glasslogic (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
glasslogic) wrote2010-06-11 09:38 pm
glasslogic) wrote2010-06-11 09:38 pm
Entry tags:
Midnight Of the Century - Section Three
Chapter Nine
"Absolutely not."
"Boy, I have spent umpteen hours trying to track down that wayward brother of yours. Hunting a damn hunter who don't want to be found is no easy task, and I've had to let a few other things slide in the meantime. That doesn't mean I haven't got responsibilities that need looking after. Now you're here, and there is no reason in the world you can't go do this one simple thing for me."
"I'm not a hunter anymore, Bobby."
"I thought this whole road trip of yours was about hunting!"
Sam gave him a frustrated look. "Hunting for Dean, not hunting for monsters."
"A lot of them monsters are a damn sight less scary than your brother," Bobby snorted. "It's just a salt and burn, Sam. Not even a particularly active ghost. Probably won't even see it."
"If it was so inactive, it wouldn't have come to a hunter's attention. There's no such thing as 'just a salt and burn,' and you know it, Bobby! I'm not getting back into this."
"Into what?" Jess asked, walking in with a bag of groceries. They had been holed up at Bobby's for three days now and she had insisted on at least cooking the older hunter a meal to pay for his hospitality.
"Hunting!"
"I have a ghost problem, but I promised some guys out West I would stick by the phone and the library to offer emergency support for a few days while they track down a--" Bobby paused, giving Jessica an appraising look, "--well, something nasty. Anyways, Sam here says he won't help me out, even though the only reason the damn thing hasn't already been dealt with is because I've been so busy trying to track down his fool brother."
Jess nodded, and then skewered Sam with a look. "Can I talk to you outside for a sec?"
Sam gave a short nod and stormed out. Jess followed with rolled eyes and a "one minute" sign to Bobby.
She trailed him a short distance from the house. Even this far into April, South Dakota was still feeling the chilly drafts of a slowly receding winter. She was glad she still had her coat on.
"What's the problem?"
"The problem! The problem is I'm not a hunter anymore, Jess. And you sure as hell aren't either!"
"He isn't asking you to don your dragon-scale armor, lift up the sword of Michael, and do battle for the world, Sam! He just wants us to go get rid of one ghost. Just like the one we did back home."
"And you remember how well that went! You still buy five pound bags of salt every time we enter a grocery store and sleep with a poker beside the bed. It's never 'one little ghost.' We do this, presuming we survive, and next time it will be 'one little werewolf,' or 'one little shapeshifter,' and before you know it, we are driving around the country stomping out supernatural fires as a full time job just like every other hunter out there!"
"Bobby knows I'm not a hunter, and he knows you've been away from it for a long time. I'm sure he wouldn't ask us to do anything dangerous."
Sam glared at her.
"Anything exceptionally dangerous," Jess hastily corrected. "And he is doing us a huge favor with Dean. Why don't you at least look into it, and if it seems like it might be a low key sort of thing we can handle, then ...we really do owe him."
Her eyes narrowed. "And the salt and poker is just good sense. Like locking the front door at night."
"Whatever."
"Sam..."
"I'll look into it. But if I say no, then that's it, Jess. You don't get an equal vote on this. Not on hunting stuff."
She nodded, satisfied. "Deal."
Jess loitered outside, petting Rumsfeld and generally wasting time until she presumed Sam had had enough of a chance to smooth things over with Bobby, then she slipped back in to make dinner.
Bobby was waiting for her in the kitchen. He wordlessly held out an opened beer to her.
She snagged it and slid into a seat.
"Something on your mind?" she asked.
"My kitchen, didn't think I needed an invitation to sit in it."
"I'm pretty sure cooks get kitchen prerogatives, even visiting ones."
He saluted her with his own bottle. "Sam's upstairs looking over some notes I have about the ghost." He took a long pull of his beer. "He's not wrong, you know, to not want to take any jobs. He's worried about you getting hurt, or worse."
"I notice no one has suggested I stay behind yet."
"It doesn't take a genius to see you two come as a set. It's not my business to try and talk you out of it; I have to assume Sam's already tried and failed."
"It's my life. I may not have the experience or the knowledge of an actual hunter, but I saved us both on the last ghost hunt. As long as this is similar, I think I can judge the risk for myself."
Bobby snorted.
"You know how Sam feels about hunting," she continued. "I don't think you would have asked him to do this if it wasn't important, and we do owe you for helping us find Dean."
Bobby stared at his beer for a long moment. "That eager to find him, are you?"
"I don't know him. But I love Sam, and I don't want him to have to live with the guilt of knowing how Dead died, and not having at least tried to save him."
"Even if you do find him, he's not likely to give you guys a warm reception."
"He doesn't have to be happy about it, he just has to shut-up and listen for five minutes."
Jess hesitated, "Do you know what happened between them?"
"Them who?"
"Sam and Dean," she hurried on, before Bobby could tell her it wasn't her business, "only I've asked Sam, and he honestly seems confused. I really don't think he has any idea of why Dean hates him."
"Dean doesn't hate him."
"That's not what Sam says, and that's not what it sounds like from their last little visit together either. Sam is completely convinced his brother hates him, and I haven't seen or heard anything to contradict that. Not even calling when their father died? That would be unforgivable to me."
"What John wanted," Bobby grunted.
"He wanted Sam to think Dean hates him? Or he didn't want Sam to know he was dead?"
"It's not any of our business."
"Sam is my business," Jess said firmly. "And from what he has to say, Dean was the absolute center of his universe from the day he was born until the day he said he wanted to go to college, and suddenly Dean hates him for some reason no one feels like telling him about? That isn't fair, that's like … junior-high level drama."
Bobby sighed. "I'm not getting anymore involved in this. It's a mess from the ground up, and there isn't going to be anyone happy at the end. I said I would help you guys save Dean's life, if it can be saved, but that's the limit of my involvement. Don't try siccing your boyfriend on me either, I'm not gonna have this talk with Sam. He wants to know, he's gonna have to find Dean and ask."
"He did ask!"
"Maybe he should use smaller words, and a tire iron."
Jess glared.
Bobby gave her a nod and drained his bottle, before leaving to go work on something outside.
Jess sat for a few more minutes, sipping her beer and thinking about the conversation, before digging into the grocery bag to get dinner started.
Chapter Ten
-Reverend M. Goodman
The "little salt and burn" was a vanishing hitchhiker type. Unfortunately, instead of catching rides, the ghost was appearing in the road causing accidents. No fatalities yet, but that was just a matter of time.
Sam had continued to gripe and bitch, but had finally agreed that they would go and check it out.
The story on this ghost --as best as Bobby could find out-- was that it was some teenager in the fifties run down by a bunch of drunks, who then panicked and buried the body in the woods nearby. Unmarked, of course. One of the drunks in question had made a tearful confession to a sheriff while arrested on a completely unrelated incident years later, but he had been unable to remember where on the highway the accident had occurred, much less the location of the burial. If not for that confession, they wouldn't have any idea at all about the ghost's history.
The spirit hadn't made an appearance until a developer started clearing land for new housing about three years ago and apparently woke it up. Seemingly the ghost had liked its woodland home. But the accidents were piling up, and since the people were unlikely to leave, the spirit had to go.
Locating the grave had been surprisingly easy. Sam had given her a run-down on finding unmarked burials during the drive out to the site. It was interesting; when she thought of "graves" it pulled up a pretty generic idea of a coffin, and a six-foot pit --maybe with a tasteful headstone at the top. But she had to agree with Sam that a couple of guys half-drunk in a panic were probably not going to manage six-feet before they rolled the body in. Sam said that the easiest way to stop animals from immediately digging the body back up was to pile rocks on top, and hopefully the guys who had done the burying had had the wits to realize that much --since they wouldn't want their victim showing back up and all. Otherwise, if the corpse couldn't be located intact, Sam wasn't sure how they were going to go about banishing the ghost.
Luck had been with them. By pinning all the sightings on a map they had been able to set up a fairly reasonable search area, and literally tripped over the uneven jumble of loose rock not even three hours after they started looking, despite the thick drift of leaves that had built up around it over the decades. By then the sun had been going down, so Sam tied a bright strip of plastic flagging to the closest tree, then to a few more on the way back to the car so they would be able to find the site again in the morning.
Opening the grave the next morning was fairly quick work, moving the stones covering it had almost taken longer.
Sam had generously allowed her to do half the shoveling.
Jess was appalled at how much sheer work it was, her back aching and palms stinging by the time she was halfway through her turn. She was grateful Sam had brought along some work gloves in her size, but the way he hovered beside the slowly developing trench, waiting expectantly for her to give up, was irritating. She finished her half just to spite him, and watched enviously as he seemed to effortlessly excavate the rest of the shallow grave.
He looked up when done to find her staring at him. Sam flashed a grin, "Like what you see?"
"Next time, take your shirt off."
"Not in this weather, even with the work-out," he demurred. "Ready for the next step?"
Jess held up the bag of salt and tossed him the lighter fluid. She had been keeping a paranoid look-out for the ghost when they had first started digging, but the late morning sunshine and calmness of the surrounding forest had lulled her into a sense of security. Distracted by backbreaking work and her fiancé's muscles, her attention had wavered somewhat.
Sam didn't seem concerned about it.
"Why don't we just make a big salt circle around the grave to begin with --for protection?"
"The ghost is tied to the bones, if we draw the circle around them, it will just manifest inside with us."
"So the answer is no circle at all?"
Sam raised an eyebrow. "Did you notice that doing us a lot of good last time?"
Jess poured the bag of salt out onto the weathered bones lying partially exposed about three feet down. "It's sad."
"What is?"
"He was killed by lowlifes, and no one knew where he was, we still don't know who he is, and after this he won't even be a ghost to remind people he existed."
"He's been dead a long time, Jess. Saving the lives of the living is more of a priority than keeping around the memory of someone who died more then fifty years ago."
"Still, sad."
Sam nodded in agreement and squeezed the lighter fluid out over the bones to mix with the salt. "Have the matches?"
"Yep." She bent to rummage them out of the rucksack. A new one, borrowed from Bobby.
A choked sort of noise brought her head back up with a snap. "Sam?"
He was on his knees beside the grave, clutching his head with both hands, his face locked in an expression of agony.
"Sam!" She scrambled to his side, his nose was bleeding and he didn't respond to her with anything but ragged gasping. She flashed back to the motel where she had found him in much the same state, but couldn't be sure this wasn't some kind of attack by the ghost, and so was fumbling with the matches in her hand to light the bones up when the wind began to blow.
The first hard gust sent the entire book of matches flying out of her hand and somewhere into the dense leaves. Sam had fallen to the ground behind her, still moaning and clutching his head.
"Sam! Sam we aren't doing this again!" Jessica screamed over the howling wind.
Wind was suddenly blowing so hard it was all Jess could do to stand. She was going to be black and blue from being pelted with sticks and other forest debris. She didn't think she could keep a match lit in the gale, but it was the only option she could see.
She dived for the rucksack and another matchbook, snagging the bag with her fingertips just as the wind tried to fling it away. The matches wouldn't stay lit even long enough for her to drop them into the pit, and the wind was getting even stronger.
She about jumped out of her skin at the deafening thunder of a gunshot from feet away. The pit she was leaning over exploded into flames, sending her tumbling onto her back to avoid getting scorched. The air went flat still, and she clawed tangled hair out of her eyes to see what had happened.
Sam was lying on his side where she had left him, his face smeared with blood and deathly pale, but one hand was extended towards the grave, holding a revolver he had fired into the pit full of kerosene fumes. He was holding his head up, looking for her. When he saw her sit up and blink at him, he dropped back completely against the earth and lay still.
Jess took a moment to collect herself, then walked around the burning grave to sit next to Sam.
"Don't hit me this time," he mumbled.
"Not while you look so pathetic," she agreed, pushing his hair off his forehead and giving him a good look-over.
"Did the ghost do this?"
Sam grimaced. "Had a vision."
"Your visions have some bang-up timing."
He tried to nod, but cringed at the movement. "Let's not do this again."
"Yeah, next time Bobby can salt his own damn ghost. What was the vision about?"
"Not really sure. It had Dean, and some girl. Kinda confusing. Let me not think about it for awhile, and it might make more sense later."
Jess nodded, but her concern sharpened when a fresh line of blood trickled from his nose.
"Are you going to be okay?"
"I'll live."
"How about walking? We didn't haul the camping stuff in with us, I guess I could go back and get it, but I don't really want to leave you alone out here if you can't even sit up."
"Let me lay here for a bit?"
Jess fished some forgotten aspirin out of the interior pocket of her coat, and didn't say anything about the wait. Even when almost five hours went by before Sam felt able to make the hike back to the car.
Sam scowled and threw the pencil across the room.
Jessica looked up from her magazine and raised an eyebrow. "That's a novel way to draw."
"This isn't working. My talents don't extend to drawing accurate depictions of people."
"Let me see what you have." She tossed the magazine onto the couch beside her and slid into a seat at the table to look.
"Wow."
Sam glowered.
"No, I mean it's really... really... Is that Big Bird?"
"Jess!"
"It's fine, Sam." She patted his arm. "Not everyone can be da Vinci."
"It isn't fine. This is the only clue we have, some fragmented vision of this woman -- and that she is related in some way to Dean. But if I can't get her image out of my head and onto paper, we aren't going to be able to find her," he growled, frustrated.
"And this didn't work out with that sketch artist friend of Bobby's why, again?"
"I can't hold her face in my mind like that. I can see her, but when I try to describe her, it never comes out right; the image keeps shifting." Sam rubbed his hands over his face in exhaustion. "I just can't ...this is more frustrating than having no clues at all."
"Go take a nap."
"What?"
Jess stood up and closed the sketch pad. "We've been here a month now, and I think Bobby is starting to feel crowded. He'll call us if he finds anything, but you need to get a little sleep, and then I think it's time you and I hit the road again."
"And go where, Jess? This woman, and my brother, could be anywhere in the country! Anywhere in the world even!"
She shrugged. "I've always kind of wanted to see New England."
Chapter Eleven
a designer can be inferred."
-Percy Bysshe Shelley
"But you have to be hot."
"I'm not wearing shorts, Jess. Especially not neon red shorts with palm trees on them."
"So you might be open to a different color?"
Sam gave her a withering look, which she completely ignored as she continued browsing through the sales rack.
Jess's own shorts were the result of taking a knife to her more ragged pair of jeans as soon as the temperature stopped dipping below sixty. Her latest mission was to convince Sam to do the same. More because he had so adamantly refused the first time she suggested it, than because she had any real investment in his choice of apparel.
Shopping had grown much more amusing since she realized that it wasn't just the idea of cut-offs he was opposed too, but any kind of shorts at all. Shorts for him anyways; he was nothing but supportive of her desire to wear them.
Middle Tennessee was almost unbearably hot in September. Even up on the Cumberland Plateau, where it was marginally cooler than the surrounding landscape, afternoon temperatures in the high nineties weren't uncommon.
She couldn't believe how fast time was going. They had criss-crossed the country several times in the last few months. From Mystic Seaport to the Everglades, Carlsbad Caverns to Yosemite. Sam flat out refused to do anymore hunting, but he was less opposed to running errands and package pick-up and delivery at Bobby's behest.
Jess had met a wide variety of strange and interesting people, and seen a great deal more of the world than she would have believed she would ever have the chance to just nine short months ago. She had met psychics, and seen magic, and other things both amazing and horrible --and that was just delivering packages. She couldn't imagine what it would be like to be an actual hunter, and found herself not-unhappy that Sam refused to even entertain the idea of taking those kind of jobs.
It was September, and there was still no sign of Dean.
On the plus side, Sam had not suffered another one of his debilitating visions; on the negative side, that left them with nothing to go on but the one vision of the unknown woman.
Bobby had turned up nothing. Word had trickled back from a few sources that they might have lifted a glass with a hunter named Dean in various locations, but it was always days or weeks after the fact. There were never any signs by the time Sam and Jess could get there to check.
Sam had gone through a few weeks of depression as spring turned to summer and they made no progress, but lately he seemed to have grown somewhat resigned, and was taking more pleasure in the freedom of the road again.
Jess had had a bout or two of homesickness, but they were brief, and easily curable by calling her parents for a few minutes. They still weren't thrilled with the situation, but at least seemed to have accepted the fact that she wasn't heading back to California to take up her organized middle-class life anytime soon. She was suspicious that they had increased their life-insurance policy on her from the "just enough for a funeral" class to the "…and console our grief with a year-long cruise" bracket.
Sam seemed to find that endlessly amusing.
"I'm going next door to the Post Office," he called. "Do we need anything but stamps?"
"I don't think so. But hold up a sec, I'll come with you." Jess replaced the shirt she had been examining on the rack and followed Sam back out onto the street.
The tiny brick post office was almost empty. Sam browsed around looking at posters and stamp displays while Jess stood in the short line.
The teller called her up in less than five minutes.
"What can I help you with today?" The woman seemed bored, but friendly.
"Just stamps, I think."
"How many?"
"Ah ...hang on." She looked around for Sam and saw him standing at the end of the counter examining a cork board with some flyers tacked up on it. "Sam! How many stamps?"
He didn't answer her. Jess held up one finger to the woman behind the counter and went to grab Sam's shoulder.
"Sam, how many stamps?"
He turned to face her, one of the flyers from the board in his hands, expression fierce. "It's her."
"It's who?" Sam shook his head impatiently at her question and looked past her towards the woman at the counter. "Can I take this?" he asked loudly, but didn't wait for a reply from the confused looking attendant. "I'm just going to take this, ah... Have a nice day!"
Sam grabbed Jess's arm and dragged her out while the woman at the counter was still looking bemused.
"Look. Look!" He shoved the black and white missing flyer into Jess's hands. "It's her, Jordan Black. The woman from my vision."
Jess stopped walking and stared at the paper. "The one with Dean?!"
"Yes," Sam hissed, grabbing her again and pulling her down the street. He was looking over his shoulder like he expected the postal clerk to come running out at any moment demanding the poorly photocopied missing-person flyer back.
They ducked into a small diner on the corner and asked for a booth in the back.
The paper showed a petite woman with a snub nose, short curls, and a lively smile sitting on a porch swing. The background as far as could be made out in the poor quality of the copy job was generic trees, and could be anywhere. The lettering below the picture read:
Jordan Black
5'7
Caucasian
Brown Hair
Blue Eyes
DOB: 7/7/88
Missing Since: 6/15/09 from Franklin, Tennessee
Last Seen Wearing: Purple T-Shirt, Jeans
If you have information please call:
But the piece of paper where the contact information should have been was ripped off.
Jess ran her finger over the tear in frustration. "What now?"
Sam motioned the waitress over. "Excuse me, how far away is Franklin from here?"
"Only about thirty minutes or so." She noticed the flyer. "Oh, that poor girl. Did you know her?"
Sam cast Jess a look, then turned to face the waitress directly. "Her parents knew my parents, we kind of grew up together, but we haven't been in touch in so long... I didn't even know she was missing."
"That must have been a real shock to see that flyer."
"It was, it really was," Sam said fervently. "Can you tell me anything about it?"
"Not much to tell, sweetie; just what was on the local news. Been a few months now, but I think she just vanished in the middle of the night." She looked away, distracted by another customer. "Looks like another table. Did you guys want to order anything before I go?"
"Ah, no. Thanks. Not right now."
"You all have a good rest of the day, then."
Jess waited until she was gone, then leaned in. "Thirty minutes away?! Nine months on the road, then out of the blue you see her face on some random flyer, and she's thirty minutes away?!"
"We don't know yet, Jess. She vanished from Franklin. No way of knowing where she is now."
"No," Jess agreed, sliding out of the booth and grabbing her purse. "But we know where to start looking."
Chapter Twelve
Jordan Black: Will we always be together?
Frank Black: Of course.
Jordan Black: Forever?
Frank Black: Well, nobody gets forever.
~Millennium
"Hi. My name is Jessica, this is my ...partner, Sam. I was wondering if you had a few minutes to talk to me about your roommate, Jordan Black?"
The mousy girl in the doorway looked confused. "The police and everyone came by months ago, and you don't look like cops."
"Oh, I'm not--"
Sam cut her off impatiently, "We aren't cops --Michelle, is it? We're writers. Working on a true crime novel about your roommate's disappearance, and we were hoping you might be able to help us out with some of the details."
Michelle's face brightened. "A book? That would be great! It's only been a few months, but it's like no one even remembers she's gone missing anymore. Maybe if you do a book people will be looking for her again. Come on in!" She stepped out of the doorway and motioned them inside.
Sam and Jess walked past her into the cool dark interior. The sagging couch, worn carpet, and mismatched furniture, with the bright eclectic prints on the walls and weird knickknacks, brought back flashes of undergrad off-campus living.
Jess caught the familiar grin on Sam's face and knew he recognized the ambiance. She leaned in to whisper to him, "This is much cleaner than our place ever was."
"Hey, I did my share of the dusting!" he whispered back.
She had started to reply to that, when her eye was caught by a painting over an old-fashioned looking furnace in the corner. The painting wasn't large, and the colors were somewhat jarring, but it was compelling nonetheless. It looked like it should be a forest scene, though the details of the trees and sky were indistinct. There was something else about it, though... Jess stepped closer. From right below the painting, she could see that the swirls of color and the brushstrokes themselves hinted at faces. There was also a heaviness to the center of the painting. Without being able to determine any actual changes in strokes or color, everything seemed to bend to the center of the painting, like it was being drawn in. The overall effect was …disturbing.
"This is amazing."
Michelle closed the door behind them. "Do you like it? That's one of Jordan's. She's an amazing artist. Even if you don't care for her subject matter, there is just something about her work. Here --you guys can sit anywhere, just not the right side of the couch; there isn't much support on that side and you would probably end up on the floor."
Jess sat on the left side of the couch, while Sam dragged a seat over from the table. Michelle came back from down a short hallway with a beanbag chair.
"What did you want to know?" she asked, flopping down on it.
Jess gave Sam a 'go ahead' look.
"Well, we really don't know very much at all. Just that she was an art student here, and vanished back in--" he flipped through his notebook, "--June, and no signs were ever found."
Michelle nodded. "It was completely weird. I was asleep, Jordan was at the table drawing when I turned in, I never heard anything. But when I woke up in the morning Jordan was gone, and every window in the house was broken."
"Broken, like someone had smashed their way in?" Jess asked.
"No. Outwards. There was no glass in the house, and it was all ...broken-up, like safety glass. Only it wasn't."
Sam frowned. "Wait --you said all the windows. Do you have a window in your bedroom too?"
Michelle nodded. "Yeah. Freaky, right?"
"What did the cops think about that?"
"You mean after they finished trying to find some way to accuse me of being involved? They didn't have a clue what happened. No one does." She looked down where she was twisting her fingers in the hem of her skirt.
"Did you and Jordan get along?" Jess asked gently.
"She was my best friend. She was in some of my freshman classes, but I didn't know her very well then. I missed the lottery to stay in the dorm my Junior year, and I didn't want to live alone. I'd never lived alone before. I don't know how Jordan found out about it, but she knocked on my door one evening and said she wanted more space than the dorms had, and asked if I wanted to be roommates. We found this place and moved in together. She brought her work with her..." Michelle's voice trailed off for a moment, lost in thought.
"Her work?" Sam prompted.
"Sorry. Her work is just …amazing. And she never seems to have to think about it, she just picks up a pencil, or some paint, and just ...does it. It would be easy to be jealous, but Jordan's just so friendly and honest. She'd give you her last dollar if you needed it and she would do it with a smile and a wave. I can't imagine who would want to hurt her."
"Could she just have left?"
"No. Absolutely not. She would never have left without telling me. And if she did, why leave her wallet and all of her stuff? She didn't even tell her dad."
"So she has family."
"She has a dad. Her mom died when she was little; she never said how, she didn't like to talk about it. She didn't like to talk about her dad either, but he came here after we moved in to see her and I met him then."
"What was he like?"
"Intense."
Sam gave her an encouraging smile. "That's it? Intense?"
"You would have to meet him," there was a tone of finality in Michelle's voice.
"So, are all of Jordan's paintings like that one?" Jessica changed the topic, pointing towards the landscape on the wall.
"No, that one is actually unusual. She normally only does religious-type stuff. Which is also odd, because as far as I could ever tell Jordan wasn't very religious. I think that painting may have been for a class --it was the last one she did before she disappeared."
"What do you mean by 'religious-type stuff'?" Sam asked.
Michelle stood up. "You can come see if you want, it's all still in her room."
"No one took her things?" Sam asked, standing to follow her.
"Nope. I mean, they went through them when she vanished, but except for some paperwork and identification stuff, they left everything here. Her dad never even came by that I know of after she vanished, though I guess he might have come with one of the detectives while I was at class."
Jessica frowned. "What about rent. Aren't you looking for another roommate to help pay for this place? How can they move in if her stuff is still here?"
Michelle shrugged and led the way into the short hallway she had brought the beanbag chair from earlier. "Her dad sends me a check for rent every month. He paid for the windows too."
"So he thinks she's going to come back. Did he think she smashed the glass?"
"I wouldn't want to guess about what he thinks. He's an odd guy. But I lived with Jordan for two years, and I can tell you this entire thing --broken windows, vanishing without telling anyone so that they worry-- that's all very not-Jordan. Here we are."
They had passed two closed doors in the hallway, and stopped in front of a third. Michelle turned the handle and pushed it open without entering. It was pitch black inside, and she reached around the door frame to find a light-switch on the wall.
"You don't want to go in?"
Michelle didn't reply, but then her hand found the switch and light blossomed in the room. After that neither Sam nor Jess could think of anything to say.
Angels looked down on them from every square inch of wall. Some were paintings, some were drawings in ink or pencil, and some were different mediums like etching. None of them were the same as any other, and all of them gazed down into the room with an air that made the hair stand up on Sam's neck. He understood why Michelle was still standing outside the doorway.
"That's ...powerful imagery," he said, at a loss for anything else.
Jess finally found her voice. "You said she wasn't religious?"
"Nope," Michelle said, leaning against the wall, "she just seemed to really like angels."
"Apparently." Jess took a step into the room. If she tuned out the images watching her from the walls, nothing else in the room was that unusual. A twin bed, rumpled with lavender sheets and a cheap purple comforter. Heavy artsy curtains blocked out every trace of light from a window. A desk made of polished wood suspended over two filing cabinets. Cheap shelving held a variety of art- and school-related texts, some with used stickers still dotting the spines.
Two photographs in hand-made frames had a shelf to themselves. In one, a very young girl with curly brown hair was having her feet licked by a large shaggy dog. She was laughing, sitting on the lap of a woman with long brown hair and a broad smile, on the steps of a yellow house. The other photo appeared to be of the same girl, now several years older. She was smiling, wearing winter clothes, with both of her arms wrapped around the arm of a much older man with graying hair, and deep lines in his weathered face. He was smiling too, but the expression lacked the girl's honesty and there was something heavy about his gaze that reminded Sam of his father.
He took the second photo from Jess to examine more closely.
"That other one looks like the Pacific Northwest from the trees," he told Jess, carefully handling the frame so he didn't damage the dried flowers decorating it. "I can't tell about this one, not enough greenery in the image."
He turned to Michelle, still out in the hallway, and held up the photo. "Is this Jordan's father?"
"Yes, and the other one is her mom. She told me once they used to have a yellow house in Seattle, so I guess that's where that picture is from."
"And this one --where is this?"
"Not sure, sorry. Her dad lives a few counties over, though. It gets cold enough around here to wear clothes like that in winter. It could maybe be at his place."
Jess opened the closet, after glancing at Michelle and finding no protest. The inside of the door, unlike the outside, only held one picture. Like the others it was an angel, in what looked like pencil this time, but unlike the others this one was in a matted glass frame and the paper it was drawn on looked like it was yellowing with age. Creases showed that it had been folded at some point. It was clearly the same style as the other angels in the room. The stark strong lines of the figure demanded an attention far beyond its surface appearance. The only other things in the closet were some folded blankets on the shelf, a laundry basket with what looked like socks and undergarments on the floor with a tangle of shoes beside it, and a neatly hung assortment of pants and tops. The clothes looked like they belonged to a slim woman of medium height.
"Why is this angel different?" Jess asked Michelle.
"She told me her grandmother drew it. I think it's the thing she valued most in the room. Maybe at all."
Jess raised an eyebrow, stepping back so Sam could see the drawing too. "Her grandmother? Is that who taught her to draw?"
"Oh, no. I wouldn't think so -- she said her grandma died a long time before she was born."
"If she valued it so much," Sam frowned, "why was it in the closet? I would think she would want it out where she could see it."
"She left the door open a lot, but it used to be on the wall over her desk. Then one day we were sitting on the couch and she just sat up and said her dad was coming, and he shouldn't see it. The next time I went in her room, it was on the inside of her closet door."
Sam and Jess traded looks, but only commented on the drawing.
"Her dad didn't like the angel?"
Michelle shrugged. "From things she said, I don't think her dad liked any of the angels. I wasn't here the entire time when he visited, but as far as I know he never went into her room. He was on the couch when I left, and in the same place when I got back. That's the only time I know he visited at all. I asked her why that drawing was special once, and that's when she told me about her grandmother. She said it made her dad sad. It was his mom, so maybe it just brought up bad memories."
"Interesting. You said Jordan was sitting with you on the couch, then just suddenly seemed to know her dad was coming to visit?"
Michelle stiffened. "Yeah, she must have just remembered."
"So she didn't ...do things like that a lot, then?" Sam hedged
"Do what?"
"Seem to just know things."
"What kind of book did you say you were writing again?"
Closing the door and turning to the room, Jess decided to steer the direction of the conversation to safer waters. "True crime." She gave Michelle a reassuring smile. "Sam was just wondering if she had those kind of memory lapses a lot, maybe she had periods of confusion? It could be important to her disappearance."
"Oh! No." Michelle gave a nervous half laugh. "It sounded like you were accusing her of being, I dunno, psychic or something. I mean, she would zone out sometimes, act a little weird maybe. But she's an artist, it sort of goes with the territory."
"My first roommate was an artist," Jess agreed, her gaze caught on the backpack and purse slung over the rickety desk chair. "So when you said she didn't take anything, you're sure nothing was missing?"
"It's not my stuff, so I can't be absolutely sure -- but she doesn't have much clutter, not compared to my room anyways, and as far as I can tell there isn't anything gone." Michelle was still slouched against the far wall watching them.
"No clothes missing or anything?"
Michelle shrugged. "Not that I noticed."
"What was she wearing when she disappeared?"
"Mmmm, when I went to bed she was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I think it was a violet school shirt, I remember asking her where she got it since it was pretty and not one of our normal school colors."
Sam picked up a piece of paper lying face down on the desk. When he flipped it over he saw that it was a half-completed drawing of yet another angel.
Michelle saw what he was looking at, "I found that on the floor the morning she vanished," she offered. "It was what she was working on when I went to bed."
"Anything odd about it?"
Michelle shrugged and waved her hand at the room in general as if to suggest, "what do you think?"
Sam showed it to Jess, who took it for closer examination. She frowned and brushed a finger over one of the lines. She looked up to scan the walls, then back to the angel in her hands.
"See something?" Sam asked.
"Not really, it just feels …I don't know. Different. Sad, maybe?" She shrugged and laid it back down on the desk.
Sam nodded and opened the desk drawers. He found only art and other school supplies inside, plus a few hanging folders with titles like "registration" and "medical stuff," which were empty. He glanced at their hostess inquiringly.
"The cops took all that stuff with them; they emptied her purse out too."
He nodded and closed the drawers. Sam lifted the closed sketchpad on the dresser and flipped through it, most of them were angels, but in the middle of the pad he frowned, then flipped through the rest quickly before coming back to the one page.
"I thought you said she only did angels?" He turned the pad to Michelle so she could see the incredibly detailed drawing of the rooster, very unlike the stark-lined angels watching from all around the room. Beneath it, in neat block text produced with the same charcoal used to draw the bird, was printed, "The Time Is Now."
Michelle looked at it and nodded. "It could have been something for class, or just a whim. I don't really know much about her assignments --I'm more into textile work. After that first year we didn't really have any classes together. The cops and people who came to investigate didn't seem to think much of it."
"Do you have any idea what it means, what 'time' the picture is talking about?"
Michelle shook her head. "Honestly, until that last FBI guy came by a few weeks ago, I didn't even know it was there. He seemed to think it was weird too."
"What FBI agent?" Jess shot in with, before Sam could speak up. She had spent a lot of time over the last few months hearing about various Winchester adventures, and was well aware what sort of covers they tended to use. It seemed unusual that an authentic lone FBI agent would wander by and interrogate the roommate of a missing college girl months after her disappearance when the case had been seemingly sidelined.
"I don't remember his name, sorry. He just knocked on the door one afternoon and said he was following up. He asked a lot of the same questions you did and wanted to see her room."
"What did he look like?" Sam demanded. Michelle looked a little confused and uneasy, he realized how odd the question seemed. Jess jumped in to save him.
"We just didn't realize the bureau was still investigating, " she said, sounding excited, "the agents we spoke with all seemed to think the case was shelved for the time being. If it's been assigned to a new guy, maybe he will be willing to speak more with us. But it would help us find him if we knew what he looked like."
"Why don't you just call and ask who's handling the case?"
"We already have. They say the case is a low priority, but maybe one of their agents has taken a personal interest and is investigating off the clock. If we have a description, we might be able to find out who," Sam suggested hopefully.
Michelle seemed to buy the cover. "He was, um, not quite as tall as you. With short hair and green eyes. He looked a little beat up and like maybe he wasn't feeling well. I offered to fix him a snack and a drink and let him sit for awhile, but he insisted he had more work to do."
"You sound like you paid some attention to him," Jess offered.
"I don't make time for a lot of guys with my schedule," Michelle grinned, "but I would have made time for him."
"That hot?"
"Definitely."
Both women smiled at each other knowingly.
"Yes. Thanks," Sam interrupted before the conversation could head to places he didn't really want to have to listen to. The description fit Dean perfectly, down to Michelle's female assessment of his charms. "Did he happen to mention where he was headed next? We might pick up some good details following his tracks."
Michelle finally entered the room from her post in the hallway, walked over to the shelf and pulled down an address book. Sam could see her flip through the empty pages until she found one with writing. She handed it to Sam.
"He asked for her father's address."
Chapter Thirteen
"A dreamer is one who can only find his way
by moonlight, and his punishment is that he
sees the dawn before the rest of the world."
~Oscar Wilde
Crossville, Tennessee, was further from Franklin than Michelle's "a few counties" made it sound.
It was already late in the day, so they ended up spending the night in a motel before going to find Frank Black. Sam took the opportunity to do some research into the Black family.
"Anything good?" Jess wandered over to stand behind his shoulder, wringing her hair out with a towel from her shower.
"There are a lot of news articles that mention Frank Black. Apparently he used to actually be with the FBI, and it looks like he did a stint as a consultant out in Seattle. There is an article here about his wife being abducted--" Sam scrolled down the page.
"That's horrible. Is that when she died?"
"Mmmm... no. Looks like they got her back alive."
Jess skimmed the article, then leaned down to do her own typing. "Let's try Cath--"
"Hey, hey!" Sam protested, waving her off. "One person at a time. You go --finish drying your hair, or find some clothes or something."
Jess snorted, but conceded defeat and sat on the edge of the bed while Sam ran the search.
"Well?"
"It looks like a Catherine Black might have been one of the victims of that nasty outbreak they had in the Northwest about fourteen years ago. This is just a speculative list of names, but other than some articles on children's work --she was apparently a counselor-- it's the only hit I'm getting."
"I remember that; my parents didn't let us leave the house for three months."
Sam nodded. "Yeah, that was about the longest we stayed anywhere when I was a kid. In Florida. South Florida."
"That must have been horrible for Jordan. Maybe explains her fascination with angels?"
"Maybe, but that picture by her grandmother is certainly a lot older than that."
"She fixated on it after her mom died?"
Sam shrugged, and seemed distracted by something he was reading.
He was still deeply involved five minutes later after Jess had tied her still damp hair up and dragged a pair of Sam's boxers and a t-shirt on.
"Find something else?" she prodded.
"There's a couple of blurbs in more questionable news sources speculating about Mr. Black. Internet conspiracy sites mostly, but it's weird."
"Conspiracy? Like aliens and who killed JFK?"
"Yeah, but these sites are linking him up to something called the Millennium Group, and accusing him of some kind of paranormal powers."
"Powers? What kind of powers?"
"Doesn't say, sites are pretty vague. Nothing on what the Millennium Group is either, just that they are a law enforcement consulting firm. I can't find anything else about them on the internet."
"A law enforcement consulting firm tied in with psychic powers," Jess repeated skeptically.
Sam shrugged. "Police stations have been consulting so-called psychics on the sly to help find victims for decades."
Jess snorted her opinion of that.
Sam gave her a pointed look, and she had the grace to blush slightly at the reminder of exactly what they were doing on the road in the first place. She moved on.
"Anything about Jordan?"
"Nope. Just her student bio for the college."
"What now?"
"I'm going to call Bobby and update him on where we are, then I guess we just go see Frank Black tomorrow as planned." He took note of what she was wearing. "Didn't we buy you some shorts for sleeping in?"
"I like your boxers better."
"I'm amazed they even stay up on you."
"It's the miracle of the female hip." She tossed him one of the cell phones to call Bobby and waved the other one. "I'm ordering out for dinner --preferences?"
"Not as long as it's hot. Why don't you call your parents while you're at it?"
Jess gave him a withering look.
"I have a theory that periodic proof that you're alive makes it less likely they take a hit out on me. Indulge my paranoia?"
She rolled her eyes, but nodded and flopped on the bed with the phone book.
Sam took his cell outside to call Bobby.
"Frank Black? That's been awhile." Bobby sounded like he was frowning on the other end of the line.
"So you've heard of him?" Sam asked, surprised. "Is he a hunter?"
"Hardly a hunter. Not like you mean anyways. I only know about him because I had to talk some people out of killing him a while back."
"By 'people', I assume you mean hunters like us. Why would they want him dead?"
Bobby lets Sam's "us" comment slide, though he filed it away for future discussion. "They thought he had some supernatural ability, and you know how hunters feel about anything with supernatural abilities."
The warning in his voice was unmistakable, and Sam found himself nodding even though Bobby couldn't see him.
"Yeah. What did they think he could do --did they have any proof?"
"Don't know. Something that helped him solve cases. There was some muttering about him being tied up with demons, but again, no evidence. Just rumors and some suspicious timing. Took some doing from both me and a few other older hunters to talk them down."
"I'm surprised you got involved at all. Hunters are pretty autonomous, and from what I remember enough coincidences and credible talk about demons is all a lot of them would need."
"Well, Frank was tied up in some other things, things that are just as well left alone without real good cause to stir them up."
"The Millennium Group?"
"What do you know about the Group?" Bobby voice was suddenly sharp.
"Nothing, I just saw them mentioned on a website with Frank's name."
"You stay clear of the Group, Sam. Anyone from Millennium ever contacts you, I want your word you will run the other way."
"What's the problem, Bobby?"
"Your word, boy. I've done what I can to help you and your family out when I could, but I want your promise on this matter, or this is the last help you get." Sam was startled by how serious Bobby sounded.
"Of course, Bobby. I trust you; if you say Millennium is bad news, I won't have anything to do with them."
Bobby blew out a gust of air on the other end of the line, as if he had been holding his breath. "Good."
"Anything else you maybe want to tell me about them?"
"No. But I suppose I had better or you're going to go looking into them anyways. They claim to be a consulting firm for law enforcement, and from what I can tell they seem to do a pretty good job at it. But under the level, they also seem to be involved in a lot of more shady affairs. Prophecies and mystical crap. A lot of end-of-the-world stuff. They aren't doing anything about it, as best anyone can tell, but you don't get people in the kind of circles Millennium moves in, paying attention to those kind of things, that aren't just bad news."
"Why would they be interested in me?"
"There are rumors that the Group collects human psychics. Just being Group affiliated is enough to get your name on hunters' hit lists in several parts of the world. Parts where the hunting population has been all but decimated through one freak incident or another. No one can prove it's the Group, but it's pretty suspicious. We have a kind of unspoken agreement in this country. They don't bother us, we don't bother them, and all parties go home sullen but alive."
"How big is this group?"
"Big enough to be bad news. Stay away from them, Sam. And stay away from anyone associated with them."
"Like Frank Black."
"Exactly."
"Dean went to see him, Bobby. I have to find out what Black told him."
"Dammit, Sam."
"Jess will be with me, Bobby. If he looks like he's doing anything weird or threatening, like reaching for his phone or staring at my aura, she can brain him with her purse while we make our escape."
"This isn't funny, boy. You have no idea how much trouble you can get into with these people."
"You obviously haven't tried to pick up her purse if you think I was joking. Could Millennium have had something to do with Jordan Black's disappearance?"
"I think they could have something to do with anything they please. But off the top of my head I can't imagine what use they would have for a twenty-something art student."
"She's not religious, but she's obsessed with angels. She draws them just like a grandmother did who died before she was born. They are ...intense; it's hard to stay in the same room with them looking down at you," Sam told him. "Does that sound like anything you've heard of?" Bobby was silent on his end for a minute.
"No, but watch yourself, Sam. I'm not going to tell you what to do here beside the promise you gave me, but you need to be very careful. It may be that Dean has gotten involved in something you won't be able to save him from."
"I won't believe that."
"Keep me updated. And keep your mouth shut about your own ...talents, if you talk to Frank Black."
"I will, Bobby. Thanks."
Section Four
Masterpost
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::goes back to reading::
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