briarwood | FIC: Carnival of Souls (6/10)

Title: Carnival of Souls (Part Six)
Rating: Adults Only (rating is for violence)
Fandom: Supernatural
Pairing: None (Dean, Sam, John - no 'cest, just the wonderful fucked-up family we all love)
Warnings: Some fairly gory details - see rating.
Summary: Pre-Series fic. Sam left his family to get away from the world of demons and ghosts. But when that world follows him to Stanford, Sam does the one thing he swore he'd never do: he calls his father.
Disclaimer: You don't seriously think I own Supernatural, do ya?

Previous Chapters: Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

CARNIVAL OF SOULS

Part Six

Saturday, Noon

When they reached the motel, the first thing Dean did was check his phone. The battery died that morning so he'd left it charging while they talked to Professor Langley. He saw the voicemail notification at once.

"Dean, Bobby told me what you're doing. I know I don't have to remind you of my orders. I'm on the road now. If there's a good reason you can't wait for me, call me."

Dean leaned back against the motel wall. "Oh, crap."

"What's wrong?" Sam asked.

"Bobby ratted me out. I'd better call Dad." He took the phone outside to make the call. It was answered at once. "Hey, Dad."

"Where have you been?" John demanded curtly.

Sammy would have taken offence. Dean simply answered the question. "My battery was dead. I've been with Sammy, checking into our case. Dad, when will you get here?"

"If the cops don't stop me for speeding, I'll be there tonight, I hope. Dean, I want you to wait for me."

"Did Bobby tell you about the pact?" Dean asked. He could hear the rumbling engine of his dad's truck and knew John was on the road. But he was coming from halfway across the country. Could even John Winchester make it in time?

"Yes."

"There are four kids dead, Dad. He's gonna take another one today and that'll be the last he needs. If Sammy and I wait for you, it'll be too late."

John answered with a stream of obscenities.

Dad!" Dean objected, mock-offended.

"Alright, Dean, listen to me."

John's voice was all business, so Dean swallowed the wise-ass remark he'd been about to offer and shut up, listening.

"The magician may be targeting children, but it doesn't have to be a child. If you force his hand, it could be you or Sammy on the slab. Do you understand what I'm saying to you?"

Dean turned around, looking through the motel room window to where Sammy waited for him. The magician was stealing souls, and needed just one more. There are things worse than death, and this was one of them. Could he risk Sam in that way?

Dean swallowed. "Yes, sir."

"Good. Son, I understand you're up against a deadline, so you tell me what you think you should do now."

This was familiar ground. "Sammy and I are headed to the carnival. That's where he is and I'm convinced that's where he's doing his killing. I guess we can limit it to recon, but if he's taken another kid, Dad, I'm not gonna sit it out. I can't."

For a moment, John was silent. "At least you've thought it through. Okay, Dean, you do what you have to. But keep me in the loop. I'll meet you boys at the carnival."

If John thought he was going to reach Palo Alto in time to do that, he must be driving even faster than Dean usually did. Dad was worried.

"Good hunting," John added.

It was only after he ended the call that Dean realised he hadn't mentioned the demon. He'd insisted on interviewing the professor to confirm that detail: Sarah was playing with a girl she didn't know. There one moment, gone the next. No one saw her taken. No one would suspect another child. It was the same demon, Dean was sure about that now.

Which meant Dean knew how to kill her.

"You don't have a gun?" Dean asked incredulously.

Sam slammed the Impala's door and walked around to the trunk. "Dude, I'm a student and I live in a dorm. If I got caught with a gun, I'd be kicked out."

"So don't get caught," Dean pointed out. "I wouldn't stay any place I couldn't keep a weapon handy."

Sam's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, well, I'm not you, Dean."

"You got that right. You've got your priorities all fucked up." Dean glanced around to make sure no one was watching. He'd parked the car under a low-hanging tree that should conceal them from a casual glance. But there were three patrol cars that he could see, and probably cops all over the place. That was gonna be helpful.

Dean propped open the Impala's trunk and pulled out his backup gun. He handed it to Sam and watched him slide the clip out, check it and snap it back into place. Sam jacked a round into the chamber and thumbed the safety on. He said nothing, but his mouth was set in a grim line and there was something in his eyes Dean didn't like seeing.

"Sammy?" he tried.

Sam pushed the gun into his pants, concealed at his back underneath his coat. He looked over toward the carnival. "My priorities," he said flatly, "are mine. Not Dad's."

Yeah, that's what's fucked up. Dean opened the ammo box he'd been looking for but found it empty. He turned to Sam. "Listen. The magician is human, more or less, so regular bullets will work fine. But don't trust that just one shot will do it. He's a powerful son of a bitch."

"I remember," Sam said "Head, heart, chest upper left."

"Right. But the magician is only half our problem. If his demon is around, we'll have to deal with that, too."

"Dean," Sam began uncertainly, "if you shoot someone who's possessed by a demon..."

"It's not possessing someone." Dean slid the clip out of his own gun, showed the contents to Sam and pushed it back into place. "I've only got enough of these for one gun, Sammy, so if we find it, you leave the demon to me."

"Iron rounds? Will that work?"

Dean forced a smile. "Consecrated iron, and it works like you wouldn't believe." He could still see the child's face exploding in a spray of blood and bone. He could still feel pieces of something too thick to be blood hitting him in the face and chest. Dean swallowed back the memory. If that demon bitch was back, he was going to make her wish she'd stayed in Hell.

Sam nodded. "Okay."

He didn't ask, which surprised Dean a little. He would have asked Dad. Sam simply trusted that Dean knew what he was talking about.

"Holy water." Dean handed Sam a bottle and pocketed one for himself. Then he pulled out the map, closed the trunk and spread the map on top. He dug a pen out of his pocket. "Okay. The pattern here looks like two Latin crosses, but in the Whitechapel murders the pattern was one cross. Like this..." He drew on the map, joining the two crosses he'd already drawn and blocking in the space between them. "Black mass means there'll be a black altar, and that's gonna be somewhere in this area." He circled the area where the arms of the cross joined. "In the carnival. What's there?"

Sam studied the map, then looked across to the carnival itself. "That's the funhouse. But Dean, I've been in there, man. I went over every inch of this place. I would have noticed a freaking altar."

"You're not thinkin', Sammy. You broke through an illusion covering the dead ground, because you knew it was there."

Sam's eyes widened as he got Dean's point. "You mean, maybe that's not the only spell of illusion. He's hiding his ritual space with glamour."

"Now you're catchin' on," Dean agreed. He looked over at the carnival. It was late on a Saturday afternoon and the field had attracted a crowd of people: teenagers, parents with children. "I don't think that's the only spell, Sam. I mean, look over there. Three kids are dead, and they all went missing from here. You'd think people would quit bringing the munchkins, wouldn't you?"

Sam rested both hands on the car, leaning over as he gazed at the crowd. "Misdirection," he said thoughtfully.

"Come again?"

"At the bar last night – Cat was worried about the murders. She said that maybe the women on campus might be at risk. But there's no reason to think that. People are scared, Dean, but they're scared of the wrong things. Maybe that's deliberate."

"Huh. You know what, Sammy, if you're right, that's a hell of a spell." He nodded toward the small cluster of patrol cars. "It ain't workin' on them, though."

"Maybe it is. I mean, a police presence here makes sense, but they won't see anything. This guy can snatch a kid from right in front of them and they won't even notice."

"No kid is gettin' snatched today." Dean folded the map and slid it into his back pocket. "We find him, and end this. Today."

It was called The Crazy House, in large neon pink letters which, Sam thought, did not bode well. The façade was painted in ugly pastel shades like a child's drawing of a house, complete with cutesy painted flowers along the base of the wooden "wall". It was impossible to tell from the outside what might be behind that saccharine façade. It was a big structure, though. Plenty of room inside for a ritual slaughterhouse.

"Freaky," Sam commented.

"Yeah, look at those flowers. That's gotta be evil." Dean looked at the line of kids queuing to go inside. They were mostly older kids – he saw no one younger than eight – but Dean had told him about their father's warning. Just because the magician's been targeting the little ones doesn't mean he won't settle for something different. Every one of those kids was in danger.

"Let's go." Dean walked forward to join the line.

Sam looked up at the structure towering above them. "You know, if we can figure out where inside he's likely to be, we'll have to use something other than sight to break through the glamour. Touch maybe?"

Dean snorted. "That'll be inconspicuous."

"You got a better idea?" Sam asked, then stopped as he phone rang. He answered it.

"Hey, Sam."

"Rache? What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. You've got a date tonight, remember?" Rachel went on without waiting for Sam to answer. "I know we talked about a movie but there's nothing showing we could agree on so we thought we'd do the carnival instead."

"What? No!" God, not at the carnival! And Sam had completely forgotten he'd agreed to a date.

"Why not?" Rachel sounded surprised. "It'll be fun, and – "

"Rache, I meant I can't make it tonight. I'm sorry."

"No. I'm not letting you back out again!"

Sam sighed, turning away from Dean as he spoke. "Rache, my brother is here. I haven't seen him for two years."

"He seemed happy to tag along." Rachel answered instantly. "Listen, Sam, we're all meeting at nine. Why don't you and your brother join us for a couple of hours. Fun guaranteed, and then you two can sneak off and do your male bonding."

Despite himself, Sam laughed. Male bonding? Several replies came to mind, but none he dared utter with Dean right beside him. He wanted to tell her to avoid the carnival like the plague, but how was he going to explain that? He couldn't. But he and Dean were there, now. They had the rest of the day to find this magician.

(In broad daylight, in a crowded carnival. Yeah, that was going to be easy.)

And John Winchester was on his way to Palo Alto. If Sam and Dean couldn't find it, he would.

It was the thought of his father that made Sam answer, "Okay, Rache, you've got a deal." Dean was eyeing him impatiently. "I've got to go, but I'll see you and everyone later, okay?"

"Deal," Rachel said and hung up the phone.

"Shit," Sam swore, pocketing his phone as they reached the head of the line.

Dean paid for their tickets. "Dude, did you just make a date?"

Sam shrugged. "I didn't have a lot of choice. They're coming here."

"Great. Just great."

Sam followed Dean through a rotating door into a room that was painted completely black. The room was lit by a black light, illuminating the glowing geometric shapes painted on the walls, but very little else. The shapes on the walls were very cleverly done: the design was calculated to distort the viewer's sense of perspective, making the room appear to shrink as you moved through it. Without speaking, Sam and Dean split up, each of them taking one side of the room.

Sam moved slowly down the left side of the room, alert for anything that might suggest what he saw wasn't what was really there. But the whole point of this place was to distort perception. The door behind them spun again and a group of laughing children burst through. They ran through the room, pushing and shoving at each other, followed by a woman – probably mother to one of them – walking more slowly. The eldest boy flung open the door at the far end of the room. Daylight flooded in just as Sam passed a mirrored panel on the wall. He caught his own reflection on the edge of his vision and jerked back, not expecting it.

He turned around, expecting some wise-ass remark from his brother, but apparently Dean hadn't been watching. Sam reached out to touch the mirror, just in case. It felt like glass, smooth and cool, but his fingers came away dusty. Sam moved toward the exit door.

Dean was behind him as Sam emerged into the light. Sam glanced at the dust on his fingers and nudged Dean. "Check it out."

"Sulphur," Dean said with no evidence of surprise.

"We're in the right place."

Dean nodded agreement.

The funhouse felt like an assault course. They walked through a pipe six feet in diameter, constantly rotating. To get through it they had to step over a group of teenagers who apparently thought sliding up and down the wall was great fun. The pipe led them to a spiral staircase with jets of air blowing up through the steps, across a bridge with a moving floor and then into a mirror-maze. There was a narrow passageway to the side for those who wanted to bypass the maze. Sam ignored it, walking through the one-way gate into the maze. Only when he was inside did he realise why he'd done it.

Sam had become lost in a maze like this once when he was little. The maze hadn't been especially complex, but the panels of plain glass, of metal mesh, distorting mirrors and regular mirrors easily confused the child he was then. His dad, waiting at the exit, wouldn't let Dean come to Sam's aid: he insisted that Sam find his own way out. By the time Sam battled his way to the exit, he was almost in tears. But it wasn't being lost that had panicked him. It was being able to see his dad and Dean, actually seeing them there, but being unable to reach them no matter which way he turned.

"Lost already?" Dean pushed him forward.

It was an old memory and Sam shook it off easily. "Not even," he replied, and it was true. Sam had already been through this maze once, searching for EMF before Dean ever arrived. He had no trouble finding the right path this time. Again there was that uneasy feeling that attempting to locate a magical illusion in this place designed to make you see things not there was akin to hunting for a needle in a field full of haystacks.

On the far side of the maze, a brightly painted hexagonal chamber offered a choice of pathways. The first was a near-vertical slide that seemed to lead back out into the field. On the second wall a net of rope like the rigging on a pirate ship led into a padded tunnel. A sign in several languages declared that this route was for under-12's only, and Sam knew the tunnel was too narrow for his shoulders. He hoped it was what it looked like: just a playground for youngsters, and not some kind of trap. The third wall was blank, just painted bright blue. The fourth led into a ball pool. The fifth door led to a staircase – that was the "chicken out" option – and the sixth wall led back the way they came: into the maze.

Dean headed straight to the blank wall, running his hands over the paint. He looked back over his shoulder to Sam. "Dude."

Sam moved out of the way of the next group escaping the maze. They were teenagers and went straight for the slide. Sam was watching the young children playing in the ball-pool below. They were an all-you-can-eat-buffet for the thing he and Dean were hunting, and he wished there was some way to warn them, or get them the hell out of the danger zone.

"Sammy," Dean said sharply.

Sam crossed to Dean's side. Another boy came running out of the maze behind him, looked around and started to swarm up the rope net.

"Yeah? You got something?"

"Maybe." Dean rapped on the wall with his knuckles. "This feels solid to me, but I think we're close. Can you smell that?"

Smell what? Sam was about to ask, but then he did smell it. He shivered, another old memory crowding him. He was ten years old, holding a gun too large for his child's hands, pressed up against a wall, sheltering behind Dean. Gunfire thundered around them, and the scent of gunpowder was acrid in the air. He could even taste it. But there was another scent, too, even stronger than the gunpowder.

"Dragon's Blood incense," Sam said aloud. He reached out to touch the painted wall. "There's got to be a door, or something..."

"I can't find it." Dean thumped the wall, hard, with his fist. "Damn it!"

"Sounds solid," Sam commented. He turned around slowly, trying to orient himself. The smell of incense was strong enough that it must be coming from someplace near. An open door or an air vent, maybe. Something. Something they couldn't see...

"Dean. The ropes."

Dean looked. He shook his head like he couldn't believe he didn't think of it. The rope net was heavy, secured at both sides but with room to move. It would swing about as you climbed it. Dean strode over to the net, pushing the heavy rope away from the wall. "Yahtzee. C'mon, Sammy." He slid behind the rope.

To Sam, it seemed Dean just vanished. He followed. It was a tight fit. He found the floor behind the ropes wasn't where he thought it should be. Sam dropped down. He was in a dark space like a small elevator. There was a door ahead of him, standing ajar and the scent of incense was even stronger. Sam drew the gun from his back and followed Dean inside.

It wasn't a room. It was a space beneath the funhouse. The ground beneath Dean's feet was dead grass. It crackled under his boots like dry twigs. Above his head was machinery working: part of the funhouse games. There was just enough space for Dean to stand upright. Sam had to stoop.

There was a circle of something black on the ground, marking the edges of the ritual space. Dean crouched down and touched it. The black stuff was cold and sticky on his fingers. He lifted his fingers in front of his eyes. It smelled awful, like meat left to rot. "What the hell?"

"Asafoetida," Sam said.

Dean grinned up at his brother. "You've got a good memory."

"And you're stalling."

Sam was right. The last thing in the world he wanted to do was find more pieces of children and he knew he was going to find just that. Dean straightened. "Sam, check the perimeter," he instructed.

Sam nodded.

Dean took a deep breath and forced himself to step over that black line into the ritual circle. From outside the circle, he'd been aware of the altar, but hadn't really noticed it. More magic? Or perhaps just his own reluctance. You're a Winchester. Grow the fuck up. He walked over to the altar.

It was stone, covered with a black embroidered cloth. Four black candles, unlit, stood on the corners of the altar. In the centre, white smoke curled upward from an incense bowl. The bowl a human skull. There were five more bowls, each carved from what looked like obsidian. Four of them were filled with...oh, shit.

Dean moved closer because he had no choice now. He had to be sure. He touched nothing, but looked closely at the nearest bowl. It was half-full of blood. Red blood, that looked and smelled fresh, like blood in the movies. Not real. Human blood oxidised outside of the body, turning more brown than red, but somehow this was perfectly preserved. There were two more things. Almost covered by the blood was a piece of dark flesh. Meat. Something. To discover exactly what it was Dean would have to put his hand in there. He didn't do it. He knew enough. Sticking out of the bowl, like a spoon in a grisly bowl of soup, there was a clean, white bone. A child's rib.

Blood, flesh and bone held in an obsidian bowl. It was what Dean expected to find, but still, it was horrible. Not the sight itself – that would have made him hurl once, but no longer – but what it represented. Dean wasn't sure he believed in any kind of an afterlife, but if there was a heaven this was designed to deny it to the souls represented by these bowls. Four children, all of them too young to be anything but innocent. Dean was going to enjoy killing the son of a bitch who did this.

Sam completed his circuit of the space. "More sulphur," he said. Sam looked at the altar and Dean saw the horror of it fill his eyes before Sam tore his gaze away.

Sorry, Sammy. No time for a comforting hug. "You good?" Dean demanded.

He saw Sam swallow. "I'm good." Sam nodded. "Dean...what if we bring the police here? The carnival is crawling with cops."

Dean just looked at him.

Sam spread his hands. "Well, we could! All the evidence is here, Dean, and that way we'll know for sure no one else will get hurt."

Dean nodded. "Okay. Let's say we do that. Let's say the cops believe we just found this craphole by accident and they don't arrest us both. It'll prevent another murder, sure. But they won't catch the magician. He's too powerful now. He'll just move on, try again someplace else."

"Maybe," Sam agreed. "We don't know that, Dean, not for sure."

"You've been out of the game too long, Sam." Dean took one more look at the altar. "It's not our decision anyway. Let's get out of here. I'm gonna call Dad."

The brothers turned to go.

Neither of them noticed the black eyes watching from the darkness.

Part Seven

Also posted on AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/2899

FIC: Carnival of Souls (6/10)

CARNIVAL OF SOULS

Part Six

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