The circle in which the insane asylum and then the condos had been built was directly over what used to be Salem Village.
“So Salem Village was torn down?” he called over to the librarian.
“More or less,” she replied, “sure there are some buildings in Salem Town that date back to those days, and that were used during the witch trials, but Salem Village where the actual trials took place, those buildings were mostly demolished and left to rot. The insane asylum was built right tip-top on it.”
“Well ain’t that something.” Dean thanked the woman. Then he remembered something else. “Oh I need to see that Campbell journal again, if I could?”
She led him back to the reading room and produced the box in which Dean had left John’s journal, then left him alone.
Dean pulled the Campbell journal from his jacket and took one last look at it. His family came from a lineage of hunters who had always sacrificed themselves for the good of others. He only wished he could share his discovery with Sam.
He switched out the journals and left the library. But not without pocketing the last couple of pages of the Campbell journal. They were sort of his by rights, anyway.
Dean got back into his stolen car and headed to the Kirkbride Estates. He was going to have to do some real quick thinking since he was without guns or salt. He’d had to abandon his duffle bag when Perry pulled a gun on him back in Rockport.
As Dean pulled into the estate, he noticed something he hadn’t clocked the previous day, when he and Lisa had rescued Ben. A couple of kids were hanging around by the side of one of the buildings. A car approached and slowly came to a stop in front of them. One kid in a baseball cap leaned in through the passenger-side window, and something was passed between the driver and the kid. The kid nodded then went back to his friends. The car pulled away.
These kids were Salem drug dealers. And where there were drugs, there were sure to be guns, Dean mused. Thank God, Perry hadn’t found the wad of cash in his sock. Dean had never bought drugs; they were not something that was really worked with the hunter lifestyle. Hard liquor definitely, but drugs, not so much.
Dean stopped the car, but kept it idling in case he needed to get out quick. He tried his best swagger approaching the group of kids.
“You got a load in your pants, white boy?” one of the kids said.
Dean pushed down his pride.
“Listen man, I need to buy some shit from you.”
The boys laughed.
“You trippin’ if you think we’re going to sell to a plainclothes. Go back to Captain Crunch and tell him he ain’t catching us today,” the first kid said.
“I hate that fat freak,” Dean said. “I’m not working for anyone but myself, and I need some firepower like two minutes ago.”
“Oh yeah?” another one of them spoke up. “What for? Hunting season hasn’t started yet.”
“Listen, I just need a sawed-off and if you have it, a couple pounds of salt, and anything you have that will blow up.”
The kids cracked up in his face.
His patience rapidly running out, Dean approached the closest heckler and elbowed him in the neck. As he fell, Dean pulled him up by the collar then dropped him at his feet. The kid writhed around in pain.
“Hey!” the first kid spoke again. “That some Schwarzenegger shit man. Why you do that to Tiny?”
“Because I’m not kidding and don’t have time for this crap,” Dean ground out. “What do you have? I have money and I need guns.”
“He for real,” a tall kid called from beside Dean’s idling stolen car. “Car’s hot.”
Dean looked back to the group of kids. The first kid stepped forward.
“You can go to prison for that shit you know,” he said.
“I’ve been to Hell. Try again,” Dean said.
“I believe this guy,” the kid said. “Okay, follow me. Just don’t wake up my Grams.”
Dean followed the kid in through a first-floor apartment door. Inside, an older black woman slept on the couch while the TV blared. The kid gestured for Dean to follow him into another room.
“I’m Tim by the way,” the kid said. He laid out two antique guns on his neatly made bed. “I got this and this,” he said, gesturing.
“Hey. I’m Dean. And no offence Tim but those are ancient,” Dean said disappointed. “I thought we were talking like real guns.”
“These are real guns. I only collect classics. This here dates back to the civil war. And this one before that.”
Dean didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead, he shrugged and picked up the guns. He examined them carefully. They seemed like they would do the job. He placed them back on the bed. Dean eyed Tim, and the pristine condition of his bedroom. He noticed a bookshelf was lined with astronomy textbooks.
“You seem like a smart kid,” Dean observed. “Why are you selling guns?”
Tim shrugged. “These are antiques man. I do a lot of research to find good hardware. You won’t need anything else but what you have in your hands.”
Dean reached crouched down and pulled up his jeans, pulling a wad of cash from his sock, along with a credit card. He counted out several notes, shoved the rest back into his sock, then handed the kid the cash and the credit card.
“Take this. It’s hot, but basically untraceable. I think it’s some big agent in Hollywood. Never checks his bills, so feel free to have fun.” He inclined his head toward the textbooks. “Get yourself something worthwhile.”
“Thanks, man,” Tim said, counting the money quickly and easily. He squinted at the credit card. “You can take this too.” He pulled out a small pistol. “I don’t know how much salt my Grams has in the kitchen, but you can just take what you need.”
Dean nodded his thanks, loaded the guns into his pockets and waistband. He then followed the boy into the kitchen where he loaded up on table salt.
Outside Dean offered up his hand to Tim.
“Thanks—you’ve really helped me out.”
“No problem. Hey—what you need the steel for?”
Dean eyed the group of young kids in baggie shorts and big T-shirts. Suddenly they all looked much younger and more vulnerable than they had first appeared. One thing about chasing monsters—makes your average human gang member seem like a pussycat.
“Basically, I think my girlfriend and her kid have been taken by some real bad bitches,” he replied. “And I think it’s all going to go down somewhere around here.”
“No shit. Well you know where to find us,” Tim said. “We just chillin’, so if you need extra bodies—”
Dean nodded in appreciation, then got back into the car and pulled around the corner to the Kirkbride Estates. He sat in the car for a short while, checking his weapons and loading them up. Then he got out and walked around the building.
He spied the parking garage and headed down the ramp. Under the strip lighting, Dean spread out the maps he had taken from the library on the hood of a car. He noticed that the development plans outlined the destruction of a large building in the center of the property, in its place a large swimming pool had been dug. But Dean noticed on the older map of Salem Village the very same space once was a fort built for raids against the Indians. The fort’s outer walls were much larger than the outline of the asylum building or the pool. Dean wondered if the fort somehow still existed.
A loud thump and muffled voices echoed through the parking structure. Sensing trouble, Dean searched the half-empty garage and noticed the steel doors on the other side of the lot. He grabbed the maps, shoving them back inside his jacket, took out the pistol and silently slipped past rows of cars to the doors. Inside he could hear muffled voices.
Dean pushed the steel door open an inch. He stuck the pistol barrel through the opening. The next thing he knew the door was swung open and the butt of a gun cracked his nose with a THWACK! Stars exploded in his eyes and Dean fell onto the cement floor.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Sam and Samuel looked at Dean
passed out at their feet.
“Now what are we supposed to do?” Samuel asked.
“Lisa and Ben are in there somewhere,” Sam said.
“We can’t waltz in there and save them—they’ll shit their pants,” Samuel pointed out.
“I can’t. But you can. They don’t know who you are.”
“Sam, I don’t think you understand the gravity of the issue here. There are—I don’t know how many witches in there, one man can’t do anything. I don’t even know what Dean was thinking. He’d get skinned alive. You can’t let him go in alone.”
Sam looked down at his older brother. Blood trickled from his nose onto the cement.
“We can’t leave him here,” Samuel went on. “They’ll find him. We need to wake him up.”
Two minutes later they had opened up a BMW, hot-wired the engine and placed Dean in the front seat. They set all the air conditioning vents toward his face, and blasted the cold air at him. Sam poured a bottle of water over Dean’s head.
They then retreated back through the steel doors and opened the second door on the other side of the hallway, stepping into a musty-smelling tunnel with a packed dirt floor, and brick archways that reached across the low ceiling. Stale air washed over them from the dark depths further down the tunnel. Samuel pulled a flashlight from his jacket and Sam led with his gun. As they moved forward, the tunnel seemed to drop downhill, deep into the earth. Sam estimated that they were directly underneath the large brick building. He looked at his cell phone, there was absolutely no reception.
They crept forward in the darkness, until around a corner the tunnel opened up into a large underground cavern. Lamps hung from the ceiling and a crowd of witches was gathered in the middle of the space. They all moved with purpose as though each had been assigned a task. They seemed to be constructing something.
Aware of their exposed position, Sam looked round for a better hiding place. He noticed a narrow passageway built into the thick walls that seemed to cut through toward the main cavern. It looked like the vestiges of another old passageway system. Sam and Samuel squeezed through the narrow gap. They shuffled down the tunnel until they came to a small opening cut into the wall which allowed them to see into the large cavern.
“I don’t see Lisa or Ben,” Samuel whispered.
Sam didn’t respond, because he had spotted Prudence. She stood slightly apart from the rest of the witches, who witches were gathered in a circle. A tall woman stood on a platform. She was chanting from a small book.
“That’s it,” Samuel said. “That’s the Necronomicon. We can’t let her get through the entire spell.”
Sam didn’t answer.
“Sam, are you listening?” Samuel hissed.
Sam glared his grandfather.
“Yes, I get it. We can’t let them finish.”
Sam stared at the book in the tall witch’s hands. What he couldn’t tell his grandfather was that he didn’t care. If Lucifer took back control over his body in some ways he would welcome it. When Lucifer was in him, for the couple days before he fell into the pit, Sam had never felt so powerful. Lucifer was so strong that being filled up by him completely obliterated any need to care about or love anything. The feeling of literally being able to rule the world was exquisite. Addictive. No other human being on earth had ever felt what Sam had.
For that reason, in some ways, he would welcome that feeling again. Being squished into a dirt-packed hole underground with his cranky once-dead grandfather, waiting for his heartbroken and desperate brother to come and stop a bunch of witches from resurrecting Lucifer... wasn’t one of Sam’s favorite moments.
Dean awoke wet and cold with his head pounding. He opened his eyes and clocked the unfamiliar dash of an unfamiliar car. There was a knock on the window. Dean turned and looked into the face of an extremely angry-looking man clutching a computer case and a suit jacket.
“Hey you, junkie. Get the hell out of my car,” the man yelled. He wrenched open the door and pulled Dean out of his seat by his collar.
Dean stumbled and fell into the vehicle in the adjacent space.
“I don’t know why management doesn’t take care of the trash like you,” the guy spat. He got into the driver’s seat and slammed his door, then screeched out of the parking lot.
Dean noticed his reflection in the dark window of the mini van he was leaning against. His bruised nose was developing a hideous purplish welt. He had no idea what had happened, but since he was still alive, Dean thought it best to move forward. He checked his guns, they were all still there, still working.
This time, he was slightly more cautious as he pushed open the steel doors. Inside, several cars were parked. Dean instantly recognized Perry’s. He made sure that no one else was hiding in the room, then he passed through the opposite door and into a damp underground tunnel.
The tunnel was dangerous, there was nowhere to hide if anyone approached from behind or in front of him. Only the darkness would obscure him. In the distance he could hear the murmuring of voices. Dean crept forward down the sloping dark tunnel.
After what felt like the length of two football fields, the tunnel turned a corner and Dean smelled smoke and found himself looking into a deep cavern and a crowd of witches all chanting in unison.
The figures, all clad in black, encircled a large bonfire. He could see Connie standing on a platform. She was leading the chant from the Necronomicon. Perry stood to the side. She must have fobbed off the cops and then come straight here, he figured. Lisa and Ben must be somewhere nearby though he couldn’t see them.
The bonfire smoke curled up toward the vaulted stone ceiling. Dean estimated the ceiling was about two stories tall but who knew how far underground they were. It would be pretty impossible to mount a large-scale attack from above. Plus, Dean was pretty sure they were almost directly underneath the large community pool.
He looked around the hallway, which was built large enough for a horse cart. Dean had an idea and ran back up the tunnel.
Inside the smoky cavern Lisa and Ben were shackled to the stone wall. Ben whimpered in fear. Lisa tried to soothe her son, but she could only move her hands enough to touch the tips of Ben’s sweaty fingers.
“Shush, Ben. It’s going to be okay,” Lisa whispered.
“I never should have gotten that second helping of fries. Perry is evil.”
“This isn’t your fault, Ben. None of this is your fault. We’re going to find a way out of this. I promise.”
“How? Where’s Dean?” Ben demanded.
“He’s coming, honey. He’s coming,” Lisa said, hoping that she was right.
* * *
Dean retreated back to the low-ceilinged hallway where Perry’s car was parked. He opened up the back of the car and was relieved to find his duffle. He got out his two sawed-offs, made sure they had real bullets in them and then opened up the steel doors leading back into the parking lot. He hopped into the driver’s seat of Perry’s car, swiftly got the engine going and backed the Escalade into the parking lot. He laid the condo development plans on the seat beside him, tracing the route until he found the building he was looking for.
His headache was receding and he felt a new burst of energy now that he had a plan. Dean accelerated out of the parking lot and headed to the maintenance building. He maneuvered the Escalade up to the garage doors. Inside he found entire barrels of fertilizer, gas and other chemicals—all the gear the maintenance crew needed to keep up the grounds, stacked right up to the ceiling.
Thanking God it wasn’t kill-the-weeds day so the place was deserted, Dean hastened to load the large cans of gas and sacks of fertilizer into the back of the car. Then he swung the car back around and retreated with his bounty back to the parking garage.
Dean drove through the first set of steel doors and then opened up the second set of doors leading to the underground tunnel. Hoping his estimations were correct, he flicked on his headlights, gunned the engine and floored it through the doors.
The t
ires hit the dirt floor of the tunnel and threw the car forward. The tunnel flew by. Dean steeled himself for the turn—the dirt walls didn’t afford him any room for mistakes. Mere seconds flew by. Dean held his breath then cut the wheel.
The back wheels fishtailed, and then bumped the truck forward. Dean gripped the steering wheel, punched the accelerator and bombed into the cavern and straight into the crowd of witches.
He stamped on the brakes before he drove into the bonfire. A cacophony of screaming witches shook the cavern. Dean pulled himself out through the sunroof and stood on top of the car. He started shooting.
The women flew at the car, old and young alike they attacked, lips peeled back as they snarled angrily. Dean blew away body after body.
Constance had stopped chanting and stood on her platform scowling. Three of her burly farm hands approached the car, Dean got one shot off before they grabbed him by the foot and pulled him off the roof. The six-foot drop landed him on his back.
Constance stepped off her platform and walked over to Dean. She towered over him.
“I’m not into this whole two girls one cup angle, could you maybe move?” Dean said.
Constance kicked him in the ribs. Dean rolled over and blood dribbled out of his mouth.
“I don’t find you funny,” she said. “But I’m delighted you’re here. It is very appropriate that a descendant of those who ruined my quest the first time, will be sacrificed when I succeed this time.”
Dean struggled onto all fours, spitting blood, and looked up at Constance.
“I don’t know what kind of junk you’ve been smoking,” he croaked, “but raising Lucifer is just about the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Trust me.”
“I didn’t ask for your opinion. All I need is your blood. Tie him up with the others,” Constance instructed.
Supernatural: One Year Gone Page 22