Chapter Text
“And how do you plead?”
“Sir, I swear, I know nothing of it!” Her voice cracks beneath the fragile skin of her throat and splinters in such a way that all the crowd winces, as though her protestations have sent sharp fragments out among those gathered. She must realise that this small break cannot win the crowd to her, for something in the shattering of her words rallies the terror in their chests; that she is something barbed as glass needles, something warped, monstrous. A trial is no place for sharp sounds or jolting motion, considering the accusations which stand above her, the weight of heaven’s courts of judgement. The air is already thick with fear. Her body begins to heave.
Her face, wet with tears, twists as the sobs racking her body turn violent. Dean cannot bear to witness, and looks away. A glance backward from John tells him to turn his head to the girl again. He regrets that weakness, which he has suffered since his first witness of a trial: the impulse to look away. His father has always seemed to know the precise moment he would.
No use of the rod, no amount of preaching, no word of rebuke, has ever corrected that instinct in him.
No one parish to preach to, Reverend John Winchester has wandered the coasts of New England for over a decade. John’s two sons, Samuel and Dean, have trailed alongside him in the isolated settlements across this vast, unknowable land, a sprawl of contorted woodland, of marsh, wending rivers and their thick, dark riverbeds, pale silhouettes of hills standing watch over the anxious towns that sit, so precarious, at their feet.
On Sundays, in each town, John would visit pulpits. When it was not the Sabbath, he would visit homes, then cells, then courts.
When he had to, of course, he would also stand accuser at the gallows.
Abstinence. The edge of a wilderness, John always described it. Dean remembers their old town better than Sam, who remembers little at all. It has been long weeks of travel toward her, the year cooling as they have drawn near. Few stops were made.
John says the Lord has called him home, and he has never been one to tarry on God’s commands. Approaching the town, a delicate mist, sheer and white, has settled on everything. It smears against the town walls, which John grimly enters without trouble or interrogation from the guard on duty. They’ve been expected, some weeks now.
Were they not, all John would need to recite would be his name, powerful as an oath, and they would enter.
Wandering further inwards, the mist becomes a fog. Dean glances to his father: John has always had a divine intuition of any settlement, unweaving evil from where it has been stitched into a homestead, opening the eyes of those blind to it. His jaw is set, a singular thick line carved between his brows, mouth turned at the smallest angle downwards. Any other person, indeed, any other son, wouldn’t notice, nor know to notice. But Dean is not just any son: most loyal and attentive soldier in his father’s war.
John’s face says, before he needs to utter any words, that now this evil lodges here in Abstinence—once the most holy of hometowns.
“It’s not as we left it?” Dean asks. No answer.
Atop his horse, a large black stallion named Retribution, John is carried from town to town to bring judgement to all the sinful who might dwell there. He’s done so, near two decades.
Sam and Dean walk beside him, no horses, nor any need for them. Dean reminds his brother regularly, Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be prolonged upon the land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
The smoke climbing in pillars from each of the homes melts into the fog; Dean can distinguish vague shapes looking out from behind windows dim with candlelight. By the time they reach their destination, their father’s old house, they can barely see three feet ahead of them. A crow, sat atop the fence, emerges from the mists.
It doesn’t fly as they approach it, nor even as they open the gate it sits perched on, until John, down from his horse, swats it away with quiet rage at its defiance. All of John’s anger is quiet, until one act too far in contradiction to his authority fans something loud and bright as fire from him.
The crow lifts on the air to land on top of the house.
Dean takes the reins of Retribution, handed to him with wordless instruction. He ties the horse to his post, will walk him to the stables within the hour. For now, they have a home to return to.
The house, when they enter it, is cold: brick lays by brick like packed corpses. The fireplace is an empty coffin.
“Light that,” John gestures, dropping his bag at the table. Dean sets immediately to taking the firewood and ordering it. They sent word ahead that they were coming: someone has at least piled wood, dry and good for use, in a basket. John removes two candlesticks from his pack, those he takes everywhere they go. “Light these.”
Dean gets up from where he had been knelt, at the fireplace, to do so.
He takes his father’s pack upstairs when it is handed to him, up to his room. The belongings of him and his brother, he takes to their joint bedroom. It stands sparse and bare as ever, though the blame for this can hardly be on their long leave of absence: John has always preached a life of humility and scarcity—Lay not up treasures for yourselves upon the earth, where the moth and canker corrupt, and where thieves dig through and steal. But lay up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where neither the moth nor canker corrupteth, and where thieves neither dig through nor steal.
Dean looks out of the window of his and Sam’s chamber, which faces the town. The weather being grim as it is, all he can make out are the vague hulking shadows of what must be houses. Some way beyond those, and down the faint gradient of a slope, lies the lake, still and silent.
The crow has returned to its perch on the gate. It cocks its dark head and seems to peer at Dean. He shivers and turns back down the narrow stairs of their new, old home.
Down in the single room of the ground floor, John sits at the table, already having pulled his papers out, poring over them with his grim and sombre focus. Sam stands, poking at the fire, back turned intentionally to their father.
A distance between them started in Sam’s adolescence has only deepened with the stretch of the past few years: now nineteen, at the cusp of manhood, Sam’s gaze at John when his back is turned, or when his eyes fall elsewhere, is filled with voiceless rage, sharp as broken ice.
“Take Retribution to the stables,” John says, not looking up from his papers, scratching something down. “And make my presence known to the Mayor. Then visit the Minister, make my arrival known to him.”
Dean is unsure of how the minister will respond to the presence of another ordained man in the town, indeed its old reverend, ready to settle here, again. At least for the time being. He knows better than to voice his concern.
“Take this,” John says, lifting a note and handing it to Dean, without raising his head from his papers, “give it to the mayor. No others may see it.”
“Yes, father.”
“I don’t know this new minister,” John continues. “I do not know his ways. I’ve no doubt he is a Godly man: the mayor would surely not have allowed his presence, were he not. But remember the words of the Apostle Peter. Beware false prophets,” here, at last, he looks at Dean, who finds himself flush with fear and joy, as with any time his father’s gaze turns on him, “they shall bring upon themselves swift destruction.”
“Yes, father.” Dean’s throat is tight.
“I am calling a town meeting. Let them know.”
“I will, father.”
“A sickness has fallen on Abstinence. The air is foul and putrid with it. It stalks along the streets, hides in the homes, perhaps, even, sits at the very pews the righteous and upright sit at, on the Sabbath. The Lord has called upon me to press it out.”
“Yes, father.”
“Go.”
Dean turns, heart twisting that he leaves Sam alone in the presence of John. Out in the cool air, the crow still sits on the gate, head cocked so that the beadiness of his gaze might prick through the window of their home, to the back of John’s head as he pores again over his papers.
Dean jolts when it turns its head to face him, instead.
Through the town again, through the mist, bile lying uneasy in his stomach, Dean makes his way toward the Mayor’s house. The way is a pale confusion: the mire has washed the world of colour. Mayor Zachariah Payne has been one of John Winchester’s closest confidantes and allies, these nineteen years, a man of God, like John himself, Mayor of Abstinence, even back when John was still its Pastor. Both built the town together, laid its foundations and raised its walls high to protect its people from the monsters beyond. Now, it seems, the monsters are within.
A maid opens the door of the Mayor’s home.
“I’ve come for the Mayor. I have a message for him. Fetch him for me?”
The maid shakes her head. “I cannot, Sir. Mayor Payne is not available.”
“I carry a message for him,” Dean pulls the note from his breast pocket, but holds tight to it, pulling it back, when the servant attempts to take it from him. “None but the Mayor may see it. I’m to give it directly to him.”
“He’s only inside,” the maid says. “I’ll hand it to him.”
“If he’s only inside, I can give it to him, myself,” Dean reasons, but the maid blocks his path through the door.
“No, Sir,” she says, “sorry, sir.”
A sound comes from within the house, strange, strangled and unfamiliar to Dean. The maid’s countenance flickers at it, only a feather of movement.
“The Mayor can’t see you,” she says again. “I’ll take the note.”
All her limbs are stiff. Her features purse as though she holds back a frown.
Dean falters, handing the note to her. “Direct to him, you understand? No one may see it. My father also wishes to call a town meeting. He’s asked me to inform the Mayor.”
The myself is hopefully implicit, but the maid pays it no mind.
“Your father?” she raises her eyebrows.
“John Winchester.”
Something new slides across her features. Dean is something gratified to see that his father’s name yet carries due weight in their old home.
“Is that everything?”
“—Anything else will be in the note,” Dean answers, a little more confused, still. This is a mightily cold reception for the oldest son of John Winchester, once-Minister of this small settlement, now renowned across New England for his services to Heaven, his ridding the earth of everything borne of Hell. “It is for the Mayor only. You understand?”
Another sound from within the house. The maid doesn’t answer.
“And you’re to pass on to your master that my father has requested a town meeting,” Dean presses. “The chapel is still in use for this?” he asks.
“Yes,” the maid replies, still distracted.
“And where does the Minister live, now?” Their old home, its gutted shell, could not possibly be the place he resides. A nauseated longing rises from the pit of Dean.
The maid points behind him, at a point just above his right shoulder.
“One street across the way, there.”
“Mighty far way from the church, for its very minister to live.”
“This place is hardly Charlestown.”
And Dean has been.
No, she’s right: the centre of Abstinence is made of only two main streets, running in parallel. The larger of these leads direct to the meetinghouse, which sits, with a sheet of water behind it, eerily still and vast, sheltered by the headland. Any small waves and ripples which happen upon its surface seem a disruption, an imposition. There ought to be nothing which moves there.
By its depth, and the decay of many plants that fall into it, the lake sweeps out, pitch as the devil’s eyes. A few islands lie scattered about on the water, those that live on these hardly belonging anywhere, though they might shrug on the name of Abstinence as their residence for the sake of convenience or protection. A few fishermen and crabbers, as far as Dean can tell, and when storms roll in from the ocean just beyond, he has little understanding of how they anchor down to those pieces of land swimming in the cold expanse.
When he had but three years to his name, and the greatest storm in memory rolled in from the sea, three bodies of fishermen, cold and clammy and half-eaten, washed up on the shores of Abstinence. He remembers the gaping arch of an exposed ribcage, a crab flicking between its bars of bone and graying, torn skin. The lake delivered them with its tar of rot and no currents, waves or tides to speak of. In the months following it became clear there was dark work of magic braiding its way through Abstinence.
“I’ll give this to the Mayor,” the maid says, distracted, as another cracking sound, bone-jarring in its unfamiliarity, comes from within. Before he can respond, the door is closed in Dean’s face.
Dean makes his way back through the fog, towards the residence of the town minister. He hardly knows what to expect—if chosen by Zachariah, as John has said, he will surely be an upright man, preaching only the word of God, charged with every ounce of its rage and love. How this minister will take John’s return is another question. The politics of ministry and of men’s vanities are less straightforward than the paths laid out by the Lord.
The Minister’s new home is small. When Dean knocks, the door is answered by a man with graying hair a little longer than it ought to be. His untrimmed beard sits, long, and also graying. He looks more like a vagrant than the minister of a devout parish.
Though, as John suggests, perhaps not so devout, any longer.
“Sir,” Dean bows, as taken aback as the minister seems, himself. “My father, John Winchester, sent me to let you know of our arrival—return—to this town.”
The Minister only looks at him a moment, with a frown, before searching beyond him, out to the misty and deserted street.
“Winchester,” he nods, distracted. “His oldest?” Dean confirms. “So, he’s returned.”
Dean confirms again, out of kilter.
“How do you fare?” The Minister asks, after a silence which Dean knows it would be imposition to break, himself.
“Yes, well enough, Sir.”
“Your journey brought no trouble, I trust?”
“None of note, Sir.”
The Minister cocks his head back to Dean, from where his gaze had drifted once more, out to the street.
“Cain Turner,” he holds out his hand to Dean. “Minister Cain, or Reverend Turner, or some variant. And what should I call you?”
Dean can’t find speech for a moment. “Winchester will be perfectly fine, Sir. My name is Dean Winchester.”
“Yes,” the reverend says, fixing a strange look upon him. “A name your mother chose.”
Dean is startled. He manages to fumble out, “You knew my—”
“You will have met my niece, Miss Anna, perhaps some years ago. Now to her addition there is Muriel and Esther Milton.”
Dean’s eyebrows shoot upwards.
“Yes,” he confirms. “I—”
“Though I hardly expect you to remember anything of this town, of course. Mrs Milton is my sister. Younger by some margin, I’m sure you’ll believe.”
“I hardly knew she had a brother.”
The reverend pauses.
“Well, I’ll take your leave,” he says, though Dean stands in the doorway of his house, “I am certain you would appreciate the opportunity to settle, once more. I will make myself known to your father before the evening. Pass on my regards, for now.”
And so a second door of Abstinence is closed in Dean’s face.