Archive of Our Own ^beta

Every few steps I took I heard a crunch, then another crunch as if someone was walking after me but taking steps three or four times the length of my own. I said to myself 'this is all nonsense'. I listened and heard it again but could see nothing in the mist . As I walked on and the eerie crunch, crunch sounded behind me I was seized with terror and took to my heels, staggering blindly among the boulders for four or five miles…
-Professor Normal Collie

September 2010

“You’re going to leave, aren’t you?”

Dean looked up to find Ben staring down at him, hair mussed and at odd angles, eyes still half-lidded from sleep. It was just past three in the morning, a time of salt, incantations, and hauntings. It wasn’t a time for boys to be out of their beds, no matter how often Dean himself had been. The kid should be asleep, unaware – unprepared, his mind whispered – not standing watch over the guy who’d tried and probably spectacularly failed at playing father to him. 

Dean blew out a sigh and said nothing, didn’t know what to say. Yeah,  he thought, I’m taking off. I’m having these dreams, you see. Crazy dreams from when I was a kid and Sam was about five minutes older than you are now. I don’t really know what they mean and, between you and me, Ben? I don’t know if it’s even the dreams. I’m dying here. I’m suffocating. You and your mom, you’re awesome and just about everything I thought I was supposed to want, but damn, kid. There’s only so many garbage disposals I can fix and so many T-Ball games that I can pretend to give a shit about. I’m losing my mind and you deserve better than that. I wanted to be happy here, but the truth is, I think I’m just too far gone. I’m trying to learn how to function with missing limbs here, and it’s not working.

“Yeah,” Dean said finally, figuring there wasn’t much use in sugar coating it.

“Figured,” Ben replied. He descended the few steps of the back deck and sat down next to him. He scuffed the edge of the slippers he swore to everyone from here to heaven that he was too cool to wear against the concrete and glanced up at Dean out of the corner of his eyes. “I mean, not saying you should go. You could stay. You know, if you wanted. Mom maybe isn’t digging it so much, but… I wouldn’t mind. I mean, it’s cool with me if you need a place to crash and stuff. Mom’ll… you know, she’ll get used to it.”

Something shifted hard in Dean’s chest and, not for the first time that night and all of the nights before it, he wondered what he was doing. There were so many reasons to stay and just as many to go. He’d been rendered near impotent when it came to making such a simple decision: what should he do with himself? He wished Cas would show up, longed for the simple comfort of someone who knew, someone who understood without Dean’s faulty attempts and outright failures at explanation.

“Ben, it’s not your mom …”

“Is it me?”

“Christ no,” Dean replied, feeling shitty and appalled that the kid would think he was driving him away. “Ben, you’re a great kid …”

“I’m an awesome kid,” Ben told him with an irreverent grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Beyond awesome,” Dean said, nudging him. “You and your mom, God, you guys took me in. Didn’t ask for anything. Just sat me down, fed me spaghetti, and tried to give me a home. Put up with my bad moods and retarded shit when, well, I’m barely house-trained. You and your mom have put up with a lot and I… God, this sucks. I’m like five seconds from turning this into a ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech and you really don’t need that kind of crap from me.”

“You’re not going to tell me that we can see other people or anything, are you?”

“What are you, eleven going on thirty? Seriously, stop with the soap operas in the afternoon, man.”

Ben coughed out something that sounded suspiciously close to “Doctor Sexy” under his breath and Dean elbowed him lightly for his trouble. The boy grinned as he stared down at his slippers.

“I don’t want to be all mushy and stuff,” Ben said slowly, “but, you know I’m going to miss you, Dean. You know, kinda. A little bit,” he said, pinching his thumb and forefinger together.

Dean wanted to stay. In that moment, he wanted only one thing more, despite his failed attempts at living behind the picket fence. He felt the miserable shards of his heart fracture a few more times in his chest as he put an arm around Ben and gave him a squeeze that had stopped being awkward a few weeks back.

“I’ll miss you too, Ben. I really will.”

They sat in silence for a while, Ben seemingly content tucked in tight against him while the clock inside ticked inexorably onward towards four a.m. and the crickets out in the grass finally went silent for the night.

“It’s really just the car I’m gonna miss,” Ben said after a while. 

Dean just smiled and bit back on the urge to say something truly awful like ‘that’s my boy.’

**

December 1997

“Heads up, Sammy.”

Sam didn’t so much as budge from behind the massive reference book he was crouched behind, but his hand shot up and he neatly, easily, caught the bottle of Sunny D that Dean tossed to him.

“I’m not even going to think about drinking this if you breathed on it,” Sam told him, still not looking up.

Despite the near cataclysmic fight between him and Dad earlier in the morning, his voice was neutral, hard to read. Since Indiana, Sam had been up and down the emotional spectrum. He tended towards unreasonable, stiff, and pissy where the old man was concerned, but with Dean he’d been equal parts affectionate and tetchy as hell. Sam was getting increasingly high maintenance in his old age and reading him was a lot like listening to a weather forecast: pissy with scattered showers of teenage angst and intermittent sunshine. Dean, fortunately, figured he was up to the challenge.

“I didn’t breathe on it,” Dean told him, annoyed at how congested he still sounded despite the four days of days of cold meds he’d choked down. Dad was right, it was a sinus infection with a side of bronchitis if there ever was one and his only hope for a peaceful night lie somewhere within a sweet, sweet bottle of syrupy codeine and a few rounds of antibiotics. But, there was a hunt on tonight, an honest to God chance to get a look at something that might have spawned the Bigfoot legend, no matter how many times his father patiently assured him that there was no such thing. There was no way that he was going to miss it in favor of a night of being stoned in front of shitty TV. So, as usual, he downplayed it.

“It’s all in my head,” Dean said. “Just a bunch of snot rattling around. I don’t feel as bad as I sound, believe me.”

Sam let the book – “Boston Mountains: Local Lore, Legend, and Fact” by T.R. Donnelly – flop down against his legs as he finally looked up at him. For a fourteen year-old, Sam had a gift for scrutinizing a person with the intensity of a scientist studying something beneath a microscope. Dean knew he was rapidly losing his ability to pull one over on his little brother. It made him sort of sickly proud and sentimental to realize that he was the one who taught Sam to be so astute, God damned pain in the ass as it was.

“He’ll never buy it,” Sam said finally. “You’re so staying behind with me tonight. Bet me.”

“Bet this,” Dean told him, flipping him the finger. “He’ll buy it.”

“Yeah, because you’ve had such luck with pulling one over on him lately. How many miles did you have to run after you tried to convince Dad the whole ‘holy shit, Shirley Fuentes said I knocked her up’ thing was just a huge misunderstanding? Or when you snuck off to salt and burn some spook in Tulsa by yourself and told Dad that you were, what was it, looking for spare parts for the Impala? Or when…”

“Enough, enough,” Dean said in defeat. “What, do you keep score in that big, nerd brain of yours? Dad forty million, Dean zero?”

“Face it, you suck at lying,” Sam told him.

“I am awesome at lying and you know it,” Dean countered. “Just… not to Dad. But,” he said with a light elbow to Sam’s ribs as he dropped down next to him on the shitty motel couch, “it’s not an issue because I’m not lying. It’s just snot and that’s no reason to keep me on the bench. And, anyway, who says you get to stay behind?”

“What?” Sam squawked. “Why the hell would I have to go? It’s Christmas break from every school in the freakin’ country and I don’t want to do anything but read and teach myself calculus and stay warm and dry and not wet or looking for something that’s just some ticked off ghost or a Brocken specter or both and … what? What? ”

“How are we even related?” Dean asked him fondly. 

“Maybe they switched me at birth,” Sam replied.

“But I didn’t want a sister.”

“Sis … you’re such a jerk,” Sam snapped, though his eyes belied the annoyed tone. Dean could tell he was trying not laugh by the time they were elbowing each other roughly and doing their best to shove each other off of the loveseat. Dean was bigger at eighteen, especially given the fact that Sam just seemed destined to be short for life, and he easily could have knocked him down, maybe given him a quick and easy run through on fighting a bigger opponent. He didn’t. He just elbowed and shoved and let the kid get in a few easy tags to his ribs.

He straightened up, tried to go for something between mature, responsible adult and downright angelic as the door swung open. Sam, trained since he’d been in Spiderman Underoos, did not miss his chance to attempt one last drive towards his midsection. Dean was forced grab hold of him and pin his arm behind him while Sam swore. He looked up at his father expectantly.

“Screwing around mean that you two have eaten and are packed up?” Dad asked as he stepped inside with a quick glance around the motel room. His gaze swept over them first. Then the doors, windows, and finally their bags. Priorities, Dean knew. Family, safety, and everything else.

“Yessir,” Dean replied, gesturing to the juice Sam had knocked to the floor. “Sam’s been walked and fed this morning.”

“Jerk.”

“Who’s a good boy? Wanna go for a car ride, Sammy?”

“Boys,” Dad cut in. “Can it already, would you? My head can only take so much.” It was a usual line, often one that a hard hunt or a hangover made too true, but it carried no weight on this morning. Dad’s eyes were clear, his hands steady, and had he and Sam not gone ten rounds over an accelerated math class offered at some school in Arizona or New Mexico or some shit earlier in the morning, Dean probably would have said he was in a fine mood. Guy might have even cracked a smile before noon if he and Sam could have stuck to the post-Indiana truce for a little while longer. 

“You mind taking your juice on the road, Sam?” Dad asked with what Dean thought was extraordinary diplomacy.

Sam, typically, shrugged. “S’pose.” It wasn’t much of reply, but it came with a dramatic reduction in pissyness that might, if Dean was very lucky, indicate that the afternoon was headed in a much better direction than before.

“Should take us about an hour and a half to get from Eureka Springs to Jasper, maybe two if the roads are slick. We’ll load up there and then meet Mr. Wilson up at the cabins. He says his wife’s staying down the mountain with him and that she’ll have lunch on for us. Roast or something. If that sounds good to you.”

Dean was pretty much a shoo-in for a home cooked meal, would even do a couple of laps in the wet, misty Arkansas winter if there was promise of pie, but since it was just as much of a white flag as it was free lunch, the deal hinged on Sam. He wasn’t sure what was happening with Sam and Dad – didn’t get why Sam couldn’t suck it up a little more and why Dad couldn’t just back the hell off of the kid in equal measure – and he suspected that his self-assumed mantle of peacemaker would weigh him down to the point where it was hard to get up one of these days. But? They were family. They were home. And, so, he shrugged noncommittally and sauntered over to his bag like it wasn’t a big deal if Sam and Dad were using lunch as today’s analogy for “can’t we all just get along?”

The silence was unending and a little torturous as Dean checked his already immaculately packed bag and shuffled things inside of it needlessly. But, finally, Sam moved behind him and, from the sound of things, bent to pick up the book he’d been reading moments beforehand.

“Roast is pretty good,” Sam said.

“Good,” Dad replied. Dean could hear the smile in his voice.

**

September 2010

Dean crept through the Ozarks at a snail’s pace, cleared the Missouri state line, and hit Eureka Springs by six o’clock Labor Day evening. He’d planned to have been in Jasper by three, but he’d forgotten about Labor Day traffic through the more touristy Ozarks. He’d been stuck between an RV and Ford Ranger pulling a speedboat for so long that he’d stopped in town just to walk around until his ass no longer felt numb.

He’d been back to Eureka Springs a few times since he’d first visited as a kid. Two legitimate hauntings, one overblown and badly acted fakery of one at a downtown hotel looking to drum up business, and one weekend with a big-hipped, red-headed potter named Janelle who’d done a few things with her clay covered fingers that Dean still remembered with a smile. It hadn’t changed that much since his last trip. A few more galleries, he supposed. A few more places for people to sneak off for a beer and feel like they were little more cultured than their fellow drinkers up north at Party Cove or in Branson. It was an arty, touristy little town that, really, Dean didn’t have much use for.

But, Sam had liked it well enough, Dean recalled, and these days, remembering his brother’s good moods was about as close as he got to experiencing the same himself. He walked the kinks out of his legs until he found himself at the wide steps of the town library. There was no job, no need of the library and nothing but a half-formed memory of waking up to Sam screaming. Dean still could not say what made that memory, made that night of Sam’s bad dreams any different, any more noteworthy than any other, but it was. Something was tugging at him, pulling him by the gut, and he felt a little dizzy and sick at the thought of ignoring it.

He stretched, put his hand to his back and cracked it like he was creeping up on fifty instead of having just passed thirty. Dean went inside and wandered the stacks. It was strange how a place he’d spent a few hours in seemed to almost overwhelm him. He remembered Sam sitting in the reference section which hadn’t moved in thirteen years. He could almost see him, nose in a book like the answers to the universe could be found within the pages. 

He trailed his fingers over the tomes, noting absently that some had been recently rebound while others looked long overdue for it. “Boston Mountains: Local Lore, Legend, and Fact” by T.R. Donnelly. Dean stopped, his fingers poised over the faded gold lettering and well worn binding. He pulled the book from the shelf and flipped through it. There was no sign that Sam had been here, years before him, doing the same. No theatrically placed bookmarks or scribbled on pages. Sam had been too fastidious for such things. But, Dean turned the pages, fingers ghosting over the paper, and remembered the last day he’d held this book.

Sam had flashed Dean a coy, secretive grin and had stepped into the path that the Impala’s headlights cut in the mist. He’d turned away from the car and pointed along the line of light that stretched out into the gloom.

“See?”

“See what?” Dean had asked, hoarsely. He had been losing his voice as quickly as losing any shot in hell he had of climbing the mountain. Somewhere between stocking up on groceries and taking the winding, country road out of Jasper and up into higher elevations, he’d begun to feel roughly like a vice had been clamped over his head and his chest.

“I’m like seven feet tall,” Sam had said.

Dean had moved to stand at his side. Ahead in the mist, the light had bent and curved in on itself until it had formed a halo. Two long shadows had cut through the center of it in triangular swath of darkness. Sam had waved and one of the grotesquely long shadows had waved with him.

“And you think this is what’s up on the mountain?” Dean had croaked.

“No …” Sam had hedged. “I’m just saying it’s a scientific possibility. With the right weather conditions and light source, a person could see their shadow reflected back at them, maybe surrounded by a glory ring. Might make them think they were seeing something that they weren’t.”

“And the fact that four people are dead, Agent Scully?”

“Exposure. Climbing accidents. Hunting accidents. Heart conditions… bad chicken, even,” Sam had said, screwing up his face. It wasn’t, Dean had figured, that he was really sold on the idea, it was just Sam thinking things through and beating the horse to a bloody pulp because he could.

“I suppose it’s not any crazier than friggin’ Bigfoot.”

“There’s no such thing as Bigfoot. Dad said…”

Dean smiled and closed the book, shutting out the full color image of T.R. Donnelly’s Brocken Specter and the memory of Sam showing him the picture years before. They’d all been wrong about the mountain. It hadn’t been Bigfoot as Dean had secretly hoped or Sam’s trick of light and mist. And it hadn’t been T.R. Donnelly as their Dad had suspected either.

To this day, Dean had no idea what it was that they’d heard on that unnamed ridge in the Boston Mountains, nor could he remember what it was that had frightened his brother quite so badly.

**

December 1997

Dean didn’t whine in the end. He honestly felt like such crap that he was ready to bolt the doors, stick Sam in front of the copy of ‘The Lost World’ that he’d gotten him, and let the drugs work their magic on him. Dad didn’t even have to list the reasons to leave him behind. Dean was all over it, or, at least, he would have been if Mr. Wilson didn’t offend him so much. He was the exact sort of panicked, trigger happy and arrogant blowhard that Dean had learned the hard way caused problems. Dad knew it too, Dean could tell, but they both sat with the young woman whose husband had died up on the mountain and watched her try to keep it together as she spoke of shadows and mist. Footsteps on sliding shale and a creeping fear that had been so terrible she shook uncontrollably as she told them of it.

“We just got married in June,” she said to them. “We just got married and I’m twenty and now I'm a widow. How am I supposed to go through the rest of my life without him when I’m only twenty?”

Dad said nothing, but Dean knew when he looked up that he wouldn’t wait for him to be strong enough to serve as backup . Dean didn’t like it. He’d sat through enough lectures from his Dad on how cocky, scared bastards like Wilson were an unwelcome wildcard that could botch a hunt, get someone hurt. Hell, Dean had been a cocky, scared bastard enough times as a kid to know that Dad should just leave Wilson behind.

But it was equally stupid to head up even a small mountain without some kind of map or guide. The mountain was small, a tree covered plateau of sandstone and shale that jutted out of the millennia old seabed. It didn’t have a name. There was no map. Blowhard or not, Wilson was it. Dad knew it. Dean knew it. Hell, he suspected that Sam who was busy stuffing his face full of yellow cake knew it too.

So, Dean stood, the bag of prescription cough syrup and antibiotics in his hand, and shook his head. He ignored the persistent ache creeping out from his joints and the fact that his eyes had begun to water.

“Dad, this guy,” Dean said, watching Wilson out of the corner of his eye. He was struck with the irrational urge to go clock the guy when he sat down and started talking to Sam like he was eight instead of fourteen.

“An idiot,” his Dad confirmed quietly. “But he’s the idiot who knows that mountain, Dean.”

“I get that,” Dean replied, his voice cracking as he tried to speak in a low tone. “But … why go tonight? Why now? If you wait a couple of days, I can help…” I can watch that moron, he thought.

“There’s an early cold front bringing snow and we’ve got people up on the mountain now, Dean. Hunters looking to get the last of the good weather. Another couple of idiots that think freezing their butts off is somehow romantic. A zoologist and his kid. You really think we should wait, should risk them because you’re sick and Wilson’s a jackass?”

The question wasn’t rhetorical. Dean wasn’t lucky enough to get off so easily and he knew that Dad expected him to think about it, to really think about putting lives on the line to suit their needs and personal conveniences. He remembered Sammy asking him once why it had to be them, why their lives and their safety weren’t as important as that of strangers. Dean sometimes thought it was a good question. But he also knew that they were talking about civilians who didn’t know, who couldn’t defend themselves. It made the answer easy, even if he didn’t like it.

“No, sir,” he said.

Dad nodded. It was the only answer that was going to be acceptable. He bent to pick up his pack then figuring, Dean assumed, that there was no point in waiting around any longer. They’d learned everything that they could from family members and witnesses, gone over the maps, and checked their supplies. Dad caught Wilson’s eye and jerked his head towards the door. 

“Watch it with the cough syrup,” Dad told him. “You need it, but don’t take so much that you don’t sleep through something you shouldn’t.”

“I know, Dad,” Dean told him.

“I know you do,” he replied, but kept going anyway. “Remind Sam that he’s absolutely not sleeping with those damned headphones on. It’s a bad habit – especially with you sick. Our cabin’s a lot like this one and I don’t want you boys sleeping in the loft. Stay downstairs. Bunk down on the couch. Sam can take the floor so you both can…”

“…keep an eye on the front door,” Dean finished. “Yeah, Dad, I know. I’m not a kid.”

“You’re a kid,” Dad countered. “You just don’t think you are.”

“I’m eighteen. When exactly do I get to stop being a kid?”

“When I say so.  Look, Dean, I know you want in on this job and I know you hate being sick, but there’s no changing that. So, stay inside, take your antibiotics on schedule, and watch your brother. That’s your job for the next couple days.”

“S’always my job,” Dean muttered. “Fine, I get it. I get it,” he added when his father’s eyes narrowed. “Just… be careful, okay? That guy Wilson…”

Dad stopped, turned, and stared him down until Dean gulped in spite of himself. “You… probably don’t need me telling you how to run a job or take care of the locals.”

“I really don’t,” his father replied.
**
September 2010

The sky was coral heading towards indigo with the first of the late summer stars starting to shine when Dean took the path at the base of the mountain.  It was an easy climb at first, a zigzag on a gentle incline that just barely made the backs of his calves start to warm up. He figured he’d be deep within the tree line when twilight gave itself over to night completely.

 It wasn’t the time of day anyone other than a hunter would choose start hiking. Dean found that he liked it. It was quiet. No hunters, no birdwatchers. No couples with tents nestled between the trees. After the run down the mountain thirteen years ago and their inability to research, track, or even get a handle on the shadowy form that stalked the mountain, coupled with Dad’s uncharacteristic refusal to head back up himself, they’d passed the job on to other hunters who could afford spending time trying to finish the job.  The most notable of the lot being patient Chloe Tanner, rumored heiress and confirmed recluse. She’d spent five years on the mountain – ninety-eight to oh three. Like them, she’d reported no luck. In lieu of finishing the job, she’d floated a few rumors – bad water,  mountain lions, territorial locals – to slow the number of visitors to a trickle.  The tourism had shifted over to other peaks in the small mountain range and, to Dean’s knowledge, no one had died on the mountain in years.

It should have been a comforting thought, but it wasn’t. Not entirely. Dean was glad that people were safe – it was the backbone of what hunters were supposed to be about – but he didn’t like that the mountain and whatever was on it, continued to win.  He liked even less that, after everything, he’d been compelled to come back now.

**
December 1997

It had begun to snow. Dean had done as ordered: secured the cabin, taken his meds, and settled in for a quiet couple of days with Sam. They ate, they slept, and when neither of them could stomach another run through “Jurassic Park III” Sam dragged a battered copy of “The Stand” from the bottom of his duffel and read aloud. Dean had succumbed to his illness on the second day and he lay on the floor in front the couch, facing the fire. His face felt too hot, his toes – close to the fire as they were – too cold. His head was stuffy and light feeling for all that his neck seemed nearly incapable of holding it up. He ached and he shivered and he sweated as he lay there, listening to the sound of Sam's voice rising and falling as he read to him. It occurred to him that they were working on their fourth day in the cabin and that Dad had said he didn’t plan on spending more than two or three nights on the mountain. He thought about that as morning wore on to afternoon while the sky outside grew progressively closer and more gray. He was still thinking it as he skipped the afternoon dose of Codeine laced cough syrup, opting instead to stick with Tylenol and water. Sam made him soup – Lipton in a cup – and Dean wondered when things had changed, when Sam had started minding him instead of the other way around.

“Monsters coming!” Sam read to him. “…The overcast had broken this morning, and the day was bright and hot. A bee cruised past Larry’s nose, circled one of the nearby flowerbeds, and made a three-point landing on a peony. From the menagerie came the soothing, soporific drone of flies as they landed on dead animals. Monsters coming now!”

Monsters are always coming,  Dean thought, feeling hot and spacey and weirdly giddy. Monsters and ghosts and things that burn up your mom in the dead of night and where in the fuck is Dad? Didn’t he say Tuesday? He did. I know he did and it’s Wednesday … I think …

“Sammy,” he croaked.

“…the faint, howling voice had seemed sonorous and dark, the voice of a lunatic …”

“Sam!” Dean interrupted.

“…Jeremiah and …huh? What?” Sam asked. Dean didn’t like the way that Sam looked at him with his brows pinched together in worry.

“S’Wednesday, right? Today is? Dad said he’d be back down on Wednesday.”

“It’s Thursday, Dean,” Sam answered. He managed to screw his expression up even more tightly, though Dean couldn’t for the life of him imagine how he managed it.

“Shit.” Dean dragged a hand over his face, felt more than a day’s worth of stubble, and swore again. He sat up and all of the pillows in the cabin, Sam’s included, dropped from behind his back. He took stock of himself, saw that he was tucked in beneath the big afghan from the bed they were forbidden to sleep in, and that he had water, two-thirds of a cheese and mustard sandwich – a Sam Winchester specialty – a trashcan faintly redolent of puke, and a roll of toilet paper all within arm’s reach.

The kid really had been taking care of him. “Shit,” Dean groaned again and forced himself to get to his feet. He had to roll to his knees and push up off of the arm of the couch like an invalid to get the job done. He wavered as the room spun in a gut wrenching spiral for a moment, but held out a hand when Sam set his book aside and moved to stand with him.

“He’s overdue,” Dean said, drawing a breath.

“Dad’s overdue a lot,” Sam reminded him.

“It’s different.”

“Why would it be different? He does this all of the time. There’s always more to it than he thought or someone else that needs to be saved or …”

Dean cut him off with a wave of his hand before Sam switched gears completely and let his mounting tension with Dad start talking for him.

“It’s different,” Dean said again. “Dad’s not working a job two towns away while we’re trying to finish out the school year. It was just supposed to be a couple days up on that rock for him to take a look around, clear out the civvies, and then come back down here to deep fry T.R.’s corpse in some salt and lighter fluid. That doesn’t take five days, Sammy.”

Sam shifted uncomfortably and spent way too long staring at Dean as if he was sizing him up to see if he was fit for duty. Dean saw their Dad all over Sam at that moment, saw the calculation, the consideration, the concern, and he wondered if Sam would ever realize just how much he had in common with the old man.

“What do you want to do?” Sam asked him finally.

“Wilson’s got a two-way. We’ll start by seeing if Mrs. Wilson’s heard from her husband.”

“I’ll go!”

“Yeah, with me,” Dean corrected. “Just help me find my shoes and we’ll go together.”

They pulled on shoes, gloves, and coats for the short hike through the trees to the cabin that Dean could just see through the windows. Neither of them put on hats, though they had each had them in their bags.

The air was moist with newly fallen snow. Dean still struggled to breathe in the sudden shift from warm to cold. He hacked for a few minutes, while Sam stood next to him, taking in the fat flakes that fell from the sickly tinged gray sky. So far, nothing was sticking.

Dean spit out a wet wad of phlegm that reminded him of something that came on a half-shell and sucked in a breath as he cleared the last, rattling cough from his chest. “C’mon,” he said finally.

They set off through the trees. It wasn’t cold enough for a freeze and they found themselves squelching through wet leaves and mud. For all that the cabins were advertised as romantic holiday getaways, the woods were quiet. Last he’d checked, only two other cabins besides theirs and the Wilson’s were in use. He knew a couple more people had opted to stay in tents on the mountain, though for the life of him, Dean couldn’t figure out how walking around all day and freezing your balls off at night was fun.

The Wilson’s cabin was completely lit from kitchen to loft. The cabins weren’t huge and Dean really didn’t think anything of it until they drew closer and caught a glimpse of Mr. Wilson through the side window.

“Dad’s probably inside. Probably just got there. Right, Dean?” Sam asked, still too young to be much good at hiding the worry in his voice.

“Sure,” Dean replied, but he didn’t really believe it. Wilson was cradling a tall glass of what he’d bet was whiskey, and even from where they stood Dean could see his hands shaking.

They stopped at the door and knocked because that’s what people did even if Dean didn’t feel like holding with polite convention. He felt like kicking the door in and stepping on Wilson until he told them where Dad was, what had happened.

Mrs. ‘Oh, boys, call me Barbara!’ Wilson opened the door. It was like someone had gone at her with a melon baller and scooped out all of the nice middle-aged lady, leaving a cagey, tight-lipped remnant of her in her place.

“Can I help you?” she asked and, God, if Dean didn’t want to just start screaming at her then. She knew. She knew that Dad hadn’t come back. She knew that something had happened to him and that his kids were just sitting here, waiting for him. It infuriated him to the point that it was probably a good thing that Sam stepped up with his cute face and his “gosh, lady, won’t you help us” expression.

“We’re looking for our Dad,” Sam told her.

“He’s not here,” she replied and Dean nearly lost it as she started to shut the door on them. He got his foot in the crack before it was closed completely and gave her a tight smile as she looked at him with startled irritation.

“Figured that when we saw Mr. Wilson sitting by himself and working on drinking himself into a coma,” Dean said. “Let us talk to him.”

“I don’t think…”

Dean pushed on the door and nudged her aside with as much gentleness as he could muster. She was a civilian and a chick, after all, even if she was one that wearing on his already fraying patience. He grabbed a handful of Sam’s jacket and pulled him in after him, making a beeline to the kitchen table where Wilson was working on pouring another tall glass of Jim Beam. He looked warm and dry. Nothing about him suggested a recent arrival. Dean was pretty sure that Wilson had been here for most of the day and perhaps the night before it.

“Where is he?” Dean asked, without preamble.

Wilson looked out the window, towards the hill that they called a mountain in Arkansas and shuddered, all of his bravado gone as if it had never been. “Up there,” he said, his voice shaking. “We followed Donnelly’s path, checked out the markers in the book,” he said referring to the trail mentioned in the book that Sam had been reading in Eureka Springs. “We spent most of a day looking for the damned scientist guy and his kid. We found them Tuesday. They were up a tree, can you believe that? Something… something scared them so badly that they climbed a tree to get away from it. It’s a shadow,” he continued in a whisper. “I know how that sounds, but I swear that’s what it was – shadow and mist.” He looked up at them in naked fear, his eyes wide and nearly rolling. “Don’t… I didn’t get a good look at it. Didn’t really see it, not like your Dad. He, Jesus, he just walked right up to it with that salt gun of his.”

“Where’s Dad?” Dean repeated. “What happened?”

Wilson looked for a moment like he’d run out of steam, like he’d spoken his last on the subject and wasn’t going to be good for much else. But, to Dean’s surprise, he took another long pull of whiskey and seemed to steel himself.

“I didn’t really see, just out of the corner of my eye, you know? I… I was already turning away when your Dad shot at it. But it said something, moaned something and your Dad got still like maybe he was scared too. Or maybe pissed or sad. Fuck if I know. I just know that he was staring at it and then it was coming towards me again. I… Christ you boys… it was terrible. I ran. I had to run and that thing followed me. One step for every two or three that I took and I had to go because it kept coming after me. Your Dad tried to stop me, tried to help me, and he fell. I’m sorry, but he fell.”

“Dad fell?” Sam asked, sounding as incredulous, horrified, and angry as Dean felt.

Wilson nodded and answered Dean’s next question before he could ask it. “I don’t know if he’s alive. I didn’t go back. I couldn’t go back. God help me, I just couldn’t. It was behind me and the way it made me feel? I… no. I couldn’t.” Wilson repeated.

“How did it make you feel?” Sam asked in a whisper.

“Alone,” Wilson replied. “Terrified and… and miserable. Scared. And like this thing, this shadow had been someplace too … too, fuck. Just too big. I’m sorry, I don’t know how else to say it. It was all too big .”

Monsters coming,  Dean thought with a creeping chill. 

**

September 2010

Dean switched on the fluorescent lantern he carried as the shadows of the lingering twilight merged completely with the night. Around him the last hush of day was eradicated by the sounds of crickets rubbing their legs together in an endless chorus as locusts buzzed and droned and chirped from the branches and trunks of trees.  Nocturnal hunters started creeping around him, giving him a wide berth or perhaps his due as something close to kin. Their footfalls resulted in the rustling of dry leaves and the sudden, loud snaps of twigs that sounded like gunshot. He could just see the faint specks of fireflies in the field behind him.

He walked on, amused that a hunter’s life kept him constantly doing things that were decidedly stupid. It was foolish to climb a mountain at night, even an easy bulge of shale and sandstone that anyone from Colorado would have been right to call a hill. People climbed when they could see or when there was moonlight clear overhead. But trees covered the Boston Mountains and hunters had to go where – and when – the action was. Something lurked on this mountain that came out at night, in the gloom. Dean had to comply with that timeframe if he wanted to meet up with it.

Even if he wasn’t sure why he wanted to, why he needed to.

He carried a copy of the map Chloe Tanner had made a few years back. She’d emailed it to him, figuring correctly as it had started as Winchester hunt that one of them would someday come back for another look at the tall shadow that stalked the footsteps of unwary hikers. Tanner had marked the trail he followed, the same one followed by countless former hikers and the original suspect, T.R. Donnelly. She’d marked likely spots for campsites, areas where she’d hidden away spare salt, matches, and iron rounds, and the places where the shadow had been felt, heard, and seen. Tanner was a thorough, methodical hunter. It was like her to spend months on a single job, sometimes, like this one, even years. Dean knew that it rankled her that she’d found no answers, no solutions. He wondered if he would have any good news to tell her when he came down from the mountain. He wondered why some part of him was glad that she’d never found out what it was that lurked in the hills and how to stop it.

The mountain’s shadow, not so different from Ireland’s Gray Man and the thing that had long ago spawned the first rumors of what had become the American Bigfoot legend in later years, never killed, despite the number of deaths that Dean’s father had first linked to it. Sam, ironically, had been the closest of the lot of them to being right – none of the deaths had been supernatural. Two heart attacks, several falls, and one accidental shooting when a panicked man had turned to fire on the stalking shadow and had succeeded in putting a bullet in the head of his hunting buddy. Whatever it was, it terrified people, caused them to run, to panic. But, to Dean’s knowledge, it had never physically hurt anyone. It just followed everyone it came across as if, he suddenly realized, it wanted something.

Dean shook his head as he walked on, picking his way along the path. Of course it wanted something. Most everything he’d hunted did. Monsters like rugarus, wendigos, ghouls, and rawheads wanted to eat. Vengeful spirits wanted to make someone pay. Ghosts wanted people out of their house, out of their limited reality, or out of it themselves. Demons… yeah, demons wanted. It wasn’t any kind of special revelation that this thing wanted something. But, it did bother him that he was interested, too interested, in finding out what.

He climbed the mountain and half-assed considered seeing if he’d get enough signal to call Bobby or Cas to stage an intervention on the not-so remote chance that he’d come up here on some kind of suicide mission, hoping, maybe that this thing could scare him so badly he wouldn’t have to endure the agony of keeping his promise to Sam.

“Suicide mission. Really, Winchester? Coulda found a couple dozen surer things than this,” he muttered.

Dean didn’t bother digging out his cell phone and he didn’t stop.

**

December 1997

Dean knew going up the mountain was a bad idea. Every last part of him ached, exertion brought on coughing fits that threatened to start him puking again, and he figured his reflexes had to be somewhere south of crappy. And, naturally, the only thing falling faster than night was the snow. It had begun to stick on their way back to their cabin and, now, as they switched on the lantern and looked at the trail that would lead them up the mountain, the ground was steadily turning white. Climbing now, in his condition with his one advantage being a fourteen year-old little brother that could shoot far better than anyone would have suspected, was a very bad idea. Sam didn’t even need to tell him so. Though, being Sam, he wasted no time in getting the job done.

“Dean, this is a bad idea.”

Really, Sammy? he thought. Genius observation. I’m sick, you’re short, and Wilson didn’t even have the balls to serve as a guide.

“I mean, without Mr. Wilson, we don’t even have a guide. Just this crappy map that we can’t see because it’s so dark.”

“Don’t be scared, Sammy, I’ll watch out for you,” Dean said only half mockingly. It was true, but it was also an easy way to get his brother riled up and, hopefully, off of the subject.

“I’m not scared, Dean,” Sam said. “This is stupid. Dad’ll go apeshit.”

“I’d rather have Dad go apeshit, than not have Dad at all, Sam.”

“Yeah, but …”

“No buts,” Dean told him. He stopped and held up the lantern so that he could see Sam’s face. His breath came out in a white fog and he held his lips in a fine, tight line. The kid was afraid, but he was only fourteen and Dean really didn’t find fault with him for it. But, he was also nervous and worried. He looked up at him like he expected him to fall down in the snow and cough up his spleen at that very moment.

“Dad fell, Sam. I could give a shit what Wilson thinks about him being dead, but he could be hurt. And, yeah, you’re right, he’s the first one that would tell me to stay in, take my meds, and keep an eye out for you, but I can’t. You and me and Dad, we’re all we’ve got. If he wants to bust my balls for it for the next month, he can. I can live with it. But, I don’t think I could live with sitting down here all cozy and warm while Dad starves or dies of exposure. Can you?”

Sam stared down at his shoes and Dean expected him to remain with eyes downcast or to look up at him with that pissy, broken-hearted little pout he wore when Dean tore into him. He was surprised when Sam looked up at him with a steely, determined glint in his eyes.

“No. I can’t live with it.”

Dean nodded and moved to turn. He was stopped by Sam grabbing his sleeve.

“But, just so you know? I can’t live with you dying out here because you’re too sick to know that you’re being a stupid jerk either. If he is dead, if something did happen, then you’re all I’ve got. Dad’s not the only one that could fall or bleed to death or get fucked up by some big, ticked off ghost, Dean. We could too. You could.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Sam’s expression too tired and worried for his age and Dean feeling equally too old for his years.

“We’ll just have to be careful,” Dean said. “Stick together. Look out for each other. S’all we can do, Sam. We have to go after him.”

“I know,” Sam replied, deflating slightly so that he looked young and small again. “But, I don’t have to like it. I want him back too, but this?” he said gesturing to the thick, fat flakes of snow. “This sucks.”

Dean cracked a grin at him. “Ain’t no lie, little brother. Now let’s get going. If we’re lucky, we’ll be back before morning. Then we can experiment with mixing cough syrup and hot chocolate.”

“Gross,” Sam declared.

They set off on the trail that wound its way up the mountain.

Under normal circumstances, Dean didn’t think that it would have been a bad hike. Dad had taken them up in the Rockies, the Appalachians, the Cascades – Arkansas’s idea of a mountain wasn’t much of anything by comparison and Dean was sure that, snow or no snow, he probably could have run most of it. But even with the telescoping trekking poles that he and Sam got out as the gentle ascent started to swell, he was struggling. All of the aches that he’d had back at the cabin were magnified to near unbearable intensity, but it was breathing that was proving to be the most difficult.

Sam wisely said nothing as he labored and wheezed, but he drew closer as if he was certain that Dean was about to drop. It was, he knew, no small miracle that he didn’t do that very thing. The rapid fall of snowflakes was accentuated with hallucinatory stars and Dean was having a difficult time getting his blurry vision to coalesce into something solid and defined.

But, because he had to keep going, because it was Dad and there was no choice, Dean didn’t stop. His focus became tight, narrow and intense to the point that he might have called it panic at any other time. There was nothing but the sound of their trekking poles snicking in and out of the snow. He picked up one foot and then the other. He leaned on the poles, lifted them, and did it all again around the tortured wheeze of his breathing. He trusted Sam, who walked with only one pole so that he could hold the lantern, to be their eyes. He knew it would gall him later that he was depending so heavily on the kid, but he used what resources he had. Like it or not, Sam was at his side and he didn’t seem likely to go anywhere. He was one of the few people that Dean could trust implicitly; didn’t expect that it wouldn’t always be the case, no matter how young they were now or how old they would grow to be.

Dean was so focused on breathing, so focused on staying upright, that he was startled and confused when he realized that Sam had stopped and was holding the lantern so that he could stare off to the right.

“What’sit?” he wheezed.

“Campers,” Sam answered. “On the map Wilson drew, but…?”

Dean took the lead and walked closer to the round tent tucked cozily between two trees. No light shone from within and the ring of stones that served as a fire pit was all but covered with snow. He handed Sam both of his poles and reached into his pockets with fingers that seemed to have grown dumb after a few hours wrapped tightly around the grips of the hiking sticks. He willed them to move properly, forced them to stop shaking as he pulled out first his flashlight and then, after pulling off his right glove with his teeth, his Beretta. He hunkered down and motioned to Sam.

“Get the shotgun,” he said, jerking his head to where it was slid between the straps of his backpack.

Sam looked at the poles he carried and then let them drop into the snow. He reached for the gun, wiped it down, and readied it without asking.

“Stay here,” Dean croaked.

He walked across the snow towards the tent, suddenly finding the crunch of his boots to be too loud. The tent billowed in the winter’s breeze, the sides sucking in and blowing outward as if it was breathing. Dean didn’t like the metaphor, didn’t like the creeping tingle at his neck that told him something was watching, that something was lurking out in the night.

At the tent, he nudged the zipper of the closed opening with the Beretta until he managed to work it upward. Using the gun still, he forced the zipper up and around. Dean bent down and quickly shoved both flashlight and Beretta inside.

There was nothing. Pillows, camping rations, spare clothes, and towels. Of the tent’s occupants, their packs, and their sleeping bags, there was no sign. He stepped back, scanned the snow for footprints, and found only theirs, though there were irregular depressions here and there that might have been snowed over tracks.

“They’re…” Dean’s voice had been reduced to little more than a wheeze and he scowled in irritation. He cleared his throat, spat another sour tasting oyster from deep within his chest, and tried again. “Gone,” he said to Sam. “Left in a hurry, but not so quickly that they didn’t grab essential gear first.”

He waited for Sam to acknowledge him, waited for his brother to ease up on his grip on the shotgun and turn. He didn’t and Dean took note of Sam’s rigid posture and the escalation of his fogged breath in the night.

Dean readied his gun again and crept towards his brother, eyes straining as he peered out into the darkness and tried desperately to see what it was that Sam saw. He stopped even with Sam and for several minutes, they both stood, staring out over the yellow glow of the lantern. There was nothing. Falling snow. The far off yips of coyotes and the sound of naked tree limbs knocking together in the winter wind. And then one of the shadows moved.

Sam cocked the shotgun back. Dean tensed, eyes watering as he tried to see what it was, as he tried to differentiate shadows from trees from something else. He dropped a hand down on his brother’s shoulder and gripped it tightly.

“Wait,” he said as Sam moved to fire the shotgun full of rock salt. “Wait.”

Sam didn’t want to wait, that much was obvious from his posture. He wanted to start shooting now, wanted to pelt the irregularly moving shadow full of salt. But he did as he was ordered and he stood still, rigid and taut as Dean took one step forward and then another. He was even with the lantern. And then he was beyond it. He crept towards the outer ring of light and stared out into the thickened gloom of snowfall and night.

For one moment he stared into a shadow taller than he was. Something that was six, six and half feet tall and woven together with darkness, misery, and something that smelled like the most unnaturally tinged smoke that Dean had ever encountered. He stared at the shadow and had the distinct impression that the shadow stared back. 

“What do you see?” Sam asked behind him.

He knew better than to take his eyes off of the shadow, he knew better than to give this desperately miserable and purely awful thing even a second of vulnerability. But something in Sam’s voice begged him to turn, even as something in the shadow urged him without voice or sound not to turn away.

Dean did. He turned to look at Sam, saw his brother’s eyes widen as if he’d just caught a glimpse of the Devil himself, and then Dean was running to him. He couldn’t think rationally in the face of Sam’s expression. Didn’t think about the tall shadow behind him or the number of people who had met their deaths on this tiny stupid mountain. All he could see was the look in Sam’s eyes. Dean ran to him and just reached him as Sam edged the gun around him and fired. 

Sam was breathing heavy and his eyes were round, huge, fixed absolutely on whatever it was that he saw beyond the ring of the lantern’s glow.

“Did you see it?” Sam asked. His voice sounded small and afraid.

“I saw something,” Dean replied.

“Gone now. I thought… I… you didn’t see it?” His voice was plaintive now, desperate.

Dean reached a hand out and placed it over his brother’s with gentle pressure until Sam relaxed his grip on the shotgun and lowered it, pointing it to snow. When Sam didn’t look at him, Dean reached over with his cold, frozen fingers that still held onto his Beretta. He tilted Sam’s chin with his thumb until he was looking at up at him.

“What was it, Sam?”

Sam shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“What?”

“Don’t know,” Sam mumbled. He was lying. Dean knew it as instinctively as he knew anything. Sam couldn’t lie to him, not yet, hopefully not ever. But he was also terrified and they still had a long way to go. Dean let him be, accepted the lie, and curled his hand around the back of Sam’s head. He hugged the kid to him for a quick second and knew a small moment of pure misery as Sam shook against him. He shouldn’t have brought Sam with him and he had no business taking him any further up the mountain. But, the snow was still falling and their father was somewhere further ahead – injured, perhaps seriously. He couldn’t go back and he wasn’t sure that Sam could either, no matter how unsettled, how terrified he seemed at that moment.

Sam pulled away and schooled his features into a calmer expression. He picked up the lantern, but made no move to put down the shotgun in favor of picking up the hiking poles. Dean left his where they lay in the snow as well and they walked on.

They came upon the footprints as they reached the edge of the small camp. They circled the camp twice where there had been nothing but virgin snow before. Large footprints, left by something with a long stride.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Sam whispered so quietly that Dean just barely heard him.

They looked at the footprints for a moment and then they went on, striking back towards the path that would, hopefully, lead them to their father.

**

September 2010

Dean reached the tiny clearing just as the moon was swallowed by low, fast moving grey clouds that heralded a coming storm. The clearing was labeled on the map in Chloe Tanner’s hectic, curving scrawl as “Wrong Time.” He found that peculiar, found that it left something like an itch right in the middle of his back where he couldn’t quite reach. But, Wrong Time was one of Chloe’s supply drops and, though he’d come with his own pack adequately stocked, it seemed prudent to stop for a quick minute to see what Chloe had left behind.

He looked for Tanner’s “T” that would mark where she’d stashed supplies. Dean held up the lantern and inspected the trees by its fluorescent glow. The trees all bore old scars that were filled in with moss and years of dirt and wear. He ran the fingers of his free hand over the gashes and wondered what they could be. He was still wondering when he came upon the tree with a large letter T carved into the bark. It was no newer than the other lines in the other trees, but it was larger, deeper, meant to be noticed.

Dean knelt and set the lantern next to him. He dug at the mound at the base of the tree. Tanner’s box wasn’t buried too deeply. He cleared enough of the earth to open the box, flicking away a fat earthworm as it oozed out of the dirt and towards the contents. It was orderly: neatly packed brown packages of first strike rations, a box of blueberry Pop Tarts, two shrink wrapped boxes of strike anywhere matches, and ammo. One box each of iron and silver rounds and another larger box labeled “special.” Dean pulled that box out and dug out one of the shotgun shells. He shook it and then took it apart, sprinkling it onto his palm. It looked like the contents of a salt and herb grinder – there was rock salt, green flecks of herbs, slivers of wood, and tiny pebbles of metal scatter shot. More iron and silver, he suspected.

“Now that is special,” he murmured in approval. He pocketed six of the shells and put the rest away. He helped himself to one of the ration packets, favoring the unexpected, costly treat over the protein bar he had somewhere in the depths of his own bag. He had just set everything to rights when he noticed a slip of yellowed paper down next to the matches. Dean picked it up and unfolded it.

It’s waiting for you.

It was written in Chloe’s messy script, but was addressed to no one. Dean searched the rest of the box, but found nothing indicating who she’d left it for. He stared at it for a while longer and then stuck it down deep into the front pocket of his jeans.

Dean reburied the box and sat back against the tree marked with Chloe’s “T” as he tore into the ration pack. He took out the barbeque pocket sandwich and one of the small packets of cookies. The rest he put away into his own pack. He ate and stared at the clearing. The glow of his lantern illuminated most of the trees and Dean inspected each one in turn, eyes moving over the cuts carved into each tree from base to lower limbs.

It was like trying to see the image in a puzzle made up of random lines, each one worried into the bark of the trees as if scratched, rather than carved. He wondered if there was blood buried somewhere beneath the years of moss and wear. He wondered what had done it and why. He chewed, swallowed, and took another bite as he stared at first a single slash in the tree across from him and then at all of the lines as a whole. It was only as he slid his gaze away, as he lowered his eyes to reach into his pack for a bottle of water that he made sense out of the scratches in the bark. Dean sat up, dinner forgotten as the unsettled itch worked its way down his spine again.

Wrong time. It covered every tree in the clearing, even, when he turned, the one behind him.

Wrong time. Wrong time. Wrong time.

“It’s waiting for you,” he said to no one.

**

December 1997

An hour after they'd left the clearing, only three things were keeping Dean upright: fear for his father, the nervous, worried look in Sam’s eyes, and the occasional soft crunch of footsteps behind them. Sam said nothing about the sound, the feel of something following them, something stalking them, but Dean knew that if he could hear it with his head and his ears so clogged, then Sam had to be more than aware. 

The temptation to turn, to pull his flashlight out of his pocket and investigate the path behind them was strong, but, for his brother’s sake, he resisted. Nothing had been there in his previous attempts to scout the way behind them anyway. He’d seen footprints, the same large depressions in the snow as before, but no shifting shadows, not when he turned. There was nothing but the expansive hush of the snow covered woods.

Dean walked. And coughed, spat, and wheezed. He was feeling distinctly light-headed. His chest was too tight, his lungs too full and too wet. He couldn’t get a sufficiently satisfying breath of air no matter how hard he coughed. More than he ever had in his life, he just wanted to stop and take a breather. Maybe head back to the abandoned camp and crawl beneath a mound of the hikers’ discarded clothes and sleep. But he kept going, the look in Sam’s eyes and the worry for their father goading him onward.

He concentrated on walking, on the sound and feel of his brother plodding on through blowing snow beside him, and did what he could to try to remain aware of their surroundings, even as he did his best to ignore the intermittent crunch of footsteps behind them. It was difficult, almost more so when they stopped suddenly just a second after Sam pulled him to a halt.

He pointed and Dean looked up. Arkansas’s idea of a mountain wasn’t much. It didn’t require much in the way of climbing gear and the path that they were on presented them with no sheer faces of rock to climb. But, the path ahead, the one that Wilson had described in enough detail that Dean recognized it without pulling out the map, was steep enough. With the snow, it could even be treacherous. It would require the full use of their hands.

“Shit,” Sam said.

“Uh-huh,” Dean agreed tiredly. “C’mere.” He pulled Sam closer and inspected him for a minute, taking in the loops of his backpack and the shotgun he carried at the ready.

“It’s probably slicker ‘n snot up there,” Dean told him. “We’re going to have to stash the guns.”

“But,” Sam said, gesturing to the empty quiet behind them.

“But, nothing,” Dean interrupted. “It hasn’t rushed us yet and I don’t want to try to figure out how to get two or three wounded people down the mountain because we weren’t smart about this. It’s let us get this far, Sam, and I don’t see that we have a choice.”

“Me either, I guess,” Sam replied. He stood at the ready, waiting as he had since he’d been little, for Dean to work him over. When he’d been three, it had been tucking him into the bright red parka that had left his arms sticking out. At six it was hats and gloves and long underwear. At twelve, Dean watched Sam tend to himself. Now, it was like Sam was a child again. Dean stripped him of his pack and undid the left strap with cold, stiff fingers. He looped the strap through the handle of the battery powered lantern and secured it again before holding it out for Sam to put back on. When that was done. He checked the safety of the shotgun, flipped it on, and then slid it between the bottom straps of Sam’s pack.

“Can you reach it?”

“I’m not nine, Dean.”

“Show me.”

Sam scowled at him, but reached behind him and grabbed the gun. “Happy?”

“Not really, but it’ll do,” Dean said. “The lantern’s going to bang against you on the way up, try to keep it from breaking on the rock if you can, but don’t do anything stupid to save it.”

“Still not nine,” Sam said. “And you worry about yourself. You sound like shit.”

“Feel like shit,” Dean admitted. He tucked away his flashlight, pulled his gloves down and nodded towards the steep incline of what he hoped wasn’t shale and snow, but figured probably was. “Let’s do it.”

It wasn’t bad at first. They were able to walk up, only occasionally having to lean down to brace their hands in the wet snow. But, as they continued on, the rock became a shifting nightmare beneath their feet. The shale had been worked loose by something and the added treachery of snow did nothing for the safety of their footing. 

Dean slipped, swore, caught himself, and worked against the rock angrily as Sam bent down, shotgun sticking out perpendicular, as he climbed up on all fours. Dean followed suit and the pair of them scrabbled up like slow moving monkeys.

He thought that they might get up with relative ease, but then, from down below where the start of their climb was now wrapped in shadow, there came the sound of sliding rock. Sam stopped suddenly and flattened himself against the mountain, the lantern clanging noisily, but harmlessly against the rock. Dean stilled himself too and carefully turned in order to peer down the incline.

He saw only shadow, but, then the shadow began to move. He could see no hands, no feet. It was too dark, but something was definitely on the move below them.

“It’s coming,” Dean said matter-of-factly.

“Shotgun,” Sam breathed.

“Not on this terrain.”

“Oh, God.”

“We’re going to have to do this fast, Sam. We have to go up, quick as we can, and without any mistakes. Don’t you dare fall, you hear me?”

Sam, usually ready enough with a pissy retort or a plea for someone, anyone to notice that he wasn’t a child, said nothing. He nodded and Dean could see the whites of his eyes in the lantern light.

“Ready?”

The sound of shifting, sliding rock drew closer.

“Fuck yes,” Sam said tightly.

“Then climb,” Dean told him. “Now.”

Sam set to without a sound and Dean followed. They dug toes into a snowy, loose rock and climbed with fingers rendered nearly useless by their gloves. He wondered, belatedly, if it would have been smarter to risk the cold and climb without them. How they managed, he didn’t know, perhaps fear for Sam gave him surer feet and the ability to ignore the lancing hitch to his breath. They increased their distance from the moving shape below them and were soon ten feet from the top. Then six. Then five.

At four feet from the top, Sam slipped.

He sucked in a breath and Dean could see him try to flatten himself down against the mountain face once again. It didn’t help. Sam worked his feet, legs scrabbling madly, almost comically against the rock as he tried to find purchase, but he was going down.

Dean caught him, just barely, by the scruff of his coat. For a moment, he was sure that Sam’s weight combined with his was going to send them both sliding down into the ascending shadow and for a few heart stopping moments, that’s just what occurred. But, by some miracle, Dean’s feet slid against solid, unmoving rock. He held tight to Sam, hissed as the kid’s weight caused something to wrench terribly in his shoulder with an audible pop. He wondered if he’d dislocated it. He saw stars and felt a dreadful buzzing sound throughout his head as his shoulder became the new and painful center of his universe. But, he kept a tight grip on his brother and, when he could do something that was close enough to breathing to count, he groaned.

“Climb, Sammy.”

Sam needed no urging. He extricated himself from Dean’s grasp and found surer bits of stone to climb. He worked his way up, the lantern banging against his hip and the rock face, as he grew level with Dean.

“Go,” Dean said and didn’t move until Sam passed him. Until he was nearly to the top and Dean was sure that he wouldn’t fall again. He reached up with his left arm, bit down on a scream as a hot flash of pain tore through him. His arm wouldn’t extend fully and he didn’t think he could count on it to hold much weight. So, he reached with his right arm instead and pulled, grunting as he worked his way up the mountain.

Behind and below him, the shadow closed the distance.

Dean didn’t hurry, he couldn’t, but he kept on, refusing to look anywhere but up, at the low gray skies, at Sam’s worried face just visible in the lantern’s light. He stayed focused upward, climbing steadily, even as the shadow moaned something that sounded terrifyingly like his name.

He reached the top, fingers scrabbling on the suddenly even surface as Sam said “hurry” and then, when Dean’s hips cleared the lip “clear!”

Then Sam was shooting, reloading and shooting again with a grim, terrified look on his young face.

“Go away!” Sam screamed down the rock face. He fired again. “Go away!”

Dean pulled himself to his knees and, though it was stupid when Sam held a loaded shotgun, he grabbed his brother’s leg and tugged on his jeans.

“S’enough, Sammy,” he coughed. “It’s gone. It’s okay. Calm down.”

Sam didn’t look like he agreed, didn’t look like he thought anything was okay, but he stopped shooting and dropped to a squat next to him. Dean thought it looked like he was dangerously close to hiding his face against him like a little boy who’d just woken from a bad dream. He didn’t, he looked down the mountain with wild eyes and then took stock of Dean, again with John Winchester’s critical, concerned scrutiny.

“Your shoulder’s funny.”

“Think I might have dislocated it,” Dean said with as much cheer as he could manage. Then he bent over and coughed. The coughing didn’t stop and he was soon sucking in breath after breath, struggling to get air into his lungs. Sam pounded him a few times on the back, unwittingly causing him agony in his bad shoulder, and Dean coughed again. He choked on a large, meaty feeling wad of phlegm and was soon vomiting miserably in the snow, body heaving, shoulder screaming, as he retched and retched until there was nothing left.

Sam kept patting his back while Dean wheezed. He struggled, listening as he heard something other than his own labored breathing.

He sat up, motioning with a wavering hand for Sam to be still.

“What?” Sam asked, turning a wary eye towards the rock face below them.

Dean said nothing and he held his breath as he strained to listen. Finally, it came again.

“Sam!”

Sam’s eyes went wide, this time with relief and something like awe. “Dad.”

Dean smiled. “Knew he was okay,” he said. “C’mon.”

They got to their feet and, though Dean’s arm hung awkwardly from a decidedly lower left shoulder, they walked as quickly as they could, jogging here and there on the easier, but still occasionally tricky surface.

“Wilson said Dad slipped somewhere up here,” Sam said.

“Slipped my ass,” Dean hacked out. “You heard Wilson. The idiot freaked out. Bet you money he did and Dad either lost his footing” – it sounded better than slipped, somehow – “trying to save him or the moron ran into him while he ran away, pissing his pants. Dad doesn’t just slip, Sammy.”

“I don’t care if he jumped,” Sam replied. “He’s okay. He’s okay and that’s … that’s all I want.”

Same here,  Dean thought.

“Sam?” Dad again and closer now, much closer.

Sam looked up at Dean inquiringly, sparing a quick glance behind them as if he expected their shadows to rise up and give chase.

“Go ahead,” Dean said, his voice now barely more than a croak. “It already knows we’re here. Not like you’re going to tell it anything it doesn’t already know.”

“Dad!” Sam shouted with Dean’s approval. “Dad!”

“Sammy!”

“There,” Dean said pointing to their right where the mountain dropped off. They loped through the snow that was, somehow lighter on the mountain top. The lantern banged against Sam’s hip, causing the light to bob and send jerking shadows out before them. Something unsettled Dean badly as he watched Sam run towards his shadow as if straining to reach it.

I’m like seven feet tall.

Dean wanted to grab hold of Sam, to pull him back, but his left arm hung dumbly at his side and Sam was already ahead of him, already dropping to his knees and peering down over the edge into darkness.

“Dad!”

“Sam.” Dad sounded relieved and as if he was trying his hardest to be patient. “What in the hell are you doing up here? And where’s Dean?”

Typical,  Dean thought with a weary grin. He got down on his knees next to Sam and looked down.

There was Dad on an outcropping so narrow that Dean wondered how he hadn’t fallen down to the unseen depths below. He looked up at them and Dean had to force himself to be still because the man looked battered, tired, and so haggard that it didn’t take much to imagine what could have happened to him if they hadn’t climbed the mountain after him. Dean took a breath, told himself that it was fine, that his Dad surely wasn’t as bruised as he looked, that the ledge he stood on wasn’t quite so narrow or precarious. He was more or less all right, though maybe favoring his right leg from the look of things.

“You all right?” Dean tried to call down. It came out as little more than a croak and he elbowed Sam, gesturing for him to repeat the question.

“Are you all right, Dad?” Sam called down.

“Ankle’s twisted and I’ve got nothing to hang on to. Dean?” he queried.

“Fine,” Dean croaked and waved a hand at him when Dad cocked an ear.

“Says he’s fine,” Sam repeated. “His voice is just gone and his shoulder …”

Dean elbowed him again, more sharply this time and shook his head. “Never mind about that. Tell him we’ve got a rope. Just need a minute to secure it.”

“But your arm…”

“Not now, Sam,” Dean said wearily. He stood, leaving Sam to holler down the plan as Dean carefully slid his right arm out of his pack. He held his breath and, when it seemed like that was about to bring on another coughing fit, let it out again in a strangled wheeze as he reached over with his good hand to gingerly pull the pack off of his left arm.

“Fuck me,” he hissed as his shoulder protested even his most careful movements.

Dean got up, ignoring Sam’s questioning look as he took the pack and backtracked to the nearest tree. It was young and green, but sturdy and flexible enough not to snap in the cold or with weight. He dropped the pack in the snow at its base and opened it, reaching inside for the rope coiled within. He looped it around the tree and ignored how his fingers shook as he tied the knot. Dean pulled on it with his good hand and, judging it sound, made his way back to where Sam waited on the edge.

“Here it comes,” Sam called as Dean snaked the rope down to their father.

“Got it,” Dad called up. The rope went taut a few moments later.

“Come on,” Dean told Sam, pulling him back from the edge. He gestured to the rope and squatted to pick it up.

“Let me,” Sam told him. “Your arm.”

“I know you hate it when I point this out,” Dean told him, “but you’re too small, Sam. This will take both of us.”

“But…”

“It’s fine,” Dean said.

“Bullshit,” Sam said with emphasis on the second syllable, but he did as Dean instructed and grabbed hold.

Dean sucked in a breath, prepared himself for the hurt, and pulled. Their father was a big, solidly built man and it took a fraction of a second for the weight to jerk on Dean’s injured arm. It popped again, this time with an intensity that passed the red spectrum and went all the way to white. His vision was gone in the starburst of pain, but he pulled, hissing “fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck” until, after an indeterminable amount of time, the weight was suddenly gone, the rope went slack, and Dean fell back into the snow.

“Dad!” Sammy shouted and at any other time it might have done him good to see his little brother rush to his father’s side as if he’d been waiting all day just to see him. At the moment, however, Dean could only rock on the ground, cradling his arm close to him, and hissing in agony.

They were both at his side in a quick second, Dad indeed dragging his leg and Sam chattering a mile a minute, saying “I saw it, I saw it, Dad, what is it” around explanations of what had befallen Dean on the mountain.

“Sam,” Dad said quietly and Sam fell silent as he bent to inspect Dean. He groaned as his father pulled him up and unzipped his coat. He bit back a scream as his jacket sleeve was pulled off. Dad felt along the arm, fingers deftly probing into muscle, flesh, and bone.

“Dean,” Dad said. “It’s dislocated.”

“No shit,” Dean blurted out. He somehow found his way into adding a “sir” to that and hissed again as his father took hold of him, one hand holding his arm, the other pressed firmly against his shoulder blade.

“This is going to hurt like hell,” Dad told him. “Ready?”

“What… no…” But Dean didn’t have the chance to voice any further protestations as his Dad suddenly shoved his weight down against his back and somehow twisted his arm up simultaneously. The joint snapped back with another sickening crack and Dean shouted with as much voice as he had left, which, admittedly, wasn’t much.

Dad had him, one hand on his back, the other looped carefully around him as he said “it’ll pass, just give it a minute, Dean, it’ll pass.”

Like hell it’ll pass,  Dean thought, but already the pain was sliding back to a more manageable, burning throb. Miraculously, he didn’t throw up and he was, somehow, still breathing.

“Let’s never, ever do that again, okay?” he wheezed as he sat up. Sam was at his side and quite suddenly hugging him, though Dean couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out why.

He and Dad stared at each other over Sam’s head for several moments. Dean studied his father, knew he was being studied in return, and he said nothing for fear that anything he might have said would come out sounding like a child.  I’m so glad you’re all right. I’m so glad that you’re here.

Dad looked back at him, his face a storm of emotion. “I don’t know whether to kick the pair of you down this mountain or just...” He put one hand on Sam’s head and gripped the back of Dean’s neck with the other. Dean thought maybe he saw pride mingling with everything else he saw on his father’s face. It made him duck his head.

“What,” Dad said, recovering his wits, “Jesus, Dean, what were you thinking?”

“That some jackass knocked my Dad off a mountain,” Dean answered. “Didn’t much like it.”

“Wilson didn’t mean to do anything,” Dad clarified. “He panicked and couldn’t handle it. Just like everyone else that’s died on this mountain. It wasn’t really his fault. I knew he wasn’t cut out for this and I should have left him, guide or no guide.”

“I saw it,” Sam interrupted quietly. “Dad … I saw it.”

“Dean,” Dad asked, his voice too carefully neutral. “What did you see?”

“Nothing,” Dean told him truthfully. “Just shadow.”

“Then we leave it,” Dad said. “We get off this mountain and we leave it for now.”

“But, Dad,” Sam said, voice quavering, “I saw it.”

“Not now, Sammy,” Dad told him. “It’s the wrong time, okay?” And when Sam looked like he was going to protest, like he was going to push the issue, he added: “we need to get Dean back to the cabin, Sam. It’s the wrong time.  Do you understand?”

He didn’t and Dean could see his eyes welling up with tears because he was confused, frightened, and weary. But, he nodded in the end and looked to Dean. He looked at him the way Dean knew he looked at Sam most of the time, like he was the only thing that mattered. It shamed him, humbled him, even as it caused a warmth to suffuse his cold, aching body.

“Good,” Dad said and ruffled Sam’s hair for good measure.

**

September 2010

Dean stayed in the clearing and watched as fireflies dodged the first sprinkles of rain to land on the sides of the marked trees. He waited, chewing on the rations that had gone tasteless in his mouth as night wore on, as the thunder rumbled ominously overhead. He later walked the clearing, feeling the grooves scratched long ago into the tree bark. Sometimes his fingers shook. Sometimes he remembered standing in this clearing and barely being able to breathe as he and Sam had stared out into the darkness.

He did so now, watching the shadows, waiting for them to move as the clouds drew ever closer and the humidity caused him to sweat. Dean shucked his outer shirt and paced the small clearing in his t-shirt, lantern down by Chloe’s tree, his gun and pilfered ammo forgotten next to his pack.

He stopped as the smell of smoke drifted towards him. Years ago, he hadn’t been able to sort out what had been wrong with it, what it was on the smoke that he had smelled.

Dean knew it now, he’d spent forty years breathing it in. It was the smell of brimstone.

**

December 1997

Their descent down the mountain was a nightmare. Though the going was physically easier once they’d cleared the steep hill of sliding shale and snow, the shadow returned to follow them, its steps dogging them as they hobbled ever downward, Sam the only one of them that wasn’t sick or injured. Its footfalls echoed theirs, one for every two or three they took as if it was taking long, easy strides compared to their shorter, hampered ones.

The sound of it set them all on edge, Sam most of all and Dad, who would normally never put him out front did so, keeping Dean and himself between the ghostly footfalls and Sam.

It was impossible to tell who supported who on the way down. Dad was bigger, but two days starved and favoring his leg badly. Dean was just about wiped out and felt twice as haggard as his father looked. They walked, Dean’s good arm beneath Dad’s shoulder. Dad was surer of foot, despite his limp, but he leaned on Dean heavily. Somehow they didn’t fall. Somehow Dean kept breathing, though he had to stop periodically when he grew to coughing so hard that he had to bend over double until it stopped or he heaved up thin ropes of spit and very little bile.

And, still, the shadow followed them. Never gaining, never cutting them off, just following them down the mountain as if it could only go where they led. Sam stayed close to them. He kept the lantern where Dean had put it, looped through the straps of his backpack in favor of gripping the salt filled shotgun. Dad let him have it and said nothing as Sam gripped it with one gloved and one naked hand. He’d shucked his right glove, sticking it in his pocket long ago. He refused to put it back on and, for whatever reason, Dad didn’t force the issue, just let him have it as if he could tell that he needed the extra security.

They could see the lights of the cabins below, finally, and Sam stopped, pointed, and turned to them with a fiercely happy, relieved smile.

“Thank Christ,” Dad said and Dean would have echoed the sentiment if he’d been able. The cough worked its way out of his chest and he hacked, silently cursing as he coughed and coughed, as the crunching sound of following footsteps stopped.

Sam looked beyond them and his eyes grew wide and round as silver dollars. Dean was suddenly standing on his own, Dad having moved towards Sam as he started babbling nearly incoherently.

“I don’t get it. I just don’t get it! You don’t make any God damned sense!” Sam screamed at it and Dean wanted desperately to go to him, but he couldn’t breathe. He could only hack again and again. He bent double and dropped to his knees, retching again and desperately trying to get a breath in. His face felt hot, his lips numb and tingling. He wondered absently if he was turning blue.

Dad was shushing Sam, trying to calm him, and Dean heard again the crunch of footsteps behind him. The shadow, impossibly tall, loomed over him. He wanted to look, he turned to do so, but his eyes were watering and he couldn’t see anything, nothing but vague impressions of snow and shadow.

“Get away from him,” Sam shouted and as Dad yelled “No, Sam!” Sam pulled back on the shotgun and let loose with another round of salt. It cleared Dean and hit nothing, though the shadow wailed.

It was the most terrible sound Dean had ever heard, full of anger, confusion, and, most of all fear. As if it had seen the most terrible things that could ever be seen. As if had done the most terrible things that could ever be done. It wailed, loud and long, as it retreated and ran back up the mountain. Into the darkness.

Dean watched it go, feeling horrified and frightened himself, feeling strangely like he just wanted to curl in upon himself and cry until he had nothing left, though he didn’t understand why. He pulled a shaking breath into his lungs instead and, when he met with minor success, he did it again, breathing until he was almost dizzy from it.

To his astonishment, Sam was on the move, his mouth pressed into a tight line as he cocked the shotgun again and moved as if he meant to chase the shadow back up the mountain.

“No!” Dad shouted again and he grabbed hold of Sam, wrenching the shotgun out of his hands and holding tightly to him as Sam fought. As he cursed and kicked and shouted into the night.

“I have to know!”

“No you don’t,” Dad insisted. “Damn it all, Sam, let it be. It’s not the right time and you let it go. Do you hear me? Let it go!”

Sam wailed incoherently and he struggled against Dad’s hold until he grew tired of it, until he stood limp and despondent in his grasp. He stared beyond Dean into the darkness. “I have to know why,” he said dully.

“No, you don’t,” Dad said again sternly.

Sam sniffled as he hung in Dad’s firm grasp, but nodded once. “Dean needs to go to bed,” he said finally, his voice small, petulant and terribly afraid.

Dean got himself to his feet at the sound in his brother’s voice and made his way to them. “You got that right, Sammy,” he wheezed. “Can we go?” he said, looking at his father and suddenly feeling as young as his brother. “Please?”

Dad nodded and they set off, Sam firmly in his grasp and Dean keeping pace as best as he could. Sam sad nothing, kept his head down, kept sniffling quietly as if he was on the verge of a breakdown. He was, Dean noted, holding just as tightly to their father as he was to him and Dean was stricken with the thought that if he had been a little smaller and Dad a little stronger, that Sam might not have resisted if Dad had picked him up and carried him the rest of the way down, despite how hard he had fought to chase the monster back into the night.

**

September 2010

Dean stood, alert and scared shitless with an emotion he refused to name as the burning shadow worked loose of the darkness and crept towards him with crunching steps. It was tall, insubstantial, and it reeked of brimstone, lightning, and queerly smelling blood. Of things Dean had no name for. Misery, loneliness and the same sense of things great and terrible rolled off of it and, where as Dean had felt afraid of the looming shadow before, he was racked with pity now. With sorrow and guilt and that one thing he was near afraid to put name to: hope.

“Right time?” the insubstantial thing queried, sounding achingly weary.

“Yes,” Dean whispered. “It’s the right time.”

It walked towards him with long strides, footfalls sounding on the wet leaves and dry twigs, as the shadow started to fall away, as it finally knew shape and face and form.

Dean reached for it, reached for the body trying to rid itself of clinging shadow. His fingers brushed fabric, his hands felt flesh and bone beneath. Dean locked his fingers around solid arms and pulled, wrenching the man, for it was a man, from the shadows that had held him hostage for so long. When he had him, when the shadow fell away and dropped to the ground like discarded silk, Dean pulled him carefully, gently to him.

“Sam.”

**

December 1997

Dean was in a drug induced stupor, struggling against the cozy pull of pain meds and Codeine that urged him to sleep, to forget about what it was that had woken him. He sat up, wavering in bed and momentarily confused by his inability to move his left arm. He tried again and then felt a little silly as he remembered that it was bound to his chest. He shrugged with his good arm and blinked into the gloom of a room with shades drawn tight against the afternoon sun. He was unable to make out more than the blurred shapes of his father and his brother in bed next to him. He remembered Dad checking them both over, remembered the hot shower and the seemingly endless line of things he’d been told to swallow and drink.

But he didn’t remember Dad putting Sam to bed with him and he sure as hell didn’t remember Dad joining them, though the bed was big enough to easily hold them all. Dad was there now, trying to quiet Sam as he shook. He sat with one leg curled up on the bed, the other on the floor and with his large hands on either side of Sam’s face. His head was bowed, his forehead to Sammy’s as he whispered to him. Sam held onto large fistfuls of Dad’s shirt, tears shining down his face. He clung to him. Sam, who had wanted to run back up the mountain, Sam who had resisted and bitched and pushed back against their father for the past few months, clung to him in desperate fear.

Dean tried to make sense of it, tried to get his head clear of the woolen mental fog as he watched them – Dad gentle and patient and Sam desperate for him to reassure him, to chase the nightmare away. It hurt to watch.

“It was me,” Sam cried, his voice thin and shaking. “It was me.”

“Shh, Sammy. It was a dream,” Dad soothed. “It was just a dream.”

“It wasn’t,” Sam told him. “I saw it, Dad. I saw it and it was me.”

As Dean fell back against the bed, finally succumbing to the pull of drugs and unable to make any sense of what was happening, he heard Dad whisper, very quietly, to Sam.

“Let it go, Sam. It was just shadow. Shh, it was just shadow.”

Epilogue
from John Winchester’s journal
Arkansas 1997 – it called me Dad.