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minervacat at 12:06pm on 07/06/2006 under fic:supernatural
minervacat at 12:06pm on 07/06/2006 under fic:supernaturalback to part one
A mile from Harper's Crossing, the wind started to blow harder, kicking up clouds of dust on the road and flipping the leaves on the trees upside down, showing their undersides to the world. "Thunderstorm," Sam said. "Natural, you think?"
Dean peered at the horizon, still blue, but with the dark clouds chasing it down. "Looks like," he said. "Moving natural, at least. Goddamned fucking South, the weather's never predictable in April." Before he could say anything else, a clap of thunder crashed down around and the skies opened up.
"Shit," Sam said.
"Yeah," Dean said.
They worked fast, Sam pushing dripping hair out of his eyes every couple of steps. "You should get a hair cut," Dean said.
"Shut up," Sam said.
The graveyard dirt stuck to their hands, and even with a plastic garbage bag tossed over the paper bag full of dirt, it still clumped in the rain and clung to their hands as they spread it over the ground. "This is disgusting," Sam said.
"Life's messy, Sammy," Dean said. "Get over it."
The rain had slowed by the time Sam started pouring holy water overtop the graveyard dirt, but the humidity had crawled up to unbearable levels. The ground was steaming, clouds of wet heat puffing up and turning the entire clearing into something even more eerie than it normally was. It was dark by the time Sam finished, and there was no way to tell if the ground was wet from holy water or rain or settling clouds of steam.
They had just finished spreading the dirt when Sam shoved his hand into his jacket and pulled out a handful of okra. "Goddamnit, what're you going to do with that?" Dean said.
"It's got seeds, right?" Sam said, snapping a pod open and showing Dean. "Thought we could plant it. I thought maybe it would help, if we got the spirit out of here, to make stuff grow again."
"That's the dumbest fucking idea I ever heard," Dean said. "But at least it'll get it out of my car, I guess."
They snapped the pods in half, pressed the seeds into their hands and sprinkling them into the dirt at the center of the circle. "I never had an urge to be a gardener," Dean complained. "It's why I'm in the hunting business, nobody asks me to plant anything more than salt."
By the time they finished with the okra, the clouds overheard were rolling, thick and black, and gave no clues away about the rise of the moon or the setting of the sun. "Time is it?" Dean asked, and Sam shrugged.
"Watch gets in the way when I aim," Sam said. "Before sunset, though, there's still birds."
"Yeah," Dean said. "Okay." Too wet to build a fire, they settled at the edge of the circle, the toes of Sam's boots grazing the damp graveyard dirt - mud, now, it was a circle full of graveyard mud - and waited.
"Is it just me, or do we spend a whole lot of our life just waiting," Sam said.
Dean was wet and cold and cranky, and he was starting to think that the shadow they'd seen the night before was nothing more than a scared rabbit magnified by the ghosts of legend and word-of-mouth. The sun had set, though, or it would have if they could have seen it, because the birds had stopped singing what felt like hours ago. "Shut up," he said. "Better to spend your life waiting than to end up dead, you hear me?"
"Yes, Dad," Sam said.
Dean was getting ready to smack Sam upside the head, except that something moved in his peripheral vision, on his left, and Sam started to move, too, cocking his shotgun and inching over the line that divided the relatively healthy scrub grass from the barren spread of graveyard mud and holy water mixed with rain. Whatever was out there, it was nothing more than a black shadow skirting the edge of the circle - it could be anything.
But where Sam said that the shadow had streaked across the center of the Devil's circle the night before, tonight it lurked at the edges. The rain picked up again, cold streaks against the back of Dean's neck, but the clouds cleared despite the downpour. The moon, just past full, heavy and shining gold instead of silver, hit the edge of the clearing and Dean couldn't see a thing, couldn't see a single detail except that there was a shadow.
"Damn, Sammy," Dean said. "Sorry. Guess you were right. Shit."
But he could see the shadow try to creep across the circle, could see the moon light a trail of dirt pushed out of shape in the circle, could see steam rising from the edges of that displaced dirt.
He waited for Sam to take the point, dropping behind Sam into the six spot. Dean heard Sam say, "Oh, yeah, come and get it," under his breath, and the mud squelched under Sam's boots as he shifted another foot forward.
The shadow hovered at the edge of the circle.
"Hey," Dean said, casting his voice towards the shadow. "We get it, okay, we get it? Building on your ground, and maybe this isn't your godforsaken crop circle, but it's your land. You get out of here, whatever or whoever you are, and we'll do our part."
Sam turned and glared at him. Dean shrugged, and the shadow slipped forward, a visible trail of footprints following behind it, steam and the smell of burning sulfur hissing up from the ground. "So talking it down didn't work," Dean said, watching the movement - five footprints a slow advance, and still ten feet from where they stood. Maybe it wouldn't cross the circle tonight, but it might tomorrow, except Dean'd be damned if it would ever cross the circle again. "Shoot it."
"Talking the Devil down never works," Sam said.
The shotgun blast split the silence with a deafening crash, almost like thunder overhead, and the spray of salt was visible in between the sheets of rain. Dean had heard a hundred thousand different unearthly howls, the death throes of a dozen creatures that would kill him in his sleep, and this one sounded no different than any other. The sulfur smell got stronger, the shadow twitched and steamed.
Just another night's work, and Sam, finished reloading, fired another shot. The shadow shrieked and flew apart, the steam kept rising, and the rain trailed off.
The moon slipped behind another cloud, and if Sam hadn't been breathing like he'd just run a marathon (or had a really good fuck), Dean wouldn't have had any idea where he was.
"You okay, Sammy?"
"Yeah," Sam said, and stepped back, the line of his profile resolving out of the darkness, eyes fixed on the spot where the demon - or the ghost or whatever the hell it had been, Dean knows that rock salt offs almost everything, when you double it up with holy water and graveyard dirt - had dissolved. "All in a night's work."
Chuck must have known more about hunting than he'd let on, because there was a gas can, full, sitting on the porch of Jimmy's cabin, and the rooms were entirely empty. "It's all wood," Dean said. "Get the floors, bust a couple of back windows, and see if you can find any empty bottles."
Sam turned, hand on the gas can, and looked like he was going to ask a question before his face resolved into an answer. "Right, cocktails, toss them through the windows," he said. "Okay."
"You never miss a trick, Sammy," Dean said.
"Yeah, and you said this would be an easy sit on our ass job for three days," Sam snapped. "Like you're the authority on everything these days."
"Dump the damn gas," Dean said.
Sam stomped up the stairs, can swinging loosely from his fingers, and not two minutes later, Dean could smell the gas rising up as Sam passed through the rooms. A shatter of glass, the gas got stronger, and then Sam stumbled out the front door. He doused the front porch and scrambled down the stairs, back to Dean, and reached into the pocket of his jacket. "No bottles," he said, shoving a box of kitchen matches into Dean's hand.
"We'll just light the whole damn box," Dean said.
A box of kitchen matches went up faster than a normal person could probably imagine, and Dean almost didn't get it out of his hand before he caught on fire, too. Toss a match into a puddle of gasoline, and it doesn't actually got straight up in flames, like it did in movies - gasoline was as wet as it was flammable, and a single cardboard match will flame out before it flames up. Soak a wooden cabin in an entire can of gas and toss in a whole box of matches, and the thing went up like - well, like a tinderbox.
They watched it start to burn, just to make sure it was going to take (when Dean was 16 and Sam was 12, Dad tried to send up a warehouse infested with a pack of spider demons, the fire guttered out before it took, and six more people ended up dead), and the sky was clear when they hiked the half mile back to the car.
Dean was tired, way more tired than he thought this trip would make him, and Sam was walking next to him like he was an old man. It was still dark, and when Dean checked his phone, it was barely past midnight. "Get out of here tonight?" he asked.
"Yeah," Sam said. "Never want to stay at the scene of an arson, right?"
They checked out of their place and drove down to the coast, after, because they were headed aimlessly toward Atlanta and Dean was fucking tired of I-95. Siler City to Wilmington, 64 to 70 to 17, and Dean still always thought of everything in terms of the numbers needed to get where he was going. The sun was rising behind them when they sat down to a table at another roadside breakfast shack looking out over salt marsh and open water, and even at 6 AM, the beer he ordered tasted sweet and cold against the back of Dean's throat.
Sam leaned back in his chair, haloed by the sunrise, and snagged the USA Today on the table behind them. They both learned a long time ago that you didn't read the front page when you were looking for anything supernatural, and Sam flipped to the second page and started scanning.
Dean was tipping the bottle back as far as it would go when Sam looked up and said, "Hear from Dad?"
"Sammy," Dean said.
"Yeah?" Sam said, head already back in the newspaper.
"The last two days, you ever been further than 25 feet from me?"
"No," Sam said. "Why? Oh. Okay."
"North or south, do you think?"
Sam folded the paper back to the third page and tapped a finger on a two-column photo. "Unsolved grave robberies at St. Bonaventure in Savannah," he said.
"South, then," Dean said.
"Guess so," Sam said.
The sun rose over the Atlantic, and Dean ordered a second beer. All in a night's work.
*
author's notes:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
insidian, as always, held my hand all the way through this one, read two drafts, and betaed the hell out of this. at the beginning of april, when i turned to the girls at the beach and said, "i want a legend local to north carolina for a supernatural story," resmin said, "oh, the devil's tramping ground". it's a real place - as are siler city, harper's crossing, wilmington and st. bonaventure cemetery in savannah, georgia - though i don't think anyone's ever died at the tramping grounds; i made that part up. you can read about the devil's tramping ground here and raleigh's lost colony here. i owe a great debt to john harden and his book the devil's tramping ground and other nc mysteries for providing scenic details, as well as several back issues of the north carolina journal of folklore. title from mike garrigan, "maybe i'm wrong".
A mile from Harper's Crossing, the wind started to blow harder, kicking up clouds of dust on the road and flipping the leaves on the trees upside down, showing their undersides to the world. "Thunderstorm," Sam said. "Natural, you think?"
Dean peered at the horizon, still blue, but with the dark clouds chasing it down. "Looks like," he said. "Moving natural, at least. Goddamned fucking South, the weather's never predictable in April." Before he could say anything else, a clap of thunder crashed down around and the skies opened up.
"Shit," Sam said.
"Yeah," Dean said.
They worked fast, Sam pushing dripping hair out of his eyes every couple of steps. "You should get a hair cut," Dean said.
"Shut up," Sam said.
The graveyard dirt stuck to their hands, and even with a plastic garbage bag tossed over the paper bag full of dirt, it still clumped in the rain and clung to their hands as they spread it over the ground. "This is disgusting," Sam said.
"Life's messy, Sammy," Dean said. "Get over it."
The rain had slowed by the time Sam started pouring holy water overtop the graveyard dirt, but the humidity had crawled up to unbearable levels. The ground was steaming, clouds of wet heat puffing up and turning the entire clearing into something even more eerie than it normally was. It was dark by the time Sam finished, and there was no way to tell if the ground was wet from holy water or rain or settling clouds of steam.
They had just finished spreading the dirt when Sam shoved his hand into his jacket and pulled out a handful of okra. "Goddamnit, what're you going to do with that?" Dean said.
"It's got seeds, right?" Sam said, snapping a pod open and showing Dean. "Thought we could plant it. I thought maybe it would help, if we got the spirit out of here, to make stuff grow again."
"That's the dumbest fucking idea I ever heard," Dean said. "But at least it'll get it out of my car, I guess."
They snapped the pods in half, pressed the seeds into their hands and sprinkling them into the dirt at the center of the circle. "I never had an urge to be a gardener," Dean complained. "It's why I'm in the hunting business, nobody asks me to plant anything more than salt."
By the time they finished with the okra, the clouds overheard were rolling, thick and black, and gave no clues away about the rise of the moon or the setting of the sun. "Time is it?" Dean asked, and Sam shrugged.
"Watch gets in the way when I aim," Sam said. "Before sunset, though, there's still birds."
"Yeah," Dean said. "Okay." Too wet to build a fire, they settled at the edge of the circle, the toes of Sam's boots grazing the damp graveyard dirt - mud, now, it was a circle full of graveyard mud - and waited.
"Is it just me, or do we spend a whole lot of our life just waiting," Sam said.
Dean was wet and cold and cranky, and he was starting to think that the shadow they'd seen the night before was nothing more than a scared rabbit magnified by the ghosts of legend and word-of-mouth. The sun had set, though, or it would have if they could have seen it, because the birds had stopped singing what felt like hours ago. "Shut up," he said. "Better to spend your life waiting than to end up dead, you hear me?"
"Yes, Dad," Sam said.
Dean was getting ready to smack Sam upside the head, except that something moved in his peripheral vision, on his left, and Sam started to move, too, cocking his shotgun and inching over the line that divided the relatively healthy scrub grass from the barren spread of graveyard mud and holy water mixed with rain. Whatever was out there, it was nothing more than a black shadow skirting the edge of the circle - it could be anything.
But where Sam said that the shadow had streaked across the center of the Devil's circle the night before, tonight it lurked at the edges. The rain picked up again, cold streaks against the back of Dean's neck, but the clouds cleared despite the downpour. The moon, just past full, heavy and shining gold instead of silver, hit the edge of the clearing and Dean couldn't see a thing, couldn't see a single detail except that there was a shadow.
"Damn, Sammy," Dean said. "Sorry. Guess you were right. Shit."
But he could see the shadow try to creep across the circle, could see the moon light a trail of dirt pushed out of shape in the circle, could see steam rising from the edges of that displaced dirt.
He waited for Sam to take the point, dropping behind Sam into the six spot. Dean heard Sam say, "Oh, yeah, come and get it," under his breath, and the mud squelched under Sam's boots as he shifted another foot forward.
The shadow hovered at the edge of the circle.
"Hey," Dean said, casting his voice towards the shadow. "We get it, okay, we get it? Building on your ground, and maybe this isn't your godforsaken crop circle, but it's your land. You get out of here, whatever or whoever you are, and we'll do our part."
Sam turned and glared at him. Dean shrugged, and the shadow slipped forward, a visible trail of footprints following behind it, steam and the smell of burning sulfur hissing up from the ground. "So talking it down didn't work," Dean said, watching the movement - five footprints a slow advance, and still ten feet from where they stood. Maybe it wouldn't cross the circle tonight, but it might tomorrow, except Dean'd be damned if it would ever cross the circle again. "Shoot it."
"Talking the Devil down never works," Sam said.
The shotgun blast split the silence with a deafening crash, almost like thunder overhead, and the spray of salt was visible in between the sheets of rain. Dean had heard a hundred thousand different unearthly howls, the death throes of a dozen creatures that would kill him in his sleep, and this one sounded no different than any other. The sulfur smell got stronger, the shadow twitched and steamed.
Just another night's work, and Sam, finished reloading, fired another shot. The shadow shrieked and flew apart, the steam kept rising, and the rain trailed off.
The moon slipped behind another cloud, and if Sam hadn't been breathing like he'd just run a marathon (or had a really good fuck), Dean wouldn't have had any idea where he was.
"You okay, Sammy?"
"Yeah," Sam said, and stepped back, the line of his profile resolving out of the darkness, eyes fixed on the spot where the demon - or the ghost or whatever the hell it had been, Dean knows that rock salt offs almost everything, when you double it up with holy water and graveyard dirt - had dissolved. "All in a night's work."
Chuck must have known more about hunting than he'd let on, because there was a gas can, full, sitting on the porch of Jimmy's cabin, and the rooms were entirely empty. "It's all wood," Dean said. "Get the floors, bust a couple of back windows, and see if you can find any empty bottles."
Sam turned, hand on the gas can, and looked like he was going to ask a question before his face resolved into an answer. "Right, cocktails, toss them through the windows," he said. "Okay."
"You never miss a trick, Sammy," Dean said.
"Yeah, and you said this would be an easy sit on our ass job for three days," Sam snapped. "Like you're the authority on everything these days."
"Dump the damn gas," Dean said.
Sam stomped up the stairs, can swinging loosely from his fingers, and not two minutes later, Dean could smell the gas rising up as Sam passed through the rooms. A shatter of glass, the gas got stronger, and then Sam stumbled out the front door. He doused the front porch and scrambled down the stairs, back to Dean, and reached into the pocket of his jacket. "No bottles," he said, shoving a box of kitchen matches into Dean's hand.
"We'll just light the whole damn box," Dean said.
A box of kitchen matches went up faster than a normal person could probably imagine, and Dean almost didn't get it out of his hand before he caught on fire, too. Toss a match into a puddle of gasoline, and it doesn't actually got straight up in flames, like it did in movies - gasoline was as wet as it was flammable, and a single cardboard match will flame out before it flames up. Soak a wooden cabin in an entire can of gas and toss in a whole box of matches, and the thing went up like - well, like a tinderbox.
They watched it start to burn, just to make sure it was going to take (when Dean was 16 and Sam was 12, Dad tried to send up a warehouse infested with a pack of spider demons, the fire guttered out before it took, and six more people ended up dead), and the sky was clear when they hiked the half mile back to the car.
Dean was tired, way more tired than he thought this trip would make him, and Sam was walking next to him like he was an old man. It was still dark, and when Dean checked his phone, it was barely past midnight. "Get out of here tonight?" he asked.
"Yeah," Sam said. "Never want to stay at the scene of an arson, right?"
They checked out of their place and drove down to the coast, after, because they were headed aimlessly toward Atlanta and Dean was fucking tired of I-95. Siler City to Wilmington, 64 to 70 to 17, and Dean still always thought of everything in terms of the numbers needed to get where he was going. The sun was rising behind them when they sat down to a table at another roadside breakfast shack looking out over salt marsh and open water, and even at 6 AM, the beer he ordered tasted sweet and cold against the back of Dean's throat.
Sam leaned back in his chair, haloed by the sunrise, and snagged the USA Today on the table behind them. They both learned a long time ago that you didn't read the front page when you were looking for anything supernatural, and Sam flipped to the second page and started scanning.
Dean was tipping the bottle back as far as it would go when Sam looked up and said, "Hear from Dad?"
"Sammy," Dean said.
"Yeah?" Sam said, head already back in the newspaper.
"The last two days, you ever been further than 25 feet from me?"
"No," Sam said. "Why? Oh. Okay."
"North or south, do you think?"
Sam folded the paper back to the third page and tapped a finger on a two-column photo. "Unsolved grave robberies at St. Bonaventure in Savannah," he said.
"South, then," Dean said.
"Guess so," Sam said.
The sun rose over the Atlantic, and Dean ordered a second beer. All in a night's work.
author's notes:
insidian, as always, held my hand all the way through this one, read two drafts, and betaed the hell out of this. at the beginning of april, when i turned to the girls at the beach and said, "i want a legend local to north carolina for a supernatural story," resmin said, "oh, the devil's tramping ground". it's a real place - as are siler city, harper's crossing, wilmington and st. bonaventure cemetery in savannah, georgia - though i don't think anyone's ever died at the tramping grounds; i made that part up. you can read about the devil's tramping ground here and raleigh's lost colony here. i owe a great debt to john harden and his book the devil's tramping ground and other nc mysteries for providing scenic details, as well as several back issues of the north carolina journal of folklore. title from mike garrigan, "maybe i'm wrong".
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