Supernatural The Unholy Cause

by Joe Schreiber

  “So I’m saying that, barring the existence of a wormhole in the time-space continuum which suddenly switched these replicas with real guns and live ammunition, there’s no way a weapon like the one Dave Wolverton was carrying yesterday could have possibly done anything like this.”

  She opened a drawer in her desk, took out a manila folder and dropped it on the desk, glossy eight-by-tens falling out. Sam picked up the crime-scene photos of a corpse in a Union soldier’s uniform.

  He passed the first print to Dean. Most of the head had been scalloped away just above the neck and was sprayed out around it. In full color, it looked as though somebody had spilled a particularly messy Italian meal across the grass.

  The next photo was a close-up of another re-enactor with one eye gouged out, blood dried over the skin like a theatrical half-mask.

  “Wolverton stabbed him with a bayonet,” Daniels said, nodding at the side table to the left of the desk. “Just like that one.”

  Dean picked it up, turning it over in his hands, and tested the edge of the blade against his palm.

  “You couldn’t cut Wonder Bread with this.”

  “Gee, you think?” Daniels’ eyes, very green and sharp, flicked back and forth between them. Reaching into her desk, she pulled out a piece of gum, unwrapped it, and popped it in her mouth, then wadded up the wrapper and stuffed it in the ashtray.

  “Look,” she said, “I know you two aren’t from around here. So here’s what I suggest. Go to the Historical Society, look at some old pictures, check out the battlefield, talk to some re-enactors—”

  “We already did that,” Dean said.

  “Good for you.” She took the gum out of her mouth, gave it a look as if it had somehow personally betrayed her, and wadded it up. Into the ashtray it went. “So we’re clear, then. Do your own homework, and let me get back to my job. If you come up with any intelligent questions, get back to me, okay?”

  With that she turned her attention to the paperwork on her desk. Clearly the discussion was over.

  “Right,” Dean said. “Intelligent questions.”

  Sam glanced up.

  “I’ve got one.”

  The sheriff looked up, gazing at him from the depths of bottomless indifference.

  “Yes?”

  “Wolverton stabbed himself to death with his own bayonet, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So,” he pointed, “what are these marks around his neck?”

  “Where?”

  “Right here.” Sam tapped the photo, indicating Wolverton’s throat, where a pair of red friction-burns ringed the flesh. “Like bruises, see?”

  “You’d have to ask the coroner.”

  “You didn’t notice anything strange yourself?”

  “Anything strange?” The sheriff arched one eyebrow. “Are you joking?” But Dean noticed that she didn’t actually answer the question.

  “Maybe we should talk to the coroner ourselves,” he said.

  “Be my guest. His office is two blocks away.” She glanced at her watch. “Tell you what—it’s getting late, but I’ll give him a call and let him know you’re coming.”

  “Bruises.” Dean was still scrutinizing the photo. “Almost looks like he was choked or something. Right, Sam?”

  When there was no immediate answer, he turned to look over his shoulder at his brother, expecting agreement, or at least a nod of acknowledgment.

  “Sam?”

  But Sam Winchester had done a very strange thing.

  He had fallen utterly silent.

  SIX

  “Okay,” Dean said as they walked down the sidewalk toward the coroner’s office. “You want to tell me what that was all about?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Really.”

  “I saw those marks around Wolverton’s neck, and I think... it triggered something in my mind.” Sam stopped and looked at Dean. “From that dream I had. But I don’t remember what it was.”

  “You’re not holding back on me, Sammy, are you?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “Cuz you know, that never works out.”

  “I know,” Sam said. “I just... it’s like whatever happened got erased.”

  “Well, maybe a look at the corpse will help jog your memory.”

  * * *

  The Mission’s Ridge County Coroner’s office wasn’t much more than a steel doorway in the back of a long brown municipal building just off of Main Street.

  Dean and Sam walked past a dumpster and a single vehicle that was parked there, a beige nondescript sedan with government plates. The ground alongside the building was littered with old lottery tickets and cigarette butts, as if someone had spent a long time watching his luck run out.

  Dean tried the door.

  “Locked.” He pressed the buzzer, waited a few seconds, and then started knocking on the wire-reinforced window. “Lights are off. Didn’t Sheriff Hottie say she was calling ahead?”

  “Maybe the coroner’s gone home for the day,” Sam offered.

  “Or maybe nobody wants to talk to a couple of Yankee boys asking tough questions.” Dean stepped back, evaluating the security keypad. “I’ve gotta say, I’m not feeling a whole lot of Southern hospitality here, Sammy.”

  “And you’re the one who said, ‘I love the South.’” Sam glanced back in the direction they’d come. “What about the Historical Society?”

  “What about it?”

  “Maybe we should check that out before it gets any later.”

  Dean frowned at him.

  “You don’t want to see the body?”

  “Door’s locked, Dean.”

  “So was the vault at the Bellagio, but that didn’t stop Ocean’s Eleven.”

  Sam gave him a look.

  “I’m just trying to make the most of the time we have.”

  “So you’re not scared of looking at those marks on Wolverton’s neck?”

  “Scared?”

  “Yeah, as in, nightmare?” Dean peered at him expectantly.

  “I told you, I don’t remember.”

  “And you don’t want to.”

  “Hey, look,” Sam said, “if you want me to stay—”

  Dean shrugged.

  “Nope, you’re right,” he said. “You go ahead and see what you can dig up. Divide and conquer. Apocalypse freakin’ now.”

  But Sam stood his ground.

  “What’s this about, Dean?” he demanded. “Is it about you not trusting me? Because if it is, there’s not a whole lot of places we can go from there.”

  “Yeah, you’re my brother,” Dean said. “But you’re also Lucifer’s prom dress, and if he’s seeding your dreams with hints about the master plan, then maybe it might be a good idea for you to look at ‘em as close as possible. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “What I’m feeling aren’t hints, Dean,” Sam said, trying to explain as best he could. “They’re not clues—if anything, they’re preventing me from figuring this out. It’s more like getting jabbed in the brain with a cattle prod. So forgive me if I don’t go actively seeking it out.”

  “Okay.” Dean took out his cell phone. “I’ll try the sheriff again, see if I can get her to come over and let me in herself. You do your historical thing, and we’ll hook up later and talk it out.”

  Sam nodded, and left.

  Dean stood by the door, watching his brother stride around the corner. There was no mistaking the swiftness of Sam’s gait. Whatever the nightmare had left in his mind, Dean knew Sam wasn’t ready to deal with it—not directly, anyway.

  And when he was, Dean hoped it wouldn’t be too late.

  Glancing at the wire-reinforced window in the door in front of him, he put away the cell phone and picked up a brick.

  “George Clooney was a wuss,” he said, and raised the brick. He was about to swing it forward when the lock clicked and the door swung open.

  Castiel blinked out at him.

  “How long have you been in there?” Dean asked, qui
ckly stepping inside. The coolness of the air conditioning was a relief from the stifling heat outside.

  “I just arrived.”

  “Hey!” a voice cut in. “Who the hell are you?”

  Dean looked past Castiel, into the office, at an unshaven, thirty-something man in a white Oxford, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, tie tugged down. He’d been in the process of lighting a cigarette, which now dangled from his lower lip in surprise.

  “Door was open,” Dean said.

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Are you the coroner?”

  “Who’s asking?”

  Dean badged him.

  “Agent Van Zandt, FBI. This is Agent... Zevon.” Before Castiel could react, he continued, “Sheriff Daniels gave us the access number in case you were busy.”

  The coroner regarded Dean and Castiel for a long beat, and the open door behind them, then brought his lighter to the cigarette and put a flame to its tip.

  “My name’s Todd Winston. And yeah, I’m the coroner.” He inhaled and blew a stream of smoke from the corner of his mouth. “But Sheriff Daniels didn’t give you the combination to get in. She’s not a big fan of the Feds.”

  “Well, gee golly gosh, Cletus, that just about burns me all up inside,” Dean said. “How about we stop worrying about the sheriff and you show me the dead body you got in there.”

  Grumbling under his breath, Winston led them through the loading area and down the hall to a small office where he ducked inside. When Dean turned to look in after him, he saw that the walls of the office were packed floor to ceiling with books, most of them hardcovers still in their dustjackets.

  Emerging again, Winston held a set of keys. He led them around the corner to another, even narrower hallway. A second doorway took them into a storage chamber illuminated from above with long glass florescent tubes that cast a cold declarative light over everything. While the rest of the building had been comfortably cool, here it was downright cold, and Dean was actually glad to be wearing a suit.

  In the center of the room stood a steel table with a drain at the bottom, surrounded by cases of sterilized instruments and canisters of fluid and supplies. A bottle of drinking water sat off to one side, half-empty.

  Dean paused, the old familiar smells of disinfectant and chemical preservatives pricking his nose. He waited while Winston put on a pair of latex gloves and a lab coat, then turned his attention to the far wall to take hold of a handle.

  The coroner twisted the knob, braced himself and pulled out a seven-foot-long drawer, lifting the stainless steel flat-plate to reveal the bin itself.

  “This your boy?” Winston asked.

  Dean looked down. Pale and naked and somehow flattened, the corpse of Dave Wolverton looked even scrawnier and more pathetic than he’d anticipated. Despite his best efforts to dress and act like a Civil War soldier, it had, ironically, taken nakedness and stillness to complete the transformation. The stab wound on the underside of his chin had been cleaned and sutured, and the coroner’s traditional Y-incision was fresh enough that the flesh was still raw and pink where the shears had cut open Wolverton’s thoracic cavity.

  Small divots of black hair tufted the young man’s skinny breastbone and the almost emaciated concavity of his belly. Here was a body that could very easily have come from an actual surgeon’s tent back in 1864.

  Looks like he died hungry, Dean reflected, the randomness of the thought surprising him.

  He found himself staring at Wolverton’s face, the sunken cheekbones and sagging lips. Even vacant and slack, the face had a strange leering quality that put him on edge. He realized that he didn’t want to spend any more time with the corpse than he absolutely had to.

  “You find anything unusual in the autopsy?” Dean asked.

  “Not really,” Winston said.

  “Toxicology report?”

  “Not back yet.” He took another drag on his cigarette, then looked around for an ashtray. A used coffee cup fit the bill.

  “You don’t do that yourself?” Dean asked.

  Winston shook his head.

  “Lab at the M.E.’s office takes care of that part, down in Waldrop City. Don’t have the equipment here.”

  “Well, I guess that’s something to put on your Christmas list, isn’t it?” Dean bent down closer to examine the flesh around Wolverton’s neck, inspecting the bruises that Sam had first noticed in the photo. “What about these?”

  “Twisting abrasions. Rope burns.”

  “Where’d they come from?”

  “Rope,” Winston replied, without a hint of humor. “Maybe some kind of cord.”

  “Thanks,” Dean said. “That clears that up.”

  Winston didn’t seem to notice the sarcasm.

  “There wasn’t anything wrapped around his neck when the sheriff brought the body in. No trace of fibers in the skin either. And you’d see those.”

  “There are other ways of binding men’s souls,” Castiel said, leaning forward to touch the hematomas on either side of Wolverton’s neck. “Some forms of demonic bondage are not so easily detected.”

  “Bondage?” Winston glanced at Dean. “What the hell’s he talking about?”

  Castiel opened his mouth to answer, but Dean cut him off.

  “Forget it,” Dean said. “Is there an inventory of what Wolverton had with him when he died?”

  “Sheriff’s office is still typing it up.” He glanced at the doorway. “I just remembered, I gotta make a phone call.”

  Without awaiting a response, he walked out, leaving Dean and Castiel alone with the corpse.

  “Well, might as well give this a shot,” Dean said, glancing at his companion and reaching into his back pocket. He pulled out an index card and began reading the Rituale Romanum.

  “Deus, et Pater Domini nostri Jesu Christi, invoco nomen sanctum tuum...”

  “You don’t have it memorized by now?” Castiel asked, completely in earnest.

  “I got sick of everybody correcting me all the time so I just wrote it down,” Dean said, and then he kept reading. “... et celmentiam tuam supplex exposco...”

  Without warning Wolverton’s corpse jerked a little in the bin, hard enough that one hand twitched and fell palm-open, and the fingers quivered and twitched.

  The corpse’s head rolled slightly to one side.

  “...ut adversus hunc, et omnem immundum spiritum...”

  “Something’s happening,” Castiel said.

  Dean paused and glanced down.

  Something black was emerging from Wolverton’s left ear. At first he thought it was some kind of fluid, and then he realized that it was alive. Tiny, cilia-like legs—dozens of them—wiggled around it. With weird, deliberate speed, the black thing began to scurry like a malformed cockroach across Wolverton’s pale cheek, as if making its way toward his eyes.

  As Dean stared at it it stopped, frozen in place.

  It’s looking at me.

  The hairs rose up on the back of his neck.

  That’s impossible, it doesn’t even have—

  Then, with a high-pitched shriek, the black thing sprang upward, launching itself at Dean’s face.

  He jerked backward on reflex and the thing hit the floor. He lunged and stomped on it, crushing it under his heel, then grimaced at the sticky stuff that spattered outward from the bottom of his shoe. The thing was still wiggling, pulsing furiously as it crawled upward, onto his ankle.

  He could feel it sucking against his skin, pulling as it slithered upward toward his calf.

  “It’s still moving!” Dean shouted. “Get it off!”

  Without hesitating, Castiel picked up the bottled water. He closed his eyes, murmuring over it briefly, then dumped the water over Dean’s lower leg.

  There was a smoking hiss and the thing gave another shriek. Dean felt it go limp against his skin. He yanked up his soaking wet pant-leg and saw nothing but a faint reddish mark just above his Achilles tendon.

  Grabbing a piece of paper towel, he wiped
the last of the holy water from his leg, wadded up the wet towel and tossed it in the trash.

  “What was that?” he asked, trying to calm his own breathing.

  “Moa’ah,” Castiel said.

  “What?”

  “A kind of demonic afterbirth unique to this region of the American South.” The angel scowled. “I have not seen its like since the Civil War battlegrounds. When angels and demons skirmished over the souls of the dead.”

  “And now it’s back,” Dean said, peering with disgust at the bottom of his shoe. “But why? And why Wolverton?”

  Castiel looked at him.

  “He was touched by the Witness.”

  “So your Witness used this guy as some kind of demonic snot-rag?”

  “You don’t understand,” Castiel told him. “Moa’ah is a footnote in the Luciferian apotheca—one of its most obscure calling cards. It shouldn’t exist anymore. Its very presence here is a harbinger of the Apocalypse. And the Witness knows this. He wants us to know it.”

  “And you’re looking for this guy?” Dean asked. “On purpose?”

  “I need to find him.”

  “Yeah, well,” Dean shook his head, “good luck with that.”

  * * *

  They found Winston back in his office, phone to his ear. Dean walked over and hit the ‘disconnect’ button.

  “Hey!” the coroner snapped, leaping to his feet. For a second it seemed as if he might take a step closer, but then he saw something in Dean’s face that stopped him in his tracks.

  “Who else was alone with that body?” Dean demanded.

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Besides yourself, who’s been back there?”

  “Nobody. Sheriff Daniels, I guess. That’s about it. Whole thing happened right there on the battlefield, in front of God and everybody. If there was a rope around Wolverton’s neck, somebody would have seen it.” Winston sounded a little desperate now. “Right?”

  “The rope is the least of your worries,” Dean said, glancing up at the ceiling. “You have surveillance cameras here? Motion detectors?”

  Castiel looked at Dean.

  “The Witness has full demonic powers. It could have passed through here entirely unnoticed.”

  Winston’s eyes widened.

  “What?”