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Title: The Question of Ghosts, sequel to Old Ghosts
& Old Fears The Question of Ghosts by Gillian Part Three Dean finished his cup of coffee and grimaced as he pushed it across the cracked, formica table. "Are we really going to do this?" he said for the third time. Sam looked up from the journal he'd been studying pretty much non-stop since they left California. By unspoken agreement they'd swung by home to pick it up, both of them knowing it was the key to everything they needed to find out. "Now you ask me this?" Sam said wryly. "Five miles from his house?" Dean shrugged and fiddled absently with some Sweet & Low packets. "I don't know, man. It just seems kind of crazy to me. I mean, we're pretty sure this guy is some kind of psycho killer, right? But we're just gonna drive into his lair, just like that?" "It's a salvage yard, Dean, not a lair." "Right, so rusting hulks against a stormy sky, out in the middle of nowhere, no one can hear you scream? Sounds like the plot of a slasher movie to me." Sam just stared at him. "What?" Dean said defensively, but the corner of his mouth was curving up. "You watch way too much TV, man," Sam said, shaking his head. "Anyway, we won't take any chances, okay? We just want to see Phil, and find out what the hell is going on." "We know what's going on," Dean said, flicking a packet away from him sharply. "Our whole lives are a tissue of lies and deceit. It's the why of it that I need to know." Sam reached out and laid his hand over twitching fingers. "Not our whole lives," he said gently, and Dean looked up and met his eyes. "You realize of course that these guys know about us. Should we really be holding hands in their home town?" Despite Dean's words his fingers curled and caught hold of Sam's hand, thumb stroking gently over his knuckles. "Screw 'em," Sam said gruffly. Dean smirked. "Anyway," Sam said, squeezing Dean's hand one last time before pulling his fingers free. "I found something." "In there?" Dean said incredulously, nodding towards the battered old journal. "Here." Sam swung the book around and jabbed at the page. "Must be friends, or contacts of Winchester's." "Bobby," Dean read. "You think that's Bobby Singer?" "Might be," Sam said, swinging the book back around. "It's a South Dakota area code." "So Papa Winchester did know him," Dean mused. "What about Nash, he in there?" "Not that I can see. But there are some names scribbled out. "Maybe before they sent it to us?" "Maybe," Dean conceded. He tapped impatiently on the table. "And you know what? We're not going to find any of those answers here." 888 Dean drove under the Singer Salvage Yard sign and past an unmanned little gatehouse, down the overgrown drive to the front of the house. A screen swung open with a squeak as the engine quieted, and a young man stepped out cautiously. A teenager actually, Sam amended in his head as they climbed out of the car, no more than sixteen or so, with a freckled, unsmiling face, and dusty denim coveralls smeared with grease. A huge black dog pushed past the swinging screen door and leaned heavily against the teen's legs. The boy dropped one hand onto his wide head. "Don't worry about it, Rafe," a man called and Robert Singer was striding around the side of the house, wiping his hands on a rag that he proceeded to stick in his back pocket. With a nod the boy and the dog disappeared back into the house. "Well well," Singer said. "Look who showed up." Sam exchanged a quick glance with Dean. "You know who we are?" Singer snorted. "If you boys have tracked me all the way here, I figure you know that I know a hell of a lot more than that." "Then you know why we're here," Dean said. Singer nodded. "Reckon I do," he conceded. He pulled the cloth back out of his pocket and mopped at his forehead with it. "It's damn hot out here. Want to come inside?" Dean circled the car and stood beside Sam facing the man, the warmth of his presence a comforting weight against Sam's side. "If you don't mind," Sam said carefully. "Maybe we could just talk out here?" Singer surveyed them for long moments, his grizzled face squinting a bit in the noon day sun. Then he smiled and nodded. "Surely," he agreed. "There's a bench around the side, under some shade. You boys make yourselves comfortable, I'll get us a couple of beers." "Now's he's going for his slashing knife," Dean hissed in his ear, as the screen door swung closed behind Singer with a bang, and Sam snickered nervously and pushed him away. "I don't even know what I'm supposed to ask him," Sam muttered back as they followed the winding cinder path around the side of the house. Sure enough, across a dirty patch of concrete sat a worn old picnic table and benches, under the shade of a gnarled old tree. Sam's runners crunched as they crossed the rough surface, and he squinted down through the dust and leaves. "Hey, what do you think that is, painted on the concrete?" he whispered, and Dean followed his gaze. The design was circular, the points of a pentacle touched its edges, with what looked like a scorpion crudely painted in the middle. Great," Dean whispered back. "Not just a psycho killer, but a Satanist psycho killer." Singer trotted around from the back of his house, three beers clutched in one hand. He stopped and watched as they walked over the concrete, then smiled broadly as they nervously approached and sat down at the picnic table. "Like it?" he asked, nodding back at the faded old paintwork. "Let me guess, you're a Scorpio?" Dean joked weakly. Bobby grinned and laid a sweating bottle in front of each of them before taking a seat. "Something like that." He screwed the cap off his bottle and took a mouthful, but Sam only wrapped a hand around his, enjoying the coldness of the glass on the warm day. He wasn't inclined take this man's hospitality, and, Dean's jokes aside, he wasn't entirely sure how safe they were here. "So, you boys must have about a million questions," Singer said. "I was hoping to see Phil," Sam began, but Singer shook his head. "Sorry, Phil's out right now. Hunting," he said, eyeing them both as he took another mouthful of beer. "I didn't know Phil hunted," Sam said blankly, and Singer shrugged. "But then there's a lot you don't know, Sam, isn't there? That's why you came here." Sam nodded, pulling the journal out of his coat and laying it on the table in front of him. "Ahh," Singer said. "That is your name in there?" "Yeah, Bobby, that's me." "And you knew him? John Winchester?" "I did," Singer confirmed. "He was a good man, and occasionally a good friend." "Not much of a father though," Dean said bitterly. Singer sighed. "Reckon no one can blame you for thinkin' that," he said carefully. "And there's no doubt the man made some mistakes..." "Ya think?" Dean drawled. "But he couldn't know, Dean, that night. He couldn't know Daniel was gonna turn up the way he did, evil on his trail. He couldn't know you'd be too sick to remember the numbers he'd had you memorize since you was four year old. Of folks to call in case he never come home one night. You gotta believe, it was just a lousy set of circumstances and some piss-poor luck." "Luck?" Dean returned savagely, but Sam leaned forward and cut across his rage. "Evil?" he repeated incredulously. "For god's sakes, don't tell me you believe in all the same crap that he did?" Sam flicked the ragged journal derisively. "All this supernatural mumbo jumbo?" Singer's face grew wary. "All right," he said slowly. "I won't tell you that, if you don't want to hear it." "Oh, that's just great," Dean muttered. He pushed away from the table and stood up abruptly. "Come on, Sam. We're not going to get any sense out of this guy." "Sit down, Dean," Sam said. He turned and met Dean's angry eyes calmly. "Please, sit down." Dean met his stare with a jagged glare, but reluctantly sat back down. Sam reached over and laid a hand on his lover's knee, squeezing gently. "We've come a long way," he reminded him softly. "Let's try to get as many answers as we can." Singer sat quietly opposite them, still sipping at his beer. "I'll answer any questions you like," he said into the growing silence. "And for what it's worth, I think you're wise to steer clear of all that." He nodded at the journal. still laying on the table between them. "It's a can o' worms, all right, and one best left closed." "It's the deluded ravings of a madman," Sam said bluntly. "And if it wasn't for the fact that Dean and I were split up, I'd say getting away from that guy was the best thing that could have happened to us." He squeezed Dean's leg again and Dean laid his hand on top of his and squeezed back, to show he understood what Sam was saying. "Like I said," Singer said. "Best not speak of that part of it. It's not my place to defend John Winchester, he wouldn't have thanked me for it when he was alive, and he can hardly care now that he's dead." The man's gaze softened somewhat. "But I will say one thing, before I leave it alone. He'd have been proud as hell of the way the two of you turned out." Dean just shook his head, making it clear he didn't want to discuss the subject any further, and Sam gladly followed his lead. He was curious about his birth father, he could admit that. At the same time he had so many conflicting emotions about the man, so much anger and such a sense of loss over all he and Dean had been denied. He couldn't sit here with this stranger and speak calmly about him. He just couldn't. "I have to know why," Dean said intently. "When you found us, you and Nash. Why didn't you tell us about each other? Why keep us apart like that?" Singer nodded, his face grim. "Yeah, I guess that's the question, isn't it? Phil and me, Pastor Jim, Joshua, Caleb, a whole bunch of folks, we'd been looking for John ever since he dropped off the map. We figured something had gone bad, somewhere along the line, and we were worried as hell about you boys. It took us a long time and a lot of contacts before we finally traced you. I'm just..." He broke off, cleared his throat, then glanced up and met Dean's gaze. "I'm just sorry as hell it wasn't sooner, Dean." Dean drew back a little at the intense sincerity in the other man's gaze, his own face closing up. Singer glanced away, rubbing at his bristled chin. "Wish I could make you understand, boys, what it was like. To finally get a lead after all them years, Dean, and then to find you'd disappeared again, off the face of the Earth. Once we knew where you'd been, we traced back and found Sammy, and the godawful mix-up that saw the two of you separated. Only reason we found you again, Dean, was because you applied to change your name when you were eighteen. " He cleared his throat and blinked away the sheen of moisture in his eyes. "By the time I'd tracked you down that second time, son, you'd found a home with those folks who gave you their name. It seemed to me that would be about the worst time to come knocking on your door with stories about the past." Singer turned to Sam, his face and expression earnest. "And Sam, you were just fourteen, a hard age for a kid anyway. Last thing you needed was that kind of complication, throwing your life out of balance." "Who the hell were you," Dean growled. "To make that kind of decision for us?" "I know, I know," Singer said unhappily. "It was a hell of a thing to do. But you have to understand, Phil and I, we felt like we'd dropped the ball badly on this one. Let you two down by taking so long to find you, let John down, by not being there for you when you needed us most. We couldn't take the chance of screwing up again, we just couldn't." Dean's jaw clenched and Sam put out a hand and laid it on his leg again, feeling the muscles quiver and tense with rage. He could feel his own echo of that pain and betrayal, but it was different for him, it always had been. He'd had his parents, his family, his nice, safe growing up. It was Dean who had paid the highest price for all the adults that had let them both down when they were too young and vulnerable to take care of themselves. "I'm guessing things didn't work out quite the way you planned, between the two of us," Sam said mildly, and Singer's gaze dropped to the edge of the table to where Sam's arm clearly crossed over into Dean's personal space. A ruddy stain coloured his bearded cheeks and he looked away, clearing his throat. "Not exactly, no." "I'll bet," Dean smirked savagely. "You sent us this?" Sam nodded at the journal. "Yeah," Singer said gruffly. "But we always meant to anyway. We did want you to know the truth, it just seemed better to ease you two into it." "You had no right," Dean said bitterly and Singer nodded heavily. "Maybe that's so," he conceded. "But, Dean, you were happy, content. Did my heart good to see you so at peace. Imagine what might have happened if I'd busted in on your life right at that time, just when you were set on your course? The way I saw it, what I had no right to do at that time was destroy everything you'd worked so hard for." Dean was shaking his head automatically, but Sam let himself think about it. Dean, so happy with Nick and Renie, leaving it all behind to fly to his brother's side. Himself at fourteen, a normal teenager living his normal life. How would it have been, having an older brother appear and lay claim to a part of his life? Sam hoped that he would have been glad, welcomed Dean with open arms, made a place for him in his family. But he'd been fourteen. A kid. And it all could have gone wrong so badly. "It wasn't your place to make that decision for us," Sam said, despite his inner misgivings. And Singer nodded again, eyes dark and troubled. "I guess that's just one more thing we're gonna have to live with, Phil and me," he said gruffly. "For what it's worth, hindsight's twenty-twenty. I'd sure do thing different if I had them to do over again." "Yeah, well, not to shock you," Dean said dryly. "But we're just as happy with the way things have turned out." Singer's eyes widened a little. "Uh, right," he said uncertainly. "Fair enough, I guess. And there never was much point in looking back and worrying about what we might have done different. There's no changing the past, even if we wanted to." The man seemed so sincere, so open and honest, Sam was having a hard time trying to see through that to what might lie underneath. His gaze fell on the journal, absently noting the tattered edges of photographs protruding from its sides, the dull spot on the cover where the marine insignia was pinned inside, wearing the leather. All the weird, crazy shit between those pages, this man was a part of that. The man in the picture holding him and Dean close to him on the bonnet of his car, this man had known him, called him friend. This man had tracked Dean down to California and... "Did you kill Jason Ryan?" Sam asked quietly. "Aw, hell," Singer mumbled, rubbing his hand over his face. "Not that we're complaining or anything," Dean said. "Or at least, I'm not. But just out of curiosity, did you really slice the man's dick off and leave him to bleed to death in an alley?" Singer looked down at the warming bottle in his grasp, and then up again, meeting Dean's directly. "I reckon that was me," he admitted. Not my finest hour, I'll grant you. But I'm not saying I regret what I did that night," he added sharply. "Not for one damned second." "What happened?" Sam prompted. "I'd been dogging him for days, hoping for a lead on you, Dean. Phil was already looking out for you, Sam, digging into your life in Richmond. After I found out Dean had run away, I broke into the guy's house, searched through his stuff. Found the... pictures and magazines." Singer grimaced, mouth pinched and tight. "I've seen some evil shit in this world, never doubt it. But sometimes what people do to each other..." Dean jerked under Sam's hand, but the expression on his face didn't change. "At any rate, I was tempted to waste the fucker right then and there, but I needed to know more about Dean. For all I knew Ryan had killed you and left you in some shallow grave some place. I followed him for a few days, trying to get an idea of his movements, contacts etc. And one night I followed him to this seedy dive in the ass end of the city. I sat outside, waiting for him to show back up. And then..." Singer swallowed hard, lifted his warm beer as if to take a swig, then grimaced and pushed it away. "Another car pulled up, and a man got out with a kid. Little thing, no more'an six or seven. And I knew," Singer whispered, eyes seeming lost in the past. "I knew what he was there for." "Oh god," Dean muttered under his breath, but Sam could do more than squeeze his suddenly cold hand, all his attention was fixed on Singer and the story he was telling. "I broke in after them, followed them upstairs, busted in the door..." Singer broke off, rubbed at his eyes as if he could erase the memories playing there. "So you killed him? I thought he died in the alley?" Sam said. "I killed the other man first, snapped his neck like a twig. Followed Ryan down when he ran, screaming like a bitch. Followed him down into the alley and finished him there." Sam frowned. "The cops didn't say anything about a second murder." Bobby huffed a humorless laugh. "Because I didn't give them cause to. I had time to get rid of the body upstairs, but I'd been spotted down in the alley, there was nothing I could do about Ryan's corpse." There was silence for long moments. Sam tried to absorb everything he'd heard, tried to fit it into the context of what this man had done. Cold blooded murder? Far from it. Singer's blood had been hot that night, full of horror and outrage. In those circumstances, could they really judge? And yet what he had done, the savagery of it... "What happened to the kid?" Dean asked hoarsely. "The kid's okay," Singer said shortly, and Sam looked over at the house in realization. "The boy with the dog," he said. "You took him in?" Singer huffed another bitter laugh. "Well, I'd have taken him back to his family, but since they're the ones that sold him in the first place..." Dean pulled away from Sam's grip and strode away from the table, booted feet scuffing the leaves on the ground as he crossed to the trunk of the tree and stood for a moment, bracing himself on its gnarled bole. "Is he okay?" Bobby said in concern. Sam gazed sadly after his lover, wanting to walk over to him and wrap his arms around him, but knowing him well enough by now to leave him be. "He just needs a few minutes," he murmured. "This stuff... Hits him pretty hard." Bobby grimaced. "Didn't sleep real well myself for a damn long time afterwards," he confessed. "I know it must seem like I'm some kind of cold-blooded sonuva bitch, after what I did. But I'm no killer, Sam." "But you know how to get rid of corpses?" Bobby swirled the dregs of the beer in his bottle, then met Sam's eyes directly. "Yeah, just not usually human corpses." Then his eyes fell on the book under Sam's hand. Sam tightened his fingers on the leather cover, his logical, reasonable side once more warring with his instincts. Bobby Singer seemed to really believe the crazy supernatural stuff in this journal, therefore Bobby Singer was probably crazy himself, and anything he said should probably be dismissed as crazy-talk. But those direct, brown eyes, gazing so openly into his own. The compassion and genuine emotion in his voice when he spoke of the past, the boy he'd taken in, his crime... "Maybe, Sam," Bobby said quietly. "Maybe you can just accept for a minute that you don't know everything there is to know about everything. That maybe the world's a lot bigger than you personally know." Bobby shrugged. "And maybe we should leave it at that." Dean was back, standing at his shoulder, and Sam nodded at the touch on his arm. "Yeah," he agreed. There was so much he wanted to know. About his father, about that night, about the journal clutched in his hands. But Bobby was right about one thing, even if everything else he'd said today was nonsense. They didn't know everything about everything. But they knew enough now to come to terms with that past, or at least begin to. "You can always come back later," Bobby said, standing up and facing them across the worn old table. "Anytime." He didn't offer his hand, but he did wave good-bye as Dean turned the car around on the gravel drive and headed for the gates. Sam looked back and saw the boy come back out onto the porch, the huge dog at his side. He joined Bobby on the porch and Sam's last glimpse before the car swung out of the gates was of them standing side by side. Back to Gillian's Supernatural Page
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