Spreading Roots

In the day and a half since I met Dean Winchester, I became accustomed to the sound of his Impala. It was nearly engraved in my mind by then, so when I heard the too-familiar, unwelcomed car pull up to the curb by Uncle Franks house I let out a long melodramatic groan. Apparently he wasn’t joking when he said he’d ‘see me soon.’

Springing into action, I stood from my spot beside the stereo and booked it out through the garage’s side door. ¬If he didn’t see me he’d go away. And that was all I could hope for.

Just yesterday he was here and a fight had been close to breaking out between him and Frank. I was too busy thanking my lucky stars that my usually well-tempered uncle wasn’t around to greet him that I probably made more than a couple noises as I staggered through Frank’s backyard in a galloping run and into my shed.

Sat on my designated bench in front of my bike, I took a deep breath and steadied myself. Hopefully Dean wouldn’t have the nerve to venture all the way back here just to ‘talk’ to me, but I somehow doubted he would care. If he didn’t see me, on the other hand, I was in clear… so long as he didn’t hear me, either.

It was times like those I wished I was a little more stealthy than my usual trip-over-my-own-two-feet nerdy self.

I busied myself at my bike and picked up whichever tools were closest to me without even looking at them, mentally cursing myself when I heard his plodding, measured footsteps approach. I would have heard Uncle Frank’s truck approach, so I knew it wasn’t him. And besides, he was supposed to waste his time at Foley’s Garage for at least another hour.

He went there to see if he could secure his old job for when he got back from his tour in Afghanistan—but there was no avoiding his deployment in the coming days, so I wasn’t particularly supportive of him going over there.

For the time being I was in a terrible mood solely for that fact. If I couldn’t harp on Frank for that, then I certainly wasn’t going to be too welcoming to Dean. After all, Frank didn’t like him for a reason. A reason he still wouldn’t tell me, but a reason nonetheless.

“Knock, knock,” Dean popped out from behind the open door, the grin tugging at his lips obviously fake. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Workin’ hard or hardly workin’?”

I rolled my eyes at his cheesy greeting and didn’t acknowledge him any further. I didn’t want him here, or anywhere near the house. If Frank came back and saw him here… my last couple of days with him would be ruined.

A hammer and a pair of pliers were the tools I blindly chose for myself. I refused to show my embarrassment; my bike wasn’t even taken apart. Where the hell did that hammer even come from, anyway?

I let the tools drop to the floor with a loud, annoying crash; it may have been a little childish but I hoped it would irritate Dean enough to get him to go away. He proved to be a lot harder to rattle—my mother would have gotten frustrated and left the instant I didn’t acknowledge her—instead Dean opted to pull up an old folding chair next to my bench. He sat on it the wrong way, arms around the back, and didn’t speak. His silence got to me more than his cheesy jokes did. That was more than likely his plan, too, I thought with a scowl. It was what I would have done.

Finally after minutes of silence I sighed and turned so I was facing away from him. “What do you want?”

“Just a couple of questions,” he replied happily, as if he didn’t pick up on the blatant distaste in my tone.

Just to be sure he was serious I snuck a glance back at him and then went back to staring at my bike. The fact that our eyes were an exact match for each other still freaked me out, and I didn’t enjoy meeting his gaze. “Scary,” I muttered to myself, hoping he wouldn’t hear me. “Why? What questions could you possibly have to ask me?”

None of it made sense. Dean Winchester himself didn’t make sense, at least not to me. I didn’t know him and he sure as hell didn’t know anything about me. I didn’t care about him. The feeling should have been mutual… he was just cramping my style right in time for the last few days I had with Frank.

A plan was quickly formulating in my scheming mind, but I had to do one thing first.

Sell it.

“Your mom might be in trouble, Dev.”

I laughed, causing him to fall short. When I swiveled around on my bench to finally meet him in the eye, he gave me an uneasy look. “She’s crazy, you know,” I stated, somewhat carelessly.

The concentrated, cool expression on Dean’s face told me he was taking his time, trying to figure out how to word whatever he wanted to say. I had a feeling he knew how easy it was for me to become frustrated. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he said, pretty much dismissing my claim. The smile playing on his lips told me he believed otherwise, however. “Oh come on, Baker. Don’t make me say please.”

“Go away, Winchester. Your stupid jokes aren’t gonna work on me,” I held my ground and hoped I sounded a whole lot older and sure of myself than I thought I did.

“Didn’t think it would,” he mumbled. The chair made an awful squeal as he stood from it and he turned to leave. The playful smile and mischievous glint in his eyes drained as soon as he did so, but I missed the knowing look that remained behind that.

“Wait,” I called out, hoping that I’d made the right decision and played it all out as well as I thought I had. The smirk he held was hard to ignore, and I almost regretted my plan. But hopefully it would work, and hopefully once he got whatever answers he wanted he would be gone before Frank got home and he wouldn’t come back. “You have five minutes.”

He planted himself back in the chair he hadn’t bothered to put away, acting as if he had all the time in the world. I did not like his attitude. I crossed my arms in response to his actions. “Sure, why not. Make yourself comfortable.” I glared, picking up the pair of pliers to distract myself with. I focused on squeezing the handles and then releasing them while I refused to look at Dean.

Cracking a smile, he took the chance I gave him and powered on with his questions. “Back at your house—with Marilyn,” he could probably gather that I spent a whole lot more time here than I did at my ‘home’. “Have you ever noticed anything strange?”

“Define ‘strange’.”

“I don’t know, flickering lights. Ever heard any kinda scratching noises…. in the walls maybe? Like rats? Cold spots? Anything you can think of.”

There was one thing, which happened just moments before I’d met him. Back in the basement the other day. The light going out. The hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. The uneasy, panicked feeling that shrouded me almost instantly. I may have been afraid of my own shadow, but that was a whole other experience for me.

“That’s really weird, Winchester. Who are you?” I decided to evade the question just for good measure. Come on, sell it.

“Just answer the question, Devon.” I was surprised to find that he actually looked like he was getting tired of this game of his and resisted the urge to replicate the smirk he previously wore.

And then I made my move. “If I answer these questions, you have to promise to stay away from me and my Uncle from now on. Got it?”

Not knowing exactly what I was getting at (which was what I intended), he hesitantly agreed. “Sure kid. Whatever. Now please—for the love of god, just answer the question. Anything that springs to your mind, I’m all ears.”

“No. The house is just a regular house, there’s not much I can tell you about it,” never mind why he was even asking in the first place. I didn’t want to know.

He must have been better at reading people than I gave him credit for, because he didn’t fall for my act. If anything, he only seemed surer of himself. And more frustrated with me. “Alright then. If that’s how you wanna play it, I can come back tomorrow. Maybe you’ll know something then. If not, maybe the day after that.”

I stiffened at his words, in turn becoming angry. Who the hell was he to just storm in here as if he owned the place, anyway? “It was nothing,” I said more to myself. Remembering the feeling of being down in that basement, of being by myself yet not feeling like I was completely alone, was freaking me out all ready. I didn’t appreciate Dean’s forcing me to think about it.

My better judgement got to me then and I started to think that Dean probably was here for a reason—good or bad—and maybe Marilyn really was in some kind of trouble. Maybe the information I was withholding really was important. And what happened down in that basement? It was more than likely Dean’s definition of ‘weird’.

“Well it sure as hell doesn’t sound like nothing.”

“I don’t know what it was, okay?” I huffed, momentarily forgetting about the time and the fact that Uncle Frank would be back soon. I was scared. “I thought it was nothing. But…”

From my quick change in mood Dean looked a lot more concerned. Almost worried. I refused to wonder why. “Just before I met you the other day… in the basement,” that was all I managed to get out before I had to suck in a deep, steadying breath. Realization washed over Dean’s features as soon as I mentioned it. “The light, it went out. And the feel of everything. It was just really weird.”

It felt like I was underestimating it by a long shot but I didn’t know a better way of saying it without sounding crazy myself.

Dean swore and stood up once again. He ran a hand over his mouth, looking like he wanted to chew a knuckle or two off. “Listen, Devon. You have to answer this next question, and you have to answer it truthfully.”

I nodded. Him freaking out was making me freak out, and I didn’t even know what the hell was going on. I didn’t want to know. “Shoot.”

“Is there anything weird—anything interesting—about your family? About its past?”

Another ‘what’s totally freaking weird about your life?’ question and I didn’t like it one bit. I couldn’t answer this. Not when I didn’t know him. Not when I didn’t know what was going on. I never, ever talked about this. Not even with Frank.

I looked down, refusing to let certain memories get the best of me—refusing to even think about anything that happened before I turned eleven. If I kept this up, maybe I’d even believe myself when I told this next lie. The grip on my old pair of greased-up pliers was jaw-like, and I released it once I realized what I was doing. If Dean saw that, it would be a dead giveaway that there was something even bigger I wasn’t telling him. “No. Not—not anything I can think of, anyway.”

Measuring me, he stood back and eyed my hunched up posture and downcast gaze. He saw through it… saw through all of it. An idiot would be able to, but at least he had the decency not to push it. “Well if you think of anything, just give me a call alright? Anything at all.”

When I looked a crumpled piece of paper was set next to me on my bench, with a sequence of numbers scrawled across the center of it. “C’ya later, kid,” I glanced up, ready to say good bye in return, but by that time he was gone; this time his footsteps were completely silent.

‘Guess earlier he wanted to make an entrance.

My hands shook after I dropped the pliers, and I knew they would stay like that for the rest of the day. The questions Dean asked me took me back to one specific night when I was ten. Almost six entire goddamned years ago and as hard as I tried I still couldn’t forget it. When it drove my mother to the edge of insanity, I supposed it would have that effect on a kid. But I couldn’t focus on that one night… I focused on the nights and years following it. The sleepless nights, the feeling of terror that shook me from my sleep and caused me to have asthma attacks in the middle of class. Not being able to sleep alone… only wanting to be with my Uncle Frank.

The dark, the dark, the dark.

Well, it looked as if I wasn’t getting any sleep tonight. Again.

The sound of Dean’s Impala starting up and revving its engine as he pulled away from the drive way brought me to my senses.

All of it came rushing back to me in that one single moment. It was too much. I hastily stood from my bench, nearly knocking it over in the process and blindly reached for my helmet. It was a robotic, memorized action pulling it on and buckling the strap under my chin, and so was rolling my bike out of the shed, starting it up, and ripping through the even grass of Frank’s hilly back yard.

At first I didn’t know where I was going. When I started going through the trails that had long been carved out by other off-road vehicles throughout the town, however, it became clear.

Upon the realization I slowed my bike down and checked my breathing, just in case I was having an asthma attack and was too freaked out to realize it, and stayed close to the road. Even so close to civilization, it was always possible to get lost out here.

I was going to the place I hated most. The cemetery.

Where my dead sister was buried.