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The dark clouds rolled over the plains of Kansas, ominously swirling while the sleek body of the Impala raced down the highway. It hadn't started to rain but it looked like it was about to at any minute. Dean kept his eyes on the road, occasionally throwing furtive glances up at the clouds.
"This is going to be a nasty one," he commented.
Sam sat quietly by Dean's side, flipping through the weather information on his phone.
"It says there are tornado watches all through this area and even into the next county. This weather system looks intense."
"This is frickin' Kansas. When is this state not on a tornado watch? We'll be fine," Dean said, tightening his grip on the steering wheel and pressing his foot a little harder on the gas. The sooner they were out of the area the better. He'd been through one tornado in his life and he didn't want to ever experience it again if he could help it. Hell, it ranked in his top five things that featured in his reacquiring nightmares.
Lost in his own thoughts, he didn't notice Sam tensing up beside him until his baby brother grabbed ahold of his shoulder.
"De... turn the fuck around. NOW!"
When Dean turned his head to see what Sam's problem was he saw one of the more terrifying sights of his life. One of the cloud formations a mile to their right had started a rotation that descended downward. The spinning winds kicked up dust in a way that the remainder of the funnel filled out and met in the middle. Panic gripped Dean's insides, threatening to turn his bowels to water. He turned to judge the distance ahead of them and saw a house up ahead. Maybe if they could get there the folks would let them into their shelter.
"Dean! What are you doing man? Go the other way!" Sam sounded frantic as he kept looking between the funnel and the road, his hand braced on the dashboard as Dean pushed the car to the point of its roar almost drowning out the sound of the wind.
"Damned thing could end up chasing us. We're going to that house. Maybe they have a cellar or something," Dean said through clenched teeth as what first appeared a nice farmhouse from a distance started to look like something ripped from one of their hunts. One half of the house’s roof was already caved in, there weren’t any windows or shutters and the whole thing had a definite lean to it. Looking around, Dean considered taking his brother’s advice, but he could already feel the Impala shaking from the gale-force winds. The tornado must have been much closer than he thought.
Sam was struggling to open his door; even using his entire upper body strength it barely budged. Turning, he braced his foot on the door while pulling the release handle and kicked it open with a grunt. Scrambling out, he heard Dean shout from inside the cabin, “Don’t hurt my Baby!”
Reaching back into the cabin, Sam grabbed Dean by the arm and dragged him out.
“Fuck the car, Dean. Now move it!”
As they ran toward the house they heard the door slam shut behind them and the tinkle of shattering glass. Dean could only pray that not only would they survive this but that his prized possession would as well. They had nearly reached the porch of the dilapidated building when they saw a girl around 6 years old appear right in front of them. Her hair was done in twin braids that trailed over her shoulders and her dress was a calico print with a high collar. It was a style not seen since the middle 1800s when Kansas was still a territory peppered with a sparse population.
“Great! It’s haunted,” Sam called out over the wind, slowing down to determine if they were going to be attacked or not.
Dean scowled at his brother, “Bitch at me about it later. We got a much bigger problem.” He was about to turn back to get a shotgun filled with rock salt when the little girl waved them to follow her and started to run around the back of the house.
The men gave each other a brief glance, silently debating whether to follow or arm themselves, when a board came loose and flew by, barely missing either of their heads by inches. That settled it. Dean and Sam followed the spirit child’s path around the back but when they got to the hind part of the house, she flickered out from in front of them only to reappear above an old earthen mound with a worn wooden door.
Racing to the destination, the brothers got the door open and descended the ancient ladder into the hole in the ground. “I fucking hate this,” Dean hissed as he dug around in his pockets for some kind of source of light once the door was latched behind them.
Sam took a small flashlight from his jacket and turned it on.
“Just be glad that a ghost led us here instead of wandering around that house.” He pointed the light at Dean and nodded to the space behind him, edging around him to investigate more. “This goes back deeper. We should get as far back from that door as possible.”
When he didn’t get a response, Sam turned around to see why Dean was so quiet. All he found was his brother rooted to the spot and looking up at the door as it shook. It could have been a trick of the light, but Dean’s skin was white as a sheet. Taking him by the shoulder, Sam steered him to the back of the root cellar, away from the wooden shelves that lined the walls. He pulled Dean down to crouch beside him as the rows of jars of rotted preserves rattled in the shelves around them.
As the wind roared above them like a train was passing close by, the specter appeared before the brothers. Raising her pale hand, the girl pointed at them as her mouth moved wordlessly.
“We don’t need this right now,” Dean muttered while bracing himself against the dirt wall. It reminded him too much of a grave and he fervently hoped it wouldn’t be by the time this was all over.
Sam watched how the girl’s mouth moved as if she were pleading or trying to tell them something important. It was uncommon in their experience for a ghost to try and communicate with them. Most that were stuck on earth were trapped by their own anger at some wrong done to them.
“Dean,” he said, raising his voice above the wind, “I think she’s trying to tell us something.”
Dean turned his attention, or part of it, away from the din around them and focused on the girl who now had both hands raised toward them. Furrowing his brow in concentration, he tried to read her lips.
“Half-Pint wants a pan of peas. A pan of peas? What the hell does that mean? Ghosts don’t get hungry and we sure as hell can’t cook down here.”
The dry rotted door gave a plaintive shudder as the wind started to die down. The roar of the tornado finally passed into the distance only to be followed by heavy rain. Sam’s face pinched in irritation at Dean’s weak attempt at deciphering what the girl was saying. As he was about to say so, she disappeared with a flicker, leaving them alone once more.
“Where’d she go?” Sam asked, scanning around them with only his flashlight to help him see.
“If we’re lucky she moved on and if we’re double lucky then so can we,” Dean said as he mustered himself to his feet. The less time he spent in this place the better, and he had growing anxiety about the state the storm had left his car. “Come on. I don’t want to be here when the weather decides to drop another one of those bitches here.”
“We can’t just leave the spirit of a little girl wandering around.” Sam protested.
Sighing, Dean turned his eyes up to the darkened ceiling.
“She’s not hurting anything from what I’ve seen. Out here in the middle of nowhere. Let her be, Sam.”
With a narrowed gaze, Sam regarded his brother before shaking his head.
“You can do what you want but I’m not leaving until I find out what she was wanting. It might release her.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Then it’s a salt and burn,” Sam said as he made his way past his brother, determined to do what needed to be done. Pushing open the door, he came face to face with the girl once more, only this time she looked disheveled like she’d spent her time out in the storm. Taking a reflexive step back, Sam looked around for something to defend himself with in case she attacked.
Having started to follow Sam out, Dean stopped when he did. It took him a second to realize what Sam was staring at but when he did that wasn’t the only thing he saw. Just over Sam’s shoulder there appeared to be several spirits flickering in and out of sight, all in various states of activity like they were on a looped tape. Dean took hold of his brother’s arm and pulled him back.
“Sam. Look,” he hissed.
Tearing his gaze away from one specter, Sam was confronted with the others milling about. The entire time the wheels in his mind were spinning in an attempt to piece together what was going on. None of them looked to even be aware that they were there. The only ghost that had apparent cognition was the little girl. When Sam went to see if she was still standing at the entrance he found that she’d disappeared again.
“Dean. Where’d she go?” he asked in a near whisper.
Instead of Dean’s deeper voice, the answer that came back was soft and nearly plaintive.
“Samuel, I’m scared and I can’t find Elise.”
Sam spun around, shining the flashlight on Dean. He didn’t know how it was possible but his brother’s usual 6-foot frame seemed smaller somehow. Maybe it was the way he was curling inward while clutching at his elbows like he was seeking some kind of comfort.
“Dean?” Sam asked, watching Dean with a keen eye for some indication if he was screwing around or if there was a much larger problem on their hands.
Dean looked up at Sam with a bottom lip quivering like he was on the verge of tears.
“My name’s not Dean. It’s Winnifred, and if you don’t stop teasing I’m gonna tell Mama.”
If it were physically possible for Sam’s jaw to hit the ground, it would have happened right then. His brother was possessed by a little girl. Realizing that he wasn’t immediately dealing with a vengeful spirit, Sam held up his hands in a placating gesture and took a tentative step toward Dean.
“Alright, Winnie. I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you in the dark. Can you tell me who Elise is?”
“My dolly,” she said with Dean’s voice and sniffled, “I have to find her. Will you help me find her please?”
The bizarre nature of this whole situation was something Sam wasn’t ever going to forget. They were in a cellar, surrounded by ghosts and his brother had a little girl inside him. He cringed at his own unspoken wording in regards to the possession, but the fact remained that that was exactly what was happening. Another thing he hadn’t been prepared for was when Dean, or Winnifred, lunged for him. For a split second he thought it was an attack until he was completely enveloped in a desperate hug. Stumbling back a step, he held his hands up, unsure of what he was supposed to do because he started to feel the warmth of slow rolling tears soak through his T-shirt. So he took the next logical step anyone would when confronted with an upset child.
“Um… Don’t cry. I’ll help you,” he said slowly. “Where did you last play with Elise?”
“We were playing house down here, then Mama called us for supper. But when I looked on the shelf I put her, she was gone,” Winnifred said, not lifting her head from Sam’s chest and gripping him tighter. “Mama is gonna be so mad at me.”
Wondering how much Dean was aware of, Sam figured that if he was at all cognizant of the situation it would be just as distressing for him as it was for Winnifred, but for entirely different reasons. Deciding that both personas needed some kind of reassurance, Sam gently wrapped his arm around Dean’s shoulder and hugged him. “Okay. Show me where you sat her down. And we’ll search from there.”
Pulling back, Winnifred wiped the tears from Dean’s face, leaving a muddy streak from the dirt on his hands.
“There,” she said, pointing at the lowest shelf near the ladder. “I looked but I couldn’t see her.”
Flicking the light over to the shelf, Sam glanced back at Dean before making his way over and crouching down.
“Here?” he asked, searching around the cloudy jars and making sure he wasn’t about to touch any spiders before moving some of them aside.
“Yes,” Winnifred said, twisting the tail of Dean’s shirt, “She’s the one Mama made out of corn for me.”
Internally groaning, Sam caught sight of what could have been red flannel once upon a time and pinched the corner of the fabric, lifting it from behind the last row of jars. To him, it looked like a half-rotted corn cob dressed in a quick slip like dress, or possibly apron. The arms looked to be made from braided husks or even grass, which had unfortunately broken with the decay of time. Turning he presented it to Winnifred and pointed the light so she could see.
“Is this it, Winnie?” he asked, slipping into a familiar shortening of her name.
Dean’s eyes lit up with joy as she took the doll, but that joy was short-lived when she saw the state it was in.
“She’s broken,” Winnifred said and then started to sob.
Sam would swear to his dying day that he’d never seen anything so heartbreaking as his brother’s cheeks covered with fat tears.
“Hey. Hey,” Sam said, not thinking twice about who or what was actually upset and started to brush away the tears with his knuckles, “Don’t cry. I’ll try to fix it for you. But we have to go outside. Can you do that? Go up the ladder and be outside?”
Winnifred hugged the doll to Dean’s chest and sucked in a ragged, wet breath as she nodded.
“Good. Then up we go,” Sam said, ushering her toward the ladder and praying that once she had the doll that it would be enough to release her. The last thing he wanted to attempt was salting and burning a doll while the spirit of the child was using Dean as a puppet.
Once they were out in the open, Sam scanned around the area and found that the other spirits had disappeared. The only sound was the soft patter of the last of the rain that fell from the previous storm, although he still could see grey clouds overhead. Not wanting to get caught out in the rain, Sam hurried them both toward the Impala where he barely took notice of the shallow dents in the black surface or the shattered rear passenger window.
Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the spare key to the car and opened the trunk. With a bit of rooting around, he tossed aside many of the items that could be used for the repair as they might need them later on. Eventually, he found a leftover spool of twine.
“This will have to do,” he said, turning to Dean and holding out his hand.
Winnifred’s tears had stopped while she’d watched Sam’s every move with a sense of natural curiosity. When Sam held out his hand, she quickly handed off her treasured toy and worried her bottom lip as he went to work.
Several minutes passed with Sam’s hands twisting and tying the cord together around the corncob so that it resembled outstretched arms with large knots for hands. Finishing the task, he reached back into the trunk and grabbed a marker they usually used for scrawling warding sigils on surfaces. Sticking his tongue into the corner of his mouth while he concentrated, Sam drew a small smiley face on the surface of the doll. “There we are. Elise looks happy now,” he said, handing it back to Winnifred.
Gasping, she took the doll and kissed the top of its head before flinging Dean’s arms around Sam’s neck and kissing his cheek repeatedly.
“Thank you, Samuel. Thank you! You’re the best big brother in the whole wide world!”
Sam was taken aback at the sudden show of affection. It wouldn’t have been so surprising from an actual child but this was the body of his full-grown brother kissing his face with all the enthusiasm of a puppy. It took him a full 20 seconds for his brain to come back online but by that time there was the thin shout of a woman off in the distance.
“Winnefred Campbell! Come in for supper!” the voice called.
Winnifred pulled away from Sam and slipped from Dean’s body as easily as a breeze and would have dropped the older hunter to the ground if Sam hadn’t caught him at the last moment. A ghostly version of the doll was firmly in her grip as she flashed Sam a sweet smile.
“I’ll tell Mama you’re washing up. Don’t take long,” she said before running toward the house, twin braids bouncing behind her until she faded away like smoke.
“What the hell was that?” Dean grumbled as he kept a firm grip on Sam’s forearm while trying to get the world to stop spinning around him, “Did I get hit in the head?”
“No,” Sam said, giving the house one last glance before focusing on his brother. “You were possessed. Are you okay?”
“I’m good. Just a little woozy from getting yanked around by my short and curlies,” Dean said, shaking his head once more in an attempt to clear it.
“Any urges to wear dresses or braid your hair?” Sam asked, unable to resist teasing his brother. After years of Dean’s slight digs at him being a girl, this was a perfect opportunity to get him back.
Dean’s head jerked up to glare at Sam.
“Not cool, dude. Very not cool.” Straightening up to his full height, he gave his head a quick shake and looked down at the doll in his hand. Scowling at the thing, he reached into his pocket and produced his handy lighter. With a flick of the flint, he set the flame to the dry fabric and watched it become engulfed before dropping it to the ground while Sam gave a weak protest. Once the doll was burnt to a crisp, he stepped on the remains to extinguish the flames and spun around on his heel. “Don’t worry, Sammy. I’ll get you a new doll later. Until then, put on your big boy pants and get in the car.”
“Seriously? After all that I’m still the girl?” Sam asked, with a pinched look of irritation.
“If the hair fits,” Dean said with a grin that lasted as long as it took him to notice the broken glass and hail damage to the car. “Sonofabitch!” he shouted in a slurred string as he started to caress the hood’s black finish. “I’m sorry, Baby. That mean storm really worked you over,” he finished with a coo.
Biting back any comment about that little display, Sam shut the trunk and got into the car. He let Dean have his moment of mourning for ‘the love of his life’ then leaned over and blew the horn.
“Let’s go, Laura Ingalls. Bobby’s expecting us by nightfall and we have at least 6 more hours of driving,” he said with a smirk.
Dean circled around the car and finally sat down in the driver’s seat, starting the car with practiced ease while scowling at his brother.
“Just for that, I’m telling Bobby you wear women’s underwear.”
Snorting out a laugh, Sam just shook his head as they backed out onto the road. Dean could tell Bobby whatever he liked. It wasn’t like the older man would care even if he did believe it. All in all, Sam was thankful they’d made it through the last hour or so with nothing worse than a broken window and a very interesting story to tell about a little girl who’d held onto the living world all for the love of a doll.