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amberdreamsTitle: Lady Drury’s Closet
Rating: PG-13
Approximate final word count: ~15k
Pairings: Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean, Jody, Alex, Claire, OFC, Billie. Dean is 45, Sam is 41.
Warnings: Use of the F word
Summary: Set in a future where both the Darkness and Lucifer are no longer an issue. Jody calls in Dean and Sam to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a man from a locked room. Things get complicated when both Claire and the room itself vanishes from the missing man’s house. The boys investigation is dead in the water until several months later, when Sam finds a report of a missing child who’s disappeared in similar circumstances right on their doorstep in Lebanon.
Art by entirely-the-wrong-sort and fangirl_litra. Many thanks for choosing my story! Art links - fangirl_litra's cool colouring and animation of one of entirely's line arts is HERE. Other links are coming soon.
Acknowledgements - a special mention to my beta,
gatorgurl94. You made this a much better story!
There was a glint of light on a dirty windowpane, the early winter sun made extra watery by the pouring rain. There must be a rainbow somewhere but Dean couldn’t see it, and the sunlight was doing nothing to alleviate the air of gloom that hung over the brownstone mansion as the Impala drew up at the steps to its imposing entrance.
“One haunted house, coming up,” Dean said as he hauled on the handbrake with an effort. Damn. Baby was getting stiff, she was overdue a complete overhaul – and now Dean was feeling guilty for not noticing this fact before they’d set off from the Bunker the previous morning. The oil change and quick fixes he’d done before the long drive felt like giving her a makeover instead of the proper health check she deserved.
“The style of the house looks like Old Queen’s in New Brunswick,” Sam was saying. Dean tried not to listen. He’d been driving for the last twenty-four hours, and was too tired to see straight, let alone feign interest in the finer points of nineteenth century American architecture. He sensed a lecture coming whether he liked it or not. When Sam turned forty he’d decided to start an online course in the History of Urban Architecture, and since then Sam couldn’t resist taking every opportunity to share what he considered golden nuggets of information with Dean. In Dean’s view the only nuggets Sam could offer that would be of interest were covered in breadcrumbs and had chicken inside, but sadly, he feared that any distraction tactic that focused on Colonel Sanders wouldn’t save him now. He was right. “The style is definitely early eighteen hundreds,” Sam blithely continued, ignoring Dean’s pained expression, “and that stone is ashlar brownstone, so I bet it was quarried in the hills near New Brunswick, not far from here.”
Dean refrained from singing la la la to drown Sam out, but it was a close thing. He tried switching topics instead.
“So if this Marvin guy vanished from inside a locked room, what do you think we’ve got here? Maybe it’s not a ghost at all,” Dean’s eyes widened with sudden delight. “Maybe we’ve got ourselves our very own Eugene Victor Tooms!”
Sam rolled his eyes. “I should never have got you that X Files box set.”
Baby’s doors creaked in unison as they got out, wet gravel crunching underfoot. The air smelled of rain and the ice that was never far away in a New Jersey winter. Shivering, Dean turned up the collar of his overcoat and wished they hadn’t needed to use their FBI covers. It was too damned cold for thin monkey-suits and a single layer of wool. Maybe he should succumb to the demands of his aging body and invest in some thermal underwear.
“Still, needs must when the devil no longer drives, hey, Sammy?” he said, always relishing a chance to celebrate Lucifer’s absence from the world, while Sam looked at him with one eyebrow raised.
“You know you didn’t actually say the first part of that thought out loud, right, Dean?”
“So how’d you know what I meant then, genius?”
“I can read you like a book, man, you should know that by now. You were thinking it’s too cold for this get up, weren’t you,” Sam said, a smug smile on his face as he gestured at his own thick woollen coat. Dean frowned and thought about denying it; realised it would be futile and shrugged instead.
“Come on man, let’s knock on the damn door and get this over with so I can find us a nice warm motel and get some sleep.”
Dean suppressed a full body shiver. Sam with his furnace-body might not be bothered about the icy trickles of water that had started to slither down between collar and neck, but at forty-five years old Dean could do without it. And fuck anyone who dared to tell him he was getting soft in his old age.
The house was empty. Sam knocked but they both knew immediately there was no one home from the hollow sound that echoed round behind the closed door. There was something unmistakable about the quiet of an empty home that the Winchesters knew intimately. Dean didn’t speak or even have to look at Sam before Sam’s lock picks were being deployed. Ten seconds later, they were inside.
Dean whistled low under his breath as he looked around the spacious hall. Polished tiles led to a wide sweep of staircase, the thick carved banisters and wood panelled walls scenting the air with the smell of beeswax and money.
“So, what’s first, prof?” Dean asked, ignoring the massive eye roll Sam gave him. Since Sam started studying again, Dean couldn’t resist adding to his repertoire of nicknames. It was nice to have something new to tease his little brother about. “EMF the whole joint while we’ve got the place to ourselves?”
Sam nodded, looking thoughtful. Which, you know, when he wasn’t pulling a bitch face, was Sam’s default setting. Sam had managed to intensify that professorial look by adding glasses – vari-focals, no less. Though as he usually took his glasses off to read, Dean couldn’t see why he’d gone to all the extra expense. It seemed that old age liked to hit the eyesight both ways, short and long. Clearly too much studying and researching was the culprit, and Dean was more than happy to rib Sam about it, while keeping very quiet about his own sneaky visit to a Lasik clinic two years back, when he’d told Sam he was catching up with an old hunter friend in Ohio.
“Jody said the room where Marvin disappeared was upstairs, but we might as well scan the whole building.” Sam said, pushing his glasses back up his nose after wiping off the rain with a soft cloth he kept in an inside pocket. “She sent her apologies for not being able to join us by the way, but this New Hope sheriff election business is taking up all her time. Plus, she’d get slammed if she was caught messing around outside her jurisdiction.”
Dean had already got the EMF meter out and switched on. “I still can’t get used to Jody and the girls being in Pennsylvania instead of Sioux Falls,” he said as he waved the device around the entrance hall. Sam switched on his own meter – one of the benefits of having a home base and nothing much else to do with their downtime was Sam learning some electronics and building his own meter, while Dean invested in a bunch of cookbooks. “Don’t seem right her not being in South Dakota any more,” Dean added.
Sam nodded in acknowledgement of Dean’s unspoken complaint – that Jody moving east to be close to Alex and Claire meant the Winchesters had no excuse to visit Sioux Falls any more. For Dean it was cutting another tie with their past; added to which, it felt somehow disloyal to Bobby. Sam seemed to understand, but Sam had never felt the same attachment to places that Dean did. Dean had seen the way Sam added small mementoes to the box under his bed as and when the occasion arose. Sam could carry the past with him wherever he went, and that was enough. Plus, Sam was something of a proud surrogate dad to Alex. When Jody had told them Alex had decided to study law when she completed her degree, and that she’d gotten a place at Rutgers Law School, Sam couldn’t have been prouder if she’d been his own kid. Much to Dean’s amusement; though it was also kind of adorable to see Sam so invested.
Dean’s musings had carried him up the wide staircase and partway down a thickly carpeted hallway before he noticed his little brother wasn’t with him. Sam must have decided to sweep the downstairs first; in fact, Dean vaguely remembered Sam saying something about splitting up. Right. Made sense. The quicker they got this survey for anything paranormal out of the way, the quicker Dean could sleep. He closed his eyes for a second, visualising that motel bed that was waiting for him…mmm, yeah, big fluffy pillows and crisp white sheets…damn if that didn’t get him more roused than almost anything else these days, with the exception of pie.
He was jolted out of his reverie by a piercing squeal from his EMF meter. His eyes flew open and he examined the door to the room that had got his EMF all excited. It didn’t look any different from any of the other panelled wooden doors he’d passed so far. The sun was higher now, shining through the large arched window at the end of the passageway. The light brought out the golden depths of the wood grain and set the brass handle gleaming and really, this whole house was way classier than most gigs they’d had.
He tried the door – it was locked. Placing the meter and the gun on the floor, he worked at the lock with an alacrity Sam would have been proud of. Re-armed, with the shotgun cocked and ready, Dean opened the door and stepped inside, wincing a little as the EMF meter’s scream intensified. Whatever was going on, this room had to be the centre of it.
The window was covered with a cream coloured blind that muted the light to a uniform dimness, but that wasn’t what caught Dean’s attention. The room’s walls were covered in paintings. He turned slowly, taking it all in. It was more of a closet that a room, no more than seven feet square. Each wall was divided into panels, some with four paintings, some with five, all filled with intricately detailed scenes. Dean switched off the EMF meter. It wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, and the noise was making his teeth ache. He slipped it into his pocket but kept the salt gun ready even though, apart from the EMF reaction, there were no signs of anything supernatural. The temperature was normal and the room smelt of nothing but linseed oil and dust.
Dean started checking out each panel with a growing curiosity that was mixed with a healthy dollop of puzzlement. The quality of the painting was uniform; each panel looked to have been the work of the same artist; not that Dean was an expert, of course. His spare hand was digging for his cell to summon his resident art historian – Sam – when it went off, the buzz making his fingers tingle.
The display said Jody.
Sam walked through the door as Dean answered, watched as Dean’s jaw clenched.
“Hey, Jody. Yeah, we’re at the house, arrived about an hour ago. No, we haven’t seen Claire. Yeah, don’t worry, you got it; we’ll tear this place apart if we have to. Hang tight.”
Dean put the phone in his jacket, his expression grim. “Jody says Claire didn’t want to wait for us to arrive, she insisted on coming here to investigate on her own, two, maybe three hours ago. She’s tried Claire’s cell, got nothing.”
Sam was already punching in Claire’s number on his cell. Both of them stood in the dead silence of the empty house, listening. The only ringing to be heard was from the muffled speaker on Sam’s cell. By unspoken assent, they walked along the corridor checking each of the rooms in turn.
“Goddammit, Sammy, I thought she’d given up hunting for that research job in that fancy religious library in Princeton. What the fuck was she doing here?”
Sam shook his head, waiting out the ringing until it was clear no answer was forthcoming. “No voicemail, either,” Sam observed as he put his cell away. “That’s kind of weird. Her service should either put calls through to voice mail or give an unavailable message. It’s like the number doesn’t exist.”
They had made their way back to the closet room Dean had discovered earlier, and Sam looked around it for the first time. He ran a long finger over the shiny varnish that covered a painted tree, his angular face deep in thought. Dean waited, hoping Sam would see something he’d missed, because now there were two people missing and one of them was family. Suddenly the stakes were too high, but there could be no folding, not with Claire’s life on the line.
“This is the room, isn’t it? The locked room Marvin Leigh disappeared from,” Dean said, when the silence became unbearable. Sam nodded but didn’t stop his minute examination of the painted panels, by touch and sight both, his hand following his gaze as if his fingertips could tell him something his vision couldn’t. Dean didn’t question it; Sam was the perceptive one after all. So Dean was surprised when it was him not Sam who spotted it – a patch that looked shinier, fresher than the rest. It was high up, in the panel opposite the window. The picture showed a landscape like the others, a peculiarly random mix of flowers and trees and scenes. This one showed a well with a bucket suspended in mid air, next to which stood a figure who looked remarkably like…
“No. It can’t be.” Dean reached up, gently placed a fingertip on the figure’s dark jacket, careful not to touch the flesh tones or the long golden hair. Sure enough, the paint was still wet. He felt Sam’s warmth bleeding through their layers as Sam came up behind him, but all that radiant heat couldn’t shake the chill that was running through his bones. Wide and frightened, Claire’s blue eyes stared out of the picture, her cell phone clutched tight in her left hand, sawn off shotgun in her right – everything rendered with deft brushstrokes in miniature.
“What the fuck? Is that really Claire?” Dean looked at the smear of paint on his finger with the kind of blank, helpless horror he hadn’t felt for more than five years; not since he’d watched the angels leave, taking Castiel with them, like the freaking Elves in Lord of the Rings sailing into the sunset. Except this Frodo had stayed behind with his Sam.
Sam sighed, his breath huffing moist against Dean’s neck, gross and comforting. “I think so.”
“What is it then? Are we looking for a witch, a curse? Some sort of crazy-ass painter ghost or what?”
“I don’t know, Dean. I’ve never heard of anything like this before. I need to do some research.”
Dean thought about Princeton and its famous theological library, now missing a research assistant. His heart sank even further.
“Aw fuck, Sammy. How are we going to tell Jody?” He turned and looked at Sam.
“More to the point,” Sam said, his mouth set in a grim line, “what are we going to tell her?”
0x0x0x0
Jody didn’t blame them. Dean almost wished she would; Alex had no problem laying into the Winchesters for losing her sister and to be honest, Dean found the shouting was easier to deal with. Dean was the one holding the emotional fort, because the moment they returned to Pennsylvania, Sam announced his intent to visit the Theological Seminary in Princeton.
“Aren’t you a bit old to start studying for the priesthood?” Dean cracked, but his attempted humour fell flatter than sliced American cheese. Sam rolled his eyes, Alex glared and Jody just blinked and carried on staring out the window as if she was waiting for Claire’s car to come rolling up the drive.
Fortunately, about two minutes after Sam departed for Princeton, Jody snapped back into something resembling her old self. She insisted on seeing the painting for herself; she didn’t want to wait for whatever Sam might turn up in his precious old books, which was fair enough. They dropped Alex back at her college before the two of them returned to Marvin Leigh’s house to see what could be done for Claire.
The answer was nothing at all.
Dean paced the hallway, trailing Jody behind him from room to room, increasingly frantic – because Claire’s painting had gone. In fact what was worse, the whole room had disappeared. There was no sign it had ever existed, which was impossible.
“What do you mean, the room’s gone, Dean?” Sam hissed down the phone. Must be inside the library. Dean shrugged, even though Sam couldn’t see it.
“Just what I said, Sammy. The whole room’s fuckin’ disappeared. I’ve been through the whole damn house, upstairs and downstairs, and it’s nowhere. There isn’t even a closet in here small enough to have been that panelled room, you know?”
Sam’s huff of breath showed that he didn’t know, but Dean knew his brother. Sam would leave no stone unturned, no book unread in pursuit of the answer.
The drive back to Jody’s new place was a silent one after Jody cut off Dean’s miserable attempts at comfort. It reminded him of another journey with a formidable woman next to him and a younger blonde one in the back seat, and the memory of Ellen and Jo was enough to choke off any idea of filling the uneasy quiet with music.
After a few weeks based in New Hope, Sam had found nothing in the Princeton library and Dean was going stir crazy. Their motel was nice enough. It even had a pool, which brought back memories of one rare lazy summer they’d spent in North Carolina when Dad was laid up with a broken leg. Dean had been fifteen, Sam a chubby eleven year old who wanted to do nothing but spend his days at the local Civil War Museum, but Dean had wrestled the kid into swimming trunks, and after his first dunking, Dean had been hard pressed to get Sam out of the algae-filled water. Somehow wallowing in the Rode Inn’s clean, chlorine scented pool with only his memories for company didn’t have the same appeal.
On Jody’s suggestion, Dean drove up the 202 and spent a few hours fishing in Aquetong Lake, which was a mistake. He spent the whole time sitting on the wooden pier trying not to think about Castiel and failing miserably. He returned to the motel that evening so morose and quiet, Sam wanted to take his temperature, worried he was coming down with something. Dean didn’t like to say it was only a terminal case of too many memories crowding round in his head. How could he tell Sam he missed not only their many dear departed, but a kid brother that hadn’t existed for more than thirty years? It wouldn’t go over well.
Dean tried not to cheer when Sam finally gave up and decided they would be better off doing their researching back in the Bunker.
0x0x0x0
Six months later. Lebanon, Kansas.
“Dean!”
Sam had to yell to be heard over the digitally re-mastered Led Zeppelin III blasting out from the pocket music player perched precariously on the edge of a shelf. It was far too close to the suds-filled bucket Dean was using to wash the Impala, especially considering said music player belonged to Sam. He’d been wondering where the damn thing had gone. Sam had a moment’s nostalgia for the good old days when Dean had refused to go anywhere near anything electronic that hadn’t been around in the 1980s. He grabbed the player and switched it off. Undeterred, Dean carried on belting out Immigrant Song in a voice that was pure gravel. Seriously, his brother’s ability to sing had not improved over the years and was as unlike Robert Plant’s haunting vocal as it was possible to be. Dean’s was the audio-equivalent of raw methylated spirits. It should have been excruciating but Sam loved it. Dean only sang like this when he was content.
Sam’s brow furrowed at that thought. His news was likely to burst that happiness-bubble for his brother, but it couldn’t be helped. Sam waited until Dean finished wailing ah ah ah for the last time and stopped wiggling his ass where he was bent over Baby’s hood, before delivering his message.
“There’s been another disappearance,” Sam said. He didn’t need to explain what kind of disappearance. For both of them, there had only been one type of missing person report that interested them since New Jersey. Dean dropped the washcloth into the bucket, oblivious to the water sloshing over the sides, soaking his feet.
“Where?” Dean wiped his wet palms on his worn sweat pants, tension knotting the tendons in the backs of his hands.
“Here, in Lebanon,” Sam said.
Ten minutes later, Dean was dressed and ready to go. Less than thirty minutes later the Impala pulled up outside an unremarkable white-painted clapboard house on Walnut Street, right in the centre of town. Dean may have broken a few traffic laws on the way, but Sam wasn’t going to call him on it today.
“Here? Really?” Dean stared out of the side window, a look of disbelief on his face.
Sam shared Dean’s incredulity. The closet room that Marvin Leigh had vanished from had been small, but Leigh’s house had history, elegance. This place was utterly ordinary. Single story, white painted wood with green trim, three black walnut trees outside the front, kids toys scattered on the grass by the low porch.
“You know we’ve no more information about what could be happening here than we did before, Dean. All our research has thrown up bupkis. We’re going in blind.”
“I know, Sammy. But this is about a missing kid this time, as well as Claire. We can’t just sit around with our thumbs up our asses waiting for some sort of revelation.”
“Yeah, I hear you.” And Sam did. He shared Dean’s frustration at the lack of information anywhere. It was as if the phenomenon of people going missing from inside locked rooms didn’t exist outside of magic tricks. All the information Sam had been able to find centred round murder mysteries, all of which had twisty, clever explanations of a non-supernatural nature. This was the first chance they’d had to get closer to solving their own private mystery and get Jody’s adopted daughter back. It totally sucked that this opportunity had only come with the loss of another child; ten year old Joel Hart.
Even after all this time and some things never changed. Like the look Dean always got when any case of theirs involved a monster harming a child. Sam understood so many aspects of Dean, yet that one always teetered on the edge of incomprehensible, because Sam knew Dean’s utterly pure protective instincts when it came to kids were rooted in Dean’s unshakeable love for Sam. And that was never going to be something Sam was comfortable with, even on the occasions he might appear to take Dean’s devotion for granted.
They hadn’t discussed their approach, but Sam recognised that razor-focus and let his brother take the lead. Sam stood behind Dean when they knocked on Pearl Hart’s dark green door, trying not to loom, and didn’t question Dean’s decision to be honest with Joel’s mom about why they were there. Sometimes Dean’s instincts about people were so keen, Sam thought he’d cut himself on their sharp edges. When his big brother wasn’t busy trying to be a dick, of course. Certainly, there was no sign of Dean’s trademark cocky persona now.
“Mrs Hart. Pearl,” Dean said, all wide earnest eyes, “I’m Dean, this is my brother Sam. We want to help you find Joel. Please, hear me out,” he added hurriedly, as Pearl Hart started to shut the door. Something in his tone must have gotten to her, because she paused, listening. “Six months ago in New Jersey, we lost someone the same way you lost your boy, and we never had a chance to work out exactly what happened. We’ve been trying to get Claire back every way we can, but without seeing that room where she disappeared? Well, it’s been impossible. But if you let us see the room where Joel vanished, we might be able to work out what happened, see if this is the same thing. And maybe then we can get both of them back. Your Joel and our friend’s daughter.”
Sam saw the moment that hope overwhelmed Pearl Hart’s caution and fear, and her resistance crumbled.
“You’d better come in,” she said, her voice rough from crying. Sam thought Pearl would be considered a pretty woman in the normal run of things, if a little skinny. Now though, grief was a patina that made her look old and worn out. Her face was drawn, her grey eyes shadowed, her blonde hair dull and unwashed. She ran thin hands over her dress in a nervous gesture as she stood in the centre of the living room like she’d run out of ideas. It was Dean who got them all sitting down so that Pearl could tell them what happened. Sam sat back looking as unthreatening as a six foot five guy could, while Dean leaned forward, elbows on his knees, pinning her in place with his sincerity.
“Tell us everything, Pearl. You can tell the real story, don’t worry how it sounds. Believe me, we’ve heard and seen more weird than you can imagine.”
Pearl took a steadying breath and began.
“Joel was acting up, he’d been in a mood since he’d gotten home from school. Said he didn’t want to do his homework, didn’t want to eat his dinner, just sat in front of the TV on his cell phone, texting, gaming – I don’t know. So anyhow, I’d had enough, I snapped. Grabbed his cell, sent him to his room. I told him not to bother coming out again until he’d done his math problems and was ready to apologise.”
Pearl paused to swallow down her tears, one hand winding a strand of lank, blonde hair round and round until her fingers were all tangled up. Dean reached out and gently took her free hand, and the human touch seemed to give her the courage to continue.
“He stormed out in a sulk, and I heard his bedroom door slam, then everything was quiet for a long time. I was baby-sitting for my friend, so I was busy with little Masie, getting her fed and settled, then washing the pots and all, and I didn’t think to check on Joel until well after sundown. That’s when I found his door was locked, which should have been impossible, because none of the doors inside this house have locks, you know? I banged on the door, and shouted, but Joel didn’t answer. I even went outside to look through the window, but there was a blind down, so I couldn’t see in.
“I told the police, that blind doesn’t belong to the room, Joel has curtains, special ones I made him when he was seven and crazy about Spiderman. But then nothing about that room is right. All the furniture gone and those creepy paintings are where the wallpaper should be. Then I came back inside and tried the door again – nothing, it wouldn’t budge. I didn’t know what to do. I was going to go call Alan, my neighbour, but I thought I’d try one last time and the handle turned easy as anything. I couldn’t believe it. But when I walked in, Joel wasn’t inside and none of his things were there either, not even his bed. It was like I’d walked into a stranger’s house. So yeah, the police are looking for Joel, but they’ve written me off as crazy.”
Sam exchanged a glance with Dean. So far, this scenario sounded similar enough to match Marvin Leigh and Claire. Dean patted Pearl’s hand and stood up. “We don’t think you’re crazy, Pearl. Come on and show us this room.”
Sam grimaced. His back and right leg twinged as he stood, one of several painful legacies from occupational injuries. What? Hunting is an occupation, albeit an unorthodox one. He felt it on days like today, when he didn’t have the opportunity to dose himself up before leaving the bunker.He usually self medicated with home grown cannabis but obviously he couldn’t light up a joint here. Sam was continually irritated by the fact that Dean didn’t seem to suffer from similar problems, especially as Dean was older and led a far less healthy lifestyle. Life really wasn’t fair.
Sam’s wallow in self pity was brief, all thoughts of his bodily aches and pains banished when he peered over Pearl’s head through the open door into the room that should have been the ten year old boy’s bedroom. Dean was already inside; he’d gone straight to the ‘creepy painting’ where Claire should be, and Sam could see from the clenching of Dean’s fists that he’d found her. Dean’s face was set when he beckoned Sam inside.
“Look,” Dean said, pointing to a small figure between the depiction of Claire and a flowering bush. Sam’s lips pressed together. He hesitated for a second then decided this was necessary. He called Pearl over.
“Is this Joel?”
The question was redundant in the face of her reaction. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth as she gasped. “How…how did this get there? Nobody’s been into the house since the police were here.”
Dean touched the paint very carefully with one finger. “Dry,” he said. “This must have been done when Joel disappeared. There’s been nearly forty-eight hours for the paint to dry. This,” he showed Pearl the other figure, “this is Claire, our friend’s daughter.” Dean moved across the room scanning each panel until he came to one that featured a dejected-looking man in a suit sitting under a willow tree. “And this, if I’m not mistaken, is Marvin Leigh.”
Sam took his glasses off to take a closer look, then nodded. Whoever or whatever was creating these oil paintings was making uncannily accurate likenesses of the victims. Given that each panel had at least one person depicted, that was a disturbing number of potential missing people. He pulled out his cell, opened the blind to let the light stream in, and started taking photos of each panel. He wished they’d been able to do this last time, but the room had disappeared too quickly. It had really restricted the amount of information Sam had been able to glean about this strange room. Focused on his task, Sam left Dean to comfort Pearl, who was understandably upset all over again at seeing her little boy’s picture on the wall.
There were six panels; three with eight pictures in two columns, three with twelve pictures in three columns. Each panel had an inscription across the top, and most of the pictures had inscriptions too, all in Latin. Sam took close ups of each. He’d take a good look at them all once he’d gotten the photos loaded up onto his laptop. The bottom picture in each set of four was of one or more plants – herbs and wildflowers – and none of these contained any people or writing, though Sam wasn’t dismissing their significance. The herbs might have a purpose for witchcraft, or some other meaning.
By the time Sam had finished, Pearl had gone back into the living room and Dean was propping up the door frame, legs crossed at the ankles, the picture of nonchalance to the untutored eye. Sam wasn’t fooled. Dean raised one eyebrow. “You done, Annie Leibovitz?”
Sam ignored the dig at his photography skills (and his gender) in favour of checking that the pictures on his cell phone matched the room then nodded. “These inscriptions are weird, man,” he said. “Some of them don’t even seem to be complete. Like this one,” he pointed to the top of the first panel to the right of the door, which happened to be the one in which Claire and Joel appeared. FRUSTRA NISI DOMINUS. “It’s useless unless the Lord,” he translated.
“Unless the Lord what?” Dean asked.
“Exactly!” Sam said, putting his phone into his pocket. “I’m going to have to see if these phrases are part of some larger document. Maybe someone has just copied extracts instead of the whole thing.”
Dean grinned. “Nice to see you getting your geek on again, professor.” Sam gave Dean the finger over his shoulder as he walked down the narrow hall back to the living room where Pearl was sitting, looking as lost as her child. She looked up as he entered, and he almost winced at the hopeful expression on her face.
“Do you think you and your friend will be able to help?”
“Dean’s my brother; and I don’t know yet, but I hope so. We’ve solved some pretty strange cases in the past, haven’t we, Dean?” Sam turned his head and that was when he realised Dean wasn’t behind him. He spun round, his stomach sinking with sudden dreadful anticipation. “Dean?”
At the end of the short hallway, Sam saw the door to the room swing shut, heard a click like a bolt snapping into place and though he ran the few strides it took to reach the smooth dark wood, he already knew he’d be too late.
0x0x0x0
PART TWO this way
Rating: PG-13
Approximate final word count: ~15k
Pairings: Gen
Characters: Sam, Dean, Jody, Alex, Claire, OFC, Billie. Dean is 45, Sam is 41.
Warnings: Use of the F word
Summary: Set in a future where both the Darkness and Lucifer are no longer an issue. Jody calls in Dean and Sam to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a man from a locked room. Things get complicated when both Claire and the room itself vanishes from the missing man’s house. The boys investigation is dead in the water until several months later, when Sam finds a report of a missing child who’s disappeared in similar circumstances right on their doorstep in Lebanon.
Art by entirely-the-wrong-sort and fangirl_litra. Many thanks for choosing my story! Art links - fangirl_litra's cool colouring and animation of one of entirely's line arts is HERE. Other links are coming soon.
Acknowledgements - a special mention to my beta,
gatorgurl94. You made this a much better story!There was a glint of light on a dirty windowpane, the early winter sun made extra watery by the pouring rain. There must be a rainbow somewhere but Dean couldn’t see it, and the sunlight was doing nothing to alleviate the air of gloom that hung over the brownstone mansion as the Impala drew up at the steps to its imposing entrance.
“One haunted house, coming up,” Dean said as he hauled on the handbrake with an effort. Damn. Baby was getting stiff, she was overdue a complete overhaul – and now Dean was feeling guilty for not noticing this fact before they’d set off from the Bunker the previous morning. The oil change and quick fixes he’d done before the long drive felt like giving her a makeover instead of the proper health check she deserved.
“The style of the house looks like Old Queen’s in New Brunswick,” Sam was saying. Dean tried not to listen. He’d been driving for the last twenty-four hours, and was too tired to see straight, let alone feign interest in the finer points of nineteenth century American architecture. He sensed a lecture coming whether he liked it or not. When Sam turned forty he’d decided to start an online course in the History of Urban Architecture, and since then Sam couldn’t resist taking every opportunity to share what he considered golden nuggets of information with Dean. In Dean’s view the only nuggets Sam could offer that would be of interest were covered in breadcrumbs and had chicken inside, but sadly, he feared that any distraction tactic that focused on Colonel Sanders wouldn’t save him now. He was right. “The style is definitely early eighteen hundreds,” Sam blithely continued, ignoring Dean’s pained expression, “and that stone is ashlar brownstone, so I bet it was quarried in the hills near New Brunswick, not far from here.”
Dean refrained from singing la la la to drown Sam out, but it was a close thing. He tried switching topics instead.
“So if this Marvin guy vanished from inside a locked room, what do you think we’ve got here? Maybe it’s not a ghost at all,” Dean’s eyes widened with sudden delight. “Maybe we’ve got ourselves our very own Eugene Victor Tooms!”
Sam rolled his eyes. “I should never have got you that X Files box set.”
Baby’s doors creaked in unison as they got out, wet gravel crunching underfoot. The air smelled of rain and the ice that was never far away in a New Jersey winter. Shivering, Dean turned up the collar of his overcoat and wished they hadn’t needed to use their FBI covers. It was too damned cold for thin monkey-suits and a single layer of wool. Maybe he should succumb to the demands of his aging body and invest in some thermal underwear.
“Still, needs must when the devil no longer drives, hey, Sammy?” he said, always relishing a chance to celebrate Lucifer’s absence from the world, while Sam looked at him with one eyebrow raised.
“You know you didn’t actually say the first part of that thought out loud, right, Dean?”
“So how’d you know what I meant then, genius?”
“I can read you like a book, man, you should know that by now. You were thinking it’s too cold for this get up, weren’t you,” Sam said, a smug smile on his face as he gestured at his own thick woollen coat. Dean frowned and thought about denying it; realised it would be futile and shrugged instead.
“Come on man, let’s knock on the damn door and get this over with so I can find us a nice warm motel and get some sleep.”
Dean suppressed a full body shiver. Sam with his furnace-body might not be bothered about the icy trickles of water that had started to slither down between collar and neck, but at forty-five years old Dean could do without it. And fuck anyone who dared to tell him he was getting soft in his old age.
The house was empty. Sam knocked but they both knew immediately there was no one home from the hollow sound that echoed round behind the closed door. There was something unmistakable about the quiet of an empty home that the Winchesters knew intimately. Dean didn’t speak or even have to look at Sam before Sam’s lock picks were being deployed. Ten seconds later, they were inside.
Dean whistled low under his breath as he looked around the spacious hall. Polished tiles led to a wide sweep of staircase, the thick carved banisters and wood panelled walls scenting the air with the smell of beeswax and money.
“So, what’s first, prof?” Dean asked, ignoring the massive eye roll Sam gave him. Since Sam started studying again, Dean couldn’t resist adding to his repertoire of nicknames. It was nice to have something new to tease his little brother about. “EMF the whole joint while we’ve got the place to ourselves?”
Sam nodded, looking thoughtful. Which, you know, when he wasn’t pulling a bitch face, was Sam’s default setting. Sam had managed to intensify that professorial look by adding glasses – vari-focals, no less. Though as he usually took his glasses off to read, Dean couldn’t see why he’d gone to all the extra expense. It seemed that old age liked to hit the eyesight both ways, short and long. Clearly too much studying and researching was the culprit, and Dean was more than happy to rib Sam about it, while keeping very quiet about his own sneaky visit to a Lasik clinic two years back, when he’d told Sam he was catching up with an old hunter friend in Ohio.
“Jody said the room where Marvin disappeared was upstairs, but we might as well scan the whole building.” Sam said, pushing his glasses back up his nose after wiping off the rain with a soft cloth he kept in an inside pocket. “She sent her apologies for not being able to join us by the way, but this New Hope sheriff election business is taking up all her time. Plus, she’d get slammed if she was caught messing around outside her jurisdiction.”
Dean had already got the EMF meter out and switched on. “I still can’t get used to Jody and the girls being in Pennsylvania instead of Sioux Falls,” he said as he waved the device around the entrance hall. Sam switched on his own meter – one of the benefits of having a home base and nothing much else to do with their downtime was Sam learning some electronics and building his own meter, while Dean invested in a bunch of cookbooks. “Don’t seem right her not being in South Dakota any more,” Dean added.
Sam nodded in acknowledgement of Dean’s unspoken complaint – that Jody moving east to be close to Alex and Claire meant the Winchesters had no excuse to visit Sioux Falls any more. For Dean it was cutting another tie with their past; added to which, it felt somehow disloyal to Bobby. Sam seemed to understand, but Sam had never felt the same attachment to places that Dean did. Dean had seen the way Sam added small mementoes to the box under his bed as and when the occasion arose. Sam could carry the past with him wherever he went, and that was enough. Plus, Sam was something of a proud surrogate dad to Alex. When Jody had told them Alex had decided to study law when she completed her degree, and that she’d gotten a place at Rutgers Law School, Sam couldn’t have been prouder if she’d been his own kid. Much to Dean’s amusement; though it was also kind of adorable to see Sam so invested.
Dean’s musings had carried him up the wide staircase and partway down a thickly carpeted hallway before he noticed his little brother wasn’t with him. Sam must have decided to sweep the downstairs first; in fact, Dean vaguely remembered Sam saying something about splitting up. Right. Made sense. The quicker they got this survey for anything paranormal out of the way, the quicker Dean could sleep. He closed his eyes for a second, visualising that motel bed that was waiting for him…mmm, yeah, big fluffy pillows and crisp white sheets…damn if that didn’t get him more roused than almost anything else these days, with the exception of pie.
He was jolted out of his reverie by a piercing squeal from his EMF meter. His eyes flew open and he examined the door to the room that had got his EMF all excited. It didn’t look any different from any of the other panelled wooden doors he’d passed so far. The sun was higher now, shining through the large arched window at the end of the passageway. The light brought out the golden depths of the wood grain and set the brass handle gleaming and really, this whole house was way classier than most gigs they’d had.
He tried the door – it was locked. Placing the meter and the gun on the floor, he worked at the lock with an alacrity Sam would have been proud of. Re-armed, with the shotgun cocked and ready, Dean opened the door and stepped inside, wincing a little as the EMF meter’s scream intensified. Whatever was going on, this room had to be the centre of it.
The window was covered with a cream coloured blind that muted the light to a uniform dimness, but that wasn’t what caught Dean’s attention. The room’s walls were covered in paintings. He turned slowly, taking it all in. It was more of a closet that a room, no more than seven feet square. Each wall was divided into panels, some with four paintings, some with five, all filled with intricately detailed scenes. Dean switched off the EMF meter. It wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know, and the noise was making his teeth ache. He slipped it into his pocket but kept the salt gun ready even though, apart from the EMF reaction, there were no signs of anything supernatural. The temperature was normal and the room smelt of nothing but linseed oil and dust.
Dean started checking out each panel with a growing curiosity that was mixed with a healthy dollop of puzzlement. The quality of the painting was uniform; each panel looked to have been the work of the same artist; not that Dean was an expert, of course. His spare hand was digging for his cell to summon his resident art historian – Sam – when it went off, the buzz making his fingers tingle.
The display said Jody.
Sam walked through the door as Dean answered, watched as Dean’s jaw clenched.
“Hey, Jody. Yeah, we’re at the house, arrived about an hour ago. No, we haven’t seen Claire. Yeah, don’t worry, you got it; we’ll tear this place apart if we have to. Hang tight.”
Dean put the phone in his jacket, his expression grim. “Jody says Claire didn’t want to wait for us to arrive, she insisted on coming here to investigate on her own, two, maybe three hours ago. She’s tried Claire’s cell, got nothing.”
Sam was already punching in Claire’s number on his cell. Both of them stood in the dead silence of the empty house, listening. The only ringing to be heard was from the muffled speaker on Sam’s cell. By unspoken assent, they walked along the corridor checking each of the rooms in turn.
“Goddammit, Sammy, I thought she’d given up hunting for that research job in that fancy religious library in Princeton. What the fuck was she doing here?”
Sam shook his head, waiting out the ringing until it was clear no answer was forthcoming. “No voicemail, either,” Sam observed as he put his cell away. “That’s kind of weird. Her service should either put calls through to voice mail or give an unavailable message. It’s like the number doesn’t exist.”
They had made their way back to the closet room Dean had discovered earlier, and Sam looked around it for the first time. He ran a long finger over the shiny varnish that covered a painted tree, his angular face deep in thought. Dean waited, hoping Sam would see something he’d missed, because now there were two people missing and one of them was family. Suddenly the stakes were too high, but there could be no folding, not with Claire’s life on the line.
“This is the room, isn’t it? The locked room Marvin Leigh disappeared from,” Dean said, when the silence became unbearable. Sam nodded but didn’t stop his minute examination of the painted panels, by touch and sight both, his hand following his gaze as if his fingertips could tell him something his vision couldn’t. Dean didn’t question it; Sam was the perceptive one after all. So Dean was surprised when it was him not Sam who spotted it – a patch that looked shinier, fresher than the rest. It was high up, in the panel opposite the window. The picture showed a landscape like the others, a peculiarly random mix of flowers and trees and scenes. This one showed a well with a bucket suspended in mid air, next to which stood a figure who looked remarkably like…
“No. It can’t be.” Dean reached up, gently placed a fingertip on the figure’s dark jacket, careful not to touch the flesh tones or the long golden hair. Sure enough, the paint was still wet. He felt Sam’s warmth bleeding through their layers as Sam came up behind him, but all that radiant heat couldn’t shake the chill that was running through his bones. Wide and frightened, Claire’s blue eyes stared out of the picture, her cell phone clutched tight in her left hand, sawn off shotgun in her right – everything rendered with deft brushstrokes in miniature.
“What the fuck? Is that really Claire?” Dean looked at the smear of paint on his finger with the kind of blank, helpless horror he hadn’t felt for more than five years; not since he’d watched the angels leave, taking Castiel with them, like the freaking Elves in Lord of the Rings sailing into the sunset. Except this Frodo had stayed behind with his Sam.
Sam sighed, his breath huffing moist against Dean’s neck, gross and comforting. “I think so.”
“What is it then? Are we looking for a witch, a curse? Some sort of crazy-ass painter ghost or what?”
“I don’t know, Dean. I’ve never heard of anything like this before. I need to do some research.”
Dean thought about Princeton and its famous theological library, now missing a research assistant. His heart sank even further.
“Aw fuck, Sammy. How are we going to tell Jody?” He turned and looked at Sam.
“More to the point,” Sam said, his mouth set in a grim line, “what are we going to tell her?”
0x0x0x0
Jody didn’t blame them. Dean almost wished she would; Alex had no problem laying into the Winchesters for losing her sister and to be honest, Dean found the shouting was easier to deal with. Dean was the one holding the emotional fort, because the moment they returned to Pennsylvania, Sam announced his intent to visit the Theological Seminary in Princeton.
“Aren’t you a bit old to start studying for the priesthood?” Dean cracked, but his attempted humour fell flatter than sliced American cheese. Sam rolled his eyes, Alex glared and Jody just blinked and carried on staring out the window as if she was waiting for Claire’s car to come rolling up the drive.
Fortunately, about two minutes after Sam departed for Princeton, Jody snapped back into something resembling her old self. She insisted on seeing the painting for herself; she didn’t want to wait for whatever Sam might turn up in his precious old books, which was fair enough. They dropped Alex back at her college before the two of them returned to Marvin Leigh’s house to see what could be done for Claire.
The answer was nothing at all.
Dean paced the hallway, trailing Jody behind him from room to room, increasingly frantic – because Claire’s painting had gone. In fact what was worse, the whole room had disappeared. There was no sign it had ever existed, which was impossible.
“What do you mean, the room’s gone, Dean?” Sam hissed down the phone. Must be inside the library. Dean shrugged, even though Sam couldn’t see it.
“Just what I said, Sammy. The whole room’s fuckin’ disappeared. I’ve been through the whole damn house, upstairs and downstairs, and it’s nowhere. There isn’t even a closet in here small enough to have been that panelled room, you know?”
Sam’s huff of breath showed that he didn’t know, but Dean knew his brother. Sam would leave no stone unturned, no book unread in pursuit of the answer.
The drive back to Jody’s new place was a silent one after Jody cut off Dean’s miserable attempts at comfort. It reminded him of another journey with a formidable woman next to him and a younger blonde one in the back seat, and the memory of Ellen and Jo was enough to choke off any idea of filling the uneasy quiet with music.
After a few weeks based in New Hope, Sam had found nothing in the Princeton library and Dean was going stir crazy. Their motel was nice enough. It even had a pool, which brought back memories of one rare lazy summer they’d spent in North Carolina when Dad was laid up with a broken leg. Dean had been fifteen, Sam a chubby eleven year old who wanted to do nothing but spend his days at the local Civil War Museum, but Dean had wrestled the kid into swimming trunks, and after his first dunking, Dean had been hard pressed to get Sam out of the algae-filled water. Somehow wallowing in the Rode Inn’s clean, chlorine scented pool with only his memories for company didn’t have the same appeal.
On Jody’s suggestion, Dean drove up the 202 and spent a few hours fishing in Aquetong Lake, which was a mistake. He spent the whole time sitting on the wooden pier trying not to think about Castiel and failing miserably. He returned to the motel that evening so morose and quiet, Sam wanted to take his temperature, worried he was coming down with something. Dean didn’t like to say it was only a terminal case of too many memories crowding round in his head. How could he tell Sam he missed not only their many dear departed, but a kid brother that hadn’t existed for more than thirty years? It wouldn’t go over well.
Dean tried not to cheer when Sam finally gave up and decided they would be better off doing their researching back in the Bunker.
0x0x0x0
Six months later. Lebanon, Kansas.
“Dean!”
Sam had to yell to be heard over the digitally re-mastered Led Zeppelin III blasting out from the pocket music player perched precariously on the edge of a shelf. It was far too close to the suds-filled bucket Dean was using to wash the Impala, especially considering said music player belonged to Sam. He’d been wondering where the damn thing had gone. Sam had a moment’s nostalgia for the good old days when Dean had refused to go anywhere near anything electronic that hadn’t been around in the 1980s. He grabbed the player and switched it off. Undeterred, Dean carried on belting out Immigrant Song in a voice that was pure gravel. Seriously, his brother’s ability to sing had not improved over the years and was as unlike Robert Plant’s haunting vocal as it was possible to be. Dean’s was the audio-equivalent of raw methylated spirits. It should have been excruciating but Sam loved it. Dean only sang like this when he was content.
Sam’s brow furrowed at that thought. His news was likely to burst that happiness-bubble for his brother, but it couldn’t be helped. Sam waited until Dean finished wailing ah ah ah for the last time and stopped wiggling his ass where he was bent over Baby’s hood, before delivering his message.
“There’s been another disappearance,” Sam said. He didn’t need to explain what kind of disappearance. For both of them, there had only been one type of missing person report that interested them since New Jersey. Dean dropped the washcloth into the bucket, oblivious to the water sloshing over the sides, soaking his feet.
“Where?” Dean wiped his wet palms on his worn sweat pants, tension knotting the tendons in the backs of his hands.
“Here, in Lebanon,” Sam said.
Ten minutes later, Dean was dressed and ready to go. Less than thirty minutes later the Impala pulled up outside an unremarkable white-painted clapboard house on Walnut Street, right in the centre of town. Dean may have broken a few traffic laws on the way, but Sam wasn’t going to call him on it today.
“Here? Really?” Dean stared out of the side window, a look of disbelief on his face.
Sam shared Dean’s incredulity. The closet room that Marvin Leigh had vanished from had been small, but Leigh’s house had history, elegance. This place was utterly ordinary. Single story, white painted wood with green trim, three black walnut trees outside the front, kids toys scattered on the grass by the low porch.
“You know we’ve no more information about what could be happening here than we did before, Dean. All our research has thrown up bupkis. We’re going in blind.”
“I know, Sammy. But this is about a missing kid this time, as well as Claire. We can’t just sit around with our thumbs up our asses waiting for some sort of revelation.”
“Yeah, I hear you.” And Sam did. He shared Dean’s frustration at the lack of information anywhere. It was as if the phenomenon of people going missing from inside locked rooms didn’t exist outside of magic tricks. All the information Sam had been able to find centred round murder mysteries, all of which had twisty, clever explanations of a non-supernatural nature. This was the first chance they’d had to get closer to solving their own private mystery and get Jody’s adopted daughter back. It totally sucked that this opportunity had only come with the loss of another child; ten year old Joel Hart.
Even after all this time and some things never changed. Like the look Dean always got when any case of theirs involved a monster harming a child. Sam understood so many aspects of Dean, yet that one always teetered on the edge of incomprehensible, because Sam knew Dean’s utterly pure protective instincts when it came to kids were rooted in Dean’s unshakeable love for Sam. And that was never going to be something Sam was comfortable with, even on the occasions he might appear to take Dean’s devotion for granted.
They hadn’t discussed their approach, but Sam recognised that razor-focus and let his brother take the lead. Sam stood behind Dean when they knocked on Pearl Hart’s dark green door, trying not to loom, and didn’t question Dean’s decision to be honest with Joel’s mom about why they were there. Sometimes Dean’s instincts about people were so keen, Sam thought he’d cut himself on their sharp edges. When his big brother wasn’t busy trying to be a dick, of course. Certainly, there was no sign of Dean’s trademark cocky persona now.
“Mrs Hart. Pearl,” Dean said, all wide earnest eyes, “I’m Dean, this is my brother Sam. We want to help you find Joel. Please, hear me out,” he added hurriedly, as Pearl Hart started to shut the door. Something in his tone must have gotten to her, because she paused, listening. “Six months ago in New Jersey, we lost someone the same way you lost your boy, and we never had a chance to work out exactly what happened. We’ve been trying to get Claire back every way we can, but without seeing that room where she disappeared? Well, it’s been impossible. But if you let us see the room where Joel vanished, we might be able to work out what happened, see if this is the same thing. And maybe then we can get both of them back. Your Joel and our friend’s daughter.”
Sam saw the moment that hope overwhelmed Pearl Hart’s caution and fear, and her resistance crumbled.
“You’d better come in,” she said, her voice rough from crying. Sam thought Pearl would be considered a pretty woman in the normal run of things, if a little skinny. Now though, grief was a patina that made her look old and worn out. Her face was drawn, her grey eyes shadowed, her blonde hair dull and unwashed. She ran thin hands over her dress in a nervous gesture as she stood in the centre of the living room like she’d run out of ideas. It was Dean who got them all sitting down so that Pearl could tell them what happened. Sam sat back looking as unthreatening as a six foot five guy could, while Dean leaned forward, elbows on his knees, pinning her in place with his sincerity.
“Tell us everything, Pearl. You can tell the real story, don’t worry how it sounds. Believe me, we’ve heard and seen more weird than you can imagine.”
Pearl took a steadying breath and began.
“Joel was acting up, he’d been in a mood since he’d gotten home from school. Said he didn’t want to do his homework, didn’t want to eat his dinner, just sat in front of the TV on his cell phone, texting, gaming – I don’t know. So anyhow, I’d had enough, I snapped. Grabbed his cell, sent him to his room. I told him not to bother coming out again until he’d done his math problems and was ready to apologise.”
Pearl paused to swallow down her tears, one hand winding a strand of lank, blonde hair round and round until her fingers were all tangled up. Dean reached out and gently took her free hand, and the human touch seemed to give her the courage to continue.
“He stormed out in a sulk, and I heard his bedroom door slam, then everything was quiet for a long time. I was baby-sitting for my friend, so I was busy with little Masie, getting her fed and settled, then washing the pots and all, and I didn’t think to check on Joel until well after sundown. That’s when I found his door was locked, which should have been impossible, because none of the doors inside this house have locks, you know? I banged on the door, and shouted, but Joel didn’t answer. I even went outside to look through the window, but there was a blind down, so I couldn’t see in.
“I told the police, that blind doesn’t belong to the room, Joel has curtains, special ones I made him when he was seven and crazy about Spiderman. But then nothing about that room is right. All the furniture gone and those creepy paintings are where the wallpaper should be. Then I came back inside and tried the door again – nothing, it wouldn’t budge. I didn’t know what to do. I was going to go call Alan, my neighbour, but I thought I’d try one last time and the handle turned easy as anything. I couldn’t believe it. But when I walked in, Joel wasn’t inside and none of his things were there either, not even his bed. It was like I’d walked into a stranger’s house. So yeah, the police are looking for Joel, but they’ve written me off as crazy.”
Sam exchanged a glance with Dean. So far, this scenario sounded similar enough to match Marvin Leigh and Claire. Dean patted Pearl’s hand and stood up. “We don’t think you’re crazy, Pearl. Come on and show us this room.”
Sam grimaced. His back and right leg twinged as he stood, one of several painful legacies from occupational injuries. What? Hunting is an occupation, albeit an unorthodox one. He felt it on days like today, when he didn’t have the opportunity to dose himself up before leaving the bunker.He usually self medicated with home grown cannabis but obviously he couldn’t light up a joint here. Sam was continually irritated by the fact that Dean didn’t seem to suffer from similar problems, especially as Dean was older and led a far less healthy lifestyle. Life really wasn’t fair.
Sam’s wallow in self pity was brief, all thoughts of his bodily aches and pains banished when he peered over Pearl’s head through the open door into the room that should have been the ten year old boy’s bedroom. Dean was already inside; he’d gone straight to the ‘creepy painting’ where Claire should be, and Sam could see from the clenching of Dean’s fists that he’d found her. Dean’s face was set when he beckoned Sam inside.
“Look,” Dean said, pointing to a small figure between the depiction of Claire and a flowering bush. Sam’s lips pressed together. He hesitated for a second then decided this was necessary. He called Pearl over.
“Is this Joel?”
The question was redundant in the face of her reaction. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth as she gasped. “How…how did this get there? Nobody’s been into the house since the police were here.”
Dean touched the paint very carefully with one finger. “Dry,” he said. “This must have been done when Joel disappeared. There’s been nearly forty-eight hours for the paint to dry. This,” he showed Pearl the other figure, “this is Claire, our friend’s daughter.” Dean moved across the room scanning each panel until he came to one that featured a dejected-looking man in a suit sitting under a willow tree. “And this, if I’m not mistaken, is Marvin Leigh.”
Sam took his glasses off to take a closer look, then nodded. Whoever or whatever was creating these oil paintings was making uncannily accurate likenesses of the victims. Given that each panel had at least one person depicted, that was a disturbing number of potential missing people. He pulled out his cell, opened the blind to let the light stream in, and started taking photos of each panel. He wished they’d been able to do this last time, but the room had disappeared too quickly. It had really restricted the amount of information Sam had been able to glean about this strange room. Focused on his task, Sam left Dean to comfort Pearl, who was understandably upset all over again at seeing her little boy’s picture on the wall.
There were six panels; three with eight pictures in two columns, three with twelve pictures in three columns. Each panel had an inscription across the top, and most of the pictures had inscriptions too, all in Latin. Sam took close ups of each. He’d take a good look at them all once he’d gotten the photos loaded up onto his laptop. The bottom picture in each set of four was of one or more plants – herbs and wildflowers – and none of these contained any people or writing, though Sam wasn’t dismissing their significance. The herbs might have a purpose for witchcraft, or some other meaning.
By the time Sam had finished, Pearl had gone back into the living room and Dean was propping up the door frame, legs crossed at the ankles, the picture of nonchalance to the untutored eye. Sam wasn’t fooled. Dean raised one eyebrow. “You done, Annie Leibovitz?”
Sam ignored the dig at his photography skills (and his gender) in favour of checking that the pictures on his cell phone matched the room then nodded. “These inscriptions are weird, man,” he said. “Some of them don’t even seem to be complete. Like this one,” he pointed to the top of the first panel to the right of the door, which happened to be the one in which Claire and Joel appeared. FRUSTRA NISI DOMINUS. “It’s useless unless the Lord,” he translated.
“Unless the Lord what?” Dean asked.
“Exactly!” Sam said, putting his phone into his pocket. “I’m going to have to see if these phrases are part of some larger document. Maybe someone has just copied extracts instead of the whole thing.”
Dean grinned. “Nice to see you getting your geek on again, professor.” Sam gave Dean the finger over his shoulder as he walked down the narrow hall back to the living room where Pearl was sitting, looking as lost as her child. She looked up as he entered, and he almost winced at the hopeful expression on her face.
“Do you think you and your friend will be able to help?”
“Dean’s my brother; and I don’t know yet, but I hope so. We’ve solved some pretty strange cases in the past, haven’t we, Dean?” Sam turned his head and that was when he realised Dean wasn’t behind him. He spun round, his stomach sinking with sudden dreadful anticipation. “Dean?”
At the end of the short hallway, Sam saw the door to the room swing shut, heard a click like a bolt snapping into place and though he ran the few strides it took to reach the smooth dark wood, he already knew he’d be too late.
0x0x0x0
PART TWO this way