Supernatural: One Year Gone (4 page)

Lisa had introduced Dean to the next-door neighbors. As summer approached cookouts became commonplace and Dean wholeheartedly took part in all suburbia had to offer.

On those summer nights Dean manned the grill while the neighborhood kids and Ben ran around menacing everyone with super soakers. And as the spring days dripped away into nights buzzing with the sound of cicadas, Dean’s dreams about Sam stopped. For the first time in months Dean had slept through the night.

“You’ve got to help me, sis!” An inflated music score of a network show blared out from the television.

“Ben. Turn it down!” Lisa pulled her chair around and stared at the back of Ben’s head. He was thoroughly engrossed and ignored the command. Lisa sprang to her feet.

“I’ll get it.” Dean stuffed an egg roll into his mouth and crossed to the living room. “Ben, your mom is talking to you.”

Ben nodded but didn’t make a move. Picking up the remote, Dean pointed it at the TV to turn down the volume.

“Carrissa, please.” On the screen a blonde clad in black leather pants was being whipped around by an invisible force. “Use the
Necronomicon
!”

A brunette girl flipped through the elaborate pages of a large grimoire. “I’m trying. Here it is!” She began a Latin incantation. The wind subsided and the blonde dropped to the floor. The girls—sisters, Dean gathered—hugged each other. They had just escaped some sort of supernatural force and both of them wanted to go home. But how would they hide this from their mother? The two girls quipped a couple of lines of tween banter.

“What’s this?” Dean asked.

“It’s a new show. It’s about two teenage witches.” Ben blushed a bit. “But they’re badass, not like stupid witches.”

“What’s it called?”

“Spell Bound.”

“Spell Bound,
huh?” Dean sat down, and paused the show.

On screen, the book they called the
Necronomicon
hovered in digital stasis. During all of his obsessing over the past couple of months Dean hadn’t thought about the
Necronomicon.

The book had been thought to be a work of fiction by twentieth-century occultist and novelist H.P. Lovecraft. A Wikipedia search could bring up enough facts about it to make any Hollywood screenwriter seem sufficiently knowledgeable about the work; thus its appearance in the pop-song scored, tween show of which Ben was a fan.

But in truth, the book had existed over millennia, though it had been called a couple of different things:
The Red Dragon, The Great Grimoire.
These texts had all been combined, picked apart, then combined again. But the original text was thought to have come from one man, some seven hundred years before Christ’s birth in Sumeria, what is now Iraq. It had been recopied, abridged and added to over centuries. The original was in an ancient form of Arabic, but it was later translated into Latin, Greek, German, and French by other scholars, monks, and priests.

The book contained ancient rights and spells with which to bind gods, which were in actuality demons. When the book was translated by Christians it was interpreted with less mysticism and more religion. The unorthodox nature of the text made many Christian scholars nervous, so they added locks and safety measures into the text, but it still stayed powerful.

Despite the changes made to the incantations, the text included spells for necromancy, raising the dead, the binding of demons, and mastery over the earthbound. If someone knew what they were doing the book was as potent as the day it was written. But there was one spell in particular—the only spell in the
Necronomicon
which Dean was interested in—a spell that could raise Lucifer.

The brothers had toiled to get Lucifer into the cage, but the
Necronomicon
was written to release Lucifer and bind him—a whole different story to raising Lucifer and starting the Apocalypse. It had never been done before because all sixty-six seals had to have been broken. But Sam had taken care of that and that meant that, in theory at least, Lucifer could now be raised and bound.

If Dean could get Lucifer out of Hell, he would be getting Sam out of the cage as well. Lucifer would no longer have to fight Michael, so he might have lost his spunk and perhaps could be lassoed silent for enough time for Dean to expel Lucifer from his brother’s body. But the first step would be freeing Lucifer.

Dean thought about where he could find a complete enough version of the book. The brothers had run into a
Necronomicon
a couple of times, though usually only abridged, watered-down, fit-for-public-consumption pamphlets. An elementary version of the book had been used by the teens who had switched Sam into the body of a suburban geek a couple of years ago. It was witchcraft all right, but the pesky, pimpled kids had probably picked up their copy in a head shop.

The actual
Necronomicon
was locked up in a cloister somewhere in Europe. Chances were that H.P. Lovecraft had made most of his version up, since reading from the actual text is often fatal—it can only be used by someone very practiced and powerful. Dean was pretty sure that Amazon wasn’t selling the originals. He had to find a real one.

And then who would help him cast the spell? He needed someone who knew how to handle powerful magic. Witches and those who practice witchcraft had used the
Necronomicon
and texts like it since ancient cultures developed an alphabet. The lineage of the sorcerers familiar with the book trickled down from ancient Sumeria to today. But where was Dean going to find a witch? He couldn’t ask Bobby to point him in the right direction, and he and Sam had ganked every other witch that they had encountered. Finding a witch that was powerful enough and willing to help Dean might be difficult in Cicero, Indiana.

Dean sat down next to Ben, who again commandeered the remote.

“You want more?” Lisa called to Dean. “If not I’m saving it for leftovers.”

Dean didn’t answer, he was thinking about his brother.

Sam peered at the house through the Impala’s rain-splattered windshield. They had followed their mark home, but there hadn’t been any movement since he went inside.

“What do you think he’s doing in there?” Sam asked.

“What else would a guy who has killed everyone in his family be doing?” Dean said.

“You think he did it?” Sam asked.

“Totally. You’re such a softy, Sam. You think he’s in there making a fluffer-nutter and sitting down to watch
Frontline
? No, he’s getting ready to go out and eat more human flesh. He’s the last man standing. Of course he did it. He’s gotta be a rugaru or a shapeshifter or something.”

Sam wasn’t so sure. Granted, Nick Warner
had
been found in the house where all three of his family members were found dead. But he claimed that he was sleeping and didn’t hear anything. Plus, the police had cleared him. However, in all of Sam and Dean’s travels they had come across stranger things. It could be a case of amnesia. Certainly in werewolf cases they had encountered the infected people didn’t remember anything when they turned back. Maybe Nick Warner didn’t remember killing his family.

“We have to just wait and see.”

“Well, I’ve had enough, I’m going in,” Dean said as he kicked open the car door and grabbed his sawed-off from the back seat.

“Dean, wait. What’re you gonna do? Just walk into the guy’s house? That’s breaking and entering,” Sam said, following closely behind his brother, shotgun in hand.

“Not the way I do it. The way I do it, it’s just breaking.”

Dean stomped up the steps and yelled, “Nick Warner, we know you’re in there. Come out with your hands up or we’re coming to get you!”

“What are you going to do when he comes out and sees you’re not the police, Kojak?” Sam asked.

Dean ran his fingers through his hair. “Just let me handle that pa—”

A horrible scream came from inside the house. Followed by the sound of breaking furniture.

“Watch out!” Dean cried.

He stepped back, then hurled his shoulder into the door. The lock splintered away, revealing the dark interior beyond.

“Mr. Warner? Nick Warner?” Sam called.

The house had fallen silent. Dean motioned that he was going to check the back rooms, and he indicated that Sam should sweep the upper floors. As Sam crept up the stairway, a dark streak crossed quickly before him. A door slammed at the top of the landing. Sam stood before the door with his shotgun at the ready, then slowly turned the door handle and entered the room.

On the bed a nasty old crone crouched over a tied and bound man, who Sam assumed to be Nick Warner. She was up to her elbows in Nick, her hand jammed into his mouth. Nick was turning blue. She was trying to tear out his heart.

Sam pulled the trigger back and aimed at the crone’s back. But she was quick. In moments, the old hag humped on top of him and overpowered his large frame. He struggled beneath her weight, her putrid breath wet his face with corpse-smelling saliva.

“Dean!” Sam yelled.

The crone was stronger than her bony body suggested. Both Sam’s arms were pinned to the floor. She bent down and examined Sam’s face. Sam half expected her to tell him how pretty he was. Instead she said, “I’m going to eat your heart.”

“Talk about cliché,” Dean said from the doorway.

The crone’s dark pupils swept over Dean.

“You’re next. But first I’m going to take his liver,” she cackled.

She shot her arm down Sam’s throat. His eyes bugged out, and he fought against her with his one free arm.

BLAM! The bullet blew apart the crone’s head. Her body slumped over. Sam gagged and threw the body off him. He rubbed his tongue with his hand, trying to get the taste of the old woman’s disgusting limb out of his mouth.

“Yum. Croney,” Dean said.

He took one look at Nick Warner and his smile vanished.

“Let’s get this poor guy to the hospital. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“I almost lost a liver. I can still feel her fingers touching my stomach lining,” Sam said with a grimace. “So, I guess Nick wasn’t to blame.”

“Nope, guess not,” Dean said, untying the poor man from the bed. He then hoisted him onto his shoulder. “Come on, let’s get going.”

Later that night, as Dean and Sam drove out of the small North Dakota town, they both enjoyed a moment of quiet contemplation. The feeling that they were doing good in the world.

Dean woke from his reverie.

“You seem far away.” Lisa leaned back in her lawn chair and regarded Dean.

It was a very warm day, summer was in full swing and Ben was out riding his bike with friends. Dean had been staring into space silently for a good twenty minutes without speaking. His mind
was
far away, in a different dimension entirely, he was thinking about breaking Sam out of the cage. The terrible dreams about Sam had stopped, but Dean’s obsession with springing Sam had not.

“What’s going on in there?” Lisa tapped Dean’s head with her index finger.

Dean dusted away the cobwebs.

“I’m good. I’m good. Don’t I look good?”

“Yes. I was just wondering what you were thinking,” Lisa said, then held up her hand in defense. “I know it’s one of the cardinal sins of relationships to ask a guy what he’s thinking. But I figure I have a kid, I’m way past stuff like that.”

“I’m thinking...” Dean in fact knew he couldn’t tell Lisa what he was thinking.
The
Necronomicon, he thought.
I’m thinking about how I’m going to find a powerful ancient book, steal it, and then use it to bounce my brother
—
who is probably already ripped to shreds
—
out of Hell. I know I said I would stop obsessing about Sam. But I just can’t help but think this book could get me my brother back.

Now of course finding a copy will prove difficult, there might not even be one in the United States. Even if I do get my hands on it, I’ll have other problems, like figuring out how to get Lucifer out of my brother’s body. I’m hoping the binding spell in the
Necronomicon
will help me cast Lucifer back, just not in Sam’s body.

To top it all off, thinking I need to find a powerful person, most likely a witch, to help me with the whole thing. So basically I’m thinking about doing the impossible
—
getting Sam out of Hell.

Dean knew he couldn’t say all that to Lisa. So he said the thing that every woman likes to hear.

“Let’s go on vacation.”

Lisa sat up to face him. “Really? Dean, that would be so wonderful. Ben would love that. The last vacation Ben and I had was when he was six. We went to a water park in Michigan and I got the flu and couldn’t take him on any of the rides. A vacation would be perfect.” She leaned over and kissed Dean on the mouth.

“Wow, if I’d known I’d get that reaction I would have mentioned it weeks ago.”

“Where are we going to go?” Lisa asked.

Where would we go?
Dean thought about it. He responded with an answer that was impossible to disagree with.

“It’s a surprise, been planning it for a while. I’ll let you know.”