mat-ou-oui-sah elene….”

Dean recognized the words immediately. It was the same thing he’d heard before in the mission, the words Frankie had translated. He felt a rush of icy wind spin past, pricking at his skin and chilling him to the core.

“Stay sharp, Sammy! Bad man comin’!”

Cracker’s voice added to the confusion. He called out to the girls, trying to prevent them from disappearing as the whispering faded. “No! Wait…Don’t go! You don’t have to be afraid. You can free yourselves! He can’t hurt you--!”

The Winchester’s watched as an invisible hand lashed out, knocking the psychic to the floor. Spun sideways, he landed hard on his hands and knees and knelt low for a few seconds.

“Sweet magic 8-ball,” he gasped.

Sam crossed to check on him but Cracker waved off the assistance and stood up on his own. He closed his eyes and took in a long breath, trying to calm and center himself. Opening his eyes, he tilted his head slightly, as if listening.

“Now, let’s see what we can learn about our very uncool party crasher.”

The psychic moved slowly around the room, unfazed by the weapons and offensive positions of Dean and Sam. “Lincoln Beets – you are not welcome here.” As he walked, he concentrated on pinpointing the dark energy. “Doesn’t like to be challenged.”

“Tough shit,” Dean stated.

Cracker pointed abstractedly toward Dean. “Oooh, and he doesn’t like you…you irritate him.”

“Try living with him.” Sam added, but moved slowly towards his brother.

“He’s threatened by you.” Cracker abruptly rolled his eyes and released an exasperated sigh. “Oh, for the love of Buddha…I’m stuck in an ethereal pissing contest.”

“ ‘Scuse me?” Dean asked. He ceased his back and forth visual sweep of the two rooms he stood between and looked at the blonde man.

“He’s threatened by the ‘machismo.’ Man, you got too much testosterone for him.” Cracker answered, throwing his hands up in the air.

Dean showed a cocky grin. “Well, that’s a given.” He raised his voice. “If the little chickenshit had the balls to come forward, I’d have something else for him.”

Sam drawled out his brother’s name in a warning tone. “Dean.”

He was surprised to receive a wink in reply. Then Sam understood. If Dean could distract Beets, it would give Cracker the opportunity to guide the girls’ spirits ‘home’.

“C’mon Sam, I’m pretty sure ‘cojones grandes’ aren’t part of this guy’s equipment list, if ya know what I mean. Profiles show that many serial killers have serious sexual difficulties.”

Cracker began to softly repeat his call to the girls, while Dean spoke a little louder.

“Even if he did manage to approach a woman, she’d probably laugh in his face…or did you have to pay for it, Beets? Hittin’ those ‘houses of ill repute’ for some skank only to find out you couldn’t get it up?” He leaned back against the wall, taking a casual stance, but not relaxing his grip on the pistol. “It must really suck to be you.”

Sam shifted his focus from the main room over to his brother just in time to see the attack begin. A section of the white wall over Dean’s right shoulder bulged outward, becoming viscous and malleable. It was as if a furious human face was trapped inside the structure - stretching, desperate to push its way out through sheer force of angry determination.

With mouth open, teeth showing, it lunged toward Dean’s shoulder.

“Look out!” Sam raised the shotgun, but his brother’s proximity prevented him from getting off a shot.

Dean spun to his left as the rage-filled face morphed back into the wall. He caught Cracker’s eye when the psychic broke concentration to check on him. “Keep going!” Dean yelled.

Before he could push away from the wall, an arm with a long-fingered, clawed hand bulged forth in the same manner as the face had. Like a fluid, alabaster worm it wrapped around Dean’s throat, pulled him hard against the wall and lifted him off his feet.

The pistol dropped from Dean’s grip as he fought to release the pressure at his throat. Staring down the sites of the shotgun, Sam closed the gap between himself and his brother. He gritted his teeth, frustrated at the inability to have a clean shot.

Half a foot off the floor, the heels of Dean’s boots slammed against the wall as he struggled and dug at the arm cutting off his air supply. Sam watched helplessly while his brother was dragged along the wall towards the doorway of the small room adjoining the dormitory. The white arm dissolved into the plaster as Dean was flung backwards into the room.

The door slammed shut before Sam could reach it, but that didn’t stop the younger Winchester from throwing himself at it.

“DEAN!” Sam pounded hard against the door, sickened by the equally loud crashing coming from where his brother was trapped. “Son of a bitch!” He took two steps back and fired a blast of rock salt at the door. The surface of the solid wood chipped slightly, and spat back beads of salt at Sam.

Cracker’s low, soothing voice was eerily juxtaposed with the violent noise from the next room and Sam’s desperate attempts to reach his brother. “Now is your time to cross the Great Divide. The Great Spirit protects you. Follow the good road. Your ancestors await you.”

Something large hit the door just as Sam twisted the knob and pressed hard against it. The reverberating force knocked him back a few inches and Dean’s pain-filled yell echoed from inside the room. Sam spun on the psychic. “Do something!”

Cracker shook his head, but his focus never left the floor. “They’re still here!”

The room seemed to rattle with rage and despair and the psychic winced, as if consumed by a feeling of complete desolation. “I don’t know what’s holding them.”

Sam shouted angrily. “Forget them! That thing is killing Dean!”

Cracker’s head shot up and he looked at Sam. “Freeing them will help him. Trust me!” His eyes grew wide as a thought struck him. “Their names! What were their names!”

Sam stared back. “What! I don’t--” His expression changed in an instant. “I know!”

He looked at the door and prayed he was doing the right thing by abandoning his attempts to reach his brother. Tucking the butt of the shotgun under his arm, he pulled a small notepad from his inside jacket pocket. Frantically, he flipped through the pages. “Here! Here! Marie Orie, Beverly Seale, Paula Menchu.”

Cracker spoke the names again. “You are surrounded by all that is good, kind, and beautiful.

Seek the road to peace.”

As he spoke, a low rumble shivered up through the frame of the mission. The glass in the windows vibrated violently and dust shook down from the ceiling. Sam and Cracker exchanged a glance, each having the same thought.

Sam yelled, in hopes that Dean was still in good enough condition to react. “GET DOWN!”

He hit the floor as the windows’ glass exploded outward. Shards rained down onto the hardwood floor, clinking together with an eerie musical tone. Silence settled on the mission and Sam and Cracker lifted their heads to see the figures of the three girls standing again, hand in hand.

The children smiled, and as the two men watched, the shroud of gray that permeated the girls, gave way to a glowing swirl of pale blues, pinks and bright whites. The intensity of the light grew to a blinding level, forcing Sam and Cracker to shade their eyes and look away.

The glow faded and Sam blinked repeatedly in an attempt to chase away the remaining streaks of white peppering his vision. He released his grip on the shotgun and pushed himself up off the floor. Moving towards the closed door to his left, he glanced over at Cracker just long enough to see that the psychic was no worse off than him.

“Dean?” Sam twisted the knob and hesitantly pushed on the door. It offered no resistance, but he was afraid of what he might find on the other side.

“Dean?” His breath rolled out in a cold puff of fog. The temperature in the room was near freezing and a white layer of frost dusted the floor. However, Sam’s fear and tension melted away the instant he saw his brother kneeling low, leaning on his elbows, shaking his head to remove shards of glass from his hair.

Sam crossed to him quickly but Dean raised a shivering hand to stop him.

“Gimme a sec,” whispered Dean. He coughed several times and spat on the floor. Saliva thick with blood stood out, garishly red, against the hard wood floor.

Worry began to crest in Sam again. “Dean?”

The older Winchester could hear the tightness in his brother’s voice and he forced himself upright, leaning back on his calves. “I’m here.”

He could have used a longer moment to compose himself but Sam needed to know he wasn’t seriously injured.

“You all right?” Sam asked, hanging back a few feet. His brother’s face was flush and Sam could tell there would be a colorful bruise or two come the morning.

Seeing the weary expression on Dean’s face, he now understood that his brother didn’t want to be crowded. He waited for Dean to open his eyes and meet his gaze.

“You think that old bastard could take me?” Dean smiled and Sam could only shake his head at the smears of blood across his brother’s teeth.

Sam stripped off his coat and Dean offered no resistance as Sam helped him into it. Sam slid an arm around Dean’s back, supporting much of his brother’s weight as he stood. Sam’s height allowed him to see the patch of blood streaming through Dean’s hair from an abrasion at the back of his head.

“Looks like he got in more licks that you.”

Dean gingerly touched the wound. “Sucker punch.”

“You sure it wasn’t more like ‘sucker getting the back of his head smashed against the wall’?”

Dean leaned on his brother and hobbled forward. “There could have been a little of that too.” He did his best to show a cocky grin. “But you’ll notice who’s still here.”

He let Sam break away to collect their weapons and watched Cracker carefully scooping a small mound of gray dust into the pouch that earlier, held the crushed tobacco flakes.

“Dude, we just get rid of the Caspers - we don’t clean up after them.”

Cracker raised his gaze from his crouched position and stared at Dean for several seconds. The psychic sensed that his actions were misinterpreted. The girls had shaken off their old entrapment and left behind the gray ash of their torment.

“No part of this is Beets,” replied Cracker gently. “This is all that remains on this earth of those girls - they need to find some peace.” He brushed the remaining handful of ash inside the pouch and pulled the drawstrings tight.

He carefully tucked the pouch into his messenger’s bag before hitching the satchel onto his shoulder. He pulled a handkerchief from the bag and passed it to Dean, who stared at it for a second before Cracker spoke up.

“Relax, it’s clean.”

Dean nodded his thanks and took the cloth to wipe the blood from his lips, and then dabbed it at the back of his head.

Cracker studied Dean once more, revealing a small smile. “Nice use of testosterone, by the way. You do look like crap though.”

Dean tossed back a dry, fake laugh. “Yeah, well, somebody had to do the man’s work. Oh, and uh, yeah, I’m fine. No, really. Thanks for asking.”

“We done here?” asked Sam.

Cracker closed his eyes for several seconds. Opening them, he nodded. “Totally, man.”

Dean whooped loudly and headed for the stairs, patting Sam on the back as he passed. “Ten freakin’ grand, bro!”

Cracker followed behind but took several long steps to catch up with Dean. “You sure you’re all right?”

“Yeah,” Dean replied, brushing away some dust from his shirt.

The psychic cocked his head slightly. “No pain in your arm?”

Dean looked at Sam in confusion, then at his arm, expecting to see something. “No.”

Cracker pointed to the left arm. “Nothing that feels like maybe a break around the left wrist?”

Dean stopped and moved his wrist, but just as quickly, felt foolish for checking. “No. What are you talking about?”

“Nothin’.” Cracker waved him off, and started again for the stairs. “Just thought for sure - break in the left arm.”

“You sound disappointed.”

Cracker sighed. “Well, yeah, I mean, you know – ‘psychic’…it is how I make my living. Being wrong doesn’t really impress the paying customers. You’re sure there’s nothing wrong?”

He paused at the top of the steps, letting Sam go by, and reached out to squeeze Dean’s left wrist.

Dean slapped the hand away, irritated by the invasion of his personal space.

“No, there's nothing wrong. Cut it out, will ya?” His eyes narrowed as he looked at Cracker. “Jeez, with a condition like yours you must not get a lot of dates.”

Sam stopped halfway down the stairs, frozen by the words, and looked up at his brother.

“Being psychic isn’t a problem.” Cracker looked at Sam and gave him a knowing nod.

“Not that,” Dean stated. “I meant being an idiot.” He grinned and took the steps two at a time to join his brother.

The younger Winchester smiled. “He said he was an indigo.”

Dean glanced up the stairs and flashed Cracker a cocky expression, before purposefully snapping the fingers of his left hand. “That’s what it was.”

Cracker shook his head. “I am so telling Scarlett the windows were your fault.”

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