by David Reed
I shouldn’t have doubted him.
It took him a few days, but Bobby showed. While the lady was forcing me to relive the tenth grade, Bobby smashed through the hotel room door. He blasted her with rock-salt before she’d even turned around. Black blood sprayed on the tacky star wallpaper—kind of an improvement, really. Didn’t drop the shrew, though, she came right back at him. Another shell straight to her gut and she doubled over. Bobby got to Sammy first, untied him, then came for me.
Three on one, it was a pretty even fight. We had her cornered, Bobby pulled a silver knife from his jacket, took a couple swipes, then fell over, having a seizure. Then Sammy fell over, too. When Sam looked up at me, it was like he didn’t even recognize me. A blank stare.
My whole life flashed through my head—every kick, every kiss, every monster, and every bacon cheeseburger. All of them felt totally real, as if I was experiencing every flavor I ever tasted at the same time. And man, they tasted funny together.
I had to fight through it to get back on my feet. The woman was straining, holding out her hands at me and Sammy. Bobby was back on his feet as well, struggling to move towards her. I fell back to the floor, totally useless. Imagine feeling every emotion you’ve ever felt, simultaneously. I didn’t know whether to cry, laugh, or puke, but I came close to doing all three. When I looked back up, Bobby had his knife to her neck. She was talking, but all I could hear were the voices in my head—my dad’s voice, Sam’s voice, my mom’s voice, telling me that angels were watching over me. . . .
It stopped fast, like a faucet was turned off. I wiped the tears off my cheeks in the manliest way possible, then saw that she and Bobby were still facing off. His knife and her hand both raised.
“Who are you?” he asked.
She smiled at him, in that totally creepy way that monsters do. “Oblivion. Lethe. The Great River,” she said back, and this is verbatim ’cause I couldn’t make this crap up.
Bobby shook his head. “Not familiar.”
You know what else is chatty, besides Bobby? Monsters. They love to tell you their story and blather on about how terrible their lives are, what a burden they bear, yada yada yada. This one was no different.
See, Oblivion, aka Lethe, aka crazy shrew, was a high-level goddess in Greek mythology. Her job? Wiping people’s memories, which, I know, is a huge shock. She liked her job and was apparently really good at it. She dug the, I don’t know, taste of the memories she’d take.
Bobby has a picture of her in one of his books, but it don’t do her justice:
Oblivion got her orders from the men upstairs, and it’d worked that way since Adam and Eve were playing “hide the kielbasa” in the Garden of Eden. People see things they’re not supposed to see every day, and she was the one who would swoop in and remove those memories. Like a celestial housekeeper. Except a recession had hit in heaven, and she was laid off. We’d averted the Apocalypse, and the great heavenly plan had been tossed out. Just like the Fates, Oblivion’s services were no longer needed. Team Free Will, baby.
But Oblivion, she enjoyed her job too much to give it up. Like one of those accountants who retires but still does people’s taxes for fun. There was no order from heaven for her to take our memories. No plan. She said if angels like Balthazar could run around doing whatever the hell they wanted, then she was gonna do the same thing.
Bobby asked her what she wanted from us, and she told him the honest truth. One memory, that’s all. One of Bobby’s memories. She could smell it from across the state, and used the banshee as a way to lure us in. Sammy and me, we were just collateral damage.
I asked what was wrong with my memories. I mean, what am I, chopped liver? What she said will stay with me for the rest of my life. She said she’d sampled all of our goods, and even with everything me and Sam had been through, Bobby’d still had it worse. He’d been forced to kill his own wife, twice, and bury nearly every friend he’d ever had. He’d seen enough terrible things for a hundred lifetimes. And despite all that baggage, deep inside him, he was hiding a single, perfect memory. A moment of . . . bliss, I guess. That is what she wanted. That flawless moment.
But it was hidden too well for her to find. She’d been trying to draw it out, but it was under layers of pure suffering that she couldn’t get through. That’s why she needed him to come back to Ashland, and why she’d been using her psychic connection to Bobby to send him clues—images of her, of me, of what went down with the banshee, returning just enough of his memories so that he’d find his way back to her. She wanted to bargain.
That one memory for all of our lives. Knowing Bobby, I thought he’d say yes right away. Never met someone so prone to self-sacrifice. But I hoped he wouldn’t. He had something in there that was rare, like one in a million, she said. If I had that, I’d keep it hidden, too. But if he refused her offer, she’d suck out what she could from our heads and leave us to die as vegetables.
Bobby, bless his surly heart, said no. Told her to eat a bag of dicks. Said he was through making deals with the likes of her. He knew exactly what memory she was talking about, and he’d rather die than give it up. He was being a little cavalier with me and Sam’s lives, but I dug his attitude.
Oblivion knew his blind spot, though. Karen. Apparently, Bobby’d realized he was losing his memories while he was driving home to Sioux Falls. He was so scared of losing his memories of Karen that he carved her name in his car’s windshield at a rest stop along the way. Oblivion watched through her psychic connection as Bobby wrote down the story of her death and saw that set him on his path to being a hunter. If he cared for her so much, how would he feel if she never knew he existed? Oblivion had a pass-card for the pearly gates of heaven. Some of the people she wiped were already dead—in Greek mythology, the river Lethe was where souls went to be wiped clean before they were reincarnated—so she could find Karen in heaven and steal all of her memories of Bobby. If they ever got to meet again, Bobby’d still love her, but she wouldn’t even know his name.
“So, what’ll it be?” she said. “Will you give up the memory for Karen?”
To Bobby, it wasn’t even a choice. He said yes.
. . . . .
Oblivion put her hands on Bobby’s face. He was sitting in a chair, she stood over him. Once she had the memory, she’d let us go, she said. I’ve met enough monsters to know that once they’ve tasted the chum in the water, they never let you go. She’d take Bobby’s perfect memory, then the rest of him, then me, then Sam. We had to fight back.
Bobby said he was ready, leaned back in the chair. Closed his eyes, concentrating. It was time to do . . . something.
Sometimes, when I’m in a really stressful situation, I think of this hilarious picture of Sammy from when he was two years old. He’s buck naked and playing air guitar to Zeppelin’s “Kashmir.” That was before he decided to hate good music. I have no idea why it always pops into my head, but it takes the edge off. I was about to watch my friend get lobotomized, and what do you know, there was Sammy, riffing on his air guitar.
The damnedest thing happened. Oblivion laughed.
The connection between us was still active. Everything I remembered, she remembered. Finally, I had a weapon.
I pictured Alastair, branding me with a scorching hot piece of iron. Rusty hooks, being driven through my skin. Boiling water, being poured down my throat.
Oblivion flinched, pulled away from Bobby. Confused.
A scalpel, zippering open the flesh on my chest. A nail, being driven through my hands. A needle, digging into my eye. It was hell, literally. I was reliving my time in hell.
Oblivion snarled, wracked with pain.
“Sam, use hell,” I said. “Think about hell.” He only remembered a few seconds of his time in the Pit, but it was with Lucifer himself—a few seconds was more than enough.
Sam nodded, concentrated—I was worried he’d have a seizure, like he did the last time he remembered his time in hell, but that’d be better than us all getting our brains sucked
out.
Oblivion reached her hand out at me, but I just kept thinking about hell. Picturing years worth of torture, at the hands of a demon who knew what he was doing.
Then, my mother. Mary Winchester, smiling at me. Oblivion was putting the image in my head, and I had to fight it. I had to replace it with something terrible.
Bobby stood, one of Oblivion’s hands still on his face. Grabbed her hand.
I thought about losing my dad. Getting torn up by the hellhounds. Watching Sam die by Jake’s hand.
A knife. Bobby had a knife in his hand. Oblivion screamed.
I watched the fire burning down our house in Lawrence. Burning up my mom’s body. I watched Sam fall into hell.
A flash of silver. Bobby stabbed the knife into Oblivion’s chest. She fell back, a burst of white light flying out of her mouth. Into me, into Sam, into Bobby, and a thousand more directions. Our memories, put back right where she took them from.
We were all quiet for a second. Not sure if that’d really just happened. Then Bobby went to our duffel bag, pulled out a machete. Started hacking into Oblivion’s body.
I asked him what he was doing.
He smiled at me, like he was remembering something hilarious. He said, “It ain’t dead till it’s in five pieces.”
The Hidden Memory
HEY. DEAN AGAIN. I owe you some more explanations.
We’re all back in Sioux Falls, now, looking for our next case. I found this stack of papers in the trash, read through them. Had no idea Bobby’d been through so much, or how close we all came to losing on this one.
Bobby didn’t want to finish this book. Said he didn’t have anything else to add. I told him that it was too important to throw away. Some day, we’ll all get put in the ground, and somebody is gonna need to pick things up where we left off. That he owed it to himself to put an ending on this story, to leave something behind. He told me to do it myself, so here we are.
I told you what happened with Oblivion. But there’s a missing piece. After we bailed on the Starry Night Inn, I asked Bobby about the memory. What it was that Oblivion wanted so bad. He just harumphed and got in his van, drove off.
There are clues, though. You read what he wrote, right? The man is a curmudgeon on the outside, but downright obsessed with family. That’s why he was always tough on my old man, because my dad had what Bobby wanted—kids.
Then there’s the list of names, couple chapters back. Made me think—what if those were the names he was gonna use for his kids, if he ever had them?
I think Bobby’s been holding on to a memory for years, one that tears him up inside, but is too important to let go of. Hear me out on this—I think that Bobby was going to be a father. That Karen was pregnant when she died, and the memory he’s been carting around, it’s of her telling him. I have no way to prove it, but there it is. She told Bobby he was going to be a dad, and a few weeks later he had to kill her. A perfect memory, surrounded by misery, grief, and regret. Maybe his last good memory of Karen, the one love of his life.
But, end of the day, it’s Bobby’s memory. The good thing about memories is that they’re private. Can’t be taken or traded or stolen (most of the time). So I’m done asking about it. If he ever wants to share, he knows my number.
Me and Bobby, we’ve spent the last few days rebuilding his Chevelle. He did the same for me when the Impala was busted up, I figured I owed him one. It’s . . . it kind of reminds me of working with my dad. If Bobby did lose a kid, and I lost a father, well . . . then maybe what we’ve got ain’t a bad substitute. Bobby’s right. Family isn’t just blood.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Eric Kripke, of course, for creating Supernatural and hiring me to work on it, way back in season four, and Sera Gamble for not firing me when she took over the joint. I’d also like to thank Christopher Cerasi and Rebecca Dessertine—without them, I’d be publishing this on Internet message boards right next to pictures of Jared and Jensen with their shirts off. Maybe some of you would have preferred that. Lastly, I’d like to thank my wife, Mairin, and the rest of my family for putting up with me writing when I’m supposed to be watching the baby, cooking, cleaning, exercising, sleeping, and enjoying life.
HarperCollins would also like to thank Ant Diecidue and Mary-Ann Liu for the interior illustrations.
About the Author
DAVID REED works as the script coordinator on Supernatural and wrote the stories for the episodes “Hammer of the Gods” and “You Can’t Handle the Truth,” along with several TV movies and comic books. In his spare time (ha!) he likes to hang out with his wife and son, who are pretty great. He can often be found in front of the television with a death grip on an Xbox 360 controller, or at the L.A. zoo, making animal sounds with (and at) his toddler.
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Also by David Reed
Fiction
SUPERNATURAL: War of the Sons
Copyright
SUPERNATURAL™ BOBBY SINGER’S GUIDE TO HUNTING. Copyright © and ™ 2011 by Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
Cover image courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-06-210337-6 (pbk.)
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780062103383
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