Supernatural--Joyride

by John Passarella

  She staggered, caught her balance, and continued. “Then the blackout… an echo we created, opened a door into their minds… for us to be truly free… Until Caleb ruined everything again.”

  “Save it!” Dean said, lacking sympathy for freedom obtained by hijacking others’ lives.

  Ahead of them, the seizing man—Daniel Yates—backhanded a young girl, who stumbled and fell over a body—Gruber, bleeding from a lacerated scalp.

  Yates grabbed Ethan by the throat with his left hand, raising a butcher knife in his right above the boy’s head. “That’s far enough!”

  Dean, Sam and Bonnie froze.

  Too far away!

  “You promised!” Ethan screamed. “Fight him, Dad!”

  The possessed father remained out of range of their black lights and tasers. Even shotgun salt rounds were useless at this distance.

  “Sammy! No choice now!”

  Holding the shotgun in his left hand, Sam pulled a handgun out from the back of his waistband. Because he was vulnerable to possession, Dean hadn’t trusted himself to carry a gun with real ammunition, but Sam had no need for such self-restrictions. And yet, the distance rendered the automatic dangerously inaccurate. Sam took aim, as likely to hit the boy as his father. But if he did nothing, the boy would surely die.

  In her Barry-possessed voice, Bonnie said, “I promised.”

  As his shadow withdrew from her body, Bonnie moaned in pain, clutched her chest and fell forward. After the briefest pause, Barry’s shadow flew across the remaining distance and plunged into Daniel Yates.

  The doubly possessed man staggered, his arms spread wide as if tugged apart, releasing Ethan. The boy scrambled away from his tormented father and joined his sobbing sister on the other side of Gruber’s motionless body.

  Inside Daniel Yates a battle raged for control of his mind and body. His arms jerked and swung independently of each other. The left leg lunged forward, while the right swung to the side. He bent forward, then threw his head back, slipped and fell, then scrambled back to his feet, with Caleb ascendant.

  “You are weak, boy! Just like the others. Now—fall—in—line!”

  A second, desperate voice erupted from Yates’ throat.

  “Nooo! You don’t—control me—anymore!”

  A shadow began to emerge from one side of Yates’ body, then sunk back, while a second shadow lost control, pushed out from the other side, before surging inward again. Blood trickled from Yates’ ears, nose, and eyes. In turn, his wild eyes focused on the Winchesters, in seething anger—then on Bonnie’s fallen form, in deepest sorrow. While Barry retained control, he turned toward the Winchesters.

  “Burn it all!” he yelled. “Only way to end this. Now! Before it’s too late, before I lose—!”

  The entangled shadows continued to struggle, half inside, half outside Yates’ body.

  Sensing that Barry had lost ascendancy, Dean reached into his jacket pocket for the strobe light he’d taken from the kitchen and flicked it on, which revealed and froze the rebel shadows who had attempted to thwart Caleb before Barry returned.

  Sam swung the barrel of his shotgun toward Yates, the cone of solidifying black light touching upon the man and both partially emerged shadows. Immediately, Daniel Yates screamed in agony, then doubled over, gagging. The partially expelled shadows had become like large shards of glass, slicing open Yates’ flesh.

  “Dad! No!” Ethan screamed.

  Yates convulsed in pain, blood flowing down his torso and arms.

  “Dean!”

  Sam tossed the taser toward his brother in a looping arc. Dean dropped his shotgun and snagged the taser out of the air, aimed it at Yates and—hesitated.

  If he zapped Yates while the shadows were solidified, expelling them might slice him in half right in front of Ethan and his sister. Aside from killing Yates, who was completely innocent in all the mayhem his body had caused, he’d give those kids a lifetime of therapy bills and endless scream-yourself-awake nightmares. Instead, he lowered the strobe and fired the taser. Yates’ body stiffened, vibrating from the five-thousand-volt charge. Both shadows lost substance a split-second before the electrical current expelled them from Yates’ body.

  Yates pitched forward, creating a clear shot.

  “Can’t tell them apart!” Sam shouted.

  “Do it!” Dean advised.

  Before either shadow person could recover from the momentary disorientation, Sam fired at the one on the left, worked the shotgun’s action, and fired at the one on the right, shattering both seconds apart. Both Caleb and Barry were gone.

  Dean switched off the lowered strobe light.

  Then a curious thing happened. Multiple shadow people descended from the treetops, hovering at ground level before Sam and Dean.

  “What is this?” Dean asked, his skin beginning to itch again. “They’re creeping me out, Sam.”

  After a moment, Sam understood. “Waiting their turn,” he said. “They’re ready for it to end.”

  One shadow approached Sam slowly, in as nonthreatening a manner as possible, and hovered before Sam’s shotgun, placing itself in the cone of black light. Sam raised the shotgun and aimed.

  What do you say to someone willing to give up a second life, Dean wondered, regardless of how strange that second life had been, for the greater good?

  “Thank you,” Sam said. “For fighting to save the kids.”

  The shadow, displaying more definition under the violet glow of the black light, had a more defined face, a feminine face. Unable to speak, she simply nodded and waited for the end. Sam pulled the trigger, and she burst into a thousand pieces of fading darkness. Another took her place in line—a male face with a lined brow, the face of an elder. Perhaps the rebel contingent had included more than just the teenaged runaways after all. “Thank you,” Sam repeated, and fired again.

  Dean picked up his shotgun and aimed it toward the trees. At once, a shadow positioned itself in his black light beam. “Thanks,” Dean said, echoing Sam’s sentiment because it seemed appropriate after all. Before he fired, a few others hurried to join the first shadow in line. From their youthful faces, Dean could tell he had a batch of runaways and maybe a few reformed delinquents, all wanting to go out together.

  His jaw tight with emotion, Dean raised a fist and said, “Team Rebel.”

  They smiled, nodding their approval. Shadow arms and hands draped around shadow shoulders, and they waited. Dean fired.

  Others begin to gather in groups in front of both shotguns. But a few shadow people, afraid of the finality, fluttered away from the black lights, yet not too far away. Maybe they were afraid. Or maybe they wanted to hang around to see the end of it. Eventually, they all came into the light to say their final goodbyes, to each other and their shadow world.

  * * *

  After all the shadow people were gone, Sam knelt beside Bonnie’s body, checked for a pulse they both knew he wouldn’t find, looked at Dean and shook his head. The final pursuit had been too much for her heart. But she’d died willingly to save the children and to help her teenage crush, possibly the love of her life, finally find peace.

  Dean checked on Daniel Yates, who bled from multiple wounds, most of them superficial. Where the shadows had remained within his body, they hadn’t solidified under the black light. No internal damage, at least not of the physical variety. Dean had no idea how multiple and tag-team possessions might affect someone mentally. If Yates was lucky, he wouldn’t remember any of it.

  Sam helped Gruber to his feet.

  Carrying the equipment, Dean led the way back to the farmhouse, steering them clear of the exposed underground chambers. Behind him, a recovering Gruber escorted the children, a hand on each of their shoulders. Sam brought up the rear, carrying the body of Bonnie Lassiter in his arms.

  With everyone at the front of the house, the Winchesters returned to the kitchen for Susan Yates and Chief Hardigan. Somehow, despite considerable blood loss, both clung to life. Sam carried Susan out, m
indful of her injured shoulder, so as not to reopen the clotting wound. Draping Hardigan’s arm over his shoulder, Dean wrapped his arm around the chief’s waist and hauled him up to his feet. The movement triggered a burst of pain that had Hardigan gritting his teeth and hissing every curse he’d ever learned in his long life. By the time Dean lowered him to the front curb, the old man had passed out.

  While the Winchesters had been occupied, Gruber had called for an ambulance and seemed confident it would arrive well before midnight. With the shadows gone and the possession-fueled violence over, the combined police forces of Moyer and Bakersburg would finally regain control of the town.

  Dean stared at the decrepit house, a monument to lost dreams and mass murder, and a psychic fueling station for dozens of malevolent spirits, who belatedly raged against the dying of their light. “Barry was right.”

  Sam nodded. “Yeah.”

  They assumed all the shadows had been vanquished or surrendered, but what if some had fled before or after the final battle? Dean doubted any lingering shadow people would survive long after the destruction of the house.

  He found a pair of two-gallon containers of unleaded gasoline in a small tool shed out back, intended for the riding mower. He splashed gas around the base of the house and poured a liquid trail from the kitchen up the stairs to the second floor, then lit it with a stove match. Meanwhile, Sam took the second container and a stack of newspapers, along with the box of stove matches and burned what remained of the detention rooms that had been rigged with dynamite during Caleb’s failed ascension.

  While waiting for the ambulance, they watched the house burn.

  Sam knelt beside Ethan, staring intently at the flames, and said, “Sorry about your house, Ethan.”

  “Good riddance,” he replied.

  He turned his back on the house, and took his sister’s hand.

  As the flames raged and consumed the entire farmhouse, Dean continued to stare, wondering if they should dig up the mass grave and burn the remains of the bodies never reported to or claimed by any family. What’s the point? We’ll never track down the twenty-three that were shipped home. In the end, he deemed it unnecessary. The shadow people hadn’t been true ghosts. Destroying them with black light and salt rounds seemed to remove the possibility they could ever return. As good as burning the remains.

  The ravenous fire consumed old wood and aged shingles, shattering and melting glass, turning everything in its path to char and ash. And as the light shone brightest, even the darkest of shadows paled and faded away forever.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  On the night the Free Folk commune house burned to the ground, Sam and Dean returned to the Moyer Motor Lodge and waited for the bedside clock radio to transition from 11:59 PM to…

  12:00 AM.

  “So far, so good,” Dean said.

  Sixty seconds later, 12:00 blinked to 12:01 and Sam sighed in relief. “All clear.”

  The shadow people were gone, the midnight blackouts over.

  “Life goes back to normal in Moyer,” Dean said, unsure if he meant the statement as a question. So many lives damaged, some lost. Going forward, normal would have many shades of gray. Like shadows.

  “It’s amazing when you think about it,” Sam said. “All that metaphysical energy released decades ago, waiting endlessly. Then all those minds reawakening, willing themselves back to life, the only way they could.”

  “By taking the townspeople on a psychic joyride,” Dean commented sourly. “Not a fan. No matter what they went through all those years ago, they had no right to take control of others like that.”

  Sam nodded. “I think they came back a little crazed,” he said. “But most of them—other than those blindly loyal to Caleb or whatever strange vision they had for the cult—most of them got that in the end. Did the right thing, bowing out.”

  “Not too soon for me,” Dean said. “No Team Free Will without free will.”

  Dean checked the time again.

  “You up for a long night’s drive to the bunker or…?”

  “Crash here, hit the road in the morning?” Sam said. “Room’s paid for.”

  “Crash it is,” Dean said, stifling a yawn.

  Back in the driver’s seat of his own mind, he felt the tension drain from his body, and with that relief came pure exhaustion. He fell asleep with no concern about shadows living in the darkness. But in his dreams, the street lamps projected cones of black light and all the cars had strobe lights, rather than headlights, mounted on either side of their grills.

  * * *

  Gruber called Sam in the morning and requested they stop by the Moyer police station for an update. Dean wondered if their FBI cover was blown, but Sam thought Gruber sounded upbeat, so they agreed to meet.

  At the police station, Gruber looked as if he hadn’t slept all night, his face pale, dark circles under his eyes. He’d received stitches for his scalp wound and wore a bandage that extended well past his hairline.

  “Shouldn’t you be in the hospital?” Sam asked.

  “I was,” Gruber said, frowning. “Long enough to get stitched up. Doc wanted to hold me for observation. Told him I’ll come back today and he can observe me all he wants for the next forty-eight hours while I sleep it off.”

  “So, you wanted to see us?” Sam asked.

  “First, I want to thank you for your help,” he said. “Doubt we would have made it through the last twenty-four hours without you. Don’t think I’ll ever truly understand what the hell happened, but it’s over, so I’m good.”

  “Just doing our job, man,” Dean said.

  “Above and beyond, so thanks,” Gruber said. “I asked you here because I thought you deserved an update. Fortunately, the chief doesn’t remember me punching him in the face after he tasered me. But I think he’s okay with it, considering everything.”

  “Yeah. Sure,” Sam said.

  “He’s done,” Gruber said. “Tough old bastard, surviving a nasty gut wound, but he’s officially retiring.”

  “Susan and Daniel Yates?” Dean asked. “The kids?”

  “Susan lost a lot of blood,” Gruber said. “Weak as a kitten, but will recover. Daniel’s lacerations are superficial but, if you ask me, he’s a bit shell-shocked from whatever battle raged in his mind. Again, I don’t pretend to understand. Fortunately, his memory is Swiss cheese about the whole day, doesn’t remember stabbing Susan or threatening Ethan and Addison.”

  “Wasn’t him,” Dean said.

  “I get that,” Gruber said. “Hard to wrap your head around it though.”

  “Not after it happens to you.”

  “I’ll certainly take your word for it,” he said. “After watching Bowman and Morrissey…” He shook his head, letting the rest go unsaid. “Anyway, Yates tells me the whole family will stay with his mother in Philadelphia. She’ll help with the kids until they’re feeling normal again. But he swears he’s cured of house flipping. Going to find something in good shape and put down roots.”

  “Guessing Ethan’s thrilled about that,” Sam said.

  “You bet,” Gruber said. “First thing he said, he can finally make some friends and get a dog.”

  “What about Moyer?” Dean asked. “Lot of people here lost control of their lives, and a lot of lives went to hell as a result.”

  “Not to mention the legal consequences,” Sam added.

  “Yeah, about that,” Gruber said. “Retiring or not, Hardigan is working on a new spin. Something about how the townspeople went briefly crazy due to the aftereffects of the train derailment chemical spill, combined with old narcotics from the commune leaching into the water supply mixed with whatever nasty stuff continues to brew in Lake Delsea.”

  “So, no one is at fault?” Sam asked. “No harm, no foul?”

  “Except Pangento,” Dean said. “If Lake Delsea is part of Hardigan’s spin.”

  “Bet they won’t be happy in the role of scapegoat,” Sam said.

  “There’s an interesting postscript
,” Gruber said with the hint of a knowing smile. “Yates bought the commune house and yard, but the rest of the land had already been sold. Want to guess the buyer?”

  “Not Pangento…?” Dean said.

  “One and the same,” Gruber said. “Last night I took some of our guys out there, had them comb through the fields, like a search grid. Told them to look for any wounded survivors, wanted to tag any underground chambers. But I had my suspicions about Pangento. That land isn’t near their plant. And they never took full responsibility for the toxic spills in Lake Delsea, with their chokehold on our economy.”

  “I see where this is going,” Dean said, smiling.

  “Evidence of fresh digging back there,” Gruber said. “Holes big enough to accommodate some dubious fifty-five-gallon drums. And, Hardigan may be retiring, but he has contacts there, and he knows some things that never came to light about Pangento from way back. Short of it is, we can link those drums to them. And Lake Delsea.”

  “With all the Federal agencies poking around,” Sam said, “they might be feeling particularly… vulnerable.”

  “Massive understatement,” Gruber said. “And, as a concerned corporate neighbor—without admitting any liability, of course—Pangento has agreed to set up a healthy settlement fund for the victims and families of the blackout incidents. The fund will cover all medical and funeral expenses, pay for any property damage, establish college funds for any kids who lost a parent, and establish annuities for anyone maimed or unable to work.”

  “And in return?” Dean wondered.

  “Folks sign waivers. We keep a lid on the old and new toxic transgressions, figuratively speaking,” Gruber said. “Not ideal. Nothing can make up for the loss of lives and limbs, but it will help the survivors cope and move on with their lives without facing financial burdens on top of everything else they’ve been through.”

  “And you’re okay with another cover-up?” Sam asked.

  “If Pangento holds up their end of the agreement, yeah, I can live with it,” Gruber said. “But part of that agreement is they don’t relocate, and they stop the toxic dumping. If we ever find out they’ve polluted our land or water again, everything goes public. So, they damn well better be good corporate neighbors moving forward. Moyer has the leverage this time, which means we have control over the future of our town.”