Archive of Our Own

Entry from John Winchester’s journal:

January 24, 1996
Dean turns seventeen today. We went shooting. Then I sent him out on his first hunt. I’ve let him take the lead before, but I’ve always been there to back him up. This time he’s on his own. Partly it’s a test, and partly I wanted some time with Sammy. Should be no problem for Dean. Ghosts of two nuns haunting St. Stephen’s Indian Mission in Riverton, Wyoming. Simple salt-and-burn mission. Nuns in love with each other, then discovered. Killed themselves. We scoped the situation out, figured that something must be left behind that’s now a focus for the haunting. Bible, rosary beads, some small articles that’s hidden somewhere in their room. I figured Dean would take care of it no problem, but I still stayed close by with Sammy. 

1.

Tonight, by the freeway, a man eating fruit pie with a buck knife
carves the likeness of his lover’s face into the motel wall. I like him
and I want to be like him, my hands no longer an afterthought.

His dad had said the hunt was a gift. 

When John first mentioned it, while they were wrapping up a ghoul hunt in northern Idaho, he’d looked Dean in the eye for the first time in weeks. “I’m gonna let you fly solo on the next one,” John said. “There’s a haunted convent in Wyoming. We’ll get there in time for your birthday. Seventeen, man, that’s old enough to handle a salt-and-burn on your own.”

Dean had swallowed and said, “Yes, sir,” afraid to break eye contact. John looked at him for a long moment, expression inscrutable, while Dean tried not to squirm. 

“Alright, then,” John said, and went back to packing the trunk. Dean snapped back into motion, cleaning the shotguns and filling shells with rock salt, but he kept one eye on John’s shoulders stooped over the back of the Impala. 

Birthdays weren’t exactly a big deal in their family, and Dean could probably count on one hand the number of gifts his dad had given him over the years. Sure, Dean always made sure Sammy got something on his birthday, even if he had to steal it, but he always told Sam not to worry about it. Sam was too young to get caught using the five-finger discount; CPS would be on John’s ass if they followed a kid with no fixed address back to a shitty motel where he lived with his brother and two weeks worth of Spaghetti-O’s. So Dean usually went without, and it was fine. If John was around, he might notice the date and buy them all pie at a diner. Last year—Dean’s sweet sixteen—had started with Dean hustling pool in a biker bar outside of Memphis, and ended with John scraping him off the parking lot after Dean’s mark realized what was happening. Dean’s year hadn’t really improved from there.

So this year was starting with a hunt. Sam was already asleep in the back seat, sprawled out and drooling, so Dean contemplated the first gift his father had given him in years alone.

Riverton, Wyoming was just inside the Wind River Reservation. There’d been nothing outside the car windows for hundreds of miles but a cold, wind-swept plain, and every building in town looked like it had been beaten into submission by the wind. St. Stephen’s Catholic Church--formerly St. Stephen’s Indian Mission, name formally changed somewhere around 1976, which felt pretty late to Dean-- was on the edge of town, crumbling slowly into the Wind River. 

In the motel room, John had snapped on the stiff white collar and handed a second to Dean. Sam was on one of the beds, reading a book. “I’ll be back soon, Sammy,” John called over his shoulder. “Lock the door--” “--and don’t let anyone in, no matter what,” Sam finished, barely looking up. 

“That’s right,” John said. He flicked his eyes over to Dean. “I’ll do the talking when we get there,” he said. Dean nodded, tried to comb his hair into something respectable. 

Usually Dean wasn’t around for this part of the hunt. Having a kid around made John look more suspicious than he already was, rolling up in a black ‘67 Impala and a cheap suit and smoothly shutting down follow-up questions about “supervisors” or “chains of command”. All the other times, John would drive back by the motel and honk the horn, and Dean would listen to Sammy lock the door behind him, then climb into the passenger seat. John would fill him in on the way, or he wouldn’t. If Dean asked questions, John would say, “I told you what you need to know.” 

That morning they’d gone shooting. Sam was good with a shotgun but still shaky with a pistol; Dean hit wherever his dad told him to, head shots, gut shots, bullets straight into the target’s paper heart. He still had gunpowder residue on his hands; he hadn’t seen the point in washing it off. 

“Let’s go, Dean.” John picked up his keys and started out the door. Dean’s hair was still sticking up in the back, no matter how much water he splashed on his comb. The collar looked like a bad costume-- well, it is --but it would have to do.

“See ya, Sammy,” Dean said.

“Happy birthday, jerk,” Sam said, still deep in his book. 

St. Stephen’s chapel was almost unchanged from its original state, but most of the other buildings had burned down or sat empty. One of the few still in use was the dormitory, a squat, log-walled building as old as the mission itself.

“There used to be quite a large convent here, for the area’s population,” Sister Agnes explained when John and Dean had showed up in her office. “But that was a hundred years ago. There are fewer people taking holy orders everywhere these days. We needed to be able to block off the unused parts of the building--to save on heating costs, you know. Of course, when we started renovations is when… all this began.” 

Sister Agnes walked slowly through the grounds of the old mission, John at her side and Dean a few steps behind. Lying to a nun still felt bad. His throat felt constricted by the priest’s collar, and it felt obvious that the leather briefcase at his side was hiding a sawed-off shotgun full of rock salt. It was his first time trying the fake priest thing--well, fake seminarian, since even the extra four inches Dean had grown in the last year weren’t enough to make him look particularly adult. Sister Agnes had trusted John, though, especially when he flashed the forged letter from the archdiocese certifying him as an exorcist. “The young one is a trainee,” John had explained. “Top of his class in seminary. Especially gifted in spiritual warfare.” That’s one word for it , Dean thought. 

Dean felt the first prickle of fear when the old nun said their names. 

 “Lisette was expelled after her infatuation with Sister Beatrice was discovered,” Sister Agnes said in her creaky voice. His dad nodded and made a note in the black padfolio he used whenever he was impersonating a priest. “Of course,” Agnes continued, “it was a terrible tragedy when both of their bodies were discovered. A sort of suicide pact, evidently. One hopes in those… situations, when girls are so confused, to see repentance. As it were, they couldn’t even be buried in our graveyard.” John nodded again.

“Of course. A real shame. Where did they end up buried, then?” he said. Dean swallowed hard as John wrote down the location of the graves. 

Sister Agnes led them past sheets of drywall stacked by the entrance to the dormitory. Inside was a long, narrow hallway lined with rooms. She stopped outside the third door on the left. The door was ajar and there were deep scratches in the brown paint--fingernail marks, like someone had tried to claw through it. 

“Our contractors were scared off completely when these appeared,” Agnes said. “People are still very superstitious here.” Dean thought he detected a certain undertone to the word superstitious but maybe it was just a Catholic thing. He hadn’t actually been to many church services. 

“Well, thank you for going to all this trouble to show us. Dean will stay here and look around, but let me walk you back to your office,” John said. Dean always noticed how good his dad was at framing commands like options on hunts like this, laying out exactly how things were going to go without stepping on any toes. John turned back and handed Dean the padfolio before he followed Sister Agnes out of the dormitory. Dean snuck him a thumbs-up. John let the door slam behind him. 

The dorm room wasn’t big, just wide enough for two twin beds with a nightstand stuck between them. Sister Agnes had said the contractors were supposed to knock down one of the walls. John figured the ghosts knew, somehow, and there was something in the wall they didn’t want anyone to find. 

Dean stood at the end of one of the beds and started running his hand over the south wall. It was made of wood, not drywall, pine boards hammered roughly together and nailed over cheap insulation. Dean bent his head and tapped along the wall, looking for hollow spots. He was concentrating so hard he didn’t notice the frost creep over the window glass.

“GET OUT,” someone screamed. 

Dean whipped around. The face of a woman with blue-white skin and burning eyes flickered into sight, then an invisible force barreled into him. 

His head slammed against the wall so hard he momentarily blacked out. When he came to blood was filling his mouth, his throat pinned to the wall by an icy grip. He spat and the blood landed on the outline of a wrist, trickling down an invisible forearm. Spots dotted the edge of his vision as he groped for the iron knife in his pocket, gasping. Dean swung the knife wildly upward, hoping it would connect, and suddenly he dropped to the floor as a puff of smoke dispersed in front of him. Salt the room, dumbass. Before he let himself catch his breath, he poured a line of salt in front of the door, another bisecting the two beds. It would at least slow the ghost down when she came back.

He pulled the shotgun out of his bag and tried to breathe slowly. Felt the back of his head: no blood, so hopefully just a nasty knot. The blood in his mouth was coming from his cheek; he must have bitten it. 

Okay think, Dean, think. The ghost obviously didn’t want him touching that wall.

Dean turned back to look at the south wall. There was a splintered hole where his skull had knocked into it, but no insulation poking out. Against his better judgement, Dean reached inside the wall, fingertips scraping against insulation and the rough logs of the outer wall until they hit something hard and smooth. He pulled it out, holding it at arm’s length like it was radioactive.

It was a box made of polished wood. Small and thin, like a cigar box, with a cross inlaid on the top and a metal clasp straining to keep the lid shut. When he opened it, Dean realized that was because the box was stuffed full of letters. At least a dozen, written on yellowing paper in spidery script. The one on top was addressed to “Sister Beatrice”. 

Dean gulped, swallowing blood. These letters were definitely what the ghosts didn’t want them to find. Sister Agnes’s voice echoed in his head: “No one knew how deeply they had fallen into sin until their mother superior found a letter Lisette was writing to Beatrice.” His dad had told him the basics: a hundred years ago, two nuns had fallen in love, been discovered, killed themselves. Rested uneasily for nearly a century. Now they were haunting a decaying convent, scaring workers with spectral screams and levitating tools. Dean had to kill them. Burning the letters would kill them. That was all he needed to know. 

John would burn the letters now, then salt and burn the bones. But curiosity was getting the better of Dean, curiosity and something adjacent to it that he felt in his gut, tugging like a fish hook behind his navel.

2.

so it’s summer, so it’s suicide

Dean sat on one of the beds. The room was still cold, but it was January in Wyoming. Hard to say if it was the ghosts or just the old building, a frontier mission that wasn’t built to last this long. He eyed the salt lines, but they were still solid, not even a hint of breeze poking at them.

He pulled out the whole stack of letters and shook them, half-hoping a lock of hair or something would fall out so he could just burn it and go. But the only thing that shook loose was a pressed wildflower, pale yellow and tissue-thin. He swept it back into the box. 

It was silly for Dean’s hands to be shaking. If John were here, he’d roll his eyes and laugh. With a deep breath, he carefully opened the first letter. 

January 24, 1891

Dear Beatrice,

I am glad to be sharing a room with you. I thought I would write you something, as we do not have much time to get to know each other. I wanted to tell you that I appreciate the way you pronounce my name. It’s my real name, not the name of a saint. You’re the only one here who says it right--the French way, like my mother says it. 

My mother is Quebecois, and spoke only French with me so I would learn. My father speaks only English. Mama used to tell me that I made up my own language as a child, because I had no way of knowing that French and English were different. It was quite isolating on the farm then, I think. When Mama speaks of it she seems lonely. I was never lonely there, but then again I never knew any different. All of the strangers coming and going here, and the whole dormitory full of sisters--it’s exciting.

But perhaps I’m wasting your time--you don’t have to respond to this, if you don’t wish to. I would like to know you better, though. What were your parents like? What brought you here? How long have you lived in the mission?

Yours,

Lisette

January 25, 1891

Dear Lisette,

I’ll admit something I could not say in front of Father Joseph when we met: it’s pleasant to have a roommate so close in age. The last sister I shared with was very old. She’s gone back to Massachusetts now, where she was raised. I didn’t dare have much hope in a new roommate. I’m glad it was you.

I wouldn’t describe our life here as exciting. Every day is the same--prayers, then chores, and more prayers, the same meals most days. If you’re assigned the more menial tasks, you can spend most days outside, and that is a blessing. I think in other convents--real convents, not missions--we might have been allowed more time to read and write. Think of Teresa of Avila, or Therese of Lisieux, writing their books. But here we don’t do much that is exciting to me. Even teaching in the school is quite boring, as they only let me teach the youngest children, and only then with supervision. 

You asked what brought me here. I’ve been in the mission’s school since I was a child. I don’t remember much of my parents, or much of life before coming to the mission school. I was very young. But few men want a Shoshone wife with a Catholic education. At least, no man I want as a husband. So I joined the sisters. (It sounds very cold when I put it like that. Can I confess something to you? I already feel that I can, strangely enough. I stayed, not out of any sort of religious feeling, but because I was afraid of my chances outside the mission. Living here for most of my life has made the rest of the world seem frightening. Sometimes it makes me sad, this small view of creation.)

I don’t know any French, but perhaps you can teach me. I love to learn languages.

-Beatrice

There was a long gap in the dates. Dean wonders who kept these, Lisette or Beatrice, and how they chose which ones to keep. He hoped the others were burned instead of hidden in the walls, or it was going to be a long night. 

August 22, 1891

Beatrice,

I found this flower growing outside the chapel a few weeks ago, and thought of you. Did you know prayer books are excellent for pressing flowers? The things one learns when one has access to more than two books (on our farm we had the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare). That is why I’m so bad at teaching you French--I’ve never seen it written down. I only know what it sounds like. I have no idea if I could even decipher your beloved St. Therese’s little book. 

Your love for our more educated sisters is nobler than my preferred saints. I love Jeanne d’Arc--her English name is simply not as beautiful as the French, and since I speak both I get to choose--with her sword and visions. When I was a child I would pretend to be her, cutting off my hair and riding into battle to defend the rightful king. (Although I was unclear on how royalty worked at that time--I think I believed President Hayes was the king.) Jeanne was a simple farm girl, after all, and she got to wear armor. Of course, she was also burned at the stake, but for a noble cause. 

You told me once that you don’t have many memories before coming to the residential school. Do you remember anything? Your favorite stories as a child? My mother always told me the life stories of saints. We weren’t particularly devout, I don’t think, but they were the ones she knew the best. Hence my love for Jeanne. 

Yours,

Lis

August 24, 1891

Dear Lis,

Father Joseph’s homily today was not particularly inspiring. That’s not the point, I suppose. They are meant to be instructive. But I have been surrounded by nuns since I was a child, and I sometimes wish the men who preached to us even pretended to care about our lives. We wake up every day to say our prayers and do our chores inside the mission, while Father Joseph gets to ride around the parish and talk to more people than just the sisters. I wish he would simply tell us a good story one morning. The Bible is full of them, after all, strange as they are, and all of the saints’ lives. Look at your mother telling you about poor Joan!

My mother told me and my brothers stories at night. The stories about our people and our gods. When I was child, I believed in the gods of my ancestors. Our gods are no one thing--they are responsible for the seasons, they’re tricksters, they fall in love. They love our land and our people. I think I would still believe in them, but I don’t remember all the stories. When the sisters took me to their school, I was forbidden to speak of our gods. Forbidden to speak in my language, even, beaten for it. They gave me a new name, some virgin saint, when my mother named me after the painted turtles that lived in the river. Now I hardly remember my name and I can only write to you in English. Sometimes I still dream in Shoshoni. Sometimes I dream that my mother is alive, and speaking to me, but I can’t understand her. 

I hear you talking in your sleep sometimes. You call out for your mother. Never your father. Why do you call out for her? What are you dreaming about? 

-Bea

August 26, 1891

B,

I didn’t know that I talk in my sleep. You never do. But perhaps I’m just a heavier sleeper than you. 

Thank you for telling me about your mother. I didn’t know you arrived here against your will. I didn’t want to come here either. 

When I dream about my mother it’s always the same. She’s standing in the doorway of our house and my father is dragging me out, to bring me here. It’s the last time I saw her. I don’t know why I call out for her, it never changes anything. She still stands there and lets my father send me away. 

Do you know why I was sent here? My “shameful proclivities” are what Father called them. Father Joseph told me I was never to tell anyone. I’m not even sure Mother Superior knows that I am not exactly a faithful novitiate, nor a particularly good Catholic. (It took me a very long time to write this part, and I may still burn the letter before you see it.) You see, my father brought me here after he found me in the woods with my best friend and my dress undone. My best friend was the daughter of our neighbor. (Do you see now?)

I wish I could say I felt shame for it, that I felt the weight of my sin. It would be easier that way, if I did. But I think I must be bound for hell, because I still cannot muster regret. Just as I hope I will not regret telling you. 

You said Father Joseph’s homily was not particularly inspiring, and I agree. But I have always loved that assigned verse from the epistles. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The things I’ve hoped for have always been unseen, unsure. No one told me I was allowed to hope for them. Yet when I wake up and hear your quiet breathing I am reassured in my faith. I hope you can understand what I mean. 

I love you. I wish I could say the words out loud. The mission walls are so thin, but I want you to hear them. I want to hear you say them. I want to hear them in your language, and I want to say them to you in French and Latin and every language Father Joseph knows. I love you, I love you, I love you.

If this disgusts you, burn this letter. Throw it away. But I needed to say it, even so. 

Your Lis

There was another big gap in the dates then. Dean rifled through the stack--the next letter was in Lisette’s handwriting, too. However Beatrice responded was lost, and he tried not to imagine it. He didn’t want to think about Lisette sitting on that same bed, hands clasped tighter than when she prayed, waiting. He wasn’t going to think about it. Just like he wasn’t going to think about what happened after Beatrice read the letter, what she said, what the two of them did quietly in the dark. This letter should have gotten burned a hundred years ago, Dean thought, but he was finally going to have to be the one to light it. 

He dropped the letter on the bed next to him, but noticed something else written on the back. In Beatrice’s handwriting, a phrase in a language Dean didn’t recognize. Then, underneath the phrase: I love you. The only words I remember in my language. Then, beneath that in Lisette’s hand: Je t’aime. Beneath those, smudged letters that looked like Greek and Hebrew. They had passed the pen back and forth between them, Dean imagined, feeling the warmth of the other’s hand, hoping the silent words would be enough if they wrote them down in enough languages.

The walls are starting to close in, so Dean looked back to the letters left in his hand. 

November 6, 1891

B, 

I was thinking about your last letter as I washed the lunch dishes today. I read it after morning prayers. It was like being in your company all morning, a sweet presence. You are the sweetest part of me, I’m afraid. I don’t attend to chores happily, or pray without ceasing, or walk humbly as we are commanded. I enjoy complaining too much. But when I’m with you, I feel the humility God asks of us. Or, perhaps more accurately: I am humbled by the idea that someone as good as you could love me. And so I keep your letters with me. 

In other convents they keep reliquaries for splinters of the true Cross or fragments of saints’ bodies. I keep a box with some of our letters in the wall, my own private reliquary. I do not mean to sound more sacrilegious than I am (than we are), but the holiness I have found in you is worthy of that level of care. Sometimes when you look at me I feel as if I am receiving the sacraments. 

I don’t have much to say about my days--they are the same, even more monotonous than your days in the school. This note really has no purpose except to say I love you. The brightest moments are in the evenings, when I’m with you.

Your Lis

November 8, 1891

Dear Lis,

Today was the first truly bitter day of the winter. It doesn’t usually come this early--we’re just unlucky this year. The windows iced over at the school, and the stove wasn’t nearly strong enough to warm the whole room. Some of the other sisters were grumbling about how cold their beds would be tonight. I remember the days when I would have joined in (or rather, silently agreed). But I know we will be warm. 

Of all the ways you have blessed me, these are the least of them: keeping me warm at night; your hair before you’ve pinned it up for the day; your hand on my hand as you pass me a prayer book in chapel. Every physical thing pales in comparison to the blessings my soul has found in loving you. (Well, this is maudlin. But I know you like to hear it, so I will not cross it out.) 

Sometimes I worry. I’m afraid Mother Superior is looking at us oddly, or one of the sisters notices my eyes linger on you when you walk by the school window. Father Thomas is not an observant man, but it must be obvious how one of us feels. I try not to worry. I don’t want to be parted from you--I don’t think I could bear that. After everything the sisters have taken from me, I would not lose you, too. 

Love, B

There are no more letters, but Dean knows how the story ends. Lisette drops her next letter somewhere in the wind-scoured mission grounds. Two bodies in a bloody bedroom, two unconsecrated graves. Two ghosts who keep missing each other, keep throwing things down empty hallways and screaming until someone hears them. 

If his dad were here, Dean wouldn’t have wasted this much time reading the letters. Obviously, they were the objects holding the ghosts here. Doesn’t matter what they say. But he did read them, and now he can feel panic worming down his throat into his chest. What if he knows. His dad said the hunt was a gift. How could he know? Somehow his father’s gifts always turned into warnings. 

3.

But damn if there isn’t anything sexier
than a slender boy with a handgun,
a fast car, a bottle of pills.

There is a long list of things John and Dean don’t talk about. The night the house burned down, and Dean ran out with baby Sammy in his toddler arms. The peculiarity of their life; the endless diner food and new schools; all the times Dean has smiled and lied to cops and social workers and school counselors about the hunting scars. The first time John caught Dean watching porn in the motel room. The times John has come back too drunk and gripped Sam’s arm too tight, slapped the back of his hand across Dean’s face too hard. They don’t talk about the times John sent Dean away, dumped him at Bobby’s or just left him behind. Like a few months ago, when Dean got arrested in upstate New York and his dad said he could rot in the boys home. 

When John finally picked him up (and Dean went with him, of course he did, because Sammy was waiting in the backseat and that was more important than the first girl Dean ever kissed waiting on her porch in a perfect dress), they headed south towards Long Island. His dad hated New York, but an old friend had called in a favor. A quick salt-and-burn in Montauk. 

Sam started begging to visit the city before they’d even made it to Montauk. “Dean missed my birthday,” Sam pleaded, “and you were gone, too. Please please please.” Dean joined in after it was clear the hunt was going well and John was in a good mood; between the two of them and the easy job, John finally relented. 

So they spent a whole day in New York City in late summer, eating cheap slices of pizza for lunch and dinner and criss-crossing the city on the subway. They parked the Impala at a motel in Brooklyn, and John was as relaxed as Dean had ever seen him. He even got on the swings in Central Park when Sam asked him to. And sure, John had bristled when Dean piped up with a fact about the Flatiron Building that he’d learned from Sonny at the home, but Dean course-corrected fast enough and John went back to watching Sam tilt his head back, back, back to see the top of the skyscrapers in midtown. They went to the natural history museum, where Sam stared at the dinosaur bones and the entire herd of taxidermied elephants like they were the most amazing things he’d ever seen, and ate fat slices of cake from the museum cafe. In the cavernous room with the blue whale hanging from the ceiling, Dean closed his eyes for a second and imagined he was normal. He was there with his family, and his mom was just around the corner looking at the walruses, and his dad would turn from the penguins with a genuine smile on his face, and Sammy didn’t look over his shoulder when he moved to the next display because he’d never had to worry about something grabbing him in the dark. When Dean opened his eyes, John and Sam were almost out of the room and he had to hustle to catch up.

The day in New York City was just another line on the list of things John and Dean don’t talk about. Sam brought it up for weeks afterwards, because he fell asleep in the motel at 9:30 p.m., and didn’t understand why Dean got nervous and John went silent every time Sam mentioned the city. 

Dean had it figured out. There was a subway station down the street from the motel. The J train ran into Manhattan and if he transferred at the right stop, he could get within spitting distance of CBGB for the cost of one subway token. Sammy fell asleep early, face-down on top of the covers. His dad made it longer, but two beers put him out by 11:00. He was in the bed closest to the door. Dean watched John’s face as the door creaked open and then slowly, carefully clicked it shut behind him.

Dean didn’t have a real plan to get into CBGB, but he had a fake ID and a smile that had worked on about fifty percent of bouncers so far. He came up out of the subway on the wrong stairs and had to walk around the block, through hot wind whipping around the buildings. Bass from the club thumped all the way around the corner, and the line to get in was out the door, full of girls in baby doll dresses and boys with mohawks. He slowed his steps, unsure whether to get in line or just try to riff his way in. 

A girl in ripped jeans leaned against the club’s facade, apart from the line. “Hey kid, you got a light?” she asked. Dean pulled his Zippo out and offered it to her. She lit up and he thought maybe she’d offer him one, but she just smirked at him. “There’s no way you’re legal.”

“I’m… 21,” Dean said, remembering what his fake driver’s license said.

“Yeah, sure, and I’m Courtney Love,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Dean.” He didn’t offer anything else, and she didn’t say anything for a minute. She had lime green streaks in her dark hair and a black choker around her neck, black eyeliner, dark brown lipstick. A couple of inches taller than Dean and dressed almost exactly the same, in a flannel and a t-shirt and heavy boots. 

“This your first time here?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Dean said.

“Well, you’re a big talker.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“How about: why are you here?” She stared him in the eye and Dean could feel himself blushing. What the hell , he thought, and went with the truth.

“I’m probably not ever gonna make it back to the city,” he said slowly. “So I just. Just wanted to say I’d been here. At least once.”

Bass pulsed from inside the club while the girl took one last drag.

“Well, definitely-legal Dean, I’m Brit. Thanks for the light.” She stubbed out her cigarette on the sidewalk. Eyed him. “It doesn’t matter how good your fake is, kid, you’re not gonna get in by yourself. Come on. I’m about to blow your mind.” 

She walked past the line of punks (Dean sticking so close behind her he stepped on the heel of her boot). The bouncer was enormous, covered in tribal tattoos. “The kid’s with me, alright?” Brit said. Dean flashed his charming-adults smile at him. The bouncer frowned at him.

“Sorry, Brit, still need ID.”

Dean fished the fake out of his wallet. “Come on, he’s 21, it says right there,” Brit said. The bouncer rolled his eyes. 

“Yeah, yeah. Get in there before I change my mind.”

Walking inside CBGB was like walking face-first into a wall of sound. A guy with a green mohawk screamed into a mic over wailing guitars. The crowd was one large howling blob of black leather and denim. The air was thick with sweat and the smell of spilled beer and a hundred people breathing the same stagnant haze. Brit grabbed Dean by the arm and steered him around the edge of the pit, towards the bar. At one end a girl was definitely snorting something; at the other end a bartender was taking a shot with a guy who had safety pins in places Dean didn’t know could be pierced. “First round’s on me,” Brit yelled in his ear. 

The first shot of tequila burned his throat down to his stomach. (“Don’t forget to bite the lime!” Brit screamed.) The second shot went down easier, and by the time he knocked it back he already felt flushed. A tiny woman in a tight black dress and black hair down her back emerged from the crowd and slid her arm around Brit’s waist, accepting a shot Brit passed to her. “Who’s the jailbait?” she asked. 

“Dean,” Brit said. “This is Gloria.” They were practically screaming to be heard, so Gloria just nodded at him and turned to the bar. “Come sit with us,” Brit yelled, pointing towards a table against the wall.

At the table he ended up in a chair against the wall with a whiskey-and-coke in his hand. Brit had ordered for him. Two waifish girls with dirty blonde hair sat opposite him--Brit introduced them as Loren and Tabitha, but he wasn’t sure which was which and it felt rude to ask. Squeezed against the wall with him were Marco and Alicia, a guy in a denim vest that showed off his arm muscles and a girl with red curly hair in a halo around her face. (“Who are you?” Marco had asked when Dean slid in. “One of Brit’s charity cases,” Dean heard Alicia yell back.) At the end of the table, Brit and Gloria shared a chair.

“Why’d you get me in?” Dean asked Brit, in a momentary break in the music.

She smiled over her drink. “Someone did it for me. You pay that type of thing forward. Good karma or whatever.” 

Marco leaned his shoulder into Dean’s. “That and she thought you were cute. Somehow Brit only pays it forward to the hot ones.” Dean felt his cheeks flush bright red as Brit reached over him to slap Marco’s arm. Marco grinned and fell back but didn’t move his knee, which had pressed into Dean’s. Usually Dean would pull away at that kind of contact--especially from some guy--but the shots were making him feel hazy already, and he was nearly seventeen and feeling it, feeling younger than maybe he ever had. So he leaned back and let their shoulders line up, too, watching the neon lights flash on the dance floor. Marco’s face was just in the corner of his vision and Dean watched that too, a sharp jaw and a long nose under dark, curly hair. 

The band started into a Violent Femmes cover and Gloria pulled Brit into the pit; Dean could see them dancing together for a moment before the crowd swallowed them. Charity case or not, Dean liked the feeling of being against the wall in a crowded bar, a stranger’s body lightly pressed against him, listening to a mediocre cover of a good song. ( There may be some things that I wouldn’t miss.) He could get used to it--not having to save anyone. 

But before he could follow that thought any further, Marco slapped him on the back. “Finish your drink, kid!” Alicia screamed and clapped as Dean chugged, then grabbed his hand and pulled him into the crowd. The drink was strong and Dean was quickly losing his grip on the evening. People were stomping and flinging their bodies into each other, everyone close enough to bruise, Alicia’s red hair getting caught in Dean’s mouth as she threw her head back and forth to the bass line. Marco has his hands in the air and his hips shaking to the beat, his chest occasionally bumping Dean’s back. 

Things got fuzzy after that. At some point Alicia passes Dean another shot. The pit only gets wilder: someone’s fist grazes Dean’s mouth; someone hits Gloria too hard and she bounces into Dean, who sets her back upright into Brit’s arms. There’s so many bodies pressing in, and Dean hasn’t been touched by this many people maybe ever. He’s dancing like he’s never really allowed himself to, never had occasion to, and accepts another drink when Brit offers one up like a genie, and notices the long lines of Marco’s arms as he twirls one of the blondes around. The crowd expands and contracts until the only space left on the floor for Dean is wedged against Alicia’s pulsing back, face-to-face with Marco, who grinds his hips against Dean’s with a wicked smile on his face and Dean’s heart beating so loud he can hear it over the bass. When the set ends the room is spinning.

They all stumble back to the table, but there aren’t enough chairs for all of them anymore and they’re all a little too drunk to figure out a solution. “Um, I’ll just. I need to find the bathroom anyway,” Dean mumbles.

“It’s hard to find here. I’ll show you,” Marco offers, and Dean nods. He catches a smirk on Brit’s face and wonders vaguely what that’s about while Marco is showing him around a corner and down some stairs. New York bathrooms were in the weirdest places, Dean had discovered, but some hunter instinct in his mind was still on alert in case this was a trick.

It wasn’t a trick, just a narrow staircase and then a dimly-lit basement hallway covered in graffiti, the sound of people walking overhead thumping through the ceiling. Dean’s feet weren’t working too well, scuffing on the stairs, so he threw an arm around Marco’s shoulders and Marco shot him a look before pressing a hand to his back. The bottom stair was uneven, throwing Dean further off balance.

“Easy, kid,” Marco says, his hand still firm on Dean’s back. But Dean still trips and falls into the wall. The arm slung around Marco’s shoulder steadies him. Dean takes a breath, then another one, trying to clear his head, but Marco is looking at him with big brown eyes in a way that makes it hard to think. Suddenly it’s the wall that’s holding Dean steady, his back pressed up against the brick. Marco has one hand at Dean’s waist and the other hand at his collar, and his face is closer to Dean’s than any man’s has ever been, and then he kisses Dean hard. 

Later, Dean will deny this part. He will re-write the memory. But the truth was, Dean kissed back. He pulled Marco closer with his arm, opened his mouth slightly and felt Marco’s tongue slide in. In the alcohol-soaked recesses of his brain, he registered how strange it felt to kiss someone whose stubble rubbed against his face. He registered how good it felt.

“Ah. Ha.” Marco murmurs when he pulls away. “Shit. You really are a kid.” Dean’s too drunk to be sure what he means, but Marco looks sheepish. “And you’re smashed. Man, I’m sorry.” Marco hauls him off the wall and down the hallway, towards the bathroom. It’s empty and Marco practically shoves him in. The edge of the sink catches Dean on the hip and he grabs the sink with both hands to steady himself. When he looks up, Marco has disappeared. There’s only his own reflection in the cracked mirror, eyes slightly unfocused, cheeks bright red from the tequila. 

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit. His brain catches up finally. If Dad finds out about any of this he is going to kill me. His throat constricts at the thought, a wave of nausea hitting. Dean splashes his face with cold water and spits into the sink. No blood, not this time; just the taste of a boy’s mouth on his, a taste he hopes he won’t remember in the morning. 

Back at the table, Brit is nursing another whiskey-and-coke alone. Green-mohawk guy is just finishing a song, guitars screaming. Dean sits down carefully but he misses somehow and ends up swaying in his seat. “Oh, kid, you are drunk drunk,” Brit says. “No more for you.” 

Brit’s friends filter out of the crowd and back around the table. Gloria leans into Brit and sneaks sips of her drink; the two blondes nod along, glassy-eyed, to the music pumping out of speakers onstage; Marco sits across the table with his head leaned towards Alicia, mostly avoiding Dean’s eyes but sneaking him a wink when the band starts a Ramones song ( hey little girl, I wanna be your boyfriend). If he was anything less than blackout drunk, Dean wouldn’t have smiled back. He would have been straight-backed  in his chair, scanning the bar for threats, keeping one eye on the door. He wouldn’t even be there after the whole thing in the basement hallway. But he was there, and he was drunk, so instead he took a sip from the beer one of the blondes--Loren?--handed him to taste, and leaned one elbow on the table, chin in his hand, and watched Marco laugh at something Alicia yelled in his ear.

“DEAN WINCHESTER.”

It felt like the whole bar went silent. John Winchester was standing in the door. The bouncer was behind him, helpless. And Dean dragged his eyes from where they’d been glued to Marco’s face and hoped to God his dad hadn’t seen it. 

John stomped through the crowd.

 “Dean Winchester!” he yelled again. 

“Oh. Shit.” Dean muttered.

At the edge of their table, John took in Gloria in Brit’s lap, the blondes clearly coked out, Marco in his ripped denim vest with his eyes turned nervously towards Dean. 

“Get your ass in the car.” 

Everything was happening in slow motion. Brit looked up at John with wide eyes. “Sorry, sir,” she said quietly.

If he wasn’t about to die, Dean would have laughed. The entire bar was looking at John with the same respect Dean did, right down to the drill-sergeant response.

John ignored her. “Get. In. The car.”

His dad grabbed his shoulder as soon he was in reach, so hard Dean knew there’d be finger-shaped bruises there in the morning. John marched him back past the safety pin guy and the bouncer to the Impala idling outside, double-parked. 

“What the hell were you thinking, Dean?” John said as soon as they got inside.

“I wasn’t, sir,” Dean said.

“Damn right you weren’t. Do you know the kind of people who go after kids in this city? Do you know what kind of monsters hunt here?”

Dean’s head is spinning. The stop-and-start of the car through city streets isn’t helping.

“And you made me leave Sammy alone at the motel. Did you think about that?”

“Did you think about that when you left me in that home?” Dean snapped. He knows it’s the alcohol making him bold, but he can also feel something shift in the air.

“What if this is the night something attacks him? Because you wanted to go out and get drunk with a bunch of queers?” John is deadly calm, and it’s scarier than all the times he’s screamed. “That son of a bitch at the home sure taught you how to be selfish.”

Dean wouldn’t ever say it sober, wouldn’t let himself think it, but it tumbles out of his mouth. “I hate you!” 

John’s hands gripped the steering wheel tighter. “You don’t like me? That’s fine. It’s not my job to be liked. It’s my job to raise you right.”

Dean laughs. “This is raising us right? We’re…” Dean searches for the right word. “We’re freaking killers.”

“I’m raising you to be a hunter, not a little faggot,” John snapped. 

Dean is silent. Oh shit oh shit oh shit. He waits for the rest, for John to tell him exactly how disgusting it is, that he knows exactly what Dean did and it makes him sick. But his dad is silent too--silent all the way back to Brooklyn, silent in the alley behind the motel where he parks the Impala and takes off his belt and Dean closes his eyes against what’s coming, silent the next morning when Dean wakes up and immediately vomits blood and whiskey into the trash can.

John ignores Dean for the next week, until Bobby meets up with them in Colorado to track down a pack of werewolves. When he does start to talk to Dean again, they don’t talk about it. Dean thought maybe it was forgotten, like all the other things they don’t talk about, put down in a dark hole and set on fire.

4.

Try explaining a life bundled with episodes of this—
swallowing mud, swallowing glass, the smell of blood
on the first four knuckles .

The room turns icy cold again. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean spots a breeze starting to sweep over the salt line in front of the door, ruffling the letters out over the bed. He knows he should move, should at least get the letters back in the box, but instead he puts his head in his hands to keep his whole body from shaking. 

This was a gift. The hunt was a gift. It wasn’t tangible, they had to travel light, Dean knew that. His dad had found the hunt and thought of Dean, and Dean had held onto that knowledge like a talisman through all the miles of interstate into town. His father’s trust was the gift. But John’s trust always came with an edge. Dean had let his guard down too early, slipped with the knife, and now he had to deal with the consequences. 

Focus. What’s the next step here, boy, Dean thought. 

Get out of the room. Burn the letters. The wind was picking up in the room, starting to scatter the salt line into a thin filament. Dean stuffed the letters back in the box and dropped it in his bag. The wind was howling now, screaming. The salt line broke as he pumped his shotgun.

The figure of a nun flashed in front of him, this one with dark, wild hair down her back. Beatrice. She reached for Dean’s heart. Her hand made a cage over his chest, fingernails pressing in, as Dean pulled the trigger and she blew away in a puff of smoke. 

“NO,” Lisette screamed behind him. The force of her anger slammed into his back, but Dean was ready. He turned and plunged the iron knife into her heart, felt it meet something solid before Lisette disappeared. They were getting stronger. 

He kicked the door closed behind and ran out of the dormitory, not caring if John was still around watching. He didn’t stop running until he was all the way across the grounds, outside the chapel. Hallowed ground. He ducked in and sat in the last pew. Breathing hard, Dean took an inventory of his situation: lump on his head, probably concussion. Five bloody puncture wounds in his chest and his favorite t-shirt ruined. Two pissed-off ghosts who, he realized, could probably hitch a ride on the letters in his bag. And-- oh shit --no wheels. John had taken the Impala. He cocked his head towards the door to see if he could hear the idling engine, but it was eerily silent at the mission.

Dean pulled out the padfolio with John’s notes. There was the map of the town Dean picked up in the motel lobby tucked in the pocket, and in his neat block print, John had written down the location of Beatrice and Lisette’s grave. Of course the non-Catholic cemetery was all the way across town.

The sun was setting as Dean closed the door to the chapel behind him, wrapped his leather jacket tighter against the dropping temperature. Started walking.

The graveyard wasn’t hard to find, but the names on the grave markers were nearly rubbed off from age and neglect. Dean spent twenty minutes triple-checking he had the right ones, because he wasn’t about to dig more than two graves on his birthday, of all days. 

The ground was nearly frozen, which made things harder. But after a while the physical labor blurred out Dean’s thoughts, the sweaty repetition of dig-scoop-toss-repeat putting him into an almost Zen-like state. It wasn’t until he hit Beatrice’s coffin and broke open the top to make sure the body was there that his brain kicked back on. The hunt was almost over.

He knows. He knows. The words looped in Dean’s head as he poured salt on the bones, as he drizzled lighter fluid over two graves, as the sound of an idling Impala reached him from the cemetery gate. He knows and this was a test. He climbed out of Lisette’s grave and pulled the box of letters out of his jacket pocket. Tossed the letters in the coffin. As they hit bone, Dean thought he saw two silhouettes standing on the headstones. Big eyes staring back at him, figures blurry at the edges, holding hands in the dark.

It’s a test and what happens if you fail? What then? The silhouettes were becoming more solid. One had long, dark hair, the other pale white skin. They both had dark blood running down their arms, staining their twin habits, and tears running down their faces, their eyes burning. Dean lit a match and dropped it.

The smoke was hot on his face. He’d built the fire too high—if his dad were there he’d be furious at the waste and the carelessness. His dad isn’t there. Dean let the flames scorch his nose, his cheeks, dry out his eyes until they’re streaming and he’s crying harder than he has in years. The hardest he’s cried since before the house on fire, before the endless road trip, before Sammy looked at him with his big round eyes every time their dad came in covered in blood and wrecked with whiskey. These nuns, they were in love. That was all. The thing that kept them here was a box of dusty parchment with a few strands of hair, a kiss that left no visible mark on the page. The letters were swirling ash in the air, their bones were turning black. Their love turned them into monsters. It was so easy to become a monster. Dean could feel it under his skin.

For just a split-second, Dean contemplates jumping into the burning grave. He’s not sure if that would be success or failure in his dad’s eyes. 

But the sound of the Impala is getting louder, and Sammy’s face flashes through his mind. Sam in the natural history museum, Sam asleep in the backseat, Sam silently handing Dean a towel full of ice after John falls asleep. Dean wouldn’t leave him alone, not like that. 

Dean turned away from the flames. The wind blew a few embers across his back as he trudged back across the cemetery, towards the black silhouette of the car. As he got closer, he realized the windows on the passenger side were rolled down. Sam was hanging out the window, staring into the dark searching for Dean. 

“Hey ya, Sammy,” Dean called.

He climbed into the backseat alongside Sam. John looked at him in the rearview mirror, the same inscrutable expression on his face as when he first brought up this hunt. “Did you take care of it?” John said.

“Yes, sir,” Dean said. In the rearview mirror, Dean can see the ash and tears smeared on his cheeks, and he wanted to rub at them. But he knew it would make the moment worse. John’s face was disappointed, but not surprised. Knowing. This was the test and I failed , Dean realizes. 

“Dean,” Sam said, and Dean turned to look at him. “I got you a birthday present!”

“Ah, you shouldn’t have, bro,” Dean said.

“Open it,” Sam said, handing him a messily wrapped package. Inside is a cheap journal with a cowboy on a bucking bronco on the cover, and a ballpoint pen from the motel. “It’s a hunter’s journal,” Sam said. “Now that you’re going on solo hunts.”

The feeling in Dean’s chest was so tender he almost couldn’t recognize it, can’t process it after the night he had. “Thanks Sammy,” he choked out. “Thanks a lot.”

He falls asleep in the backseat, Sam’s legs across his lap, the smoke from the graves rising into the sky behind them as the Impala glides down the empty highway.