* * *
Of all the recent sales of Larkin land, the two with ongoing construction represented their best chance of discovering the pontianak. Sam asked Castiel to check the Coventry Crossing development, while he and Dean took the farmhouse and barn on the large property adjoining the Stanton Fertility Clinic. Sam figured he and Dean could split up and check the two buildings separately, while the Coventry Crossing development was nearly complete, so Castiel wouldn’t have a large area to cover on his own. With luck, they would either find the pontianak’s resting place or rule out both locations before Chloe or Olivia gave birth. The monster’s connection to both women meant their unborn children would be in danger, through no fault of their own, soon after they came into the world.
Before splitting up to conduct their individual searches, they made a pit stop at On Track Locomotive Repair outside Evansville for a specialty item not sold by the local hardware stores. Then Castiel left for Coventry Crossing, while Sam and Dean drove in the opposite direction to check out the farmland.
The sun dipped below the tree line as Dean drove past a street-level billboard promoting the arrival of the Braden Heights Outlet Mall, COMING TO THIS LOCATION EARLY NEXT YEAR!
“We’re close, Dean,” Sam said. “The east end of the property was sold for the Stanton Fertility Center parking lot expansion. The west end was rezoned for commercial use for those outlet stores.”
Dean nodded, tapped the brake and swung the Impala onto the entrance of the gravel driveway of the old Larkin farm but stopped short. A rusty chain at the foot of the driveway hung between weather-beaten wooden posts on either side, blocking casual access to the property. High grass, a sea of weeds and wildflowers covered most of the land. Up a long, gradual incline, at the crest of a gentle hill, Sam saw the sprawling farmhouse and, beyond that in deeper shadows, the long rectangular shape of the barn. In the dying light, the red paint on the abandoned structures had faded to a rusty brown. At this distance, their lack of structural integrity was suggested rather than confirmed. Far beyond the farmhouse rose the silhouettes of modern buildings bathed in a haze of artificial light cast by office windows and streetlights. Somewhere on the far side of the expansive property, the Stanton Fertility Clinic’s parking lot had already begun to encroach on former Larkin Land.
AC/DC’s “Hells Bells” came on the radio as Sam exited the car to unhook the chain from an eye bolt. No padlock, obviating the need for bolt cutters. The small metal sign nailed to the left post—PRIVATE PROPERTY – NO TRESPASSING—substituted for tighter security. After Sam climbed back in the car, Dean drove up the long driveway, frowning as gravel crunched and popped under the Impala’s tires. Anyone within a few hundred feet would’ve heard their approach.
“So much for the element of surprise.”
At the top of the hill, the gravel driveway transitioned to cracked and crumbling blacktop, with weeds sprouting at every fault. Dean parked between the two dilapidated buildings. At this distance, their lack of structural integrity was no longer a matter of conjecture. Most of the farmhouse windows were shattered, the main door—under a covered porch—hung precariously from one failing hinge, and the roof sported at least two jagged holes. The barn’s long slanted roof sagged past the point of condemnation. Beyond the barn stood the blackened ruin of a grain silo, reduced to a waist-high ring of charred wood. Whether the fire had been the result of a lightning strike, vandalism or arson, a search of what remained required little more than a sweeping glance.
Dean switched off the headlights and killed the engine. “I’ll take the barn.”
“Okay,” Sam said. “I’ve got the farmhouse.”
From the trunk of the Impala, they grabbed flashlights and weapons. Sam picked up a shotgun loaded with rock salt rounds. A deterrent for angry spirits, the rounds forced them to dissipate briefly. He also grabbed an EMF meter.
“Remember,” Dean said and patted his jacket pocket, “she hates pointy things.”
Nodding, Sam also grabbed a hunting knife.
Dean reached further back in the trunk and pulled out a machete, holding it up to examine its edge, then cast a sidelong glance at Sam’s dagger. “Mine’s bigger.”
“Compensating,” Sam replied and turned toward the farmhouse, smiling.
Behind him, Dean slammed the trunk and proceeded toward the barn.
Through the broken windows, Sam saw only darkness inside, no electric or candle light. Not a surprise. Judging from the exterior, he doubted the place had been occupied by anything other than wild animals in at least a decade. He climbed up three wide, creaking and sagging steps onto the covered porch that ran the entire length of the house on the side facing the barn. Originally, four narrow posts supported the porch roof, but the two closest to the door had been split in half with an axe or hatchet. As a result, the middle of the roof had buckled, forcing Sam to duck beneath a hanging brass light fixture.
As a sick joke or an ambiguous warning, someone had nailed the carcass of a raccoon to the front door. This bit of vandalism was recent, judging by the clump of writhing maggots in the animal’s gaping neck wound. The property had probably garnered renewed attention with the posting of the outlet mall billboard.
Even though the strike plate had been kicked out of the doorjamb, Sam reached for the door handle to open the door. As soon as he tugged on the door, the screws on the remaining hinge pulled free of the rotted wood, and the door fell toward him. Jumping back, he whacked his head on the light fixture a moment before the raccoon carcass slipped off its nail and dumped a load of agitated maggots on his boots.
Cursing under his breath, he heaved the door aside. Its weight struck and broke through a section of hand railing, and a whole row of balusters fell like tenpins. He stomped his feet to scatter the maggots.
“Sammy?”
“I’m fine, Dean!” Sam called. Mostly, he thought as he rubbed the growing knot on the back of his head and winced.
He took a deep breath then removed his flashlight from his jacket pocket and shone the beam of light into the interior of the farmhouse. He swept the light across the floor before stepping inside.
As he proceeded through the foyer, into the dining room and through the kitchen, each step was accompanied by a creak of yielding wood. The rooms, with the exception of a round wooden table on its side, held no furniture; the walls were bare, save for a few nails and picture hooks left behind after personal items had been removed. A downstairs bathroom had been gutted, sink ripped from the wall, missing toilet evidenced by a drain hole in the floor. With one fateful step, wood cracked and split beneath him and his boot sank into the jagged hole, momentarily pinning him in place. A startled rat bolted out of the narrow linen closet and ambled past him into the darkness. Another rat surged over the rim of the toilet drain pipe and scampered between Sam’s feet before joining its compatriot. Sam tugged his foot back and forth until it came free.
With his shotgun pinned under one arm, and the flashlight under the other, pointing forward, he took out the EMF meter and checked for any spikes. Nothing. Between the great room and the kitchen, a staircase with a ninety-degree turn led to the second floor. Sam tested each tread on the staircase before committing his weight to it. He avoided the rickety handrail altogether. The landing at the turn of the staircase was split down the middle, so he kept close to the edge as he cautiously continued upstairs.
One by one, he checked the bedrooms, not surprised to find all the furniture gone, along with any personal effects and decorations. The doorjamb on the smallest bedroom had small notches carved in the wood, a testament to a child’s growth over the years, though the identity of that child was lost in time. Again the EMF meter gave no indication of an angry or vengeful spirit on the premises. The flooring by the broken windows, subject to countless rainstorms, seemed especially hazardous. Each time he tried to approach a window to look toward the barn, the creaking of the wood increased in proportion to the sagging he felt beneath his feet. He might not fall through
to the first floor, but he had no desire to risk it.
The ceiling above the hallway featured an abundance of water stains in Rorschachian patterns. Within the ring of stains, a frayed pull cord revealed a set of folding stairs. Though the hinges were rusted and the insubstantial steps creaked under his weight, Sam climbed high enough to shine his flashlight beam around a narrow attic with slanted walls. The beam revealed a freestanding lamp with a broken bulb, an old baby carriage and a moldy child’s car seat in the otherwise empty space. Two unsightly holes in the ceiling accounted for significant water damage to the flooring. Bits of the wood crumbled in Sam’s hands so he decided against walking on the surface. Placing his shotgun on the floor beside his head with the flashlight next to it, Sam performed a quick EMF scan before descending the rickety stairs.
If the pontianak nested or hibernated in the farmhouse, he’d found no evidence to indicate a prolonged presence by anything other than common vermin. Taking as much care descending the stairs as he had on his way up, he reached the ground floor without incident, but as he turned through the great room toward the foyer, the darkness seemed to press in on all sides, overwhelming the now feeble flashlight beam. Probably dying batteries, he thought, but despite evidence to the contrary, he sensed a silent menace nearby.
Outside, he circled the house and found a pair of padlocked cellar doors on the side opposite the barn. One last place to check. But he’d left the bolt cutters in the Impala. Instead of returning to the car, he decided to check the condition of the wooden doors. Gripping a steel handle he tugged and felt some give. Yanking the handle side to side, he needed half a minute to wrench the screws out of the rotted wood. With the handle clear, the chain and padlock hung uselessly to the side. The rusty hinges elicited a squeal as he pulled the doors open. Descending the steep wooden steps, he used the tip of the shotgun to part a thick veil of cobwebs. He stepped down onto a dirt floor and swept the flashlight beam around the confined space. Probably a root cellar, Sam thought. Crude shelving made from untreated wood stood against the side opposite the stairs. The flashlight beam gleamed on fresh spider webs slung between the right angles of the shelving. The remains of a dozen shattered mason jars littered the floor, the shine of glass dulled by a thick coating of dust. In the corner, the flashlight beam revealed an overturned red wheelbarrow, its lone wheel missing.
One last EMF scan, this one underground but with the same negative results. As Sam packed the device away and climbed the wooden stairs to the surface, a fleeting darkness rippled before the framed evening sky above. Then a stiff breeze rattled the open cellar doors and, for a moment, he expected them to slam shut. But the breeze passed, and the brief darkness was probably nothing more than a scudding cloud blotting out the moonlight.
Closing the cellar doors behind him, he walked toward the barn.
* * *
Dean decided to circle the long horse barn before entering. But he’d hardly taken a dozen steps when he heard a crash from the farmhouse. He’d thought that hanging door looked dicey, but Sam said he was okay, so Dean shrugged and continued his search.
Besides wide doors on each of the barn’s narrow ends for leading a horse in and out, and smaller doors on the longer sides, he found several holes in the walls, big enough to allow the passage of small animals, such as groundhogs, foxes, or wild dogs. Some of the holes were the result of wear and rot in addition to accumulated clawing and chewing, while others owed a debt to random acts of vandalism.
Dean entered the narrow passage separating the feed room, tool storage and horse shower on the left, and the tack room on the right. All three rooms had been cleaned out. On the opposite side, he searched the office on the right and the kitchen and break room on the left. The former held a desk with missing drawers and a broken leg, the latter nothing but a bare countertop. Adjacent to the kitchen, the bathroom no longer featured a toilet, but a small sink with rusty, nonfunctioning spigots remained. On either side of the office, kitchen and storage rooms were twenty horse stalls, ten on each side of the wide central passageway. Beside the kitchen, a staircase led up to the open hayloft on one side of the barn, while a crude wooden ladder provided access to the other side.
First Dean checked the horse stalls, each with its own Dutch door. The top halves of the doors had been left open, revealing empty spaces within. He dutifully checked each enclosure for anything other than the bits of trampled hay and petrified droppings revealed by his flashlight. Finally, he climbed the creaky staircase to the loft and walked the length. A few bales of hay remained close to the eaves, but that was all. Next, he climbed the ladder to the opposite loft and found nothing of note, but part of the roof hung dangerously low on that side. He ducked as he proceeded cautiously, worried that at any moment it would all come crashing down on top of him, the feeling reinforced when a strong breeze swept through the barn, rattling loose boards and causing the compromised ceiling to moan above him. He held his breath until the wind eased, realizing he’d been prepared to dive off the edge of the loft at the first sound of cracking wood above him. After a steadying breath, he continued his inspection.
Every footfall was met with the creaking of wood and, as he stepped on one particularly noisy plank, a dozen mice scattered around him in all directions. Otherwise, his visual search had come up empty and the EMF detector had offered no encouragement that he was on the right track. As the minutes ticked by, he’d become convinced they were on a snipe hunt.
Descending the ladder to the barn floor, he swept the flashlight beam around, trying to determine if he’d missed anything. Even though he had no idea about the preferences of a hibernating pontianak, he doubted the drafty barn would make for a comfortable lair.
About to head to the farmhouse to assist Sam, he heard his brother walking down the passage between the feed and tack rooms, flashlight beam flashing back and forth in front of him.
“Dean?”
“Here,” Dean said, walking toward the light.
“Anything?”
“Whole lot of nothing,” Dean said. “You?”
“Same,” Sam said. His flashlight flickered until he whacked his palm against the side. “House, attic, and root cellar cleaned out. What’s left isn’t worth anything. And the whole house is one strong storm away from collapsing.”
Dean told Sam he’d searched all the rooms, empty horse stalls and the loft and found only a few bales of hay and a family of mice. “And some of the stalls—the ones closest to the office and break room—show no signs of use.”
“Makes sense,” Sam said, walking toward the break room entrance beside the stairs. “Keep the horses away from the noise, and the smell away from the office.”
He peeked in the break room, flashlight raised.
“Already checked,” Dean said. “They cleared out all the snacks.”
Sam turned away from the office toward the staircase, its base enclosed on all sides. Running the beam from the top to the bottom, he seemed to look for a door knob or latch. Maybe he thought they used the space for storage. But Dean had checked already and had found no access.
Dean’s phone rang, pulling his attention away from Sam’s poking and prodding. He’d been expecting Castiel to call with an update. Probably more of the same. Convinced they had followed a dead end and prepared to commiserate with the angel about the lost time, he glanced at the number on the phone and didn’t recognize it.
“Agent Banks,” he answered, curious.
At first, he couldn’t make out the voice speaking to him. In the background a woman shrieked in anger, her cries punctuated by intermittent crashing sounds.
“Hello?”
The voice spoke louder, sounded desperate. “Agent Banks, this is Malik! Brianna’s brother. Man, I need your help now! She’s freaking out.”
Another crash sounded, alarmingly close to the speaker.
“Damn! She almost took my head off with that one!” Malik exclaimed. “How soon can you get here?”
“Malik,” Dean said. �
�What the hell is going on?”
“It’s Brianna, man,” Malik said. “She’s gone crazy.”
Dean looked up and Sam was missing.
“Tell me,” Dean said, walking toward the staircase. “What happened?”
“She asked me to check on the baby,” Malik said. “Kiki was sleeping fine. But when I came down, Brianna was waiting for me with a butcher’s knife.”
“What?” Dean asked, stunned.
He saw a flashlight beam darting around the horse stall next to the staircase, so he walked that way. The bottom half of the Dutch door stood ajar and Sam was poking around in the stall, his shotgun leaning against the back wall.
Malik kept talking hastily, rapid-fire sentences to get everything out as quickly as he could while under attack. “Slashed my forearm before I got the knife away from her. Then she collapsed. Like she fainted. Thought she had some kind of seizure. Carried her to the sofa. Checked Kiki. Still asleep. Brianna woke up, seemed fine, couldn’t remember anything. Then—”
“Then what?”
“Bree—stop! Don’t!”
Dean heard glass shattering.
“Just chucked a glass vase at me,” Malik said, breathless.
Sam rapped his knuckles against the near wall of the horse stall. They made a hollow sound. Looking up at Dean he held his hands about twenty inches apart. Dean hadn’t noticed before but the wall between the stall and the staircase seemed thicker than the wall between the other stalls. And now that he examined it closely, the previously unused stall wasn’t as wide as the others.
“Five minutes after she woke up, she tried to claw my eyes out. Minute later, she dropped again. Out cold. And the baby? Still asleep. Can’t wake Kiki up even with all the racket. But Bree wakes up, is chill for about five minutes, then goes ballistic again.”
Sam found a gap between boards, and ran his hand along it down to the floor and back. After a moment, he paused and frowned, reaching for something and pulling. With the creaking protest of a rusty hinge, a tall panel of rotting wood swung inward—a makeshift door—revealing a coal-dark space under the adjoining staircase.
Supernatural--Cold Fire Page 20