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dixiehellcatWorlds Collide, part 2/11
Authors: dixiehellcat and tetiny68
Pairing/Characters: Sam, Dean, Bobby; Gen. Other SPN characters mentioned: Cas, Baltie, and one I can't tell yet cuz it's a surprise. Guest starring Zak Bagans, Nick Groff and Aaron Goodwin of Ghost Adventures.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Words: about 1300 this part; total roughly 17,000.
Summary: Sam and Dean arrive in Goldfield, Nevada, and while investigating the haunted hotel there are unexpectedly cornered.
Mostly Winchesters this chapter, but from here on in it's full on tag team action! :-D
2 Virginia Ridgeway was a pleasant elderly woman who gave Dean a suspicious look and then talked to Sam. She was sharp, and open to the supernatural—it was oddly nice to not have to keep up a cover story for a change.
"The hotel wasn't bad for quite a while," she told them over lemonade. "People who went in there reported odd things, but nothing I'd call dangerous. Then curiosity seekers, I'd call them, started coming out. A TV station from Reno, then some boys from Las Vegas with cameras making a movie—that group came back later with a bunch of tourists in tow, and that's when things really began to happen. I was with them then, and something pushed me down, threw me against a wall. It threw boards, bricks, rocks. I haven't stepped foot in the place since; but then things began to happen here in my own house. I had bruises from things flying into me!
"Those boys from Vegas came back again with their cameras, but it didn't seem to make any difference, not at first. Then people started telling me things…Goldfield's not a big town, just a few hundred of us and we all know each other, so word gets around. It's not the sort of thing one would talk about with outsiders, but I hadn't talked with Donald in a long time, and when he called me out of the blue it just—felt right to confide in him." Sam nodded with that puppy-dog earnestness that always sucked old ladies in. "As I say, Elizabeth, the girl who is said to have died in the hotel at the hands of George Wingfield, who built it, she was never a problem, except for people hearing odd sounds like a woman crying, feeling someone touch them and so forth. And there were said to be other spirits, but I never paid them much mind. These new things, more violent things, I have to admit I partly blame those boys from Vegas for stirring them up. One of them was so loud and mean, yelling at the spirits to come out and show themselves and prove their existence. Well, did they ever!"
Dean nearly choked on his lemonade. With a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, he asked, "Would his name be Zak?"
The old woman eyed him. "Yes, why? Do you know him?"
"No ma'am!" Sam said hastily. "We, um, know of him, that's all. We're trained to get rid of supernatural manifestations, not encourage them."
"That's good," she said emphatically. "You'll have to forgive me if I was a tad cool when you first came in. I was worried you boys might be in cahoots with him and his friends. You even favor him a bit," she added to Dean, who managed to hold in check the wish to roll his eyes untill Virginia had turned back to Sam. "Red, the owner, was about to sell the place when all this publicity started, and the buyers backed out. I hope you boys can do something to clear things up so he doesn't lose his shirt, and before somebody gets hurt."
"Amateurs!" Dean fumed as he stomped out to the Impala. "Damn amateurs, stirrin' up shit that we then have to clean up!"
Sam's amusement at his brother's fulminations was tempered by his realization of the very real hazard that free-roaming demonic spirits, even without meatsuits, could pose to innocent civilians. "How about if I go do some research, and you case the hotel and find us a way in?"
"Works for me."
+++
The Winchesters rendezvoused near dusk. Dean led Sam around to the back of the old hotel to an ancient service entrance, rusty and appearing long-forgotten. He'd already jammed it earlier in the day, then closed it to avoid suspicion. In seconds he popped the lock again and they slipped inside and hunkered down to wait till dark. Sam fished notes out of his voluminous duffel bag and shared with Dean. "The Goldfield Hotel was built in 1908, over a dry mine shaft. One owner dug two more shafts in the basement. When the town went bust the hotel went downhill too, and finally closed in 1945. The original owner, George Wingfield, is the one who reportedly imprisoned and later killed Elizabeth, the prostitute who's said to haunt the place. Other ghosts people have reported include a woman who hanged herself, two children, and a midget."
"Midgets," Dean grumbled. "As if this case isn't weird enough. Ten bucks says we get the midget."
"I streamed the Ghost Adventures footage too, from their previous trips here," Sam went on." On their first visit in '04, an entity approached Zak Bagans in the room where she died and touched him. Not threateningly, more like she's hungry for human contact. But when they came back in '09 the whole vibe seemed to have changed. The only time they seemed to communicate with her, she kept saying things like 'help' and 'hide' and one time they heard female crying."
"Whoever these etheric thugs are, sounds like she's as scared of them as mortals are." Dean started to check his own gear. "Let's blast them first; that'll give us space and time to find whatever's holding her here, whether it's a personal object or part of her remains. Then we do the ritual to manifest her, destroy the anchor object, and when she moves on, that should close the door between worlds."
"When she moves on. To heaven, hopefully." Sam looked thoughtful. "Not that that's necessarily the safest place to be right now."
Both brothers were silent, thinking of the war raging in heaven right now, of their angelic friend Castiel and his fight against the faction bent on bringing on the apocalypse they had so narrowly prevented. "Maybe not, but right now, it's the only game in town," Dean sighed finally. He didn't say it, but from the hooded look of his eyes Sam knew he was thinking of the lengths Cas had gone to to preserve earth and heaven, and the distance that that had put between them.
They walked through several rooms to start getting a feel for the place, till Sam nearly tripped over an electrical cord. Oddly, while the rest of the building was run down in the extreme, the cord and the duct tape holding it down looked brand new. Shushing Sam's smothered yelp, Dean's sharp ears caught faint voices. "Anybody supposed to be here tonight?" he said quietly.
"Dunno. I tried to talk to the current owner, a local rancher, but he wasn't very forthcoming. All he'd say was, he'd called his experts back in, and soon he wouldn't have any trouble selling the place…" The meaning of the words hit Sam about the time they did Dean. "His experts—back in—"
The voices grew louder. The two scrambled through the nearly dark building to a grimy front window, dropped to their bellies and slithered up to peer over the sill.
Outside sat a black SUV from which several cases of camera gear and other equipment were being unloaded by several guys in grungy roadie garb, directed by a burly bald man. A bearded older man in Western shirt and jeans stood near the door, a pipe firmly clenched in his teeth. "That's Red, the owner," Sam whispered in Dean's ear. He stood talking with two other younger men. One was lean with a beatnik air; the second had short spiky hair, wore a black t-shirt two sizes too small for his muscular frame, and gestured sharply as he spoke.
The Winchesters recognized the three from their recent TV viewing: the Ghost Adventures Crew.
"Ohhhh, shit," Dean hissed.
Authors: dixiehellcat and tetiny68
Pairing/Characters: Sam, Dean, Bobby; Gen. Other SPN characters mentioned: Cas, Baltie, and one I can't tell yet cuz it's a surprise. Guest starring Zak Bagans, Nick Groff and Aaron Goodwin of Ghost Adventures.
Rating: PG-13 for language
Words: about 1300 this part; total roughly 17,000.
Summary: Sam and Dean arrive in Goldfield, Nevada, and while investigating the haunted hotel there are unexpectedly cornered.
Mostly Winchesters this chapter, but from here on in it's full on tag team action! :-D
2 Virginia Ridgeway was a pleasant elderly woman who gave Dean a suspicious look and then talked to Sam. She was sharp, and open to the supernatural—it was oddly nice to not have to keep up a cover story for a change.
"The hotel wasn't bad for quite a while," she told them over lemonade. "People who went in there reported odd things, but nothing I'd call dangerous. Then curiosity seekers, I'd call them, started coming out. A TV station from Reno, then some boys from Las Vegas with cameras making a movie—that group came back later with a bunch of tourists in tow, and that's when things really began to happen. I was with them then, and something pushed me down, threw me against a wall. It threw boards, bricks, rocks. I haven't stepped foot in the place since; but then things began to happen here in my own house. I had bruises from things flying into me!
"Those boys from Vegas came back again with their cameras, but it didn't seem to make any difference, not at first. Then people started telling me things…Goldfield's not a big town, just a few hundred of us and we all know each other, so word gets around. It's not the sort of thing one would talk about with outsiders, but I hadn't talked with Donald in a long time, and when he called me out of the blue it just—felt right to confide in him." Sam nodded with that puppy-dog earnestness that always sucked old ladies in. "As I say, Elizabeth, the girl who is said to have died in the hotel at the hands of George Wingfield, who built it, she was never a problem, except for people hearing odd sounds like a woman crying, feeling someone touch them and so forth. And there were said to be other spirits, but I never paid them much mind. These new things, more violent things, I have to admit I partly blame those boys from Vegas for stirring them up. One of them was so loud and mean, yelling at the spirits to come out and show themselves and prove their existence. Well, did they ever!"
Dean nearly choked on his lemonade. With a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, he asked, "Would his name be Zak?"
The old woman eyed him. "Yes, why? Do you know him?"
"No ma'am!" Sam said hastily. "We, um, know of him, that's all. We're trained to get rid of supernatural manifestations, not encourage them."
"That's good," she said emphatically. "You'll have to forgive me if I was a tad cool when you first came in. I was worried you boys might be in cahoots with him and his friends. You even favor him a bit," she added to Dean, who managed to hold in check the wish to roll his eyes untill Virginia had turned back to Sam. "Red, the owner, was about to sell the place when all this publicity started, and the buyers backed out. I hope you boys can do something to clear things up so he doesn't lose his shirt, and before somebody gets hurt."
"Amateurs!" Dean fumed as he stomped out to the Impala. "Damn amateurs, stirrin' up shit that we then have to clean up!"
Sam's amusement at his brother's fulminations was tempered by his realization of the very real hazard that free-roaming demonic spirits, even without meatsuits, could pose to innocent civilians. "How about if I go do some research, and you case the hotel and find us a way in?"
"Works for me."
+++
The Winchesters rendezvoused near dusk. Dean led Sam around to the back of the old hotel to an ancient service entrance, rusty and appearing long-forgotten. He'd already jammed it earlier in the day, then closed it to avoid suspicion. In seconds he popped the lock again and they slipped inside and hunkered down to wait till dark. Sam fished notes out of his voluminous duffel bag and shared with Dean. "The Goldfield Hotel was built in 1908, over a dry mine shaft. One owner dug two more shafts in the basement. When the town went bust the hotel went downhill too, and finally closed in 1945. The original owner, George Wingfield, is the one who reportedly imprisoned and later killed Elizabeth, the prostitute who's said to haunt the place. Other ghosts people have reported include a woman who hanged herself, two children, and a midget."
"Midgets," Dean grumbled. "As if this case isn't weird enough. Ten bucks says we get the midget."
"I streamed the Ghost Adventures footage too, from their previous trips here," Sam went on." On their first visit in '04, an entity approached Zak Bagans in the room where she died and touched him. Not threateningly, more like she's hungry for human contact. But when they came back in '09 the whole vibe seemed to have changed. The only time they seemed to communicate with her, she kept saying things like 'help' and 'hide' and one time they heard female crying."
"Whoever these etheric thugs are, sounds like she's as scared of them as mortals are." Dean started to check his own gear. "Let's blast them first; that'll give us space and time to find whatever's holding her here, whether it's a personal object or part of her remains. Then we do the ritual to manifest her, destroy the anchor object, and when she moves on, that should close the door between worlds."
"When she moves on. To heaven, hopefully." Sam looked thoughtful. "Not that that's necessarily the safest place to be right now."
Both brothers were silent, thinking of the war raging in heaven right now, of their angelic friend Castiel and his fight against the faction bent on bringing on the apocalypse they had so narrowly prevented. "Maybe not, but right now, it's the only game in town," Dean sighed finally. He didn't say it, but from the hooded look of his eyes Sam knew he was thinking of the lengths Cas had gone to to preserve earth and heaven, and the distance that that had put between them.
They walked through several rooms to start getting a feel for the place, till Sam nearly tripped over an electrical cord. Oddly, while the rest of the building was run down in the extreme, the cord and the duct tape holding it down looked brand new. Shushing Sam's smothered yelp, Dean's sharp ears caught faint voices. "Anybody supposed to be here tonight?" he said quietly.
"Dunno. I tried to talk to the current owner, a local rancher, but he wasn't very forthcoming. All he'd say was, he'd called his experts back in, and soon he wouldn't have any trouble selling the place…" The meaning of the words hit Sam about the time they did Dean. "His experts—back in—"
The voices grew louder. The two scrambled through the nearly dark building to a grimy front window, dropped to their bellies and slithered up to peer over the sill.
Outside sat a black SUV from which several cases of camera gear and other equipment were being unloaded by several guys in grungy roadie garb, directed by a burly bald man. A bearded older man in Western shirt and jeans stood near the door, a pipe firmly clenched in his teeth. "That's Red, the owner," Sam whispered in Dean's ear. He stood talking with two other younger men. One was lean with a beatnik air; the second had short spiky hair, wore a black t-shirt two sizes too small for his muscular frame, and gestured sharply as he spoke.
The Winchesters recognized the three from their recent TV viewing: the Ghost Adventures Crew.
"Ohhhh, shit," Dean hissed.
