by Tim Waggoner
He’s making you feel this way, she told herself. She wasn’t certain, but she thought maybe the caduceus was doing it. Perhaps the object could perform other wonders besides healing. However it was being accomplished, she knew that Paeon was manipulating her. But the healing power of the caduceus was amazing, and she had to be a part of it, even if only as one of Paeon’s allies. And if she ended up being a servant, what of it? Hadn’t she dedicated her life to serving her patients? How much better could she help them by serving a being like Paeon?
Despite her misgiving, she reached out and slowly, almost timidly, wrapped her fingers around the caduceus. When it was finished and she let go of the object, Paeon smiled.
“Now let’s get to work,” he said.
And Lena smiled back.
TWO
Dean would’ve preferred to wait for nightfall, but Sam had argued it would be better to approach the farm in daylight.
“Ghouls aren’t nocturnal,” Dean had argued back. “They eat whenever they get the chance, day or night.”
“Yeah, but they tend to do their dirty work after the sun goes down, right? Easier not to get caught that way. There’s a good chance they’re resting now. They won’t expect anyone to come after them in broad daylight.” Sam had grinned then. “Who’d be crazy enough to do that?”
“Us, apparently,” Dean had said.
In the end, Dean had agreed, and now here they were, on a farm outside McCormick, Missouri, sneaking through a cornfield that had long ago been harvested. The empty stalks were dry and most were bent over or broken. They made rustling, rattling noises if you brushed against them; crunching noises if you stepped on one. The few stalks that remained fully upright weren’t all that high—four feet, five at the most—and they didn’t provide much cover. The sky was overcast, so at least they weren’t walking around in bright sunshine, but even though they walked hunched over to decrease their visibility, Dean felt awfully exposed.
Sam sighed. “All right, I admit it. This wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.”
“Hey, I’m not the kind of guy to tell you I told you so.”
“But?”
Dean smiled. “Told you so.”
The brothers continued making their way slowly through the cornfield. Neither suggested turning back or trying a different approach to the farmhouse, or waiting until dark, as Dean had originally suggested. They’d committed to this strategy, and Dean judged they were more than halfway across the field by now. Besides, the brothers knew from long experience that it was usually better to keep moving forward and adapt for any mistakes than to abort a hunt and start again. There was always a chance that despite their precautions, their target knew they were coming.
The creatures that inhabited the dark corners of the world and preyed on humans were experts at remaining hidden. If they were discovered, they were just as likely to abandon their lairs, get the hell out of Dodge, and set up shop somewhere else as they were to lay in wait and attack anyone who came after them. Maybe it would be safer if Dean and Sam tried a different approach, but it could mean losing their chance to clean out this nest of ghouls. And while ghouls fed on the corpses of the dead, they weren’t always picky about where their meals came from. Sometimes they waited for people to die a natural death before grabbing their knives and forks. But all too often they would kill people and devour them afterward, after they’d aged a bit. And once or twice the brothers had encountered ghouls that preferred to chow down on the living. Regardless of what type these were, the brothers couldn’t afford to risk them escaping. Not because they were eager to spill the monsters’ blood—though Dean had to admit that was one of the job’s perks—but because they wanted to prevent the ghouls claiming any more victims. That’s what it was all about when you were a hunter: protecting others.
Dean felt—or thought he felt—warmth on the inside of his right arm, precisely where the Mark of Cain was. He figured the sensation was due to his imagination, and not because the Mark was eager for the battle to come. He told himself this, and he believed it. Mostly.
The early December air was chilly, and without any direct sunlight to warm them, it felt even colder. The brothers both wore light jackets, flannel shirts, jeans, and boots. No gloves. Gloves made it more difficult to maintain a grip on weapons, and the last thing any hunter wanted to do was risk losing a weapon in the middle of a fight with some fanged and clawed nasty looking to gut you and feast on your innards. Speaking of weapons, both brothers carried guns as well as machetes, cutting edges honed to razor sharpness. Decapitation was the best way to slay a ghoul, although a hard enough blow to the head would do the job too. Right now the machetes rode in leather sheaths on their belts, and their guns were tucked into their pants against the small of their backs.
They had a good view of the farmhouse from the cornfield: white, two-story, black roof, black shutters. It looked to be in good condition, at least based on its outward appearance. The lawn was neatly kept, and there were two vehicles parked in the gravel driveway—a pick-up and an SUV, both of them not more than a couple years old. There was a barn on the property too, not far from the house and painted a stereotypical red. It could use a fresh coat of paint, but otherwise it appeared to be in decent condition as well. Some monsters liked to make their homes in dark, dank, decayed places such as forgotten cemeteries, abandoned factories, deserted houses… the gloomier and more rundown the better.
But other monsters—too many—preferred to hide in plain sight among the humans they preyed upon. These monsters worked hard to remain below radar and not draw attention to themselves. The more normal they came across, the better. It was this second type of monster, which Dean thought of as passers—as in passing for human—that was the most dangerous. Not only were they harder to track down, they were used to being sneaky. Sneaky equaled unpredictable, and Dean hated unpredictable. He liked it best when monsters behaved exactly like they were supposed to. It made everything easier and kept things neat and tidy. Unpredictable meant messy. And when it came to hunting, Dean hated messy more than anything else. Messy got people killed. The brothers had saved many people over the years—the whole damn planet, really—but it was the ones they couldn’t save which haunted Dean.
It’s just a nest of ghouls, he told himself. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.
Sam and Dean had first gotten wind that there might be ghouls living in McCormick when reports of missing townspeople began surfacing on the Net. There were two main types of news stories the brothers searched for: strange phenomena and missing persons. Sam had set up accounts for several search engines to email him links to any such stories, and he received dozens each day. He and Dean spent hours going through them, searching for any hint of supernatural activity. Most of the time they didn’t find anything, but every once in a while they got lucky. The reports from McCormick had caught their attention because there had been a spate of missing person reports combined with a number of funeral home break-ins. And when the brothers broadened their search, they discovered a number of additional incidences of both within a thirty-mile radius of McCormick.
They might’ve thought they’d stumbled across an ordinary human serial killer at work, except the victims varied in age, race, and gender. The only common quality they shared was that none of them were over fifty, and most were in their twenties and thirties. So the brothers hopped in the Impala and took a trip to Missouri. Once in town, they did their usual poking around, posing as FBI agents, asking questions of local law enforcement and relatives of the missing people. They’d learned nothing useful until, by chance, one of the local cops mentioned an employee who’d been killed during a break-in at one of the funeral homes in town. No money or equipment had been stolen, but whoever had broken into the building had cut open the corpses stored there and taken their organs. And while different monsters—not to mention warlocks and witches—would have use for the organs, when it came to dead flesh, ghouls were always the primary suspects. Once the Winchester
s began looking into the murder and organ theft, it didn’t take them long to become suspicious of one of the funeral home’s recently hired employees, a young man named Phillip Carson who lived with his parents Darrell and Kate on a farm outside town—the very farm they were currently heading toward.
Dean heard a sound then, a muffled mmmpf, off to their left, and the brothers froze.
“You hear that?” Sam asked softly.
“Yeah,” Dean acknowledged, keeping his voice low. “Sounded like someone trying to talk through a gag.”
“That’s what I thought.”
The brothers headed toward the sound, doing their best to avoid making any noise of their own as they went. A cluster of dried cornstalks higher and straighter than the others rose from the bare soil in front of them. The brothers continued toward the stalks, and as they drew closer, Dean saw they were bound to short wooden poles with lengths of thin wire. The sound came again and Dean knew he had been right: it was a human voice. And from the strained, muffled sound of it, whoever it belonged to was not exactly having a good time.
The Winchesters stepped toward the wire-bound structure, exchanged glances, and then in unspoken agreement, they slowly pulled their machetes free from their sheaths. Dean knew they should take a couple minutes to make sure the structure wasn’t booby-trapped. Supernatural creatures, at least the more humanlike ones, weren’t averse to using technology, and there could be motion detector alarms or even explosives rigged to blow if anyone got too close. Hell, you didn’t need modern tech to make traps. There were plenty of low-tech ways to hurt someone who was putting their nose where it didn’t belong: snare traps, spear traps, stake pits… But when the muffled voice sounded again, this time louder and with a tone of desperation, Dean forgot about being cautious. Someone was inside the makeshift enclosure and needed their help.
Dean started hacking at the dry cornstalks with his machete. An instant later Sam joined him, and within moments the brothers had cleared away a four-foot section, giving them an unobstructed view of what lay inside. Six people were buried up to their heads in the cold earth, mouths sealed with silver duct tape, eyes covered with strips of black cloth tied around their heads. Four males, two females, ranging in age from early teens to late forties. Two of the men were black, and one of the women was Latina. The rest were Caucasian. Their noses and ears had been damaged by frostbite, and none of them moved. Their heads lolled on their necks, tilting forward, backward, or to either side. Dean couldn’t tell if they were alive or dead, but at least one of them must still live, for someone had made the sounds that had drawn them here. The six were arranged in a circle, buried so that they faced one another.
The Latina woman, who looked to be in her mid-thirties, started moving then, shaking her head back and forth slowly, as if trying to get their attention. She attempted to speak, but all that came out from her tape-covered mouth was a strained mmmmm. None of the other prisoners made noise or moved, and Dean feared the woman was the only one who remained alive. He gripped his machete tighter and stepped through the opening they’d made and entered the enclosure.
“Don’t worry,” Sam said. “We’re here to help you.”
The brothers took up positions on opposite sides of the circle, crouched down, and began checking the ghouls’ prisoners for pulses. Dean first checked the woman who’d made the sounds that had drawn them here. She calmed when he touched her, and he found her pulse weak but steady. When he pulled his hand away from the woman’s neck, she gave a muffled grunt of protest, as if she feared she was being abandoned.
“Hold on,” Dean said. He removed her blindfold and gag, and then checked the next person—a man—to the woman’s left.
When the brothers finished checking the remaining prisoners, they knelt next to each other and compared notes.
“I found two weak, but alive,” Sam said. “You?”
“Just the one,” Dean said. “She’s not in great condition either, but I think she’ll make it—if we can get her and the others to a hospital.”
Dean tried not to think about the three dead people in the circle. The brothers had left their blindfolds and gags in place, more so the survivors wouldn’t have to see the lifeless eyes of their companions than anything else. There was nothing he and Sam could do for the dead now, and the brothers had to stay focused on the living if they were to have any chance of saving them. Dean was good at compartmentalizing his feelings at times like these, but that didn’t mean he liked it.
Dean turned to the Latina woman. “How long have you been out here?”
She frowned as she struggled to answer. “I don’t know. A week, maybe?”
“They could’ve been here even longer if the ghouls have been giving them water,” Sam said.
“Like they’re livestock,” Dean said, anger rising. “Or worse, some kind of crop.”
“Yeah.”
Dean still held his machete, as did Sam, and he jammed the tip of the blade into the ground and twisted it back and forth a couple times. The ground was hard, but far from frozen solid. Good thing too, or there would be six dead bodies in the circle instead of three. Dean figured that he and Sam should be able to dig out the survivors without much difficulty. Of course, their shovels were back in the Impala. One of them should stay here and guard the prisoners while the other went to get the shovels. Dean didn’t like the idea of splitting up—especially not when they were right in the middle of ghoul territory. But they could hardly leave the survivors alone, even for a short period of time. What if the ghouls returned while the brothers were gone and decided to kill the three living prisoners rather than risk losing them? It was a chance they couldn’t take.
“You go get the shovels,” Dean said. “I’ll stand guard here.”
His fingers wrapped tighter around his machete’s handle, and Sam noticed.
“Maybe I should stay,” Sam said. His tone was neutral and revealed nothing of his feelings, but Dean knew exactly what he was thinking.
“Yeah, I’m angry at what the ghouls have done to these people, what they did to our family, but I’m fine. Really.”
The Mark of Cain sparked a lust for violence within the one who bore it, and that spark could quickly become a raging inferno if the Mark’s bearer lost control. Dean had experienced that rage before, had been overwhelmed and swept away by it, until he’d become little more than a fury-driven killing machine. But it was precisely because he’d experienced that level of rage that he had learned how to try to resist the Mark’s influence so it would never control him again. He hoped.
Sam looked into Dean’s eyes, as if searching for any indication that his brother was lying or was mistaken about his condition. But he saw nothing that immediately worried him, and he nodded.
“Okay. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He started to rise, but wind rushed into the clearing, rattling the dry cornstalks and ruffling the buried victims’ hair. An instant later four figures stood shoulder to shoulder at the opening Sam and Dean had cut into the circle. Ghouls could move inhumanly fast when they wanted to, and given the amount of wind they’d kicked up racing toward the circle, it seemed these were especially fast for their kind.
One of us should’ve kept watch for them, Dean thought. Getting sloppy in our old age.
The quartet consisted of two males and two females. One couple appeared to be in their fifties, while the other looked to be in their twenties. They wore jackets, jeans, and boots, and the older male also sported a green trucker cap. All four were armed. The older male held a double-barreled shotgun, and the older female gripped a hand scythe. The younger male held a hunting knife, while the younger female carried a 9mm. Both the shotgun and pistol were aimed at the Winchesters. Ghouls might be faster, stronger, and tougher than humans, Dean thought, but that didn’t mean they were dumb enough to go up against a pair of hunters unarmed. Too bad. Dumb monsters were easier to kill than smart ones.
The older male spoke first. “Looks like we got us two mor
e for the garden.”
With the ghouls’ arrival, the woman whose muffled cries had first alerted the brothers to the circle—or rather, the ghouls’ grotesque garden—began shaking her head back and forth and making sounds of distress. Dean didn’t blame her. Right now, things didn’t look too good for Team Human.
His hand tightened on the machete’s handle, and the Mark of Cain burned.
Attack now before it’s too late.
He couldn’t tell if the thought was his or if it originated from the Mark. Either way, it was a stupid idea, and he wasn’t about to try it. As fast as the ghouls’ reflexes were, the ones with guns would be able to fire before either of the brothers could stand and raise their machetes. Hell, given the crouching positions they were in, an ordinary human would’ve been able to get a shot off before the brothers could reach him or her.
“These are hunters, right, Dad?” While the other three ghouls were thin, this one was on the chunky side. Not fat, but definitely well-fed.
Dean figured that this must be Phillip, the one who worked at the funeral parlor. Where else would a ghoul want to work? It would be like a human working in a candy store. Too bad he couldn’t keep his hand out of the cookie jar, Dean thought. If he had, the brothers never would’ve known about this nest of ghouls. Just goes to show that overeating is bad for you in all kinds of ways.
The older female, who Dean presumed was the younger man’s mother, Kate, answered before the boy’s father could speak.
“No, Phillip,” she said, sarcasm dripping from her voice. “They’re carrying machetes because they love to collect dead cornstalks.”
The younger woman snickered. “They probably use them to make crafts, like little cornhusk dolls.”
Phillip shot the younger woman—his sister? His wife?—an angry look.