Lady Drury's Closet - Part 2
May. 11th, 2016 07:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberdreamsBack to Part 1
0x0x0x0
Dean meant to follow Sam straight out of there, but he couldn’t just walk away, knowing Claire was stuck there somehow, and not knowing if she could see or hear anything – little ten year old Joel Hart too, for that matter. He lingered by their panel for a moment, glad that the picture the two kids were placed in wasn’t one of the really weird ones – like that one over there with the flying orange eagle that was carrying an elephant in its talons, or the creepy old man with donkey ears and ants crawling over him. What was this artist smoking, anyhow, to come up with this shit?
Shadows were gathering in the corners of the room, and when Dean glanced at the window he saw the sky outside was overcast and lowering. Before he could even form the thought, fat raindrops spattered against the windowpanes. The sudden downpour was loud, and Dean took his opportunity to speak his piece without the risk of being overheard and mocked by Sam.
“Claire, listen,” he said, “Sam’s got everything recorded now, so we should be able to crack this thing. Sorry we’re taking so long, but until the room turned up again, we had nothing to go on. But anyway, we’re going to get you both out of here; we ain’t going to lose sight of this place again. Just so you know.”
He thought he heard a noise behind him over the drumming of the rain and turned to go, fully expecting to see Sam standing there grinning at Dean’s sappiness, but the room was empty. Empty, but something was different. It took him a second to realise what was wrong – the door was closed. He knew Sam would never have shut it, and he certainly hadn’t been near it. He tried the handle but it wouldn’t budge; he thumped it with his fist, then his shoulder – it didn’t so much as rattle.
He leaned his forehead against the smooth grain of the wood. Dammit, this couldn’t be happening; he couldn’t get himself trapped in here like this. He couldn’t leave Sam alone. The air pressed on him from all sides, thick with the scent of oil paint. He recognised it from New Jersey, the same mix of rancid linseed and metallic pigment he’d smelled in Marvin Leigh’s house – except this was stronger, more cloying. He tried to turn around to face whatever was coming, but he couldn’t move. His limbs were heavy, as if they were liquifying under the pressure. He coughed, trying to breathe through the steadily increasing fumes. His thoughts were fading, smoothing out with each laboured breath as he was stretched thin, brushed into layers, his tints blending, smearing into each other until Dean simply stopped. He was nothing but colour, shading and line. A coat of varnish sealed him in.
0x0x0x0
“Dean!”
Sam pushed and rattled the door handle, fighting down the panic that threatened to overwhelm him with memories of loss, each more bloody and terrifying than the last – Dick Roman exploding; the look on Dean’s face when Metatron sheathed his blade in Dean’s chest; Dean ripped apart by invisible teeth in a bland middle-American dining room. Memories were supposed to fade with age, but even that extra two hundred years in the Cage hadn’t dulled the images in Sam’s head. Pearl was saying something, but all Sam could hear was the dull roar of his own blood. A bead of sweat trickled down his face; he tasted salt and blood in his mouth where he’d bitten his lip. It was familiar and, paradoxically, calming.
Breathing deeply, Sam centred himself. He knelt and probed the brass lock with his picks, even though part of him was certain the door wouldn’t open until the room’s work was done. But he couldn’t think about what he couldn’t change, he’d been there before and that way madness lay. He wasn’t sure how much time passed before the handle finally turned under his grasp and the door swung open. Dread and relief swept over him in equal measures. As he feared, the room was empty; Dean was gone. Thankfully the panels were still there, because if they had disappeared too, Sam would have been all out of ideas.
He looked first on the square where Claire and Joel had appeared, but Dean wasn’t there. Scanning the rest of the panels Sam found his brother in the next panel along, in a square frame second from the bottom of four. This panel’s main inscription was longer than the first panel’s, though it also didn’t seem to be complete. Sam roughly translated it as wish to be what you are, and wish for nothing. It didn’t make much sense, but then nothing much about this case made sense.
Dean was depicted inside a scene that showed a tree growing out of an old fashioned straw beehive. Sam crouched down to get a better view. Dean was glaring out at the viewer, his fists clenched at his sides. Sam couldn’t help wondering if the symbolism with the bees had something to do with Cain. There was an inscription inside Dean’s painting – NOCET EMPTA DOLORE VOLUPTAS. Sam frowned. He was going to have to check the Latin because it was hard to know exactly how to read this one – was it ‘pleasure brought by grief does injury’ or maybe ‘unbridled lust causes harm’? Sam swallowed down his rising frustration. He didn’t even know if these inscriptions were significant or not.
Sam looked at Dean again; reduced to a six-inch high daub of oil paint. He didn’t touch, he could see the varnish was shiny wet and he didn’t want to risk smudging his brother. How ridiculous was that?
“Pearl,” Sam said, “I’m going to remove all these panels. I have to stop this happening again to anyone else, and I need to study them closer, to find a way to bring our loved ones back. Is that okay with you?”
Sam didn’t wait for Pearl’s nervous nod to begin prizing the first panel off the wall with his boot knife. It wasn’t the ideal tool for the job, but he wasn’t risking leaving the room and having it vanish on him while he raided the Impala’s trunk for a crowbar or a chisel and hammer. Pearl stood in the doorway, keeping watch at Sam’s request. Sam figured her presence would be enough to prevent the room from taking him too, as it seemed to only steal people away when nobody else was around. He chose the panel nearest the door that didn’t contain anyone they knew, just in case something drastic happened when the connection between the panels was broken. He offered up a silent apology to the figures painted on the panel he’d picked, ironically headed with an inscription that said ‘I never get what I want’. He had to hope that wasn’t true.
His knife found the joint between his panel and the next, and he worried the blade into the tiny gap. The edges of the wood underneath the layers of paint were soft, almost spongy with age, so it didn’t splinter; it was more like his knife was slicing it, like a mushroom. Sam worked his way down the left hand side, creating a division between ‘I never get what I want’ and ‘The home in the sky has plenty of room’ – whatever that meant. If it was talking about Heaven, Sam guessed that was probably true enough since the angels had vacated the building. Using his height, Sam tackled the top of the panel next, using the knife to lever the wood away from the wall. He didn’t want to break the damn thing, but he would if he had to.
Thankfully, after only a few minutes he was able to grasp the top edge and with a loud crack he pulled the entire panel out and down. The huge cloud of brown dust that billowed up had Sam and Pearl choking, so once Sam had his breathing under control again, he risked sending Pearl for a couple of scarves for them to tie round their faces to avoid inhaling the worst of the ancient powder. The room was filled with the smell of mould and decay, but underneath was a faint flowery scent that reminded Sam of warm summer evenings, star gazing with Dean on the hood of the Impala. He tied the scarf tight, blamed the watering of his eyes on the cloudy air and carried on with his task.
Pearl opened the window, which let the rain in but helped keep the air relatively clear, of both the choking ancient dust and the perfumes of the various herbs and flowers that were released as Sam prised each panel off the wall. He left Dean’s and the kids’ panels until last, stacking the others carefully in the middle of the room, well away from the wet patch of rain under the open window. He was on edge the whole time, waiting for some kind of retaliation that never came. Sadly, dismantling the room didn’t set its prisoners free either, but he supposed that would have been too much to ask. Nothing was ever that simple.
Deep in thought, Sam stood in front of the last two panels, which he’d leaned against the wall, separate from the rest. “So what’s your plan?” Pearl asked finally. Sam started. He’d almost forgotten she was there. It was a good question.
“We—I’ve got a research facility on the edge of town. I’m going to take these two panels there first, so I can examine them safely. Then I’ll come back for the rest, and stick them into a secure storeroom.” Warded with every sigil, hex and seal he could find.
“You’re leaving these here?” Pearl said, gesturing at the stack of panels. The expression on her thin face was hard to read. It might have been fear, or anger, or both. Whatever it was, she hadn’t flinched away from helping, or pestered him for explanations he couldn’t give, even though Sam knew questions must be eating her up from the inside out. Sam decided he liked her.
“I’ll be honest with you, Pearl,” he said. “I have no idea what I’m doing here. We’ve never dealt with anything like this before. So I’m guessing that separating the constituent parts like this will stop it either disappearing itself, or turning anyone else into a painting. But I can’t be a hundred percent sure.”
Pearl followed him to the car, even helping him wrap the two panels carefully in a couple of old blankets from her garage, to keep them from getting damaged in transit. Away from their edges, the wood was in surprisingly good condition for something that was clearly hundreds of years old, but Sam didn’t want to take any risks.
Which reminded him.
“Don’t go near the room while I’m gone, in case I’m wrong about this. We don’t want to lose any more people to this thing.”
Pearl nodded as if she’d already thought about this, and walked back into her house without looking back. When Sam returned several hours later with a hired pickup to transport the rest of the dismantled room to the bunker, she was waiting in the hall. She was holding a tapestry holdall and in addition to her coat she wore a determined expression. “I’m coming with you,” she said, and before Sam could draw breath to protest, she played her trump card in a voice that brooked no argument. “It’s my son.”
Sam deflated – son, brother, it was the same – family was the undeniable rationale in Winchester-world. They loaded the panels into the pickup in a silence that Sam should have found awkward but instead felt familiar.
“Won’t you be missed?” he said, giving her one last chance to change her mind. She stared at him and for a brief second Sam thought he’d like to see those eyes brighten from their present colour, which was as dull as the grey wood dust they’d stirred up. Dean always said Sam was good at empathising with victims, but in reality it was the opposite. Sam was good at pasting on a convincing façade of caring because he didn’t feel their pain, not like Dean did. When Dean was at his side, Sam always kept himself protected, didn’t reach out too far because he couldn’t afford any cracks in his psyche. One tiny crack could lead to fissures and who knew what monsters might break him apart and claw loose then?
“I’ve told the PD I’m going to stay with relatives, and they have my cell number if they need to contact me. I’m not a suspect, they just think I’m batshit crazy and that Joel’s probably run off to get away from his weirdo mom.”
“Is there nobody here, friends, neighbours, that will be wondering where you are?”
“If you’re trying to unsubtly ask about Joel’s dad, then nope, he’s out of the picture. Ran off with his secretary seven years ago, left me and Joel high and dry. Last I heard, he was in Lawrence, but I’ve no idea where he is now and don’t care. I’ll quit my job, I can get another when we’ve got Joel back.”
Okay then. Sam started the engine and drove back to the Bunker, his mind a perfect blank.
0x0x0x0
Armed with the panels themselves as well as the photographs he’d taken, Sam made some early progress. He was pretty sure he’d found the room’s origin.
“Lady Drury’s closet,” he said, tapping the laptop screen. It was the first weekend after Dean’s disappearance, over six months after Claire’s. Jody had driven over from Pennsylvania even though her campaign advisor had told her it was a bad time to be taking personal days off from her election drive. Alex had stayed home, tied up with study assignment deadlines. Sam had stood, awkward and redundant as a Christmas tree in July while Jody broke down and cried at her first sight of Claire. Now red eyed but composed, Jody leaned over his shoulder to read the web entry he’d found. Pearl pulled her chair over and scooted up on his right to do the same.
Pearl read out loud.
“Lady Drury's Closet (also known as the Hawstead Panels) was a series of painted wooden panels of early 17th-century date, now lost. They originally decorated a painted closet, about 7 feet square, adjacent to a bedroom in Hawstead Place, Suffolk. It is believed they were made for Lady Anne Bacon Drury, wife of Sir Robert Drury of Hawstead and Hardwick. They were removed to Hardwick House, Suffolk, probably by Sir Robert, before his death in 1615. When the Hardwick House contents were sold in 1924, the panels were unaccounted for.
The panels contain a series of emblems of the kind associated with emblem books—images fashionable throughout Europe for private religious meditation in that age. The original sequence of the emblems is unclear, although the panels as arranged under their Latin "headings" are as originally devised. In addition to their importance for the study of emblems in general, they are significant because the Drurys were patrons of the poet and divine John Donne, who wrote his two Anniversaries following the death in 1610 of their daughter Elizabeth Drury—namely, An Anatomy of the World and The Second Anniversarie or the Progresse of the Soule. The epigrammatic and verbally or visually paradoxical themes of the paintings are, however, linked more directly to the themes and techniques of meditation developed in the writings and sermons of the preacher Joseph Hall, who was chaplain and spiritual advisor to Lady Drury at Hawstead.”
The entry was short and the only picture was a thumbnail sized etching, but the paintings were definitely the same.
“So,” Jody said hesitantly, “are these emblems some kind of spell?”
“If they are, it’s not like any kind of spell I’ve come across before,” Sam answered, tapping his fingers on the mahogany table in a staccato rhythm. He stopped abruptly when he realised it was Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. He missed Dean so fucking much; it was a constant ache in the centre of his chest. He blinked sudden tears away and squared his shoulders. “But whatever these are, we now have a lead. So who wants to research Lady Anne and who wants emblems? I’m going to check out John Donne.”
By the time Jody left again, Sam was sick of Donne and his cryptic metaphysical conceits. The only lines he could find that might have some relevance talked about a soul that had a ‘low but fatal room’ in Paradise and lived in a time of great change. Even if this was a reference to Lady Drury’s room, Sam was stumped as to how this could help him.
At first either Jody or Alex called Sam every day. As time passed, daily became every couple of days, then after six months, once a week. There was nothing new to say. Sam scanned his photos of the panels into every known database, searched for information on each obscure motto from each individual painting, tried every combination of each phrase, then even each word, in case they needed to be put in a different order to become comprehensible. But after his early success in tracking down the possible origin of the room, nothing worked, and nothing made sense, and the fixed stares of Dean and Claire and Joel felt increasingly accusing as the days gave way to weeks and months, and summer to the first chills of winter.
Sam kept the two panels in the library, the one with Dean and the one with Claire and Joel. The rest were stacked in a small storage room next to the dungeon. Sam cleared it out beforehand, and painted the walls with every warding he could find in the Men of Letters’ library. The paint itself was laced with salt, gopher dust and his own blood, for extra strength. Either the wards were working, or the separation was doing the trick, because the panels remained inert, and the ‘room’ didn’t transport itself to some new house. There were no new victims. So there was that consolation, albeit a poor one, offering no real comfort to either Sam or Pearl, or to Jody and Alex.
Pearl surprised Sam by staying, and he surprised himself by appreciating her company.
0x0x0x0
Pearl’s presence kept Sam sane. As sane as it was possible to be when you slept in your missing brother’s bed every night, and held one-sided conversations with a painting of your brother every day. Pearl didn’t look at him funny when he crouched in front of Dean’s panel to tell Dean what research he was going to do that day – probably because she would regularly chat to Joel, and sometimes include Claire too. Maybe neither of them was entirely sane then, but there was no one there to call them on it. Jody’s election was successful and the new sheriff of New Hope, along with Alex, would come over and stay for a few days whenever they could get free from their respective duties and or studies. All four of them refused to give up hope that Sam would find a way to bring the prisoners of the panels back home.
“Do you think they can hear us?” Pearl asked once, but Sam didn’t have an answer for her. He didn’t know enough to even guess.
Pearl was a revelation. She was the grain of sand at the centre of her namesake. She didn’t mope, or pester him with questions, or say a word of censure when Sam steadily drank his way through the last of Dean’s stash of whiskey. She even held his head up while he puked for a solid hour, and steered him to bed afterwards without once complaining about the sour stink of him. The day after his spectacular display of drunkenness, she disappeared from the bunker and Sam was certain she must have given up on him and returned home – it would have been the sensible thing to do, after all. He was gobsmacked when she returned not only with a truckload of groceries “I’m sick of carry-out,” but also, a large baggie of hash.
“Better than alcohol for the pain, Sam,” she said, frowning at the trash can full of empty bottles of beer and Jack, and Sam couldn’t disagree. He’d been using hash for a while but when he’d run out he hadn’t bothered to resupply. Smoking weed eased the arthritis in his neck and back (no doubt the legacy of years of being tossed into walls and strangled – happy days).
That evening was mellowed by a haze of weed-smoke and their first and last make out session – lazy and easy and meaningless. Sam walked Pearl back to her room like a gentleman, the sound of Dean’s incredulous laughter echoing down the tiled corridors.
I can’t believe you, dude. That dope’s fuzzied your upstairs and your downstairs brains if you can’t get it up for her.
“Fuck you, Dean,” Sam mumbled, smiling when Pearl landed a final goodnight kiss on his cheek. “We’re not all sex crazed Lotharios, you know.”
Pearl giggled and patted Sam’s ass to send him on his way. “And I’m no Fair Penitent either, so stop talking to non-ghosts and get some sleep.”
Non-ghosts.
The hash-high freed Sam’s thoughts so they swirled around inside his head in an aromatic haze. Pearl had put some music on in her room and her warbling followed him as he wandered down the corridor towards his – no, Dean’s - room. Something about love grows where rosemary goes, which made no sense because rosemary was a plant so it couldn’t go anywhere, stuck in the ground like Dean was stuck in the painting. Come to think of it, there was rosemary painted on the bottom of Dean’s panel, which was for remembrance and Sam wouldn’t forget, couldn’t forget even if he wanted to, surrounded as they were by illusions and ghosts.
Or rather, surrounded by non-ghostly ghosts. Pearl was right, Dean couldn’t be a ghost because he wasn’t dead (couldn’t be, Sam wouldn’t allow it), but neither was he alive. Their souls were nowhere – Dean and all the others had disappeared body and soul without a trace, apart from the paint on the panels.
They were lost in a nothingness,-an oblivion – a void. Something about the concept niggled at Sam. Then the memory struck him. All those years ago, Billie the Reaper. She’d warned him, no, more like threatened him with a place that was neither Heaven, Hell or Purgatory. She’d called it the Empty. How the hell had he forgotten the reapers? People were still dying, and souls were being collected and sent on their way; where, Sam neither knew nor cared, as long as they didn’t stay behind to haunt the living. So surely, even if all the other angels had left the building, the reapers must remain. And if reapers knew about anything, it was souls.
Sam tried witches, he tried psychics, he even, on one memorable occasion, consulted a medium. Nothing worked, no one could find even the residual traces of a soul in the paintings. Maybe summoning a reaper would finally give him a pointer, provide his compass with access to true north again. Up to now his needle had been spinning wildly, as if he had a personal magnetic field that was disrupted by the removal of Dean. As if Dean gave him direction.
Sam swayed on his feet, staring blindly at Dean’s bed. Well that was odd. He had no memory of how he’d arrived there. His slightly hysterical giggle was interrupted by a hiccup. He slapped a hand over his mouth and looked around guiltily, even though there was no one there to see him lose his shit, except the hallucination of Dean that had stayed by his side, ever faithful, when Pearl had left him. Man, maybe he’d overdone the weed, or Pearl’s supplier had a more potent blend than he was used to, because he was floating in champagne. He felt great, but a thin, dull thread of common sense wound through the golden sparkles and told him now was probably not the best time to be attempting a summoning. Especially a summoning of beings that were probably amongst the most powerful of the supernatural creatures left on earth, not to mention ones that harboured a grudge against the Winchesters. Not that there were many supernatural creatures that liked them, but still.
The hallucination of Dean prodded Sam’s ribs none too gently. Even when he wasn’t real, Dean was annoying. “Bed,” Dean said, and Sam had to agree that sounded like a great idea. “You were right about the memory foam, Dean,” Sam told his brother conversationally, as he made his unsteady way towards Dean’s bed. “It does remember you…”
0x0x0x0
Sam woke at four AM. He was lying on his back with his mouth wide open and dry as dust. He was still fully clothed and there was an A4 sheet of paper placed on his chest. He sat up, clutching the paper in his fist, and saw that he’d left Dean’s door wide open. He flushed, hoping he hadn’t been snoring too loud, even though if he remembered right, Pearl had been high as a kite herself, so had probably either slept as well as he had, or been too high to care. He looked down at the piece of paper in his hand.
Huh. It was a note he’d written to himself, presumably scrawled in the throes of revelation last night; which meant it took Sam a second to decipher his own writing. It took another moment or two to remember what he meant by the cryptic words. He’d been reading too much John Donne.
R KNOW SOULS.
Reapers. Yes. Hope flooded Sam’s empty spaces.
0x0x0x0
Sam wasted no time in getting the ingredients for the summoning ritual together, and set everything up in the Library within an hour and a half. Impressive going, even if he said so himself. The reaper summoning worked, but the encounter didn’t go as Sam expected. Firstly, not just any reaper turned up, oh no. Sam should be so lucky. Nope, of course he got Billie herself. If Sam had thought she was disapproving and hostile when he’d encountered her before, that was nothing compared to the glare she gave him at being compelled to appear by incantation.
Things went downhill from there.
“You,” Billie said, her scorn scathing. Evidently six years wasn’t enough time for her uncomplimentary impression of the Winchesters to have faded.
Sam tried his best to explain their predicament, but Billie wasn’t Death – or rather she wasn’t the old Death, as it turned out Billie was the one who’d stood up to the plate when Dean had scythed her predecessor. A fact that she’d omitted to tell Sam when they’d met up all those years ago. Billie definitely did not have a soft spot for Sam, or Dean; in fact, Sam was wondering if she had any soft spots at all. Billie was one hundred percent pure iron wrapped up in a limpid-eyed beauty. Which was a dangerous thought to be having, given that Sam wasn’t entirely confident that Billie couldn’t read his mind.
Their discussion wasn’t going well, so Sam was relieved as well as disturbed when Pearl interrupted, coming into the Library to talk to Joel before breakfast, as was her habit. The two women glanced at each other, then at Sam. Sam was kind of impressed by the way their synchronised disapproving looks focused on him.
“Who’s this?” they asked in unison.
“Pearl, this is Billie,” Sam shot Billie a pleading look that begged her not to mention to Pearl that she was also Death. “Billie, this is Pearl. She’s Joel’s mom.” Sam thought (hoped) there was a softening around Billie’s edges as she glanced from Pearl to the second painted panel.
“Joel,” Billie said, her tone thoughtful rather than hostile. “He’s the one portrayed here, right?”
Pearl was already moving, crouching down in front of Joel like she always did when greeting him. Face to face. Her hand reached out without touching the varnished surface.
“This isn’t a portrait,” Pearl said, “This is Joel. He’s trapped here, somehow. That’s what Sam thinks, anyhow.”
“Does he indeed,” Billie observed. “Maybe I should take a closer look.”
Sam barely refrained from fist pumping the air behind Billie’s back as she joined Pearl in front of the panel. Billie’s face was grim when she straightened up and Sam quailed a little inside.
“What is it with you Winchesters and perverting the natural order?”
“Whoa, wait a minute, this wasn’t our doing,” Sam protested, taking courage from righteous indignation. “Don’t lay the blame for this on us.”
Billie turned back to the panel, hovering her hand across the wood and paint.
“The people here are neither alive nor dead,” she mused, her voice quiet as if she was talking to herself, “Yet they are still present, somehow, both body and soul.”
It felt strange to celebrate confirmation that Dean was trapped in a magical painting, but Sam was so relieved to know his suspicions were correct, he couldn’t help it. It meant Dean and the others were alive, and while they still had life there was hope, regardless of the form that life took. It was good, albeit bittersweet, to know he hadn’t been working so hard for nothing, although this confirmation brought him no closer to freeing his brother.
“Body and soul?” Pearl asked, her voice full of the hope Sam was feeling. He watched Billie’s compassionate reaction to the worn-out young mother and was glad all over again that Pearl had decided to stay in the bunker. This new version of Death might not have shown any sympathy with the plight of the Winchesters but she was definitely reacting to Pearl’s distress with a stern kind of warmth that suddenly reminded Sam of Missouri Moseley. He stepped back and let Pearl ask all the questions, figuring if he stayed quiet Billie might be willing to give them more Information. He didn’t want her remembering how pissed she was with his family.
When Billie told Pearl she couldn’t free the trapped souls, Sam heard regret in her voice. He was taken by surprise when Billie turned and spoke to him; he’d thought she’d forgotten he was still there, even though he’d been looming in the background, awkward as a geeky teenager too afraid to ask the popular cheerleader for a date.
“I can see why you called for a reaper, Winchester. You get a pass this time. But no angel could help with this,” she waved a slim hand at the two panels, propped up side by side. “I’ve lived a long time and taken on the mantle of a creature older than time itself, and I can’t help you either.” Sam opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off with a gesture. “I’m going to give you two pieces of advice for free though, so listen carefully.
“First – it’s clear you two aren’t conservation experts. That wood’s drying out in this atmosphere,” Billie pointed to Dean’s panel as she spoke, “See here? The panel’s splitting now it’s exposed. You need to treat the wood and maybe oil the painted side too, while you’re about it.”
Sam leaned in closer, taking his glasses off as he peered where Billie was pointing. Shit. She was right, the panel was cracking – and not only that, but two of the hairline splits in the grain were running right through Dean’s left leg and arm. Given that Billie had confirmed Dean’s body was somehow still physically present, what did this mean for his brother? Before Sam could panic any further, Billie continued.
“Second – I haven’t seen anything like this before, but I’m thinking what you need here isn’t witch or angel or demon magic. What you need is an artist.”
Billie straightened up, a certain finality in her movements that told Sam that this was all Death was willing to offer him. He was grateful, he really was, even if he had no idea what Billie meant about this whole artist thing. He didn’t move a muscle or say a word – he wasn’t Dean to challenge powerful beings every chance he got – so he was taken by surprise when Billie spun around and poked his chest with emphasis.
“I’m not patient, Sam Winchester. You get a pass this once, for Pearl’s sake, but if I catch you distracting any of my reapers in future, you know what awaits you,” she paused, dark eyes suddenly fathomless and cold as the Emptiness she had promised them at their last encounter. Sam shivered and closed his eyes. “And, Sam, don’t ever summon me again.”
Pearl gasped and Sam knew Billie was gone. He kept his eyes closed, his mind an empty desert. He didn’t know what to do. Dean’s body and soul were trapped by a magic even Death didn’t understand and Sam couldn’t think of a single action he hadn’t already taken that could fix this. The bunker air was oppressive, heavy with Sam’s inadequacy, stinking of impending failure. He could feel the weight of Pearl’s unspoken expectation sitting on his shoulders like gravity and he couldn’t face it.
“I’m going for a run,” he said, brushing past Pearl, who wasn’t having any of it. Though she was half his size and weighed less than one of Sam’s legs, she stood her ground and Sam felt like he’d walked into an iron post.
“Wait just a goddamned minute. Who was that woman? And what did she mean about the panels splitting? What does that mean for Joel?”
Sam’s eyes widened. How could he have forgotten that? The cracks in Dean’s panel, the wood drying out now it was no longer protected by a wall or sealed together with its companion pieces. The other panels would be suffering the same problem – but the good news was, this was something Sam could do something about.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. We need to treat the panels right away, stop the damage. Come on, I know there’s some oil we can use until I can check the web for the right conservation treatments.”
He explained Billie to Pearl as briefly as he could while they worked on the two panels. Pearl took it in stride that they’d had a visit from Death. “I kinda liked her,” was her only comment, and Sam couldn’t help thinking how much Dean would appreciate this unflappable woman. After he’d tested her with every possible test, of course, as Dean would be adamant that nobody should be this calm and collected in the face of this amount of Weird. Sam thought it was strange, how well Pearl had fitted into this life, though he didn’t spend much time on the thought. Pearl was too well camouflaged, somehow. Almost like she belonged there, along with the light fittings or the symbols embedded into the floor or the scent of old book bindings in the library; except Pearl smelled nicer, like jasmine, or maybe honeysuckle.
The old dry wood drank up all the linseed oil Sam could find; it was like pouring water on thirsty desert sand. The oil sank into the friable grey surface and disappeared without a trace. Clearly something more was needed to rescue the panels, so Sam took the Impala to the nearest hardware store to get both advice and supplies, leaving Pearl to use the last of their oil on a few more coats. Sam was standing in the middle of the boat building supplies (and who in their right mind builds a boat in the centre of the USA? This is Kansas, for crying out loud.) trying to decide between a saturant wood-seal or heavy-duty boat varnish as a possible solution, when the idea struck him.
Billie had said they needed an artist, and that the bodies and souls of the stolen people were still in the paintings. What if Sam had an artist paint another, identical portrait of Dean, introduced the two paintings into the same space and summoned Dean’s soul. Was there some way Sam could capture the soul in transit? Of course, it didn’t address the physical issue – basically what happened if the body didn’t accompany the soul, or what would happen if the soul didn’t go from one painting to another but was caught bodiless in between. Because then he still wouldn’t have gotten Dean back. But here must be a way of making this work. Sam didn’t think Billie was the sort of person (if you could call Death a person) who would try to screw him over – not like Lucifer, or Crowley. Surely she wouldn’t have mentioned this whole artist idea if she didn’t believe there was something in it.
Sam grabbed two large bottles of Endeavour Oil and a tin of boat varnish just in case, and hurried through the checkout. He wanted to get back to the bunker and start this new line of research as quickly as possible.
For all Sam’s urgency, it was over two weeks before he found anything useful. He’d been reading Leonardo Da Vinci’s treatise on painting in the hopes of finding either inspiration or a hint that might point him to a more esoteric source. Leonardo’s original notebooks had been gathered together by Francesco Melzi in the 1540s, but then disappeared for over a hundred years, not to be published until the early 1800s – which was plenty of time to conveniently lose any parts that strayed from orthodoxy. Sure enough, when Sam followed a trail from the Vatican Library into the Men of Letter’s archives, he discovered some missing pages, handwritten by Leonardo himself. Any other time, Sam would have been beyond excited by this discovery, but now his immediate concern was how he was going to decipher the Renaissance Italian when he couldn’t even read the tiny spikes, loops and curlicues that formed the great man’s handwriting. Fortunately for Sam, before he could add to his permanent headache, he found his salvation. Some long dead Men of Letters scholar had been working on translating the manuscript, and had even typed up ninety percent of his notes.
Sam speed-read the translation until he found a section that talked about a non-figurative way to capture a person’s likeness. Holy shit, this could be it. Sam couldn’t resist a shout of excitement that startled Pearl into dropping her paintbrush, splashing varnish over the library floor. Since Billie’s advice, they were taking it in turns to add an extra coat of varnish over the many coats of sealant oil they’d been lavishing on the exposed wood of the three ‘youngest’ panels, that is to say the ones containing Dean, Claire and Joel, and Marvin. All of which meant the bunker constantly reeked of varnish and white spirit. Even the strongest coffee had started tasting like turpentine, which left Sam’s stomach persistently queasy.
“All right, I’ll bite,” Pearl said, retrieving her brush. “What is it?”
Sam wanted to rein himself in when he saw how Pearl’s sharp features were softened by hope, but – fuck it. He felt the same. It felt good after months of grinding, tedious getting-nowhere. If he was right, this wasn’t going to be easy, or even painless, but if he could find the right artist, it could work. It could really work.
0x0x0x0
The right artist. Huh, easier said than done. This artist needed to be talented enough to reproduce the panel portraits down to the last detail, knowledgeable enough about fifteenth century oil painting to be able to mix their own paints, and unprincipled enough to accept Sam’s added ingredients, whatever their nature. Oh, and be willing to sign a nondisclosure agreement about the Bunker, because Sam couldn’t have someone casually talking about what they saw here.
“Why don’t you just advertise for an artist in residence?” Jody suggested while they were on one of their long phone calls. “People do that all the time,” she continued, while Sam was mentally torn between punching the air and kissing Jody. Luckily for Jody, she was many miles away and never knew what she’d missed.
Sam’s laptop was out and he was composing an advertisement before Jody hung up the call.
Sam and Pearl held the interviews in a diner, neutral ground. Strangely enough, it helped Sam focus, being surrounded by a bustling atmosphere redolent with coffee and bacon, familiar smells that spoke of Dean. Jody, now safely established in her position as sheriff of New Hope, took a few days personal time and drove over to help him and Pearl grill the candidates (Sam could almost hear Dean making the diner-related pun then laughing at his own cleverness).
The first two were a bust for different reasons. One wasn’t interested in constraining their talent to such rigid parameters, which begged the question as to why he’d bothered applying in the first place. The second was just a kid, fresh faced and bursting with enthusiasm, and Sam just couldn’t bring himself to drag her into the solemn atmosphere that imbued the bunker these days. It would have been like pinning a butterfly to a board then stuffing it into a drawer in a museum store.
The third applicant proved more promising, though on first glance Sam thought the guy must have walked into the wrong diner. In his expensive, well cut suit and shiny leather brogues he looked like he’d be more at home modelling for Gucci than getting his hands dirty painting. If anything, this one reminded Sam of Naomi’s angels, which was somewhat disturbing. Sam knew better than to judge by appearances, and he was pretty sure the guy was using a pseudonym, but it wasn’t until Matt Keller opened up his portfolio and showed them samples of his work that Sam began to think he might have found their artist. This guy had true talent.
He waited while Matt (if that was really his name) read through the contract Sam had drawn up before asking for a pen.
“So you just want the four paintings done to your specifications, and anything else I create while I’m resident is mine, right?”
“Yes. You’re fine with the clause about not leaving the bunker until those four works are done?”
Matt nodded. “Sure. The seclusion suits me right now.”
“Want to tell us why?” Pearl asked, one eyebrow raised. Her thin fingers tapped nervously on the vinyl table, and Sam saw Matt’s piercing blue gaze follow the motion, registering her bitten fingernails before landing on her face. He smiled, shaking his head. “Nope, not today,” he said but Pearl had already melted under the power of the smile. Sam frowned a little. This guy might be more charming than Dean on a good day. He hoped Pearl was up to the challenge.
Matt paused, pen poised to sign the contract. “I’m going to need supplies – walnut and linseed oil, white beeswax, mortar and pestle, a double boiler…I won’t know exactly which pigments I’ll need until I’ve examined the original paintings.”
“Whatever you need, Matt,” Sam said. “If we don’t already have it, we can order whatever materials you require. Some pigments will need special mixing, no questions asked. You okay with that too?”
“You’re the boss,” Matt said, turning the full force of that smile on Sam. Who found himself smiling back through face muscles that felt stiff with disuse. Maybe this could all work out after all.
0x0x0x0
PART 3 this way
0x0x0x0
Dean meant to follow Sam straight out of there, but he couldn’t just walk away, knowing Claire was stuck there somehow, and not knowing if she could see or hear anything – little ten year old Joel Hart too, for that matter. He lingered by their panel for a moment, glad that the picture the two kids were placed in wasn’t one of the really weird ones – like that one over there with the flying orange eagle that was carrying an elephant in its talons, or the creepy old man with donkey ears and ants crawling over him. What was this artist smoking, anyhow, to come up with this shit?
Shadows were gathering in the corners of the room, and when Dean glanced at the window he saw the sky outside was overcast and lowering. Before he could even form the thought, fat raindrops spattered against the windowpanes. The sudden downpour was loud, and Dean took his opportunity to speak his piece without the risk of being overheard and mocked by Sam.
“Claire, listen,” he said, “Sam’s got everything recorded now, so we should be able to crack this thing. Sorry we’re taking so long, but until the room turned up again, we had nothing to go on. But anyway, we’re going to get you both out of here; we ain’t going to lose sight of this place again. Just so you know.”
He thought he heard a noise behind him over the drumming of the rain and turned to go, fully expecting to see Sam standing there grinning at Dean’s sappiness, but the room was empty. Empty, but something was different. It took him a second to realise what was wrong – the door was closed. He knew Sam would never have shut it, and he certainly hadn’t been near it. He tried the handle but it wouldn’t budge; he thumped it with his fist, then his shoulder – it didn’t so much as rattle.
He leaned his forehead against the smooth grain of the wood. Dammit, this couldn’t be happening; he couldn’t get himself trapped in here like this. He couldn’t leave Sam alone. The air pressed on him from all sides, thick with the scent of oil paint. He recognised it from New Jersey, the same mix of rancid linseed and metallic pigment he’d smelled in Marvin Leigh’s house – except this was stronger, more cloying. He tried to turn around to face whatever was coming, but he couldn’t move. His limbs were heavy, as if they were liquifying under the pressure. He coughed, trying to breathe through the steadily increasing fumes. His thoughts were fading, smoothing out with each laboured breath as he was stretched thin, brushed into layers, his tints blending, smearing into each other until Dean simply stopped. He was nothing but colour, shading and line. A coat of varnish sealed him in.
0x0x0x0
“Dean!”
Sam pushed and rattled the door handle, fighting down the panic that threatened to overwhelm him with memories of loss, each more bloody and terrifying than the last – Dick Roman exploding; the look on Dean’s face when Metatron sheathed his blade in Dean’s chest; Dean ripped apart by invisible teeth in a bland middle-American dining room. Memories were supposed to fade with age, but even that extra two hundred years in the Cage hadn’t dulled the images in Sam’s head. Pearl was saying something, but all Sam could hear was the dull roar of his own blood. A bead of sweat trickled down his face; he tasted salt and blood in his mouth where he’d bitten his lip. It was familiar and, paradoxically, calming.
Breathing deeply, Sam centred himself. He knelt and probed the brass lock with his picks, even though part of him was certain the door wouldn’t open until the room’s work was done. But he couldn’t think about what he couldn’t change, he’d been there before and that way madness lay. He wasn’t sure how much time passed before the handle finally turned under his grasp and the door swung open. Dread and relief swept over him in equal measures. As he feared, the room was empty; Dean was gone. Thankfully the panels were still there, because if they had disappeared too, Sam would have been all out of ideas.
He looked first on the square where Claire and Joel had appeared, but Dean wasn’t there. Scanning the rest of the panels Sam found his brother in the next panel along, in a square frame second from the bottom of four. This panel’s main inscription was longer than the first panel’s, though it also didn’t seem to be complete. Sam roughly translated it as wish to be what you are, and wish for nothing. It didn’t make much sense, but then nothing much about this case made sense.
Dean was depicted inside a scene that showed a tree growing out of an old fashioned straw beehive. Sam crouched down to get a better view. Dean was glaring out at the viewer, his fists clenched at his sides. Sam couldn’t help wondering if the symbolism with the bees had something to do with Cain. There was an inscription inside Dean’s painting – NOCET EMPTA DOLORE VOLUPTAS. Sam frowned. He was going to have to check the Latin because it was hard to know exactly how to read this one – was it ‘pleasure brought by grief does injury’ or maybe ‘unbridled lust causes harm’? Sam swallowed down his rising frustration. He didn’t even know if these inscriptions were significant or not.
Sam looked at Dean again; reduced to a six-inch high daub of oil paint. He didn’t touch, he could see the varnish was shiny wet and he didn’t want to risk smudging his brother. How ridiculous was that?
“Pearl,” Sam said, “I’m going to remove all these panels. I have to stop this happening again to anyone else, and I need to study them closer, to find a way to bring our loved ones back. Is that okay with you?”
Sam didn’t wait for Pearl’s nervous nod to begin prizing the first panel off the wall with his boot knife. It wasn’t the ideal tool for the job, but he wasn’t risking leaving the room and having it vanish on him while he raided the Impala’s trunk for a crowbar or a chisel and hammer. Pearl stood in the doorway, keeping watch at Sam’s request. Sam figured her presence would be enough to prevent the room from taking him too, as it seemed to only steal people away when nobody else was around. He chose the panel nearest the door that didn’t contain anyone they knew, just in case something drastic happened when the connection between the panels was broken. He offered up a silent apology to the figures painted on the panel he’d picked, ironically headed with an inscription that said ‘I never get what I want’. He had to hope that wasn’t true.
His knife found the joint between his panel and the next, and he worried the blade into the tiny gap. The edges of the wood underneath the layers of paint were soft, almost spongy with age, so it didn’t splinter; it was more like his knife was slicing it, like a mushroom. Sam worked his way down the left hand side, creating a division between ‘I never get what I want’ and ‘The home in the sky has plenty of room’ – whatever that meant. If it was talking about Heaven, Sam guessed that was probably true enough since the angels had vacated the building. Using his height, Sam tackled the top of the panel next, using the knife to lever the wood away from the wall. He didn’t want to break the damn thing, but he would if he had to.
Thankfully, after only a few minutes he was able to grasp the top edge and with a loud crack he pulled the entire panel out and down. The huge cloud of brown dust that billowed up had Sam and Pearl choking, so once Sam had his breathing under control again, he risked sending Pearl for a couple of scarves for them to tie round their faces to avoid inhaling the worst of the ancient powder. The room was filled with the smell of mould and decay, but underneath was a faint flowery scent that reminded Sam of warm summer evenings, star gazing with Dean on the hood of the Impala. He tied the scarf tight, blamed the watering of his eyes on the cloudy air and carried on with his task.
Pearl opened the window, which let the rain in but helped keep the air relatively clear, of both the choking ancient dust and the perfumes of the various herbs and flowers that were released as Sam prised each panel off the wall. He left Dean’s and the kids’ panels until last, stacking the others carefully in the middle of the room, well away from the wet patch of rain under the open window. He was on edge the whole time, waiting for some kind of retaliation that never came. Sadly, dismantling the room didn’t set its prisoners free either, but he supposed that would have been too much to ask. Nothing was ever that simple.
Deep in thought, Sam stood in front of the last two panels, which he’d leaned against the wall, separate from the rest. “So what’s your plan?” Pearl asked finally. Sam started. He’d almost forgotten she was there. It was a good question.
“We—I’ve got a research facility on the edge of town. I’m going to take these two panels there first, so I can examine them safely. Then I’ll come back for the rest, and stick them into a secure storeroom.” Warded with every sigil, hex and seal he could find.
“You’re leaving these here?” Pearl said, gesturing at the stack of panels. The expression on her thin face was hard to read. It might have been fear, or anger, or both. Whatever it was, she hadn’t flinched away from helping, or pestered him for explanations he couldn’t give, even though Sam knew questions must be eating her up from the inside out. Sam decided he liked her.
“I’ll be honest with you, Pearl,” he said. “I have no idea what I’m doing here. We’ve never dealt with anything like this before. So I’m guessing that separating the constituent parts like this will stop it either disappearing itself, or turning anyone else into a painting. But I can’t be a hundred percent sure.”
Pearl followed him to the car, even helping him wrap the two panels carefully in a couple of old blankets from her garage, to keep them from getting damaged in transit. Away from their edges, the wood was in surprisingly good condition for something that was clearly hundreds of years old, but Sam didn’t want to take any risks.
Which reminded him.
“Don’t go near the room while I’m gone, in case I’m wrong about this. We don’t want to lose any more people to this thing.”
Pearl nodded as if she’d already thought about this, and walked back into her house without looking back. When Sam returned several hours later with a hired pickup to transport the rest of the dismantled room to the bunker, she was waiting in the hall. She was holding a tapestry holdall and in addition to her coat she wore a determined expression. “I’m coming with you,” she said, and before Sam could draw breath to protest, she played her trump card in a voice that brooked no argument. “It’s my son.”
Sam deflated – son, brother, it was the same – family was the undeniable rationale in Winchester-world. They loaded the panels into the pickup in a silence that Sam should have found awkward but instead felt familiar.
“Won’t you be missed?” he said, giving her one last chance to change her mind. She stared at him and for a brief second Sam thought he’d like to see those eyes brighten from their present colour, which was as dull as the grey wood dust they’d stirred up. Dean always said Sam was good at empathising with victims, but in reality it was the opposite. Sam was good at pasting on a convincing façade of caring because he didn’t feel their pain, not like Dean did. When Dean was at his side, Sam always kept himself protected, didn’t reach out too far because he couldn’t afford any cracks in his psyche. One tiny crack could lead to fissures and who knew what monsters might break him apart and claw loose then?
“I’ve told the PD I’m going to stay with relatives, and they have my cell number if they need to contact me. I’m not a suspect, they just think I’m batshit crazy and that Joel’s probably run off to get away from his weirdo mom.”
“Is there nobody here, friends, neighbours, that will be wondering where you are?”
“If you’re trying to unsubtly ask about Joel’s dad, then nope, he’s out of the picture. Ran off with his secretary seven years ago, left me and Joel high and dry. Last I heard, he was in Lawrence, but I’ve no idea where he is now and don’t care. I’ll quit my job, I can get another when we’ve got Joel back.”
Okay then. Sam started the engine and drove back to the Bunker, his mind a perfect blank.
0x0x0x0
Armed with the panels themselves as well as the photographs he’d taken, Sam made some early progress. He was pretty sure he’d found the room’s origin.
“Lady Drury’s closet,” he said, tapping the laptop screen. It was the first weekend after Dean’s disappearance, over six months after Claire’s. Jody had driven over from Pennsylvania even though her campaign advisor had told her it was a bad time to be taking personal days off from her election drive. Alex had stayed home, tied up with study assignment deadlines. Sam had stood, awkward and redundant as a Christmas tree in July while Jody broke down and cried at her first sight of Claire. Now red eyed but composed, Jody leaned over his shoulder to read the web entry he’d found. Pearl pulled her chair over and scooted up on his right to do the same.
Pearl read out loud.
“Lady Drury's Closet (also known as the Hawstead Panels) was a series of painted wooden panels of early 17th-century date, now lost. They originally decorated a painted closet, about 7 feet square, adjacent to a bedroom in Hawstead Place, Suffolk. It is believed they were made for Lady Anne Bacon Drury, wife of Sir Robert Drury of Hawstead and Hardwick. They were removed to Hardwick House, Suffolk, probably by Sir Robert, before his death in 1615. When the Hardwick House contents were sold in 1924, the panels were unaccounted for.
The panels contain a series of emblems of the kind associated with emblem books—images fashionable throughout Europe for private religious meditation in that age. The original sequence of the emblems is unclear, although the panels as arranged under their Latin "headings" are as originally devised. In addition to their importance for the study of emblems in general, they are significant because the Drurys were patrons of the poet and divine John Donne, who wrote his two Anniversaries following the death in 1610 of their daughter Elizabeth Drury—namely, An Anatomy of the World and The Second Anniversarie or the Progresse of the Soule. The epigrammatic and verbally or visually paradoxical themes of the paintings are, however, linked more directly to the themes and techniques of meditation developed in the writings and sermons of the preacher Joseph Hall, who was chaplain and spiritual advisor to Lady Drury at Hawstead.”
The entry was short and the only picture was a thumbnail sized etching, but the paintings were definitely the same.
“So,” Jody said hesitantly, “are these emblems some kind of spell?”
“If they are, it’s not like any kind of spell I’ve come across before,” Sam answered, tapping his fingers on the mahogany table in a staccato rhythm. He stopped abruptly when he realised it was Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. He missed Dean so fucking much; it was a constant ache in the centre of his chest. He blinked sudden tears away and squared his shoulders. “But whatever these are, we now have a lead. So who wants to research Lady Anne and who wants emblems? I’m going to check out John Donne.”
By the time Jody left again, Sam was sick of Donne and his cryptic metaphysical conceits. The only lines he could find that might have some relevance talked about a soul that had a ‘low but fatal room’ in Paradise and lived in a time of great change. Even if this was a reference to Lady Drury’s room, Sam was stumped as to how this could help him.
At first either Jody or Alex called Sam every day. As time passed, daily became every couple of days, then after six months, once a week. There was nothing new to say. Sam scanned his photos of the panels into every known database, searched for information on each obscure motto from each individual painting, tried every combination of each phrase, then even each word, in case they needed to be put in a different order to become comprehensible. But after his early success in tracking down the possible origin of the room, nothing worked, and nothing made sense, and the fixed stares of Dean and Claire and Joel felt increasingly accusing as the days gave way to weeks and months, and summer to the first chills of winter.
Sam kept the two panels in the library, the one with Dean and the one with Claire and Joel. The rest were stacked in a small storage room next to the dungeon. Sam cleared it out beforehand, and painted the walls with every warding he could find in the Men of Letters’ library. The paint itself was laced with salt, gopher dust and his own blood, for extra strength. Either the wards were working, or the separation was doing the trick, because the panels remained inert, and the ‘room’ didn’t transport itself to some new house. There were no new victims. So there was that consolation, albeit a poor one, offering no real comfort to either Sam or Pearl, or to Jody and Alex.
Pearl surprised Sam by staying, and he surprised himself by appreciating her company.
0x0x0x0
Pearl’s presence kept Sam sane. As sane as it was possible to be when you slept in your missing brother’s bed every night, and held one-sided conversations with a painting of your brother every day. Pearl didn’t look at him funny when he crouched in front of Dean’s panel to tell Dean what research he was going to do that day – probably because she would regularly chat to Joel, and sometimes include Claire too. Maybe neither of them was entirely sane then, but there was no one there to call them on it. Jody’s election was successful and the new sheriff of New Hope, along with Alex, would come over and stay for a few days whenever they could get free from their respective duties and or studies. All four of them refused to give up hope that Sam would find a way to bring the prisoners of the panels back home.
“Do you think they can hear us?” Pearl asked once, but Sam didn’t have an answer for her. He didn’t know enough to even guess.
Pearl was a revelation. She was the grain of sand at the centre of her namesake. She didn’t mope, or pester him with questions, or say a word of censure when Sam steadily drank his way through the last of Dean’s stash of whiskey. She even held his head up while he puked for a solid hour, and steered him to bed afterwards without once complaining about the sour stink of him. The day after his spectacular display of drunkenness, she disappeared from the bunker and Sam was certain she must have given up on him and returned home – it would have been the sensible thing to do, after all. He was gobsmacked when she returned not only with a truckload of groceries “I’m sick of carry-out,” but also, a large baggie of hash.
“Better than alcohol for the pain, Sam,” she said, frowning at the trash can full of empty bottles of beer and Jack, and Sam couldn’t disagree. He’d been using hash for a while but when he’d run out he hadn’t bothered to resupply. Smoking weed eased the arthritis in his neck and back (no doubt the legacy of years of being tossed into walls and strangled – happy days).
That evening was mellowed by a haze of weed-smoke and their first and last make out session – lazy and easy and meaningless. Sam walked Pearl back to her room like a gentleman, the sound of Dean’s incredulous laughter echoing down the tiled corridors.
I can’t believe you, dude. That dope’s fuzzied your upstairs and your downstairs brains if you can’t get it up for her.
“Fuck you, Dean,” Sam mumbled, smiling when Pearl landed a final goodnight kiss on his cheek. “We’re not all sex crazed Lotharios, you know.”
Pearl giggled and patted Sam’s ass to send him on his way. “And I’m no Fair Penitent either, so stop talking to non-ghosts and get some sleep.”
Non-ghosts.
The hash-high freed Sam’s thoughts so they swirled around inside his head in an aromatic haze. Pearl had put some music on in her room and her warbling followed him as he wandered down the corridor towards his – no, Dean’s - room. Something about love grows where rosemary goes, which made no sense because rosemary was a plant so it couldn’t go anywhere, stuck in the ground like Dean was stuck in the painting. Come to think of it, there was rosemary painted on the bottom of Dean’s panel, which was for remembrance and Sam wouldn’t forget, couldn’t forget even if he wanted to, surrounded as they were by illusions and ghosts.
Or rather, surrounded by non-ghostly ghosts. Pearl was right, Dean couldn’t be a ghost because he wasn’t dead (couldn’t be, Sam wouldn’t allow it), but neither was he alive. Their souls were nowhere – Dean and all the others had disappeared body and soul without a trace, apart from the paint on the panels.
They were lost in a nothingness,-an oblivion – a void. Something about the concept niggled at Sam. Then the memory struck him. All those years ago, Billie the Reaper. She’d warned him, no, more like threatened him with a place that was neither Heaven, Hell or Purgatory. She’d called it the Empty. How the hell had he forgotten the reapers? People were still dying, and souls were being collected and sent on their way; where, Sam neither knew nor cared, as long as they didn’t stay behind to haunt the living. So surely, even if all the other angels had left the building, the reapers must remain. And if reapers knew about anything, it was souls.
Sam tried witches, he tried psychics, he even, on one memorable occasion, consulted a medium. Nothing worked, no one could find even the residual traces of a soul in the paintings. Maybe summoning a reaper would finally give him a pointer, provide his compass with access to true north again. Up to now his needle had been spinning wildly, as if he had a personal magnetic field that was disrupted by the removal of Dean. As if Dean gave him direction.
Sam swayed on his feet, staring blindly at Dean’s bed. Well that was odd. He had no memory of how he’d arrived there. His slightly hysterical giggle was interrupted by a hiccup. He slapped a hand over his mouth and looked around guiltily, even though there was no one there to see him lose his shit, except the hallucination of Dean that had stayed by his side, ever faithful, when Pearl had left him. Man, maybe he’d overdone the weed, or Pearl’s supplier had a more potent blend than he was used to, because he was floating in champagne. He felt great, but a thin, dull thread of common sense wound through the golden sparkles and told him now was probably not the best time to be attempting a summoning. Especially a summoning of beings that were probably amongst the most powerful of the supernatural creatures left on earth, not to mention ones that harboured a grudge against the Winchesters. Not that there were many supernatural creatures that liked them, but still.
The hallucination of Dean prodded Sam’s ribs none too gently. Even when he wasn’t real, Dean was annoying. “Bed,” Dean said, and Sam had to agree that sounded like a great idea. “You were right about the memory foam, Dean,” Sam told his brother conversationally, as he made his unsteady way towards Dean’s bed. “It does remember you…”
0x0x0x0
Sam woke at four AM. He was lying on his back with his mouth wide open and dry as dust. He was still fully clothed and there was an A4 sheet of paper placed on his chest. He sat up, clutching the paper in his fist, and saw that he’d left Dean’s door wide open. He flushed, hoping he hadn’t been snoring too loud, even though if he remembered right, Pearl had been high as a kite herself, so had probably either slept as well as he had, or been too high to care. He looked down at the piece of paper in his hand.
Huh. It was a note he’d written to himself, presumably scrawled in the throes of revelation last night; which meant it took Sam a second to decipher his own writing. It took another moment or two to remember what he meant by the cryptic words. He’d been reading too much John Donne.
R KNOW SOULS.
Reapers. Yes. Hope flooded Sam’s empty spaces.
0x0x0x0
Sam wasted no time in getting the ingredients for the summoning ritual together, and set everything up in the Library within an hour and a half. Impressive going, even if he said so himself. The reaper summoning worked, but the encounter didn’t go as Sam expected. Firstly, not just any reaper turned up, oh no. Sam should be so lucky. Nope, of course he got Billie herself. If Sam had thought she was disapproving and hostile when he’d encountered her before, that was nothing compared to the glare she gave him at being compelled to appear by incantation.
Things went downhill from there.
“You,” Billie said, her scorn scathing. Evidently six years wasn’t enough time for her uncomplimentary impression of the Winchesters to have faded.
Sam tried his best to explain their predicament, but Billie wasn’t Death – or rather she wasn’t the old Death, as it turned out Billie was the one who’d stood up to the plate when Dean had scythed her predecessor. A fact that she’d omitted to tell Sam when they’d met up all those years ago. Billie definitely did not have a soft spot for Sam, or Dean; in fact, Sam was wondering if she had any soft spots at all. Billie was one hundred percent pure iron wrapped up in a limpid-eyed beauty. Which was a dangerous thought to be having, given that Sam wasn’t entirely confident that Billie couldn’t read his mind.
Their discussion wasn’t going well, so Sam was relieved as well as disturbed when Pearl interrupted, coming into the Library to talk to Joel before breakfast, as was her habit. The two women glanced at each other, then at Sam. Sam was kind of impressed by the way their synchronised disapproving looks focused on him.
“Who’s this?” they asked in unison.
“Pearl, this is Billie,” Sam shot Billie a pleading look that begged her not to mention to Pearl that she was also Death. “Billie, this is Pearl. She’s Joel’s mom.” Sam thought (hoped) there was a softening around Billie’s edges as she glanced from Pearl to the second painted panel.
“Joel,” Billie said, her tone thoughtful rather than hostile. “He’s the one portrayed here, right?”
Pearl was already moving, crouching down in front of Joel like she always did when greeting him. Face to face. Her hand reached out without touching the varnished surface.
“This isn’t a portrait,” Pearl said, “This is Joel. He’s trapped here, somehow. That’s what Sam thinks, anyhow.”
“Does he indeed,” Billie observed. “Maybe I should take a closer look.”
Sam barely refrained from fist pumping the air behind Billie’s back as she joined Pearl in front of the panel. Billie’s face was grim when she straightened up and Sam quailed a little inside.
“What is it with you Winchesters and perverting the natural order?”
“Whoa, wait a minute, this wasn’t our doing,” Sam protested, taking courage from righteous indignation. “Don’t lay the blame for this on us.”
Billie turned back to the panel, hovering her hand across the wood and paint.
“The people here are neither alive nor dead,” she mused, her voice quiet as if she was talking to herself, “Yet they are still present, somehow, both body and soul.”
It felt strange to celebrate confirmation that Dean was trapped in a magical painting, but Sam was so relieved to know his suspicions were correct, he couldn’t help it. It meant Dean and the others were alive, and while they still had life there was hope, regardless of the form that life took. It was good, albeit bittersweet, to know he hadn’t been working so hard for nothing, although this confirmation brought him no closer to freeing his brother.
“Body and soul?” Pearl asked, her voice full of the hope Sam was feeling. He watched Billie’s compassionate reaction to the worn-out young mother and was glad all over again that Pearl had decided to stay in the bunker. This new version of Death might not have shown any sympathy with the plight of the Winchesters but she was definitely reacting to Pearl’s distress with a stern kind of warmth that suddenly reminded Sam of Missouri Moseley. He stepped back and let Pearl ask all the questions, figuring if he stayed quiet Billie might be willing to give them more Information. He didn’t want her remembering how pissed she was with his family.
When Billie told Pearl she couldn’t free the trapped souls, Sam heard regret in her voice. He was taken by surprise when Billie turned and spoke to him; he’d thought she’d forgotten he was still there, even though he’d been looming in the background, awkward as a geeky teenager too afraid to ask the popular cheerleader for a date.
“I can see why you called for a reaper, Winchester. You get a pass this time. But no angel could help with this,” she waved a slim hand at the two panels, propped up side by side. “I’ve lived a long time and taken on the mantle of a creature older than time itself, and I can’t help you either.” Sam opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off with a gesture. “I’m going to give you two pieces of advice for free though, so listen carefully.
“First – it’s clear you two aren’t conservation experts. That wood’s drying out in this atmosphere,” Billie pointed to Dean’s panel as she spoke, “See here? The panel’s splitting now it’s exposed. You need to treat the wood and maybe oil the painted side too, while you’re about it.”
Sam leaned in closer, taking his glasses off as he peered where Billie was pointing. Shit. She was right, the panel was cracking – and not only that, but two of the hairline splits in the grain were running right through Dean’s left leg and arm. Given that Billie had confirmed Dean’s body was somehow still physically present, what did this mean for his brother? Before Sam could panic any further, Billie continued.
“Second – I haven’t seen anything like this before, but I’m thinking what you need here isn’t witch or angel or demon magic. What you need is an artist.”
Billie straightened up, a certain finality in her movements that told Sam that this was all Death was willing to offer him. He was grateful, he really was, even if he had no idea what Billie meant about this whole artist thing. He didn’t move a muscle or say a word – he wasn’t Dean to challenge powerful beings every chance he got – so he was taken by surprise when Billie spun around and poked his chest with emphasis.
“I’m not patient, Sam Winchester. You get a pass this once, for Pearl’s sake, but if I catch you distracting any of my reapers in future, you know what awaits you,” she paused, dark eyes suddenly fathomless and cold as the Emptiness she had promised them at their last encounter. Sam shivered and closed his eyes. “And, Sam, don’t ever summon me again.”
Pearl gasped and Sam knew Billie was gone. He kept his eyes closed, his mind an empty desert. He didn’t know what to do. Dean’s body and soul were trapped by a magic even Death didn’t understand and Sam couldn’t think of a single action he hadn’t already taken that could fix this. The bunker air was oppressive, heavy with Sam’s inadequacy, stinking of impending failure. He could feel the weight of Pearl’s unspoken expectation sitting on his shoulders like gravity and he couldn’t face it.
“I’m going for a run,” he said, brushing past Pearl, who wasn’t having any of it. Though she was half his size and weighed less than one of Sam’s legs, she stood her ground and Sam felt like he’d walked into an iron post.
“Wait just a goddamned minute. Who was that woman? And what did she mean about the panels splitting? What does that mean for Joel?”
Sam’s eyes widened. How could he have forgotten that? The cracks in Dean’s panel, the wood drying out now it was no longer protected by a wall or sealed together with its companion pieces. The other panels would be suffering the same problem – but the good news was, this was something Sam could do something about.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. We need to treat the panels right away, stop the damage. Come on, I know there’s some oil we can use until I can check the web for the right conservation treatments.”
He explained Billie to Pearl as briefly as he could while they worked on the two panels. Pearl took it in stride that they’d had a visit from Death. “I kinda liked her,” was her only comment, and Sam couldn’t help thinking how much Dean would appreciate this unflappable woman. After he’d tested her with every possible test, of course, as Dean would be adamant that nobody should be this calm and collected in the face of this amount of Weird. Sam thought it was strange, how well Pearl had fitted into this life, though he didn’t spend much time on the thought. Pearl was too well camouflaged, somehow. Almost like she belonged there, along with the light fittings or the symbols embedded into the floor or the scent of old book bindings in the library; except Pearl smelled nicer, like jasmine, or maybe honeysuckle.
The old dry wood drank up all the linseed oil Sam could find; it was like pouring water on thirsty desert sand. The oil sank into the friable grey surface and disappeared without a trace. Clearly something more was needed to rescue the panels, so Sam took the Impala to the nearest hardware store to get both advice and supplies, leaving Pearl to use the last of their oil on a few more coats. Sam was standing in the middle of the boat building supplies (and who in their right mind builds a boat in the centre of the USA? This is Kansas, for crying out loud.) trying to decide between a saturant wood-seal or heavy-duty boat varnish as a possible solution, when the idea struck him.
Billie had said they needed an artist, and that the bodies and souls of the stolen people were still in the paintings. What if Sam had an artist paint another, identical portrait of Dean, introduced the two paintings into the same space and summoned Dean’s soul. Was there some way Sam could capture the soul in transit? Of course, it didn’t address the physical issue – basically what happened if the body didn’t accompany the soul, or what would happen if the soul didn’t go from one painting to another but was caught bodiless in between. Because then he still wouldn’t have gotten Dean back. But here must be a way of making this work. Sam didn’t think Billie was the sort of person (if you could call Death a person) who would try to screw him over – not like Lucifer, or Crowley. Surely she wouldn’t have mentioned this whole artist idea if she didn’t believe there was something in it.
Sam grabbed two large bottles of Endeavour Oil and a tin of boat varnish just in case, and hurried through the checkout. He wanted to get back to the bunker and start this new line of research as quickly as possible.
For all Sam’s urgency, it was over two weeks before he found anything useful. He’d been reading Leonardo Da Vinci’s treatise on painting in the hopes of finding either inspiration or a hint that might point him to a more esoteric source. Leonardo’s original notebooks had been gathered together by Francesco Melzi in the 1540s, but then disappeared for over a hundred years, not to be published until the early 1800s – which was plenty of time to conveniently lose any parts that strayed from orthodoxy. Sure enough, when Sam followed a trail from the Vatican Library into the Men of Letter’s archives, he discovered some missing pages, handwritten by Leonardo himself. Any other time, Sam would have been beyond excited by this discovery, but now his immediate concern was how he was going to decipher the Renaissance Italian when he couldn’t even read the tiny spikes, loops and curlicues that formed the great man’s handwriting. Fortunately for Sam, before he could add to his permanent headache, he found his salvation. Some long dead Men of Letters scholar had been working on translating the manuscript, and had even typed up ninety percent of his notes.
Sam speed-read the translation until he found a section that talked about a non-figurative way to capture a person’s likeness. Holy shit, this could be it. Sam couldn’t resist a shout of excitement that startled Pearl into dropping her paintbrush, splashing varnish over the library floor. Since Billie’s advice, they were taking it in turns to add an extra coat of varnish over the many coats of sealant oil they’d been lavishing on the exposed wood of the three ‘youngest’ panels, that is to say the ones containing Dean, Claire and Joel, and Marvin. All of which meant the bunker constantly reeked of varnish and white spirit. Even the strongest coffee had started tasting like turpentine, which left Sam’s stomach persistently queasy.
“All right, I’ll bite,” Pearl said, retrieving her brush. “What is it?”
Sam wanted to rein himself in when he saw how Pearl’s sharp features were softened by hope, but – fuck it. He felt the same. It felt good after months of grinding, tedious getting-nowhere. If he was right, this wasn’t going to be easy, or even painless, but if he could find the right artist, it could work. It could really work.
0x0x0x0
The right artist. Huh, easier said than done. This artist needed to be talented enough to reproduce the panel portraits down to the last detail, knowledgeable enough about fifteenth century oil painting to be able to mix their own paints, and unprincipled enough to accept Sam’s added ingredients, whatever their nature. Oh, and be willing to sign a nondisclosure agreement about the Bunker, because Sam couldn’t have someone casually talking about what they saw here.
“Why don’t you just advertise for an artist in residence?” Jody suggested while they were on one of their long phone calls. “People do that all the time,” she continued, while Sam was mentally torn between punching the air and kissing Jody. Luckily for Jody, she was many miles away and never knew what she’d missed.
Sam’s laptop was out and he was composing an advertisement before Jody hung up the call.
Sam and Pearl held the interviews in a diner, neutral ground. Strangely enough, it helped Sam focus, being surrounded by a bustling atmosphere redolent with coffee and bacon, familiar smells that spoke of Dean. Jody, now safely established in her position as sheriff of New Hope, took a few days personal time and drove over to help him and Pearl grill the candidates (Sam could almost hear Dean making the diner-related pun then laughing at his own cleverness).
The first two were a bust for different reasons. One wasn’t interested in constraining their talent to such rigid parameters, which begged the question as to why he’d bothered applying in the first place. The second was just a kid, fresh faced and bursting with enthusiasm, and Sam just couldn’t bring himself to drag her into the solemn atmosphere that imbued the bunker these days. It would have been like pinning a butterfly to a board then stuffing it into a drawer in a museum store.
The third applicant proved more promising, though on first glance Sam thought the guy must have walked into the wrong diner. In his expensive, well cut suit and shiny leather brogues he looked like he’d be more at home modelling for Gucci than getting his hands dirty painting. If anything, this one reminded Sam of Naomi’s angels, which was somewhat disturbing. Sam knew better than to judge by appearances, and he was pretty sure the guy was using a pseudonym, but it wasn’t until Matt Keller opened up his portfolio and showed them samples of his work that Sam began to think he might have found their artist. This guy had true talent.
He waited while Matt (if that was really his name) read through the contract Sam had drawn up before asking for a pen.
“So you just want the four paintings done to your specifications, and anything else I create while I’m resident is mine, right?”
“Yes. You’re fine with the clause about not leaving the bunker until those four works are done?”
Matt nodded. “Sure. The seclusion suits me right now.”
“Want to tell us why?” Pearl asked, one eyebrow raised. Her thin fingers tapped nervously on the vinyl table, and Sam saw Matt’s piercing blue gaze follow the motion, registering her bitten fingernails before landing on her face. He smiled, shaking his head. “Nope, not today,” he said but Pearl had already melted under the power of the smile. Sam frowned a little. This guy might be more charming than Dean on a good day. He hoped Pearl was up to the challenge.
Matt paused, pen poised to sign the contract. “I’m going to need supplies – walnut and linseed oil, white beeswax, mortar and pestle, a double boiler…I won’t know exactly which pigments I’ll need until I’ve examined the original paintings.”
“Whatever you need, Matt,” Sam said. “If we don’t already have it, we can order whatever materials you require. Some pigments will need special mixing, no questions asked. You okay with that too?”
“You’re the boss,” Matt said, turning the full force of that smile on Sam. Who found himself smiling back through face muscles that felt stiff with disuse. Maybe this could all work out after all.
0x0x0x0
PART 3 this way