![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: A Boy And His Hand
By:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Fandom: SPN
Rating: PG (language/horror themes)
Category: Dean,Sam (gen - angst/humor)
Words: 3,420
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no money!
Spoilers: Set mid season 1
Notes: For my![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
spn_halloween prompt. Yes, I had to pick the severed hand one.
“There’s only a hand.”
Sam looked over the edge of the grave, eyeing Dean who was squinting back up at him. “Stop messing around,” he snapped. Dean had been in one of those weird moods all day that meant Sam had to double-check everything he ate, drank or picked up for fear of booby-trap. He’d learnt the hard way in the morning when he’d gotten complacent by his third cup of coffee and ended up taking a huge swallow of caffeine liberally flavoured with rock salt.
Dean had just raised his eyebrows and had said, “Just checking for ghosts in the intestines, dude,” when Sam had snorted most of it out of his nose in surprise
“I’m not,” Dean grumbled back, kicking at the remains at his feet. “There’s a bunch of clothing and one hand and that’s it.”
“How can there only be a hand left?”
“Looks preserved too,” Dean continued, leaning over and using the tip of his knife to poke the rotted sleeve the single appendage was sticking out of. At his prodding, the fingers flexed and then the whole hand turned over and untangled itself from the sleeve, making a bee-line for him.
Dean screamed and threw himself at the side of the grave, scrabbling up and over, not stopping until he was flat on his back on the ground a good five feet away from the grave’s edge, panting raggedly.
Sam laughed hard, thumbing tears from his eyes as he approached the grave edge again to see just what had freaked Dean out so much. The laughter died when he saw the hand crabbing its way around the bottom like a large, pink spider.
“Oh gross,” Sam breathed, turning green.
Dean was too busy recovering from his heart attack to notice.
000
A woman with dark red hair and grey eyes answered the door to see Sam and Dean passing a box between them with a version of, “You hold it!,” “No, you!”
“Um, are you Isabelle Tenney?” Dean asked, trying to surreptitiously force the box back into Sam’s grasp.
“Depends who’s asking,” the woman said, rubbing her hands on a dishtowel that was slung over one shoulder. She eyed them with a raised brow as Sam finally admitted defeat and accepted the box, holding it out and away from his body.
“I’m Dean and this is Sam. You called… we got your message.”
“Oh right. Is it all taken care of?” she asked, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear. Dean could imagine that this was someone his Father had known. Her skin was weather-washed and her hair wild and she looked to be in her mid forties. He quashed the compulsion to ask if she’d heard from him, pretty much the first question he’d want to ask everyone he ran into that had even had a passing acquaintance with their Father.
He’d learned to stop asking because the answer was always disappointing.
Sam cleared his throat a little too loudly and Dean snapped back to the problem at hand. “Well, not exactly. There was a… complication.”
Isabelle huffed a sigh and stepped out of the doorway to allow them into her house. “You boys want a beer?” she asked as they passed her.
When they were sitting at her dining room table, open bottles in front of them and the box pushed to the furthest edge, Dean grimaced. “Look, we appreciate the tip about the spirit but unless we can find, salt and burn the bones, there’s not a lot we can do.”
Isabelle blinked at them. “You found the grave didn’t you?”
“Of Edgar Stevens? Yes Mam we did, but there was… no body,” Sam explained.
“Of course there wasn’t,” Isabelle said, blinking at them.
“I’m sorry?” Dean asked, beer forgotten halfway to his mouth.
“Aw hell, if it were a case of just salting and burning the body, I could have done that,” she snapped and Dean’s shoulders hunched, instinctive whenever someone took a berating tone with him. Isabelle sounded so much like his Father whenever Dean messed something up, that he couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran down his spine.
Sam had always had a very different automatic response to that kind of tone.
“Look, if there were more to this story, then it would’ve helped if you’d elaborated,” Sam grated and Isabelle’s eyes swung in his direction, narrowing. “We dug up the grave and there was nothing but a hand inside.”
“The hand is what you need,” Isabelle said, sitting back in her chair. “The hand will lead you to the remains.”
“Oh.” Sam’s eyes skated to the box, which chose that moment to thump across the table. Dean grabbed it before it went over the edge.
“Look, that’s all I know, that you need the hand to find Stevens. The rest you’re going to have to figure out for yourself.”
000
“What a bit-“
“Dean!” Sam snapped.
“What? Like you weren’t thinking it,” Dean said and smirked when Sam ducked his head. The box they’d been carting around was now sitting in the middle of one of their motel room beds. Sam was pressed against the door and Dean was leaning against the bathroom jamb, watching as it jittered and hopped across the bedspread.
“It’s going to get out,” Sam said ominously and right at that moment a finger poked all the way through the box’s side and wiggled around like it was scenting the air. “Oh yeah, this is probably the grossest thing ever.”
“Grosser than the ogre guts?” Dean asked with a quirked eyebrow.
Sam seemed to think about it and then shrugged. “How is this my life? Babysitting a severed hand.”
A second finger poked through the ever-widening hole in the box and Dean grunted. “You were right, it’s making a bid for freedom.” Dean leaned into the bathroom and snagged the wastebasket, crossing the room and dropping it over the top of the box just as a third finger worked its way free. “At least it’s not all slimey and decayed. It kinda looks like Thing.”
“Thing?” Sam blinked.
“You know, from the Addam’s Family. It would fetch mail and give them massages and-“
“Oh my god,” Sam groaned, rubbing a hand over his eyes.
000
Dean was the first one to brave looking at the hand properly and had liberated a pair of cooking tongs from a diner down the road to accomplish it. He now held the hand aloft, fingers waggling, business end of the tongs holding the hand by the palm.
“That’s weird right?” Dean asked, holding it out towards Sam who shied away.
“What about this isn’t?”
“No, I mean, it’s not all stumpy. The end is all neat, like a mannequin’s hand.”
“Fascinating,” Sam snorted, opening his laptop and lowering into the motel room chair that only had three legs so he had to perch precariously.
“Listen to what I’m saying. If this were a severed human hand, no way it would be all neat like this.”
“So… what? You think this is an animated inanimate hand that just happened to be in a guy’s grave?”
“There’s just… something wrong here,” Dean said. Sam had always been driven by information and preparation but Dean trusted his gut, and the whole scenario sat sour with him.
Sam was looking at him with his patient, I can’t believe you are saying this out loud but I’m curious where you’re going with it expression that Dean had gotten to see quite often recently. Sam had never been one to follow direction blindly, but he also wouldn’t make a judgement until someone presented their case and Dean valued that, more than he cared to admit.
000
“What on Earth are you doing?”
Dean had forgone the tongs and had the hand wedged between his knees while he tied something around the wrist. When Sam got closer he realized it was one of their black ties. As he watched, Dean set the hand down on the floor, the disembodied appendage instantly skating sideways towards the door until it reached the end of its makeshift leash.
“Isabelle said it would lead us to Stevens’ remains,” Dean shrugged, making his way towards the door, the hand skittering forward every time there was the slightest bit of slack in its tether.
“Dean, it’s a hand, not a bloodhound,” Sam said aghast, as Dean reached for the motel room door.
“Got any other ideas genius?” Dean asked, pausing with his fingers on the knob.
“No… but you can’t go out in broad daylight with that thing,” Sam tried and Dean snorted.
“Anyone asks, I’ll just tell them it’s one of those weird-ass furless cats.”
“Oh really? How are you going to explain the lack of a head?”
“Totally covered,” Dean said, leaning over to scoop the hand up and hold it out towards Sam. Right on the end of the middle finger just under the nail, drawn on with magic marker, was two little black eyes and a smiling mouth. “He’s a happy little fella,” Dean remarked with a grin and Sam slapped a hand to his forehead.
“You are a sick, sick man.”
000
Dean was loathe to admit that Sam was right, but when he’d done his second circuit around the parking lot with the hand doggedly trotting along but pulling to the left and also thoroughly freaking out three little kids who’d been playing marbles in the dust behind the motel’s office, he decided to call the whole thing a bust.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” Dean grumbled, shouldering back into their motel room and flinging the hand by the tie-leash across the small space after a small windup, it making a satisfying thump against the opposite wall.
“Don’t do that,” Sam said, going over to pick up the hand and check it.
“What? You going to call the People for Ethical Treatment of Severed Hands on me Sammy?” Dean snorted, dropping onto the bed and leaning back with a tired sigh. “I know this Isabelle chick is a friend of Dad’s, but this is a little too ridiculous even for us. We’ve been in this hick town for three days and nothing out of the ordinary has happened.”
“Why do you think she’s a friend of Dad’s?” Sam asked while he manipulated the fingers on the hand, checking if anything was broken. When he was satisfied it was unharmed, he tied one end of the leash to the motel room’s heater and let it go on the carpet. It flopped down in a heap, as if exhausted.
“The name’s familiar. I figured I’ve seen it in the journal and she had Dad’s number.”
“She wasn’t someone you’ve helped in the past?”
“Nah, I haven’t been here before. Dad might’ve and maybe he told me about it and that’s why I recognize the name,” Dean said, his words slowing to a crawl as he saw a frown pass over Sam’s features. His face cleared though when he rubbed his temples.
“I’m just hitting dead ends with the research. I can’t find any reason for this guy Stevens to be a vengeful spirit. He died in his sleep and he was eighty-four. He lived in this town his whole life and unless he’s got some deep, dark secret, it just doesn’t…gel.”
“You know Sammy, I said there was something off about all this.”
“I know. I’m thinking your gut is right on this one.”
“Dude,” Dean said, smirking. “The gut is never wrong.”
“Whatever. I think we should go pay another visit to Isabelle in the morning.”
Dean nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
000
It was a slight exhalation, a sound out of place in the darkened room that had Dean’s eyes snapping open and hand reaching for the knife under his pillow. He looked around the room, seeing nothing out of place, but just as he was about to roll over and go back to sleep, he realized that Sam’s movement from the other bed wasn’t just the younger man’s usual midnight flailing, but rather his spine was bowed and his feet were thrumming against the end of the bed.
“Sam!” Dean gasped, flinging himself at his younger brother and finding Sam’s hands at his neck, clawing at something. With horrible certainty, Dean knew what it was before he saw the flash of paler skin against Sam’s throat, milky white against tan.
“Let me get it,” Dean ordered, not able to get a grip on the disembodied hand that was squeezing the life from his brother with Sam clawing at it like he was. Sam’s wide eyes found Dean’s in the darkness and he dropped his arms and tilted his chin up. Dean wedged his fingers under the attacking appendage’s. Even though it was ridiculously strong, he was able to lever it off by breaking first the pinky at then the ring finger and using them to yank it free.
“Son of a bitch!” Dean growled when he finally pulled the hand the rest of the way off, using the tie that was still fastened around the wrist to wrap the whole struggling thing. He hurled the hand at the bathroom and then took the three strides necessary to pull the door closed when it hit the basin with a clatter.
“Are you okay?” Dean asked shakily, dropping back onto Sam’s bed and pulling him upright, ripping the collar of Sam’s t-shirt away from his throat and then flicking on the bedside lamp to inspect the damage. Sam’s neck was ringed in vivid red, which would flood with purple in another few hours.
“I liked this t-shirt,” Sam protested weakly and Dean chuckled, running a hand over Sam’s brow and letting him lean against him bonelessly as he pulled great lungfuls of air into himself.
000
“That’s just macabre.” Sam’s voice was still a painful growl as encroaching dawn lightened the sky to violet.
“It tried to strangle you,” Dean pointed out. The hand was currently pinned to the motel room’s small dining table by one of Dean’s larger hunting daggers through the meatiest part of the palm. “Crap,” he sighed, sitting back in the motel chair and nearly forgetting about the three legs so he wobbled before righting himself.
“What?”
“There’s something under the thumbnail. It’s tiny but it looks like a tattoed symbol of some kind.”
“Warn me before you rip the nail off so I can go puke,” Sam sighed.
“No, I think I can make it out. Come here and tell me if you recognize it,” Dean said and leaned sideways to snag Sam’s sleeve and pull him over to the table. Sam leaned across him, elbows resting on the table and pinched the thumb between his fingers, inspecting it carefully.
“It doesn’t look familiar but we can call Caleb. He’ll probably know.”
Dean nodded and dug his phone out of his back pocket, dialing quickly and then describing the symbol to Caleb when the older man answered. The blue tattoo looked like a stylized sickle with two intersecting horizontal lines and Caleb made a grunt of recognition but still had Dean hang on while he checked his reference books. Sam was watching him carefully as Dean listened. He then looked at Sam as he asked about Isabelle Tenney and listened for another minute, his face darkening like a storm passing over its surface as he hung up.
“Son of a…” Dean growled and slammed his phone down on the table. He held the hand down and yanked the dagger out of it, cutting the thumb off in one quick movement. Sam groaned, but then his eyes widened. The whole hand had gone hard and where Dean had sliced the thumb off, there was a stump that looked like plaster.
Dean stood and dropped the hand to the floor, grinding it into powder under his boot.
000
They were in the Impala and on their way back to Isabelle’s house before Dean elaborated.
“It was the name Tenney I recognized. A guy called Bruce Tenney about twelve months ago, so distraught over his youngest son’s death when he was accidentally backed over by his neighbor in an SUV, got his hands on an animation spell and used it to enchant household appliances to try and kill him. Dad got the neighbor out but ol’ Bruce was a determined bastard. His second attempt went wrong somehow because Bruce was the one that ended up being drowned by a automatic pool cleaner in the neighbor’s backyard.”
“Jesus,” Sam breathed.
“Yeah, and he was survived by this meek little mousy woman called Isabelle. Man, I didn’t recognize her at all and it wasn’t the same house. Last time I saw her she was wearing pastel suits and had all her hair pinned so severely….”
“Probably a glamour. Make her look like someone we’d expect to see,” Sam hazarded and Dean grunted. “In any case, why the elaborate severed hand thing?”
“She couldn’t get close enough to kill us herself so she made us think we were doing a job and tried getting to us that way.”
“But why us? Why not target Dad?”
“I don’t know Sammy. Either she tried but she was as successful in getting in contact with Dad as we’ve been and went for the next best Winchester, or she wanted to hit him where it hurt. She lost her husband, why not take out the guy’s sons who she believed was responsible?”
“How could she think it was Dad’s fault? This Bruce guy was killed when his own spell went after him.”
Dean’s eyes ticked to Sam and then back again. “Dad got in the way and when she needed someone to blame, he was probably convenient,” Dean said, sounding disgusted.
“People do pretty crazy things when they’re grieving,” Sam said softly but then was thrown against the car door when Dean wrenched the Impala over to the side of the road.
“Don’t you dare,” Dean growled.
“What?” Sam blinked at him with wide eyes.
“She tried to kill you while I was in the room, Sam! Don’t you dare waste any sympathy on her, not for a second. There’s crazy with grief, and then there’s animating a hand and attempting to strangle someone.”
“Okay, Dean, okay.”
000
Dean had been hoping that the villain of the piece would have stayed around to gloat, but the practical part of him wasn’t surprised when they turned up to Isabelle’s house and it was completely empty.
Dean kicked at a garden gnome out the front, neatly decapitating it with a well-aimed boot.
“I’m not sure she was ever really here,” Sam said, running hands over the lintel on the front door.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean grumbled, coming up the steps, hands buried in his jacket pockets.
“Look at these symbols carved into the wood. I’m guessing this house has been empty for weeks. I mean, look inside.”
Dean leaned over and peered through one of the windows, cupping his hands around his face. The house certainly did look deserted, and not recently so.
“Well, what’s the point of having a psychic sidekick if he can’t see through a little glamour?” Dean grumbled, kicking dejectedly at the wooden slats under the window.
“Who said I’m the sidekick?” Sam asked and Dean snorted.
“The geek is always the sidekick,” Dean crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, watching Sam who had pulled out a notebook and was copying the carved symbols he could see. He paused when Dean said geek and then just huffed a laugh, his pen making it’s way across the page again.
“So, I can’t really remember. What happens when we don’t get the bad guy?” Sam asked, eyes still on the page he was writing on but the pen had stilled a second time.
“What kind if sidekick talk is that? Of course we’ll get the bad guy,” Dean said, his tone light. He looked at the symbols carved on the doorway for a moment, hand rising to run the pad of his thumb against the scarred wood. “She could… what? Have been across the country when we thought we were talking to her in person?”
Sam sighed, leaning his head against the doorjamb. “Yeah, she could’ve been.”
“Okay then,” Dean said clapping his hands together. “It’ll just take a while to get the bad guy.”
Sam closed the notebook with a snap and then took a moment to look at Dean.
“Absolutely."
By:
kellifer_ficFandom: SPN
Rating: PG (language/horror themes)
Category: Dean,Sam (gen - angst/humor)
Words: 3,420
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no money!
Spoilers: Set mid season 1
Notes: For my
spn_halloween prompt. Yes, I had to pick the severed hand one.“There’s only a hand.”
Sam looked over the edge of the grave, eyeing Dean who was squinting back up at him. “Stop messing around,” he snapped. Dean had been in one of those weird moods all day that meant Sam had to double-check everything he ate, drank or picked up for fear of booby-trap. He’d learnt the hard way in the morning when he’d gotten complacent by his third cup of coffee and ended up taking a huge swallow of caffeine liberally flavoured with rock salt.
Dean had just raised his eyebrows and had said, “Just checking for ghosts in the intestines, dude,” when Sam had snorted most of it out of his nose in surprise
“I’m not,” Dean grumbled back, kicking at the remains at his feet. “There’s a bunch of clothing and one hand and that’s it.”
“How can there only be a hand left?”
“Looks preserved too,” Dean continued, leaning over and using the tip of his knife to poke the rotted sleeve the single appendage was sticking out of. At his prodding, the fingers flexed and then the whole hand turned over and untangled itself from the sleeve, making a bee-line for him.
Dean screamed and threw himself at the side of the grave, scrabbling up and over, not stopping until he was flat on his back on the ground a good five feet away from the grave’s edge, panting raggedly.
Sam laughed hard, thumbing tears from his eyes as he approached the grave edge again to see just what had freaked Dean out so much. The laughter died when he saw the hand crabbing its way around the bottom like a large, pink spider.
“Oh gross,” Sam breathed, turning green.
Dean was too busy recovering from his heart attack to notice.
A woman with dark red hair and grey eyes answered the door to see Sam and Dean passing a box between them with a version of, “You hold it!,” “No, you!”
“Um, are you Isabelle Tenney?” Dean asked, trying to surreptitiously force the box back into Sam’s grasp.
“Depends who’s asking,” the woman said, rubbing her hands on a dishtowel that was slung over one shoulder. She eyed them with a raised brow as Sam finally admitted defeat and accepted the box, holding it out and away from his body.
“I’m Dean and this is Sam. You called… we got your message.”
“Oh right. Is it all taken care of?” she asked, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear. Dean could imagine that this was someone his Father had known. Her skin was weather-washed and her hair wild and she looked to be in her mid forties. He quashed the compulsion to ask if she’d heard from him, pretty much the first question he’d want to ask everyone he ran into that had even had a passing acquaintance with their Father.
He’d learned to stop asking because the answer was always disappointing.
Sam cleared his throat a little too loudly and Dean snapped back to the problem at hand. “Well, not exactly. There was a… complication.”
Isabelle huffed a sigh and stepped out of the doorway to allow them into her house. “You boys want a beer?” she asked as they passed her.
When they were sitting at her dining room table, open bottles in front of them and the box pushed to the furthest edge, Dean grimaced. “Look, we appreciate the tip about the spirit but unless we can find, salt and burn the bones, there’s not a lot we can do.”
Isabelle blinked at them. “You found the grave didn’t you?”
“Of Edgar Stevens? Yes Mam we did, but there was… no body,” Sam explained.
“Of course there wasn’t,” Isabelle said, blinking at them.
“I’m sorry?” Dean asked, beer forgotten halfway to his mouth.
“Aw hell, if it were a case of just salting and burning the body, I could have done that,” she snapped and Dean’s shoulders hunched, instinctive whenever someone took a berating tone with him. Isabelle sounded so much like his Father whenever Dean messed something up, that he couldn’t suppress the shiver that ran down his spine.
Sam had always had a very different automatic response to that kind of tone.
“Look, if there were more to this story, then it would’ve helped if you’d elaborated,” Sam grated and Isabelle’s eyes swung in his direction, narrowing. “We dug up the grave and there was nothing but a hand inside.”
“The hand is what you need,” Isabelle said, sitting back in her chair. “The hand will lead you to the remains.”
“Oh.” Sam’s eyes skated to the box, which chose that moment to thump across the table. Dean grabbed it before it went over the edge.
“Look, that’s all I know, that you need the hand to find Stevens. The rest you’re going to have to figure out for yourself.”
“What a bit-“
“Dean!” Sam snapped.
“What? Like you weren’t thinking it,” Dean said and smirked when Sam ducked his head. The box they’d been carting around was now sitting in the middle of one of their motel room beds. Sam was pressed against the door and Dean was leaning against the bathroom jamb, watching as it jittered and hopped across the bedspread.
“It’s going to get out,” Sam said ominously and right at that moment a finger poked all the way through the box’s side and wiggled around like it was scenting the air. “Oh yeah, this is probably the grossest thing ever.”
“Grosser than the ogre guts?” Dean asked with a quirked eyebrow.
Sam seemed to think about it and then shrugged. “How is this my life? Babysitting a severed hand.”
A second finger poked through the ever-widening hole in the box and Dean grunted. “You were right, it’s making a bid for freedom.” Dean leaned into the bathroom and snagged the wastebasket, crossing the room and dropping it over the top of the box just as a third finger worked its way free. “At least it’s not all slimey and decayed. It kinda looks like Thing.”
“Thing?” Sam blinked.
“You know, from the Addam’s Family. It would fetch mail and give them massages and-“
“Oh my god,” Sam groaned, rubbing a hand over his eyes.
Dean was the first one to brave looking at the hand properly and had liberated a pair of cooking tongs from a diner down the road to accomplish it. He now held the hand aloft, fingers waggling, business end of the tongs holding the hand by the palm.
“That’s weird right?” Dean asked, holding it out towards Sam who shied away.
“What about this isn’t?”
“No, I mean, it’s not all stumpy. The end is all neat, like a mannequin’s hand.”
“Fascinating,” Sam snorted, opening his laptop and lowering into the motel room chair that only had three legs so he had to perch precariously.
“Listen to what I’m saying. If this were a severed human hand, no way it would be all neat like this.”
“So… what? You think this is an animated inanimate hand that just happened to be in a guy’s grave?”
“There’s just… something wrong here,” Dean said. Sam had always been driven by information and preparation but Dean trusted his gut, and the whole scenario sat sour with him.
Sam was looking at him with his patient, I can’t believe you are saying this out loud but I’m curious where you’re going with it expression that Dean had gotten to see quite often recently. Sam had never been one to follow direction blindly, but he also wouldn’t make a judgement until someone presented their case and Dean valued that, more than he cared to admit.
“What on Earth are you doing?”
Dean had forgone the tongs and had the hand wedged between his knees while he tied something around the wrist. When Sam got closer he realized it was one of their black ties. As he watched, Dean set the hand down on the floor, the disembodied appendage instantly skating sideways towards the door until it reached the end of its makeshift leash.
“Isabelle said it would lead us to Stevens’ remains,” Dean shrugged, making his way towards the door, the hand skittering forward every time there was the slightest bit of slack in its tether.
“Dean, it’s a hand, not a bloodhound,” Sam said aghast, as Dean reached for the motel room door.
“Got any other ideas genius?” Dean asked, pausing with his fingers on the knob.
“No… but you can’t go out in broad daylight with that thing,” Sam tried and Dean snorted.
“Anyone asks, I’ll just tell them it’s one of those weird-ass furless cats.”
“Oh really? How are you going to explain the lack of a head?”
“Totally covered,” Dean said, leaning over to scoop the hand up and hold it out towards Sam. Right on the end of the middle finger just under the nail, drawn on with magic marker, was two little black eyes and a smiling mouth. “He’s a happy little fella,” Dean remarked with a grin and Sam slapped a hand to his forehead.
“You are a sick, sick man.”
Dean was loathe to admit that Sam was right, but when he’d done his second circuit around the parking lot with the hand doggedly trotting along but pulling to the left and also thoroughly freaking out three little kids who’d been playing marbles in the dust behind the motel’s office, he decided to call the whole thing a bust.
“Well, that was a waste of time,” Dean grumbled, shouldering back into their motel room and flinging the hand by the tie-leash across the small space after a small windup, it making a satisfying thump against the opposite wall.
“Don’t do that,” Sam said, going over to pick up the hand and check it.
“What? You going to call the People for Ethical Treatment of Severed Hands on me Sammy?” Dean snorted, dropping onto the bed and leaning back with a tired sigh. “I know this Isabelle chick is a friend of Dad’s, but this is a little too ridiculous even for us. We’ve been in this hick town for three days and nothing out of the ordinary has happened.”
“Why do you think she’s a friend of Dad’s?” Sam asked while he manipulated the fingers on the hand, checking if anything was broken. When he was satisfied it was unharmed, he tied one end of the leash to the motel room’s heater and let it go on the carpet. It flopped down in a heap, as if exhausted.
“The name’s familiar. I figured I’ve seen it in the journal and she had Dad’s number.”
“She wasn’t someone you’ve helped in the past?”
“Nah, I haven’t been here before. Dad might’ve and maybe he told me about it and that’s why I recognize the name,” Dean said, his words slowing to a crawl as he saw a frown pass over Sam’s features. His face cleared though when he rubbed his temples.
“I’m just hitting dead ends with the research. I can’t find any reason for this guy Stevens to be a vengeful spirit. He died in his sleep and he was eighty-four. He lived in this town his whole life and unless he’s got some deep, dark secret, it just doesn’t…gel.”
“You know Sammy, I said there was something off about all this.”
“I know. I’m thinking your gut is right on this one.”
“Dude,” Dean said, smirking. “The gut is never wrong.”
“Whatever. I think we should go pay another visit to Isabelle in the morning.”
Dean nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
It was a slight exhalation, a sound out of place in the darkened room that had Dean’s eyes snapping open and hand reaching for the knife under his pillow. He looked around the room, seeing nothing out of place, but just as he was about to roll over and go back to sleep, he realized that Sam’s movement from the other bed wasn’t just the younger man’s usual midnight flailing, but rather his spine was bowed and his feet were thrumming against the end of the bed.
“Sam!” Dean gasped, flinging himself at his younger brother and finding Sam’s hands at his neck, clawing at something. With horrible certainty, Dean knew what it was before he saw the flash of paler skin against Sam’s throat, milky white against tan.
“Let me get it,” Dean ordered, not able to get a grip on the disembodied hand that was squeezing the life from his brother with Sam clawing at it like he was. Sam’s wide eyes found Dean’s in the darkness and he dropped his arms and tilted his chin up. Dean wedged his fingers under the attacking appendage’s. Even though it was ridiculously strong, he was able to lever it off by breaking first the pinky at then the ring finger and using them to yank it free.
“Son of a bitch!” Dean growled when he finally pulled the hand the rest of the way off, using the tie that was still fastened around the wrist to wrap the whole struggling thing. He hurled the hand at the bathroom and then took the three strides necessary to pull the door closed when it hit the basin with a clatter.
“Are you okay?” Dean asked shakily, dropping back onto Sam’s bed and pulling him upright, ripping the collar of Sam’s t-shirt away from his throat and then flicking on the bedside lamp to inspect the damage. Sam’s neck was ringed in vivid red, which would flood with purple in another few hours.
“I liked this t-shirt,” Sam protested weakly and Dean chuckled, running a hand over Sam’s brow and letting him lean against him bonelessly as he pulled great lungfuls of air into himself.
“That’s just macabre.” Sam’s voice was still a painful growl as encroaching dawn lightened the sky to violet.
“It tried to strangle you,” Dean pointed out. The hand was currently pinned to the motel room’s small dining table by one of Dean’s larger hunting daggers through the meatiest part of the palm. “Crap,” he sighed, sitting back in the motel chair and nearly forgetting about the three legs so he wobbled before righting himself.
“What?”
“There’s something under the thumbnail. It’s tiny but it looks like a tattoed symbol of some kind.”
“Warn me before you rip the nail off so I can go puke,” Sam sighed.
“No, I think I can make it out. Come here and tell me if you recognize it,” Dean said and leaned sideways to snag Sam’s sleeve and pull him over to the table. Sam leaned across him, elbows resting on the table and pinched the thumb between his fingers, inspecting it carefully.
“It doesn’t look familiar but we can call Caleb. He’ll probably know.”
Dean nodded and dug his phone out of his back pocket, dialing quickly and then describing the symbol to Caleb when the older man answered. The blue tattoo looked like a stylized sickle with two intersecting horizontal lines and Caleb made a grunt of recognition but still had Dean hang on while he checked his reference books. Sam was watching him carefully as Dean listened. He then looked at Sam as he asked about Isabelle Tenney and listened for another minute, his face darkening like a storm passing over its surface as he hung up.
“Son of a…” Dean growled and slammed his phone down on the table. He held the hand down and yanked the dagger out of it, cutting the thumb off in one quick movement. Sam groaned, but then his eyes widened. The whole hand had gone hard and where Dean had sliced the thumb off, there was a stump that looked like plaster.
Dean stood and dropped the hand to the floor, grinding it into powder under his boot.
They were in the Impala and on their way back to Isabelle’s house before Dean elaborated.
“It was the name Tenney I recognized. A guy called Bruce Tenney about twelve months ago, so distraught over his youngest son’s death when he was accidentally backed over by his neighbor in an SUV, got his hands on an animation spell and used it to enchant household appliances to try and kill him. Dad got the neighbor out but ol’ Bruce was a determined bastard. His second attempt went wrong somehow because Bruce was the one that ended up being drowned by a automatic pool cleaner in the neighbor’s backyard.”
“Jesus,” Sam breathed.
“Yeah, and he was survived by this meek little mousy woman called Isabelle. Man, I didn’t recognize her at all and it wasn’t the same house. Last time I saw her she was wearing pastel suits and had all her hair pinned so severely….”
“Probably a glamour. Make her look like someone we’d expect to see,” Sam hazarded and Dean grunted. “In any case, why the elaborate severed hand thing?”
“She couldn’t get close enough to kill us herself so she made us think we were doing a job and tried getting to us that way.”
“But why us? Why not target Dad?”
“I don’t know Sammy. Either she tried but she was as successful in getting in contact with Dad as we’ve been and went for the next best Winchester, or she wanted to hit him where it hurt. She lost her husband, why not take out the guy’s sons who she believed was responsible?”
“How could she think it was Dad’s fault? This Bruce guy was killed when his own spell went after him.”
Dean’s eyes ticked to Sam and then back again. “Dad got in the way and when she needed someone to blame, he was probably convenient,” Dean said, sounding disgusted.
“People do pretty crazy things when they’re grieving,” Sam said softly but then was thrown against the car door when Dean wrenched the Impala over to the side of the road.
“Don’t you dare,” Dean growled.
“What?” Sam blinked at him with wide eyes.
“She tried to kill you while I was in the room, Sam! Don’t you dare waste any sympathy on her, not for a second. There’s crazy with grief, and then there’s animating a hand and attempting to strangle someone.”
“Okay, Dean, okay.”
Dean had been hoping that the villain of the piece would have stayed around to gloat, but the practical part of him wasn’t surprised when they turned up to Isabelle’s house and it was completely empty.
Dean kicked at a garden gnome out the front, neatly decapitating it with a well-aimed boot.
“I’m not sure she was ever really here,” Sam said, running hands over the lintel on the front door.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dean grumbled, coming up the steps, hands buried in his jacket pockets.
“Look at these symbols carved into the wood. I’m guessing this house has been empty for weeks. I mean, look inside.”
Dean leaned over and peered through one of the windows, cupping his hands around his face. The house certainly did look deserted, and not recently so.
“Well, what’s the point of having a psychic sidekick if he can’t see through a little glamour?” Dean grumbled, kicking dejectedly at the wooden slats under the window.
“Who said I’m the sidekick?” Sam asked and Dean snorted.
“The geek is always the sidekick,” Dean crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, watching Sam who had pulled out a notebook and was copying the carved symbols he could see. He paused when Dean said geek and then just huffed a laugh, his pen making it’s way across the page again.
“So, I can’t really remember. What happens when we don’t get the bad guy?” Sam asked, eyes still on the page he was writing on but the pen had stilled a second time.
“What kind if sidekick talk is that? Of course we’ll get the bad guy,” Dean said, his tone light. He looked at the symbols carved on the doorway for a moment, hand rising to run the pad of his thumb against the scarred wood. “She could… what? Have been across the country when we thought we were talking to her in person?”
Sam sighed, leaning his head against the doorjamb. “Yeah, she could’ve been.”
“Okay then,” Dean said clapping his hands together. “It’ll just take a while to get the bad guy.”
Sam closed the notebook with a snap and then took a moment to look at Dean.
“Absolutely."