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FIC: Mirror, Mirror(Dust) 1/2
Title: Mirror, Mirror(Dust) 1/2
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
laguera25
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: FRM(R) for disturbing imagery.
Genre: Gen; pre-series, spoilers for 101 and 108.
Word Count: 14,437
Disclaimer: All characters herein are the property of Eric Kripke, Robert Singer, and the CW. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. For entertainment only.
Summary: Dean doesn't like what he sees when he looks in the mirror, and Mary Worthington's mirror is the most unflattering of all.
A/N: Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
family_secret challenge in response to Prompt #33, which asked why Dean's eyes bled when he looked into Bloody Mary's mirror. This fic contains mild spoilers for the pilot episode of the series and major spoilers for episode 108, "Bloody Mary".
Christine is a reference to the Stephen King novel of the same name.
March 22, 1983
Dean sits underneath the big oak tree in the front yard and nudges the tire swing tied to one of its branches with a stick he'd found by the porch. The swing creaks and groans as it moves through the air in a dreamy arc, and it reminds him of the runners of Mama's rocking chair on the wooden floor of the baby's room. It's an unpleasant association, and so he stops poking the tire, but the noise doesn't stop right away; momentum carries the balding Goodyear through six swings more, each one slower and smaller than the one before. The noise isn't smaller, though. It's loud as ever, a rumbling, lonely creak that makes his tummy feel like it's filled with balloons. It's the sound of Not Right Now.
He hears that a lot lately. Mostly from Mama, who has time for nothing but her tummy anymore. She spends most of her time sleeping or sitting in the rocking chair in the baby's room, making the floor and Daddy's back creak while he pushes furniture from one spot to another in the room. She rock rock rocks all day long, and her feet move like she's playing the piano. Sometimes, her hand rubs her swollen belly in rhythmic circles while her feet tap and the runners glide, and he suspects she's talking to his baby brother, singing him a lullaby only he can hear. Daddy talks, too, but he's pretty sure the baby shouldn't hear what he says. He knows this because Mama stops her rocking and says, "John Winchester," and he's old enough to know that when she uses your whole name, you're in big trouble. Daddy knows it, too, because he always apologizes and scurries out of the room for a beer.
Dean wonders for a moment what Daddy is so afraid of. Mama never brings a dishtowel into the baby's room, and Daddy's work-roughened skin is tougher than his. Even if she did bring one to pop him with, it wouldn't hurt much, and besides, he's sure Daddy can outrun her. The baby has made her big and slow, and when she walks, she waddles from side to side like the elephants he saw once at the zoo in Topeka. Sometimes, Daddy has to help her off the couch or out of the rocker so she can go to the bathroom.
He doesn't tell her about the elephants, of course. He loves his mama, and he doesn't want to hurt her feelings, not when her face is so white and her eyes are so dark and so many of her hours are spent in the silence of the nursery or the quarantined darkness of her room with a washcloth plastered to her pinched forehead to shut out the eye grains that make her pale and pukey and too cranky to read him The Lorax before bed.
But he thinks it. When she tells him to stop playing with his Castle Greyskull because the noise of the lowering drawbridge is too loud, or when she scolds him for leaving his Hot Wheels in the living room in front of the TV. He thinks it most fiercely when she refuses to play hide-and-seek with him like she used to before Daddy took her to the cabbage patch. It was their game, their special time, and they don't play it anymore.
Stupid elephant, he thinks savagely, and then he's ashamed. But he can't help it, and he refuses to let go of the uncharitable thought because it anchors him to himself, reassures him that he hasn't lost himself in the shadow of Mama's expanding stomach. It's a piece of stolen sweet that leaves a bitter aftertaste on his tongue. He knows it will taste terrible if he unwraps it a puts it in his mouth, but he craves it all the same and reaches for it with sticky, eager fingers.
Mama's not the only one who's different now. Daddy seems to have forgotten him, too. He still ruffles his hair with oil-stained fingers when he comes home from the body shop, still calls him "tiger", but his eyes are fixed on the hump of Mama's belly underneath her maternity clothes, like he's hoping what she's got in there is better than the baby she gave him the first time. He still tosses the ball around after dinner, but only if Mama doesn't need him to rub her feet or back or go to the store for ice cream and olives. Sometimes they only get five minutes before Mama's voice drifts from inside the house, waspish and demanding and deeper than her voice should be. Then he's left standing in the backyard with the ball in his hands and a lump in his throat, and all he can do is reach for the sour candy of waddling elephants.
Once, he'd tried to tell his father how he'd felt, tried to protest the loss of time and space in the world, but all that had emerged from his mouth had been a whiny baby demand to throw the ball for just two more minutes, please, Dad, please. That had earned him a stern, "Not now, Dean," and his father's shame, and he'd spent dinner swallowing guilt with his mashed potatoes and washing it down with enormous swallows of icy cold milk that had hurt his chest from the inside.
The baby's room. That's what they called it now, but until November, it had been his room. Daddy said they needed the space for the crib and the changing table, and that it was closer to his and Mama's room. They had moved him into the smaller room across the hall, the room that overlooked Mr. Krebbins' yard and gave the mean old man a perfect view of his bed. It was okay, he guesses, but it wasn't his, and he wonders why the baby gets everything that had once been his-Daddy, Mama, and even his place in the house, the place he'd had since he was in Mama's tummy. It doesn't seem fair; Mama taught him that good boys share, but so far, the stupid baby hasn't shared anything. All it has done is take, and he suspects it will only get worse after he comes out of Mama and screams for his supper.
He scuffs his shoe into the barren patch of dirt in front of him. Most of the snow from the last storm has melted, but the ground is still hard, and he leaves only the faintest impression. He frowns and gouges a divot into the dark soil with the point of his stick. There. That's better. He pushes the stick deeper into the dirt, a defiant claim of proprietorship. He pushes until splinters sink into his fingers and palms, until the stick creaks ominously under the pressure. The stinging pain in his hands is strangely comforting, and he turns them up to examine the damage, peering studiously at the scrapes, raw spots, and flecks of wood. Blood beads from the scrapes, and he wipes it on the faded knees of his jeans. Mama might yell at him for getting them dirty, but at least she'd notice him then. He wonders how long it will be before she notices the splinters in his hand, or for that matter, how long it will be before his father does. Every inch that Mama's belly grows, a little more of him disappears.
He secretly wonders how long it will be before he vanishes altogether, gobbled up by the ponderous, sleeping moon of Mama's belly like a shadow by a passing cloud. Not long, if Bobby McCabe is right. He says that Mama and Daddy had the baby to replace him, that when they bring him home from the hospital, Dean will come home from Aunt Judy's and find his bags packed and waiting by the door. They'll send him to Siberia or an orphanage in New York, and he'll never see his parents again.
He hadn't wanted to believe Bobby. After all, the grungy twerp had told him after he'd swallowed a live worm from Daddy's bait cup that it would lay eggs in his belly and have babies inside it until he exploded, and Mama had promised him it was a lie. She was right, too, because he'd never exploded. His tummy had never even gotten big. But then again, maybe that was because he'd barfed on the bathroom rug after he'd confessed to her what he'd done. Maybe it was luck. Because Mama had also said that mamas loved their little boys forever and ever, and he wasn't sure that was true at all.
Besides, Bobby had reminded him of Johnny Walton, and everybody knew about him.
Johnny Walton had been the grungy kid who smelled like old socks and strained peas and who never talked when Miss Parsons from the Sunday school asked him to recite the weekly Bible verse. He had slumped in his chair in his too-big clothes and drawn pictures in the thin mat of the church carpet with the toe of his dirty sneakers, and after a while, Miss Parsons had stopped asking. Dean had always wondered why Johnny was so dumb. All he had to do was remember the words, and Miss Parsons would give him a lemon butter cookie, but he never did. Sometimes, he had gotten a cookie anyway and eaten it in ravenous gulps. Swallowed it whole, Mama would've said.
Johnny had turned up every Sunday in the same shirt, and Dean had suspected it was for the chance of a cookie. Then he disappeared until the next Sunday. Dean had never noticed anybody waiting for him. He had just wandered out of the church, turned right at the edge of the lawn, and was gone. Miss Parsons had stood at the top of the steps with her hands fisted on her bony hips and her lips pursed like she tasted dirt on her teeth, but she had never spoken. She'd just shaken head as she watched him become dust, and retreated into the cool shade of the Sunday school room.
He had seen Mrs. Walton once, right before Johnny had become dust forever and ever. He'd been at the grocery store with Mama, hanging from the push handle of the shopping cart and begging her for a box of Trix instead of the nasty Raisin Bran she made him eat.
"But it tastes like the box, Mama," he'd said, and from the corner of his eye, he'd seen a flash of grey. He'd smelled socks, too, overripe and sour, and when he'd turned his head from the bright display of colored boxes, he'd seen Johnny, duck-footed and small behind his mother.
Mrs. Walton had been pale and skinny except for her belly, which had been heavy and bloated like Mama's underneath her flimsy, faded, red dress. All arms and fingers and horsey teeth. She had reminded him of a walking stick, and he'd shuddered. Her hair had been lank and greasy, and it had covered her sharp, ugly face. Johnny had not looked up from the floor, had just stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and watched his mama's shadow stretch over the floor like a spider.
They had still been in the store when he and Mama had been ready to pay the cashier lady, had been in front of them, as a matter of fact, and from his vantage point beside the cart, he'd realized that Mrs. Walton hadn't been paying with Washingtons and Lincolns, but with a card full of yellow postage stamps. They had reminded him of the thick, stubby movie tickets you got at the movie theater where they played movies you didn't want to see anymore but your grandma did.
"Why's she paying with movie tickets?" he'd asked Mama.
Mama had clapped him upside the head with the heel of her palm and hissed his name through her teeth, and in front of him, Mrs. Walton had hunched her scrawny, yellow shoulders like someone had boxed her ears. Johnny had just looked at him with glassy, teddy-bear eyes and made his ratty sneakers scream on the gritty, terrazzo floor. The noise had hurt his ears and prompted an absent-minded slap from Mrs. Walton, but the look had hurt his heart and made his stomach knot with a mixture of shame and fear. It was the look of a kid who had nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of whippings and creamed broccoli and shots at the doctor's office. It had followed him home and filled his tummy with cotton and mothballs, and he hadn't been able to eat his hard-won box of Trix for three days. Every time he'd thought about sweet mouthfuls of sugary victory, he would see Johnny's eyes peering balefully at him over the edge of the kitchen table or from behind the milk pitcher, and they would turn to ashes in his mouth.
Not ashes, he thinks as he digs half-heartedly at a splinter driven into his palm like its big brother is driven into the nearby dirt. Dust. Dust like Johnny.
A month after his mama had paid for milk and day-old bread with yellow movie tickets, Johnny had failed to turn up at Sunday school. For the first time, the room hadn't smelled like strained peas and onion-boiled socks, and it should have made him glad, but it had only made him uneasy and vaguely ashamed, as though he'd seen something he wasn't supposed to. Miss Parson had felt it, too, because she'd spent the whole lesson stealing glances at Johnny's empty seat, blinking and licking her lips and flaring her nostrils as if she were casting for his scent. She had even left two lemon butter cookies on his seat after Bible recitation, as if she had thought to coax him out of hiding with the promise of forbidden fruit. But he had never appeared, and Miss Parsons had gathered the uneaten cookies and tossed them into the garbage can beside her desk. He hadn't shown up the next week, either, and the week after that, Miss Parsons had stopped setting a place for him in the circle of hard, plastic chairs.
It was Bobby McCabe who had come with the answer. He'd turned up at Sunday school three weeks after Johnny had gone missing from the unbroken circle, bug-eyed with glee and dancing from foot to foot like he had to pee. He had lived two doors over from the Waltons, and he swore on his Dad's gun that the day after Johnny's first no-show at the church, some lady in a station wagon with county plates had knocked on the front door. She'd had a sheriff with her, too. They had gone inside, and there had been what Bobby had called a "great big mess of hooraw"-banging, screaming, and crying. When the lady and the sheriff had emerged fifteen minutes later, the sheriff had had Johnny by one arm and his ruined shades in one hand. The lady from the county station wagon had been carrying a grocery bag of clothes.
Bobby had told them as they clustered around the rusty spigot that jutted from the concrete wall like a wiener that Mrs. Watson had followed them onto the sagging porch, crying and begging them not to take her baby, but they hadn't listened. They hadn't even turned around to say goodbye or stopped to pick up the toy that had tumbled from the grocery sack and landed in the dirt. They had simply packed Johnny into the back of the station wagon and left Mrs. Walton crying on the porch with her hand over her mouth like she was going to throw up.
Crine. That was the way Bobby had said it, Dean remembers now. The same way Daddy says crayon.
"Where'd they take 'em?" an older kid had asked, and Dean had felt the same sick fear in his own belly.
"Dunno," Bobby had said as he crouched beside the spigot and twisted the rusty, flaking knob until water beaded from the spout like a snot bubble. "Prob'ly Siberia." He had shrugged. "Or The Home."
Mention of The Home had sent a ripple of terror through the group, and they had dispersed shortly thereafter, trying, maybe, to dodge the bogeyman. Everyone knew that The Home was where they sent kids whose parents had died in car wrecks or had held their hands against the stove burner for peeing their pants or stealing a cookie before supper. The Home was a bad place under the ground, and once you went there, you never came back.
He hadn't wanted to believe Bobby's story about Johnny then, but he did now. He was right; Johnny was never coming back, but it wasn't because he'd gone to The Home or been shipped to a Siberian gulag to eat rocks and sleep on straw. It was because he had been replaced. The baby had taken over, and the house at the end of the dirt road hadn't been big enough for the both of them. Johnny had been turned out and turned to Kansas dust.
Dean is filled with sudden panic. He doesn't want to be replaced, pushed out of his life by a bundle of screaming wrinkles that smells like poop and baby powder. He doesn't want to be left to wander the Kansas highways, trailing dust as he goes. He doesn't want to meet Johnny on the road, a mournful dust-boy with no friends and a fistful of yellow movie tickets in one weightless hand. He doesn't want to whisper through the leaves on dusty feet and play Tag with a boy he can't see forever and ever, amen. He wants to go fishing with Daddy in the spring and late summer and play hide-and-seek with Mama in the walk-in closet. Those belong to him, his secret joys, and he doesn't want to share, even if Mama says he should.
He yanks the stick from the ground and beats it against the dark, rough bark of the tree, determined to make his parents see him again. Bark flies from the trunk in a fine dust, and the splinters embedded in his hands prickle with renewed life. He watches the house for signs of movement, for Mama's face in the nursery window or Daddy's shadow in the front door. But nothing stirs inside the house, not even dust. The upstairs window remains dark, and Daddy doesn't appear on the front porch. Everything is still and quiet, as though they've gone and left him without saying goodbye.
It's not them who've gone, whispers a nasty, swamp-monster voice inside his head. It's you, Deano. You've already started to disappear. They can't hear you anymore, and soon, they won't be able to see you, either. When that happens, the lady in the county station wagon will come and take you away, and when Sheriff Goodkind doff his hat and goes back to the station, she'll drive you to the edge of town and let you out. Johnny Walton will be waiting for you with dust in his hair and streaked on his cheeks, and when you become a dust-boy like him, you can go to the church and dance in the heavy air of Miss Parsons' Sunday school room.
Stick meets tree in furious, choppy strokes, and still there comes no rebuke from his parents. Harder and harder he pounds, until blood weeps from his hands and his chest and shoulders throb with too much, too hard. He's crying now, and he doesn't know why, and snot drips onto his chin and into the cold dirt. He dimly wonders what will grow there in the spring.
"Still here, still here, still here," he mutters feverishly, and for one horrified instant, he's sure that the wood flying from the tree isn't wood at all, but dust, dust from his sloughing skin. He's disappearing, disappearing, and it's too late. Then the stick snaps in his hands with the sound of a breaking heart, and he sits in the dirt with the two halves in his sweaty, raw hands. A whimper escapes him, and he realizes that he's crying like a big sissy baby. It doesn't matter now, because no one can hear him.
Then the front door flies open, and Daddy emerges onto the porch, squinting into the dusk and scratching the seat of his sweatpants.
"Dean? What the hell are you doing out here, son? Paul Bunyan is dead, and there's no place to park the ox." He descends the porch steps and draws nearer.
Daddy's voice is furry with sleep, and his hair is sticking up from his scalp in wild tufts, and Dean knows he's probably in a heap of trouble, but he's too preoccupied with relief to really care. If Daddy's yelling, that means he can see him, and that means he's not a dust boy. Not yet.
He drops the stick and barrels into his father, nose pressed into his bellybutton. He smells like dirty cotton and Old Spice and the lumpy, living room couch, and Dean thinks it's the best smell in the world. His throat hurts and his nose is plugged with syrup, and his hands burn.
"Dean? What's the matter?" Daddy says, and there's more confusion than anger now.
He crouches so they're eye to eye, and Dean sees sleep crust in the corners of his eyes and stubble on his chin. He knows it will hurt if he touches the latter, but he does it anyway because he needs to make sure that his fingers are still solid. He grazes the hard point of his chin and winces when raw fingers meet coarse bristles.
Daddy sees the flinch and grasps his hand as it drops. He turns it over and scowls. "What happened?"
But Dean doesn't know how to explain it, so he takes a deep breath and says, "Make him go away, Daddy. Please."
Daddy's scowl deeps into a frown. "Make who go away?"
"The dust-boy," he says.
"Dust-boy?" Daddy repeats. "I don't see anybody else out here, kiddo. Did you maybe fall asleep out here and have a bad dream?"
"Yes, sir, maybe," Dean says. It's easier to let Daddy believe that than admit he was talking about his baby brother. Besides, he's not telling a lie exactly. He's just letting Daddy believe one.
Daddy ruffles his hair and rises from his crouch with crackly, popping knees. "C'mon," he says. "Let's get you cleaned up before dinner." He grabs him by the wrist so as not to hurt his hands and leads him toward the porch.
Dean goes, but he casts a glance over his shoulder. The moon hangs low on the horizon, bloated and full. It reminds him of Mama's tummy, and he shivers. He turns his gaze to the upstairs window, hoping to see her looking down at him, but she isn't there. He suspects she's in the bedroom, curled beneath the blankets and singing lullabies to the moon of her belly. He feels an ugly stab of resentment and wonders how much longer it will be before it becomes a new moon. He also wonders if that will bring the woman in the county station wagon.
Daddy takes him into the kitchen and washes his bloody hands in the sink, and Dean watches the pink water swirl down the drain, looks for signs that he's become a dust-boy, after all. But his hands remain solid under the rush of warm water, and they hurt plenty when Daddy sits him in a chair at the kitchen table and tweezes bits of tree and stick from his hands. He cries when he cleans the cuts left behind with rubbing alcohol. He can't help it.
He has nightmares about turning to dust that night and the night after that, but he doesn't remember them, and the day after that, Daddy takes him fishing. He sits in the small, aluminum boat with the wicker creel between his feet and loses the dust-boy in the soothing rhythm of the lake water as it laps the sides.
He doesn't remember him again until Sammy comes home from the hospital in May, and even then, he doesn't remember right away because Sammy is nothing like he'd thought he'd be. Oh, he's wrinkly and screams and smells like poop and baby powder, but he's also soft and grips his finger with a chubby fist, and when Mama helps him hold him, Sammy looks at him with big, brown, rabbit eyes. No monster, just his baby brother.
Then he looks out the window of his room as he's getting ready for bed and realizes that there's no moon. The sky has eaten it whole, and standing on the lawn is a long, thin shadow. He knows without seeing him that it's Johnny Walton, come to warn him of the lady in the county station wagon and invite him to play beneath the moonless, lightless sky. Dean shudders and closes the curtains and curls in on himself beneath the covers, afraid to poke his head out in case Johnny is at the foot of his bed, leaving dusty footprints on the smooth, wooden floor.
He spends the next three weeks waiting for the authoritative rap on the door and peering through the curtains every time a car pulls into the yard. He expects to see the battered county station wagon parked in the driveway on balding tires, but it's never there. Neither is the woman who drives it, tall and reedy with a Mary Poppins hat. Just Daddy or Mama or Miss Jewel from the hair salon, come to gossip on the porch with Mama.
He forgets with time, but never entirely. At night, he dreams of Johnny Walton and cars that make no sound, and he wakes from these dreams in a cold sweat. They're worst at the full moon and at the new. He never tells anyone because he is ashamed of them, ashamed that once upon a time, he wished Sammy away. He turns his back to the window, screws his eyes shut, and promises that he'll make up for his fear by being the best big brother ever.
Johnny Walton watches from the closet and says nothing.
November 3, 1983
Dean kneels on the backseat of the Impala and clears a hole in the cold-fogged window with his palm. Daddy stands on the shoulder of the road with Sammy in his hands, and Sammy is screaming, little face scrunched and fists bunched. Dean can see Sammy's scream on the air, white and cloudy like steam. There hasn't been any snow today, but the cold is sharp, and it sinks its claws into his crossed ankles and bloodless cheeks even with the heater cranked to the max. He knows it's colder outside.
But the cold isn't what scares him, what makes his mouth too small and his heart too big and his peepee ache like he has to go. It's Daddy's face. It's blank and too white as he looks down at little, shrieking Sammy. It's not a Daddy face; it's a monster face, the kind like they have on the posters in the library that warn of Stranger Danger. Daddy's eyes have gone out. Now they're only black scribbles inside his face, and Dean is suddenly sure that any minute now, Daddy is going to lean down and nuzzle Sammy's belly. Only when he looks up, his teeth will be full of Sammy's guts, red and stringy and oh-so-yummy.
The vision inspires a swooning horror, and he wants to scream, but his throat is pinched, and raw from smoke and tears. The house burned and took Mama with it, and Mama tastes bitter on his tongue when she had once been so sweet. He blinks to clear his vision of orange light and billowing black smoke. That's all he knows of what happened and why they got into the Impala, and that's all his mind wants to know.
He's not sure he wants to know anything more about this, either. Daddy is still staring at Sammy with that awful, blank face, and Sammy is still screaming, feet kicking and back arching out of Daddy's hands. His cries are piercing even through the thick glass of the car window, and Dean wonders why Daddy doesn't make them stop. Usually when Sammy bawls, Mama and Daddy rush to quiet him, but Mama is Cinderella now, and Daddy is just holding Sammy in his hands like he's never seen him before. Everything has changed.
He's tempted to get out of the car and ask what's wrong, but he doesn't dare. Daddy has too many teeth in his closed mouth now, and if he startles him, he might bite. So, he freezes in the seat and curls his fingers around the door until the thin, cold strip of metal bites his fingers. It reminds him of splinters sunk deep into the tender meat of his hands, and he swallows a hot knot of fear. It lodges in his tummy like a stone and makes it cramp.
The porthole in the window is icing over again, and he bunches his fist and scrubs frantically at the glass. If he loses sight of either of them, one or both of them will be gone. Either this strange Daddy-thing will have eaten Sammy and left nothing but red smears on the side of the road, or the Daddy-thing will be gone, and Sammy will be lying on the hard shoulder in his yellow jammies, screaming for him to bring him out of the cold. Worse still, they might both be gone, and he'd be left alone in the car, surrounded by the smell of smoke and Sammy on his baby blankets. Maybe a passing highway patrolman would find him and take him to The Home, but most likely he'd sit here in the car until it ran out of gas and took the heat with it. He'd sit in the backseat and be frozen by his own breath, and when he got too tired too move or scream, Johnny Walton would find him. Snow was only white dust.
Daddy is stirring at last, and he knows that this is the moment of truth. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen right now.
I didn't mean it, Daddy! his mind wails, and the breath catches in his throat, hot and cold by turns and sour with the memory of wishing Sammy away underneath the big oak tree in the front yard. I didn't mean it. I don't want Sammy to go away. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Wish I may, wish I might-
Daddy's hand comes up, and Dean tenses in anticipation, but he only unbuttons Sammy's jammies and starts yanking them off. This is so contrary to what Dean had expected that he blinks in confusion. In later years, this surreal moment will return to him in dreams of Daddy tearing pieces of sunshine from a disembodied, screaming Sammy head, but for now, he can only stare. Daddy bunches the torn jammies in his big, raw-knuckled hand, and Dean waits for him to drop it or throw it into the nearby culvert, but he only squeezes it until the soft fabric bulges from between his fingers like a lump of fat.
Sammy screams. He looks skinned in Daddy's arms, naked except for his diaper. His skin is pink underneath the heavy, grey sky, but Dean knows it won't be if Daddy doesn't come back to the car soon. Then he'll get frostbite, and his fingers and toes might fall off, and in the dim, naughty part of his mind, he suspects other parts might, too. He wonders if it will be like when Sammy's Uncle Bill cord shriveled up and fell off, dried, brown, and scaly like a scab.
Daddy starts moving, and Dean hopes that he's coming back to the car, but he walks instead to the edge of the culvert and squats, Sammy braced in the crook of one arm. For one horrified instant, he thinks Daddy's going to drop Sammy into the freezing water that sluices and gurgles through the drainpipe, but he doesn't. He dips his hand into the stream of grey water and sloshes it over Sammy's head. Dean hadn't thought that it was possible, but Sammy screams even louder and twists away from the water. Daddy's mouth moves, but he can't hear what he's saying. The glass is too thick, and Sammy is too loud.
He wonders why Daddy is baptizing Sammy in the ditch. They'd already baptized him when he was six weeks old. He remembers because Grammy Alcott dropped her false teeth in the mashed potatoes at the supper afterwards, and Daddy had spit out his beer. Sammy had screamed then, too, so loud in the quiet church, and Mama had laughed.
He doesn't think Mama would be laughing now. Daddy sloshes more water on Sammy's head, and Sammy shrieks. His feet kick furiously, and Daddy wets them, too. Then Daddy takes off his flannel shirt and wraps Sammy in it. He drops Sammy's wadded jammies into the ditch and doesn't look back, and then he's heading for the car, the bundle of Sammy wedged in the crook of his arm. He raps on the rear window with one knuckle, and Dean rolls it down.
"Take your brother," Daddy says, and thrusts Sammy through the half-open window.
Dean cradles Sammy, who is still howling. "'S'OK, Sammy," he croons, and bounces Sammy like Mama used to. He's sure of no such thing, but he thinks he should say something. He can hear the crunch of Daddy's boots on rock salt as he clumps around the back of the Impala to the driver's side.
"Why'd you baptize Sammy again?" he asks as Daddy slides into the driver's seat and closes the door.
Daddy goes very still, and his fingers go white at the knuckles around the steering wheel. Dean is sure that he has said something wrong, that he has provoked the Daddy-thing, and that when Daddy turns around, there will be long, yellow teeth and black scribbles for eyes. He knows, with a dazed, sick certainty, that when he speaks, it will be with the voice of the sluiceway, cold, bubbling mud and grinding rocks.
But when he speaks, it's only Daddy. "Had to get it off him, bud," he says quietly.
"Oh." He isn't sure what Daddy means by that. The soot and dirt, maybe, but if that's what it is, he missed a spot. There's a smudge of soot over Sammy's left eye. The mark makes him uneasy, and he grabs Sammy's blanket and uses the edge to wipe it off. Sammy fusses at the contact, and Dean clucks soothingly.
"You're still dirty, Daddy," he points out. "Dirtier than Sammy." There is soot on Daddy's arms from fingertip to elbow, and the fingers look red and raw, as though he'd tried to grab something hot. He smells, too, like ice and burning wood, and Dean wrinkles his nose.
"Wrap your brother in his blanket. Keep him warm," is all Daddy says, and he turns up the heater as high as it will go.
Dean does as he is told, and Sammy settles immediately against his chest, tiny fingers scrunching in the fabric of his dirty shirt. Daddy puts the car in drive, and the Sammy jammy-eating culvert recedes into the distance. Dean lets out a breath he hasn't realized he's been holding and sags into the seat.
"It'll be okay, Dean," Daddy says. Words are heavy and thick in his mouth, and Dean thinks of too many teeth.
"I know, Daddy," he answers dutifully, and tightens his grip on Sammy.
It's a lie, but it's one of necessity. He senses the truth would be dangerous now, and he doesn't know how to tell his Daddy that there are such things as monsters and spooks, oh, my. Nor does he know how to tell him that he might be one. So he sits in the backseat and lies his head off and holds Sammy tight enough to make his arms ache. He doesn't say another word until Daddy is herding him into a motel bathroom later that morning.
"I didn't mean it," he mumbles.
"Didn't mean what, Dean?" Daddy asks, and sways in the doorway. There are bruises underneath his puffy eyes, but at least they're Daddy's eyes.
"When I asked you to make Sammy g'way."
Daddy only blinks at him, and Dean knows he doesn't remember.
"Wash up now," he orders.
"Yes, Daddy," he says, and sinks into the tub of lukewarm water. It turns grey at once, and he wonders if he's dissolving. Mama was the ashes, so maybe he'll be the dust. He almost hopes for it, but then he thinks of Sammy, lying on the bed and gumming his chubby fist. He can't leave Sammy alone, so he scoops the water in his cupped hands and sloshes it over himself in an effort to put his pieces back together. He even drinks some so that bits of him don't slip down the drain into H-E-L-L. He drinks until his belly sloshes and his tongue tastes like nickels and pennies, and he only stops when Daddy knocks on the door and tells him it's time for bed.
He and Sammy sleep in one bed, and Daddy sleeps in the other, and Dean watches him as long as he can, searching for signs that the monster he saw by the side of the road has followed them here-rounded shoulders and long, gleaming teeth and black-scribble eyes. But it's just his Daddy, long-limbed and sleeping, one arm dangling bonelessly over the edge of the bed.
Even so, he places himself between Sammy and Daddy and watches the vague hump beneath the sheets of the opposite bed until exhaustion overcomes willpower and drags him into the abyss. He wakes, screaming, from dreams of Daddy with pieces of Sammy in his teeth and Mama burning like a candle on his birthday cake, face running like wax and turning into Sammy's yellow jammies wadded in Daddy's hand.
It's Daddy who tries to comfort him, floundering from his blankets to sit on the edge of his bed and gather him up, but it's Sammy Dean looks for, twisting in Daddy's groping, well-meaning embrace until he can see him lying where he had left him the night before, in a nest of pillows and blankets. Only when Sammy gawks at him with those big, brown eyes does he stop shivering. Sammy is the only thing that's safe anymore.
Within five minutes, he's up and changing Sammy's diaper, and if Daddy thinks it's strange that he's eager to chance a stinky Sammy bomb, he doesn't say. He just tells him to watch his brother while he takes a shower. Dean waits until he hears the water gurgle and splash into the tub, and then he kisses the bottoms of Sammy's feet and his forehead.
"I'll take care of you, Sammy," he says. "I won't let the monsters get you. Promise."
Sammy offers him a toothless, gummy smile and promptly kicks him in the mouth with a chubby foot. Fire on his bottom lip and blood in his mouth, and Dean reckons that the deal has been sealed. He offers Sammy a smile in return and hunts for the baby wipes in the duffel bag by Daddy's bed. Sammy's changed and dressed by the time Daddy gets out of the shower, and twenty minutes later, it as if they've never been there at all. The only evidence of their passing is a stippling of blood on the sheets and a fine layer of grit and silt in the bathtub. Soon enough, even that's gone, erased by the cracked hands of a cleaning woman who notices them not at all.
Go to Part 2
Author:
laguera25Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: FRM(R) for disturbing imagery.
Genre: Gen; pre-series, spoilers for 101 and 108.
Word Count: 14,437
Disclaimer: All characters herein are the property of Eric Kripke, Robert Singer, and the CW. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. For entertainment only.
Summary: Dean doesn't like what he sees when he looks in the mirror, and Mary Worthington's mirror is the most unflattering of all.
A/N: Written for the
family_secret challenge in response to Prompt #33, which asked why Dean's eyes bled when he looked into Bloody Mary's mirror. This fic contains mild spoilers for the pilot episode of the series and major spoilers for episode 108, "Bloody Mary".Christine is a reference to the Stephen King novel of the same name.
March 22, 1983
Dean sits underneath the big oak tree in the front yard and nudges the tire swing tied to one of its branches with a stick he'd found by the porch. The swing creaks and groans as it moves through the air in a dreamy arc, and it reminds him of the runners of Mama's rocking chair on the wooden floor of the baby's room. It's an unpleasant association, and so he stops poking the tire, but the noise doesn't stop right away; momentum carries the balding Goodyear through six swings more, each one slower and smaller than the one before. The noise isn't smaller, though. It's loud as ever, a rumbling, lonely creak that makes his tummy feel like it's filled with balloons. It's the sound of Not Right Now.
He hears that a lot lately. Mostly from Mama, who has time for nothing but her tummy anymore. She spends most of her time sleeping or sitting in the rocking chair in the baby's room, making the floor and Daddy's back creak while he pushes furniture from one spot to another in the room. She rock rock rocks all day long, and her feet move like she's playing the piano. Sometimes, her hand rubs her swollen belly in rhythmic circles while her feet tap and the runners glide, and he suspects she's talking to his baby brother, singing him a lullaby only he can hear. Daddy talks, too, but he's pretty sure the baby shouldn't hear what he says. He knows this because Mama stops her rocking and says, "John Winchester," and he's old enough to know that when she uses your whole name, you're in big trouble. Daddy knows it, too, because he always apologizes and scurries out of the room for a beer.
Dean wonders for a moment what Daddy is so afraid of. Mama never brings a dishtowel into the baby's room, and Daddy's work-roughened skin is tougher than his. Even if she did bring one to pop him with, it wouldn't hurt much, and besides, he's sure Daddy can outrun her. The baby has made her big and slow, and when she walks, she waddles from side to side like the elephants he saw once at the zoo in Topeka. Sometimes, Daddy has to help her off the couch or out of the rocker so she can go to the bathroom.
He doesn't tell her about the elephants, of course. He loves his mama, and he doesn't want to hurt her feelings, not when her face is so white and her eyes are so dark and so many of her hours are spent in the silence of the nursery or the quarantined darkness of her room with a washcloth plastered to her pinched forehead to shut out the eye grains that make her pale and pukey and too cranky to read him The Lorax before bed.
But he thinks it. When she tells him to stop playing with his Castle Greyskull because the noise of the lowering drawbridge is too loud, or when she scolds him for leaving his Hot Wheels in the living room in front of the TV. He thinks it most fiercely when she refuses to play hide-and-seek with him like she used to before Daddy took her to the cabbage patch. It was their game, their special time, and they don't play it anymore.
Stupid elephant, he thinks savagely, and then he's ashamed. But he can't help it, and he refuses to let go of the uncharitable thought because it anchors him to himself, reassures him that he hasn't lost himself in the shadow of Mama's expanding stomach. It's a piece of stolen sweet that leaves a bitter aftertaste on his tongue. He knows it will taste terrible if he unwraps it a puts it in his mouth, but he craves it all the same and reaches for it with sticky, eager fingers.
Mama's not the only one who's different now. Daddy seems to have forgotten him, too. He still ruffles his hair with oil-stained fingers when he comes home from the body shop, still calls him "tiger", but his eyes are fixed on the hump of Mama's belly underneath her maternity clothes, like he's hoping what she's got in there is better than the baby she gave him the first time. He still tosses the ball around after dinner, but only if Mama doesn't need him to rub her feet or back or go to the store for ice cream and olives. Sometimes they only get five minutes before Mama's voice drifts from inside the house, waspish and demanding and deeper than her voice should be. Then he's left standing in the backyard with the ball in his hands and a lump in his throat, and all he can do is reach for the sour candy of waddling elephants.
Once, he'd tried to tell his father how he'd felt, tried to protest the loss of time and space in the world, but all that had emerged from his mouth had been a whiny baby demand to throw the ball for just two more minutes, please, Dad, please. That had earned him a stern, "Not now, Dean," and his father's shame, and he'd spent dinner swallowing guilt with his mashed potatoes and washing it down with enormous swallows of icy cold milk that had hurt his chest from the inside.
The baby's room. That's what they called it now, but until November, it had been his room. Daddy said they needed the space for the crib and the changing table, and that it was closer to his and Mama's room. They had moved him into the smaller room across the hall, the room that overlooked Mr. Krebbins' yard and gave the mean old man a perfect view of his bed. It was okay, he guesses, but it wasn't his, and he wonders why the baby gets everything that had once been his-Daddy, Mama, and even his place in the house, the place he'd had since he was in Mama's tummy. It doesn't seem fair; Mama taught him that good boys share, but so far, the stupid baby hasn't shared anything. All it has done is take, and he suspects it will only get worse after he comes out of Mama and screams for his supper.
He scuffs his shoe into the barren patch of dirt in front of him. Most of the snow from the last storm has melted, but the ground is still hard, and he leaves only the faintest impression. He frowns and gouges a divot into the dark soil with the point of his stick. There. That's better. He pushes the stick deeper into the dirt, a defiant claim of proprietorship. He pushes until splinters sink into his fingers and palms, until the stick creaks ominously under the pressure. The stinging pain in his hands is strangely comforting, and he turns them up to examine the damage, peering studiously at the scrapes, raw spots, and flecks of wood. Blood beads from the scrapes, and he wipes it on the faded knees of his jeans. Mama might yell at him for getting them dirty, but at least she'd notice him then. He wonders how long it will be before she notices the splinters in his hand, or for that matter, how long it will be before his father does. Every inch that Mama's belly grows, a little more of him disappears.
He secretly wonders how long it will be before he vanishes altogether, gobbled up by the ponderous, sleeping moon of Mama's belly like a shadow by a passing cloud. Not long, if Bobby McCabe is right. He says that Mama and Daddy had the baby to replace him, that when they bring him home from the hospital, Dean will come home from Aunt Judy's and find his bags packed and waiting by the door. They'll send him to Siberia or an orphanage in New York, and he'll never see his parents again.
He hadn't wanted to believe Bobby. After all, the grungy twerp had told him after he'd swallowed a live worm from Daddy's bait cup that it would lay eggs in his belly and have babies inside it until he exploded, and Mama had promised him it was a lie. She was right, too, because he'd never exploded. His tummy had never even gotten big. But then again, maybe that was because he'd barfed on the bathroom rug after he'd confessed to her what he'd done. Maybe it was luck. Because Mama had also said that mamas loved their little boys forever and ever, and he wasn't sure that was true at all.
Besides, Bobby had reminded him of Johnny Walton, and everybody knew about him.
Johnny Walton had been the grungy kid who smelled like old socks and strained peas and who never talked when Miss Parsons from the Sunday school asked him to recite the weekly Bible verse. He had slumped in his chair in his too-big clothes and drawn pictures in the thin mat of the church carpet with the toe of his dirty sneakers, and after a while, Miss Parsons had stopped asking. Dean had always wondered why Johnny was so dumb. All he had to do was remember the words, and Miss Parsons would give him a lemon butter cookie, but he never did. Sometimes, he had gotten a cookie anyway and eaten it in ravenous gulps. Swallowed it whole, Mama would've said.
Johnny had turned up every Sunday in the same shirt, and Dean had suspected it was for the chance of a cookie. Then he disappeared until the next Sunday. Dean had never noticed anybody waiting for him. He had just wandered out of the church, turned right at the edge of the lawn, and was gone. Miss Parsons had stood at the top of the steps with her hands fisted on her bony hips and her lips pursed like she tasted dirt on her teeth, but she had never spoken. She'd just shaken head as she watched him become dust, and retreated into the cool shade of the Sunday school room.
He had seen Mrs. Walton once, right before Johnny had become dust forever and ever. He'd been at the grocery store with Mama, hanging from the push handle of the shopping cart and begging her for a box of Trix instead of the nasty Raisin Bran she made him eat.
"But it tastes like the box, Mama," he'd said, and from the corner of his eye, he'd seen a flash of grey. He'd smelled socks, too, overripe and sour, and when he'd turned his head from the bright display of colored boxes, he'd seen Johnny, duck-footed and small behind his mother.
Mrs. Walton had been pale and skinny except for her belly, which had been heavy and bloated like Mama's underneath her flimsy, faded, red dress. All arms and fingers and horsey teeth. She had reminded him of a walking stick, and he'd shuddered. Her hair had been lank and greasy, and it had covered her sharp, ugly face. Johnny had not looked up from the floor, had just stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and watched his mama's shadow stretch over the floor like a spider.
They had still been in the store when he and Mama had been ready to pay the cashier lady, had been in front of them, as a matter of fact, and from his vantage point beside the cart, he'd realized that Mrs. Walton hadn't been paying with Washingtons and Lincolns, but with a card full of yellow postage stamps. They had reminded him of the thick, stubby movie tickets you got at the movie theater where they played movies you didn't want to see anymore but your grandma did.
"Why's she paying with movie tickets?" he'd asked Mama.
Mama had clapped him upside the head with the heel of her palm and hissed his name through her teeth, and in front of him, Mrs. Walton had hunched her scrawny, yellow shoulders like someone had boxed her ears. Johnny had just looked at him with glassy, teddy-bear eyes and made his ratty sneakers scream on the gritty, terrazzo floor. The noise had hurt his ears and prompted an absent-minded slap from Mrs. Walton, but the look had hurt his heart and made his stomach knot with a mixture of shame and fear. It was the look of a kid who had nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of whippings and creamed broccoli and shots at the doctor's office. It had followed him home and filled his tummy with cotton and mothballs, and he hadn't been able to eat his hard-won box of Trix for three days. Every time he'd thought about sweet mouthfuls of sugary victory, he would see Johnny's eyes peering balefully at him over the edge of the kitchen table or from behind the milk pitcher, and they would turn to ashes in his mouth.
Not ashes, he thinks as he digs half-heartedly at a splinter driven into his palm like its big brother is driven into the nearby dirt. Dust. Dust like Johnny.
A month after his mama had paid for milk and day-old bread with yellow movie tickets, Johnny had failed to turn up at Sunday school. For the first time, the room hadn't smelled like strained peas and onion-boiled socks, and it should have made him glad, but it had only made him uneasy and vaguely ashamed, as though he'd seen something he wasn't supposed to. Miss Parson had felt it, too, because she'd spent the whole lesson stealing glances at Johnny's empty seat, blinking and licking her lips and flaring her nostrils as if she were casting for his scent. She had even left two lemon butter cookies on his seat after Bible recitation, as if she had thought to coax him out of hiding with the promise of forbidden fruit. But he had never appeared, and Miss Parsons had gathered the uneaten cookies and tossed them into the garbage can beside her desk. He hadn't shown up the next week, either, and the week after that, Miss Parsons had stopped setting a place for him in the circle of hard, plastic chairs.
It was Bobby McCabe who had come with the answer. He'd turned up at Sunday school three weeks after Johnny had gone missing from the unbroken circle, bug-eyed with glee and dancing from foot to foot like he had to pee. He had lived two doors over from the Waltons, and he swore on his Dad's gun that the day after Johnny's first no-show at the church, some lady in a station wagon with county plates had knocked on the front door. She'd had a sheriff with her, too. They had gone inside, and there had been what Bobby had called a "great big mess of hooraw"-banging, screaming, and crying. When the lady and the sheriff had emerged fifteen minutes later, the sheriff had had Johnny by one arm and his ruined shades in one hand. The lady from the county station wagon had been carrying a grocery bag of clothes.
Bobby had told them as they clustered around the rusty spigot that jutted from the concrete wall like a wiener that Mrs. Watson had followed them onto the sagging porch, crying and begging them not to take her baby, but they hadn't listened. They hadn't even turned around to say goodbye or stopped to pick up the toy that had tumbled from the grocery sack and landed in the dirt. They had simply packed Johnny into the back of the station wagon and left Mrs. Walton crying on the porch with her hand over her mouth like she was going to throw up.
Crine. That was the way Bobby had said it, Dean remembers now. The same way Daddy says crayon.
"Where'd they take 'em?" an older kid had asked, and Dean had felt the same sick fear in his own belly.
"Dunno," Bobby had said as he crouched beside the spigot and twisted the rusty, flaking knob until water beaded from the spout like a snot bubble. "Prob'ly Siberia." He had shrugged. "Or The Home."
Mention of The Home had sent a ripple of terror through the group, and they had dispersed shortly thereafter, trying, maybe, to dodge the bogeyman. Everyone knew that The Home was where they sent kids whose parents had died in car wrecks or had held their hands against the stove burner for peeing their pants or stealing a cookie before supper. The Home was a bad place under the ground, and once you went there, you never came back.
He hadn't wanted to believe Bobby's story about Johnny then, but he did now. He was right; Johnny was never coming back, but it wasn't because he'd gone to The Home or been shipped to a Siberian gulag to eat rocks and sleep on straw. It was because he had been replaced. The baby had taken over, and the house at the end of the dirt road hadn't been big enough for the both of them. Johnny had been turned out and turned to Kansas dust.
Dean is filled with sudden panic. He doesn't want to be replaced, pushed out of his life by a bundle of screaming wrinkles that smells like poop and baby powder. He doesn't want to be left to wander the Kansas highways, trailing dust as he goes. He doesn't want to meet Johnny on the road, a mournful dust-boy with no friends and a fistful of yellow movie tickets in one weightless hand. He doesn't want to whisper through the leaves on dusty feet and play Tag with a boy he can't see forever and ever, amen. He wants to go fishing with Daddy in the spring and late summer and play hide-and-seek with Mama in the walk-in closet. Those belong to him, his secret joys, and he doesn't want to share, even if Mama says he should.
He yanks the stick from the ground and beats it against the dark, rough bark of the tree, determined to make his parents see him again. Bark flies from the trunk in a fine dust, and the splinters embedded in his hands prickle with renewed life. He watches the house for signs of movement, for Mama's face in the nursery window or Daddy's shadow in the front door. But nothing stirs inside the house, not even dust. The upstairs window remains dark, and Daddy doesn't appear on the front porch. Everything is still and quiet, as though they've gone and left him without saying goodbye.
It's not them who've gone, whispers a nasty, swamp-monster voice inside his head. It's you, Deano. You've already started to disappear. They can't hear you anymore, and soon, they won't be able to see you, either. When that happens, the lady in the county station wagon will come and take you away, and when Sheriff Goodkind doff his hat and goes back to the station, she'll drive you to the edge of town and let you out. Johnny Walton will be waiting for you with dust in his hair and streaked on his cheeks, and when you become a dust-boy like him, you can go to the church and dance in the heavy air of Miss Parsons' Sunday school room.
Stick meets tree in furious, choppy strokes, and still there comes no rebuke from his parents. Harder and harder he pounds, until blood weeps from his hands and his chest and shoulders throb with too much, too hard. He's crying now, and he doesn't know why, and snot drips onto his chin and into the cold dirt. He dimly wonders what will grow there in the spring.
"Still here, still here, still here," he mutters feverishly, and for one horrified instant, he's sure that the wood flying from the tree isn't wood at all, but dust, dust from his sloughing skin. He's disappearing, disappearing, and it's too late. Then the stick snaps in his hands with the sound of a breaking heart, and he sits in the dirt with the two halves in his sweaty, raw hands. A whimper escapes him, and he realizes that he's crying like a big sissy baby. It doesn't matter now, because no one can hear him.
Then the front door flies open, and Daddy emerges onto the porch, squinting into the dusk and scratching the seat of his sweatpants.
"Dean? What the hell are you doing out here, son? Paul Bunyan is dead, and there's no place to park the ox." He descends the porch steps and draws nearer.
Daddy's voice is furry with sleep, and his hair is sticking up from his scalp in wild tufts, and Dean knows he's probably in a heap of trouble, but he's too preoccupied with relief to really care. If Daddy's yelling, that means he can see him, and that means he's not a dust boy. Not yet.
He drops the stick and barrels into his father, nose pressed into his bellybutton. He smells like dirty cotton and Old Spice and the lumpy, living room couch, and Dean thinks it's the best smell in the world. His throat hurts and his nose is plugged with syrup, and his hands burn.
"Dean? What's the matter?" Daddy says, and there's more confusion than anger now.
He crouches so they're eye to eye, and Dean sees sleep crust in the corners of his eyes and stubble on his chin. He knows it will hurt if he touches the latter, but he does it anyway because he needs to make sure that his fingers are still solid. He grazes the hard point of his chin and winces when raw fingers meet coarse bristles.
Daddy sees the flinch and grasps his hand as it drops. He turns it over and scowls. "What happened?"
But Dean doesn't know how to explain it, so he takes a deep breath and says, "Make him go away, Daddy. Please."
Daddy's scowl deeps into a frown. "Make who go away?"
"The dust-boy," he says.
"Dust-boy?" Daddy repeats. "I don't see anybody else out here, kiddo. Did you maybe fall asleep out here and have a bad dream?"
"Yes, sir, maybe," Dean says. It's easier to let Daddy believe that than admit he was talking about his baby brother. Besides, he's not telling a lie exactly. He's just letting Daddy believe one.
Daddy ruffles his hair and rises from his crouch with crackly, popping knees. "C'mon," he says. "Let's get you cleaned up before dinner." He grabs him by the wrist so as not to hurt his hands and leads him toward the porch.
Dean goes, but he casts a glance over his shoulder. The moon hangs low on the horizon, bloated and full. It reminds him of Mama's tummy, and he shivers. He turns his gaze to the upstairs window, hoping to see her looking down at him, but she isn't there. He suspects she's in the bedroom, curled beneath the blankets and singing lullabies to the moon of her belly. He feels an ugly stab of resentment and wonders how much longer it will be before it becomes a new moon. He also wonders if that will bring the woman in the county station wagon.
Daddy takes him into the kitchen and washes his bloody hands in the sink, and Dean watches the pink water swirl down the drain, looks for signs that he's become a dust-boy, after all. But his hands remain solid under the rush of warm water, and they hurt plenty when Daddy sits him in a chair at the kitchen table and tweezes bits of tree and stick from his hands. He cries when he cleans the cuts left behind with rubbing alcohol. He can't help it.
He has nightmares about turning to dust that night and the night after that, but he doesn't remember them, and the day after that, Daddy takes him fishing. He sits in the small, aluminum boat with the wicker creel between his feet and loses the dust-boy in the soothing rhythm of the lake water as it laps the sides.
He doesn't remember him again until Sammy comes home from the hospital in May, and even then, he doesn't remember right away because Sammy is nothing like he'd thought he'd be. Oh, he's wrinkly and screams and smells like poop and baby powder, but he's also soft and grips his finger with a chubby fist, and when Mama helps him hold him, Sammy looks at him with big, brown, rabbit eyes. No monster, just his baby brother.
Then he looks out the window of his room as he's getting ready for bed and realizes that there's no moon. The sky has eaten it whole, and standing on the lawn is a long, thin shadow. He knows without seeing him that it's Johnny Walton, come to warn him of the lady in the county station wagon and invite him to play beneath the moonless, lightless sky. Dean shudders and closes the curtains and curls in on himself beneath the covers, afraid to poke his head out in case Johnny is at the foot of his bed, leaving dusty footprints on the smooth, wooden floor.
He spends the next three weeks waiting for the authoritative rap on the door and peering through the curtains every time a car pulls into the yard. He expects to see the battered county station wagon parked in the driveway on balding tires, but it's never there. Neither is the woman who drives it, tall and reedy with a Mary Poppins hat. Just Daddy or Mama or Miss Jewel from the hair salon, come to gossip on the porch with Mama.
He forgets with time, but never entirely. At night, he dreams of Johnny Walton and cars that make no sound, and he wakes from these dreams in a cold sweat. They're worst at the full moon and at the new. He never tells anyone because he is ashamed of them, ashamed that once upon a time, he wished Sammy away. He turns his back to the window, screws his eyes shut, and promises that he'll make up for his fear by being the best big brother ever.
Johnny Walton watches from the closet and says nothing.
November 3, 1983
Dean kneels on the backseat of the Impala and clears a hole in the cold-fogged window with his palm. Daddy stands on the shoulder of the road with Sammy in his hands, and Sammy is screaming, little face scrunched and fists bunched. Dean can see Sammy's scream on the air, white and cloudy like steam. There hasn't been any snow today, but the cold is sharp, and it sinks its claws into his crossed ankles and bloodless cheeks even with the heater cranked to the max. He knows it's colder outside.
But the cold isn't what scares him, what makes his mouth too small and his heart too big and his peepee ache like he has to go. It's Daddy's face. It's blank and too white as he looks down at little, shrieking Sammy. It's not a Daddy face; it's a monster face, the kind like they have on the posters in the library that warn of Stranger Danger. Daddy's eyes have gone out. Now they're only black scribbles inside his face, and Dean is suddenly sure that any minute now, Daddy is going to lean down and nuzzle Sammy's belly. Only when he looks up, his teeth will be full of Sammy's guts, red and stringy and oh-so-yummy.
The vision inspires a swooning horror, and he wants to scream, but his throat is pinched, and raw from smoke and tears. The house burned and took Mama with it, and Mama tastes bitter on his tongue when she had once been so sweet. He blinks to clear his vision of orange light and billowing black smoke. That's all he knows of what happened and why they got into the Impala, and that's all his mind wants to know.
He's not sure he wants to know anything more about this, either. Daddy is still staring at Sammy with that awful, blank face, and Sammy is still screaming, feet kicking and back arching out of Daddy's hands. His cries are piercing even through the thick glass of the car window, and Dean wonders why Daddy doesn't make them stop. Usually when Sammy bawls, Mama and Daddy rush to quiet him, but Mama is Cinderella now, and Daddy is just holding Sammy in his hands like he's never seen him before. Everything has changed.
He's tempted to get out of the car and ask what's wrong, but he doesn't dare. Daddy has too many teeth in his closed mouth now, and if he startles him, he might bite. So, he freezes in the seat and curls his fingers around the door until the thin, cold strip of metal bites his fingers. It reminds him of splinters sunk deep into the tender meat of his hands, and he swallows a hot knot of fear. It lodges in his tummy like a stone and makes it cramp.
The porthole in the window is icing over again, and he bunches his fist and scrubs frantically at the glass. If he loses sight of either of them, one or both of them will be gone. Either this strange Daddy-thing will have eaten Sammy and left nothing but red smears on the side of the road, or the Daddy-thing will be gone, and Sammy will be lying on the hard shoulder in his yellow jammies, screaming for him to bring him out of the cold. Worse still, they might both be gone, and he'd be left alone in the car, surrounded by the smell of smoke and Sammy on his baby blankets. Maybe a passing highway patrolman would find him and take him to The Home, but most likely he'd sit here in the car until it ran out of gas and took the heat with it. He'd sit in the backseat and be frozen by his own breath, and when he got too tired too move or scream, Johnny Walton would find him. Snow was only white dust.
Daddy is stirring at last, and he knows that this is the moment of truth. Whatever is going to happen is going to happen right now.
I didn't mean it, Daddy! his mind wails, and the breath catches in his throat, hot and cold by turns and sour with the memory of wishing Sammy away underneath the big oak tree in the front yard. I didn't mean it. I don't want Sammy to go away. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Wish I may, wish I might-
Daddy's hand comes up, and Dean tenses in anticipation, but he only unbuttons Sammy's jammies and starts yanking them off. This is so contrary to what Dean had expected that he blinks in confusion. In later years, this surreal moment will return to him in dreams of Daddy tearing pieces of sunshine from a disembodied, screaming Sammy head, but for now, he can only stare. Daddy bunches the torn jammies in his big, raw-knuckled hand, and Dean waits for him to drop it or throw it into the nearby culvert, but he only squeezes it until the soft fabric bulges from between his fingers like a lump of fat.
Sammy screams. He looks skinned in Daddy's arms, naked except for his diaper. His skin is pink underneath the heavy, grey sky, but Dean knows it won't be if Daddy doesn't come back to the car soon. Then he'll get frostbite, and his fingers and toes might fall off, and in the dim, naughty part of his mind, he suspects other parts might, too. He wonders if it will be like when Sammy's Uncle Bill cord shriveled up and fell off, dried, brown, and scaly like a scab.
Daddy starts moving, and Dean hopes that he's coming back to the car, but he walks instead to the edge of the culvert and squats, Sammy braced in the crook of one arm. For one horrified instant, he thinks Daddy's going to drop Sammy into the freezing water that sluices and gurgles through the drainpipe, but he doesn't. He dips his hand into the stream of grey water and sloshes it over Sammy's head. Dean hadn't thought that it was possible, but Sammy screams even louder and twists away from the water. Daddy's mouth moves, but he can't hear what he's saying. The glass is too thick, and Sammy is too loud.
He wonders why Daddy is baptizing Sammy in the ditch. They'd already baptized him when he was six weeks old. He remembers because Grammy Alcott dropped her false teeth in the mashed potatoes at the supper afterwards, and Daddy had spit out his beer. Sammy had screamed then, too, so loud in the quiet church, and Mama had laughed.
He doesn't think Mama would be laughing now. Daddy sloshes more water on Sammy's head, and Sammy shrieks. His feet kick furiously, and Daddy wets them, too. Then Daddy takes off his flannel shirt and wraps Sammy in it. He drops Sammy's wadded jammies into the ditch and doesn't look back, and then he's heading for the car, the bundle of Sammy wedged in the crook of his arm. He raps on the rear window with one knuckle, and Dean rolls it down.
"Take your brother," Daddy says, and thrusts Sammy through the half-open window.
Dean cradles Sammy, who is still howling. "'S'OK, Sammy," he croons, and bounces Sammy like Mama used to. He's sure of no such thing, but he thinks he should say something. He can hear the crunch of Daddy's boots on rock salt as he clumps around the back of the Impala to the driver's side.
"Why'd you baptize Sammy again?" he asks as Daddy slides into the driver's seat and closes the door.
Daddy goes very still, and his fingers go white at the knuckles around the steering wheel. Dean is sure that he has said something wrong, that he has provoked the Daddy-thing, and that when Daddy turns around, there will be long, yellow teeth and black scribbles for eyes. He knows, with a dazed, sick certainty, that when he speaks, it will be with the voice of the sluiceway, cold, bubbling mud and grinding rocks.
But when he speaks, it's only Daddy. "Had to get it off him, bud," he says quietly.
"Oh." He isn't sure what Daddy means by that. The soot and dirt, maybe, but if that's what it is, he missed a spot. There's a smudge of soot over Sammy's left eye. The mark makes him uneasy, and he grabs Sammy's blanket and uses the edge to wipe it off. Sammy fusses at the contact, and Dean clucks soothingly.
"You're still dirty, Daddy," he points out. "Dirtier than Sammy." There is soot on Daddy's arms from fingertip to elbow, and the fingers look red and raw, as though he'd tried to grab something hot. He smells, too, like ice and burning wood, and Dean wrinkles his nose.
"Wrap your brother in his blanket. Keep him warm," is all Daddy says, and he turns up the heater as high as it will go.
Dean does as he is told, and Sammy settles immediately against his chest, tiny fingers scrunching in the fabric of his dirty shirt. Daddy puts the car in drive, and the Sammy jammy-eating culvert recedes into the distance. Dean lets out a breath he hasn't realized he's been holding and sags into the seat.
"It'll be okay, Dean," Daddy says. Words are heavy and thick in his mouth, and Dean thinks of too many teeth.
"I know, Daddy," he answers dutifully, and tightens his grip on Sammy.
It's a lie, but it's one of necessity. He senses the truth would be dangerous now, and he doesn't know how to tell his Daddy that there are such things as monsters and spooks, oh, my. Nor does he know how to tell him that he might be one. So he sits in the backseat and lies his head off and holds Sammy tight enough to make his arms ache. He doesn't say another word until Daddy is herding him into a motel bathroom later that morning.
"I didn't mean it," he mumbles.
"Didn't mean what, Dean?" Daddy asks, and sways in the doorway. There are bruises underneath his puffy eyes, but at least they're Daddy's eyes.
"When I asked you to make Sammy g'way."
Daddy only blinks at him, and Dean knows he doesn't remember.
"Wash up now," he orders.
"Yes, Daddy," he says, and sinks into the tub of lukewarm water. It turns grey at once, and he wonders if he's dissolving. Mama was the ashes, so maybe he'll be the dust. He almost hopes for it, but then he thinks of Sammy, lying on the bed and gumming his chubby fist. He can't leave Sammy alone, so he scoops the water in his cupped hands and sloshes it over himself in an effort to put his pieces back together. He even drinks some so that bits of him don't slip down the drain into H-E-L-L. He drinks until his belly sloshes and his tongue tastes like nickels and pennies, and he only stops when Daddy knocks on the door and tells him it's time for bed.
He and Sammy sleep in one bed, and Daddy sleeps in the other, and Dean watches him as long as he can, searching for signs that the monster he saw by the side of the road has followed them here-rounded shoulders and long, gleaming teeth and black-scribble eyes. But it's just his Daddy, long-limbed and sleeping, one arm dangling bonelessly over the edge of the bed.
Even so, he places himself between Sammy and Daddy and watches the vague hump beneath the sheets of the opposite bed until exhaustion overcomes willpower and drags him into the abyss. He wakes, screaming, from dreams of Daddy with pieces of Sammy in his teeth and Mama burning like a candle on his birthday cake, face running like wax and turning into Sammy's yellow jammies wadded in Daddy's hand.
It's Daddy who tries to comfort him, floundering from his blankets to sit on the edge of his bed and gather him up, but it's Sammy Dean looks for, twisting in Daddy's groping, well-meaning embrace until he can see him lying where he had left him the night before, in a nest of pillows and blankets. Only when Sammy gawks at him with those big, brown eyes does he stop shivering. Sammy is the only thing that's safe anymore.
Within five minutes, he's up and changing Sammy's diaper, and if Daddy thinks it's strange that he's eager to chance a stinky Sammy bomb, he doesn't say. He just tells him to watch his brother while he takes a shower. Dean waits until he hears the water gurgle and splash into the tub, and then he kisses the bottoms of Sammy's feet and his forehead.
"I'll take care of you, Sammy," he says. "I won't let the monsters get you. Promise."
Sammy offers him a toothless, gummy smile and promptly kicks him in the mouth with a chubby foot. Fire on his bottom lip and blood in his mouth, and Dean reckons that the deal has been sealed. He offers Sammy a smile in return and hunts for the baby wipes in the duffel bag by Daddy's bed. Sammy's changed and dressed by the time Daddy gets out of the shower, and twenty minutes later, it as if they've never been there at all. The only evidence of their passing is a stippling of blood on the sheets and a fine layer of grit and silt in the bathtub. Soon enough, even that's gone, erased by the cracked hands of a cleaning woman who notices them not at all.
Go to Part 2