Supernatural: One Year Gone (11 page)

“Dabbles in witchcraft? How do you ‘dabble’ in witchcraft?” Dean asked.

“Okay, fine. She’s like really, really into it. I try not to get in her way. Connie’s like old school, been in town forever, way before the Skechers store and the yogurt shops started opening up.”

“So, you’re a good witch?” Dean raised an eyebrow.

“Just call me Glinda,” Sukie said.

“Right, I get it. So where can I find this Connie? If she’s pretty hooked in, I’d like to talk to her.”

“Umm. I guess I can tell you where she lives.” Sukie shrugged. “Her old family place, last name of Hennrick. Go north out of town, you can’t miss it. What did you say your name was?”

“I didn’t,” Dean said.

“Weird, ’cause you look sorta familiar. You have family in town?”

“What’s with the
Who Do You Think You Are?
genealogy questions?” Dean said, a little miffed.

“Wow, way to go for the Friday night TV. Were you under house arrest? No one watches that.”

“Okay, Glinda, I’m out of here. And since you beaned me with a bat, I expect you’re going to forget that your back door had an accident.”

“Like I said, I have a wealth spell. I’m not worried,” Sukie said.

Dean wanted to find Lisa’s attacker, but was beginning to get the distinct feeling that there was more to Salem than he had first thought. He left by the broken back door.

At the front of the store, Sam got out of his truck and peeked through the window. He spotted a shopgirl and banged on the glass.

She looked up and mouthed, “We’re closed.”

“I just have a quick question,” Sam yelled, indicating he needed her to open the door.

“Dude, come back tomorrow.” She shook her head and went to the back of the store.

Sam cautiously doubled back to the alley where he had seen Dean. The coast was clear. Sam walked up the alley and peeked his head through the doorway. The girl stood there surveying the damage to the door.

“I just have a couple questions,” Sam said.

“Listen Bigfoot, I’m already late, so if you don’t mind, I’m just going to close this here door on your face and you can come back tomorrow to get your glow-in-the-dark witch mask.”

“Okay Sabrina, cut the crap,” Sam said, his patience at an end. “I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re gonna flap those sweet hippy lips of yours. Get it?”

“Oh wow, the sensitivity training is doing wonders. You throw any puppies into rivers lately? Tell me, how do you feel?” The girl had lost her fresh-faced gaze, and she now looked decidedly mean. “Because I’ve seen corpses before, but never one walking and talking like you. Though you don’t so much walk as lumber.”

“What the hell are you on about?” Sam demanded. He hadn’t met many people who could tell straight off that he was... unusual.

“Puh-lease, you can see your silly walk from a mile away.”

“I meant about me,” Sam growled.

“I’m a witch, lug-head. I got powers. I can feel things. You’re off. Can’t you feel that?”

Sam wasn’t in an introspective mood.

“What’d you say to him?” He inclined his head down the alley, in the direction Dean had presumably headed.

The girl smirked. “Who? The guy that just left? He your shower-buddy or something? You guys look similar—same Cro-Magnon brow.”

“He’s my... Forget it. What did he want?” Sam demanded.

“His girlfriend got sick. He thought someone like me or my boss might have hexed her. We carry a lot of shit here. I told him I didn’t do anything. He and the chick seemed harmless. I might have mentioned that my boss was into heavier shit. But that’s it. I sent him on his way. I don’t need people up in my grill. I played it nice and sweet with him. You, I don’t like too much.”

“Well, glad I’m getting to see the real you. What about the other witch-bitches around here, know anything about what they’re doing?”

“I don’t hang with anyone else if that’s what you mean. I live with my mom, who makes soap for a living. I work, I text my boyfriend, and occasionally I rearrange my Netflix queue. Like I told the other guy, not everyone with a gift hangs around together here. I know it’s Salem, but we don’t all put on witchy hats and ride around on brooms.”

“And that guy just went away, you didn’t tell him anything else?” Sam was skeptical this chick was telling the truth.

“Yawn. Yes, and no. Can I go now?”

“Yeah.” Sam spun around on his heel and walked back down the alley.

“You’re welcome,” the girl shouted after him. “Dick.”

A cool evening fog rolled in from the ocean. Dean walked back toward the inn. He took a shortcut through an old graveyard. Under normal circumstances Dean would end up digging and burning things when he was in a bone yard, but he found himself looking at the worn stone faces of various headstones. Lichen stuck to the weathered stones, making some of the names difficult to read. Nevertheless Dean found himself enthralled. These people had all been accused of witchcraft.

Dean knew a little about the history of the Salem witch trials. He supposed that maybe the people lying underfoot could actually have been witches, in that case, good riddance to them. But he also knew that envy and suspicion could cause a lot more harm than a couple of people doing spells so their crops didn’t die.

Dean reached the inn, crossed the street and threw his duffle in the trunk of the car. He supposed that he should probably go up and see how Lisa and Ben were doing, he peered up at their bedroom window, the curtains were tightly drawn. But he really wanted to find this Connie woman. If she practiced the dark arts like her employee said, then she might be behind the attack on Lisa. She also might be powerful enough to be able to help him raise Sam. Either way, Dean needed to find out more information before he confronted Connie Hennrick.

Closing the trunk, Dean headed into the lobby of the inn. Ingrid smiled saltily from behind the counter. She waved Dean over. In front of her was an itemized bill of the damage to their room.

“I’m having the curtains and floor professionally cleaned. The fire you started in the waste basket smelled everything up. I’ve also moved you all to a different room.”

Dean nodded and thanked her. He really didn’t care. But now more than ever he wished they were staying in one of his usual crap-hole motels. He put on his sweetest smile.

“Ingrid, if I wanted to find out information about a family who’s been in Salem for a while, where would I go? Is there a library in town or something?” Even in the age of the Internet, some information could only be culled from old-fashioned records.

“There’s the Peabody Essex Museum. Not walking distance though. Lots of tourists go there to see if they were related to anyone in the Salem witch trials. My great, great, great, great grandmother lived in Boston and her husband came up to see the Court of Oyer and Terminer.”

“The court of what?” Dean asked.

“It’s the court that heard the testimony of all the girls accusing people of being witches. In any case, Peabody Museum. Look up your ancestor names. Though I never heard of Winchesters in Salem.”

“Probably not. Thanks for the info,” Dean said.

Dean made his way back out of the door again. After changing into a tweed jacket and khakis—his professor outfit—Dean followed his GPS to the museum.

An old woman in a beige pantsuit was just locking the door from the inside as Dean walked up. He rapped on the glass panel of the door and mustered his most academic-looking smile, pressing a Harvard ID up against the glass.

The old woman unlocked the door.

“Sorry, we’re closed. Come back tomorrow,” she said and went to close the door again.

Dean stuck his foot against it to stop her. He smiled winningly.

“Pardon my tardiness,” he began, and cleared his throat. “I’m Doctor Jones from Harvard. I have a lecture tomorrow and I’m terribly behind on a crucial part of my research. Is there any way...?” Dean gestured with his hand.

The old woman looked him over. Dean beamed at her, turning up the charm another notch and keeping his foot in place against the door.

It must have worked as she smiled brightly back at him, nodded, opened the door and ushered Dean into a wood-paneled room.

“Now what family are you looking for, Doctor Jones?” she asked Dean, moving behind the counter.

“I’m actually looking for information on the Hennricks,” Dean said.

“Humm, I’m not sure if we have much on that family. Let me see,” she said, taking a list from a draw in the table.

Dean peered at it from upside down, it seemed to be a list of families starting from when Salem was first settled in 1628.

“Hmm. Abbey, Adams, Allen, Baily, Bayley, Bibber, Churchill, Campbell, Cory—”

“Wait,” Dean said, taking the paper and flipping it so he could read it the right way round. “Campbell?”

“Yes, right here.” She jabbed the paper. “Not much there though, if I remember correctly. I can get the box for you, if you want.”

“Yes please,” Dean said.

The old woman disappeared for a few minutes and then shuffled back holding a dusty box.

“This is all we have on the Campbells. Let me know if you need anything else,” she said. “I have a few things to finish up so I can give you about half an hour.”

Dean nodded and thanked her. She left him to it and he sat down at one of the dark-wood tables near by and opened up the box.

Inside was an old leather journal, imprinted in faded gold script “Nathaniel Campbell.” Dean carefully opened the cottony, yellowed pages.

He had never heard of any Campbell relatives in Salem, Massachusetts. Though he didn’t know about many relatives past his grandparents, Samuel and Deanna. But whoever this Nathaniel Campbell was, it seemed he was an avid journal writer.

Dean peered at the first page, it was dated 1664. A flowing brown script spread across the page. He began to read:

I signed the homestead papers today with the honorable Cotton Mather. The price is three English pounds each year hence. The property starts around twenty meters from the old oak tree at the corner of the road to Ipswich. It runs around 500 meters wide and some 2,000 meters deep. On the west side it is bordered by a small brook, and on the south by the river that runs to Ipswich.

Dean stopped reading and flipped through a couple more pages. On a page dated “Feb. 1692” something caught his eye:

A young girl’s body was found north of the village today. Abigail Faulkner age 14 was found in the snow with her throat cut. I asked the village doctor, William Grigg, if I could see the body to give the poor girl her Last Rites. I got there before Reverend Parris—otherwise he surely would have raised a big fuss and then I would not have been able to examine her. The Widow Faulkner did not want to delay one minute, lest her daughter not rise up to Heaven. She gave me permission to administer them. I insisted on having a moment or two alone with the body first in order to “make it right and proper” for the widow to see her daughter. In that short amount of time I came to a couple of clear conclusions that I am sure the good physician will not. Namely, the girl’s neck was broken, even though it was sliced, the neck bones were pulverized, as if by a regular wood-chopping axe. But there was no bruising in the back of her neck. I fear the force might have come from something otherworldly. I am quite sure I exterminated the witches some years back, but perhaps more have fallen under the dark spell of Satan. I can only hope not.

But I fear that my sons may be correct: Witches are again in Salem.

Dean sat back and stared at the page. Could this be the journal of his ancestor? Could Nathaniel Campbell be a great, great, great grandfather on his mother’s side? Dean shuddered. He had to read the rest of the journal.

Rising from his seat he peered out into the dark corridor beyond the wood-paneled room. The click, click, click of the docent’s heels pierced the silence. Dean always carried his father’s journal in his jacket pocket. With Sam gone, Dean really had nothing else to connect him to his family. He removed the leather cover of Nathaniel’s journal with his pocket knife, then carefully wrapped it around John Winchester’s. They were of a similar weight and size and surely no one else would be coming to look at an old Campbell family journal. When Dean was finished he would return and switch them back.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” the old woman asked as Dean passed her on his way out.

“And more,” Dean said.

Dean drove back to the bed and breakfast and was relieved to find Lisa and Ben watching TV and eating burgers they had ordered from the inn’s kitchen—one waited for him as well.

Lisa said she was feeling better, but she still looked pale. She said she was going to rally in the morning so they could go see the clipper ships. Ben proceeded to speak in a pirate accent for the rest of the night.

Dean munched his burger and then sat back on the other bed and took out the pages of Nathaniel Campbell’s journal.

“What’s that?” Lisa asked.

“Just something I picked up from the library,” Dean replied.

He started to read about a family of hunters named Campbell.