As It Was - Dean Winchester

Part 39

"Any headstones outside?" Sam asked once Dean made his way into the house.

"Yeah, right. Is it ever that easy?" The older Winchester slumped his bag onto an old, dusty couch.

"I guess not."

"Okay," I said, making up a game plan in my head. "Sam, you check upstairs. Bring Molly. Dean and I'll check down here." I looked between the brothers. "We're looking for anything that might indicate where Jonah might be buried. Old records, notes, or even pictures. Anything that you might deem helpful." 

"Yeah, yeah," Dean mumbled. "We know." 

Sam and Molly did as I asked and went upstairs, and I instantly began to search the rooms. Papers were thrown all over the place, and it was a mess, but I could still see the charm it might have had once. And; I had looked everywhere.

"Price," Dean said cautiously, stopping dead in his tracks once he saw me. "What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to figure out where I would put important papers." 

"By staring into space?" 

I ignored him and looked to the kitchen on my right. The counter was cluttered with mail, and I began to sift through it again. "I'm calculating probability." 

"I'm not even gonna ask," he mumbled in a husky tone of voice, but I saw the tug on the corner of his lips.

"I think it's better if you don't. You're distracting me," I smirked but then let out a sigh when I found nothing of interest and moved on to checking every drawer in the kitchen. "Did you find a study?"

"No, there might be one upstairs," Dean told me in a husky voice. "I'm distracting you?"

I looked up from my current position on all four on the floor, initially looking for false bottoms on the drawers. "What?" I got to my feet, distracted by our work. "Did you say upstairs had a study?"

"Maybe. Sure as hell ain't down here." 

I hurried past him and up the stairs, completely giving up on finding anything new downstairs. 

"It's a love letter he wrote her." Molly's voice carried down from a room further down the hallway. I just reached the top of the stairs. "My god, it's beautiful. I don't understand how a guy like this can turn into that monster."

"Um... Spirits like Greeley are, uh... like wounded animals. Lost. In so much pain that... they lash out," Sam explained delicately.

"Why? Why are they here?" Molly wanted to know. I made my way towards their voices, checking every room I passed.

"Well, there's some part of them that... that's keeping them here. Like their remains or, um... unfinished business."

"Unfinished business?"

"Yeah. Uh, it could be revenge. Could be love. Or hate. Whatever it is, some spirits hold on too tight. Can't let go. So they're trapped. Caught in the same loops. Replaying the same tragedies over and over." When Sam spoke, it struck a chord within me. It was such a fitting description.

"You sound almost sorry for them," Molly spoke softly.

I finally reached the room they were in. It was a mess, filled with papers and pictures everywhere, graffiti on the walls, and old crumpled papers and broken glass from the windows. 

"Well, they weren't evil people, you know?" Sam went on as I leaned against the doorway, listening undetected. "A lot of them were good. Just... Something happened to them. Something they couldn't control." Sam and Molly were sitting on the bed with an old album. Sam's hair had grown long, and I stopped an impulse to ask if I could cut it.