Denton, Texas
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
“Amanda! Where’s my other shoe?” Melissa hopped around frantically on one foot as she tried to pull one of her tall striped socks on the foot that was raised into the air.
“Check the living room by the TV stand. I had to squash a spider and it was the closest thing I had.”
“My shoes,” said Melissa, “are not weapons. Not these shoes, anyway.” She grabbed the missing footwear from the edge of the floor and reached for her purse. “Let’s go; I don’t want to get caught in the rush hour traffic.”
Amanda nodded quietly and followed Melissa out to the parking lot. It was good to see her friend acting normal again, even if she was pretty sure it was the fake-it-till-you-make-it variety of normal. Brandon Hall’s funeral was on Tuesday, and only the day before, Joshua Gregory had been hauled into the police station after shooting Brian. It was not a good week, and as shaken as Amanda was, she knew it was much worse for Melissa.
They jumped into Amanda’s pale green Corolla and took off towards the highway. As they turned out of the parking lot, Melissa whistled. “What wouldn’t I give to have a car like that,” she said, pointing at the black Impala parked across the street from their apartment complex. “Hell, what wouldn’t I give to have a car that’s not in the shop every other week?”
“If everything goes right today, you’ll be able to buy any car in the world,” said Amanda. “Picture yourself in a Ferrari.”
“Let’s not count our chickies before they hatch,” Melissa replied. But she was already counting and the numbers were a bit on the high side.
*
Dean knocked on the wooden door and waited for a few moments before someone on the other side called out, “Who’s there?”
“Department of Public Safety, ma’am,” he said. The door opened a little bit. “Mrs. Sanchez? I’m Dean Patterson, and this is my partner, Sam Miller.”
She nodded, brown eyes getting large and round. “What is this? Did something happen to Hector?”
“No, no, your husband is fine,” Dean said quickly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just need to ask you a few questions regarding the collision in October of last year.”
Sam and Dean flashed their fake ID cards and followed Maria inside. They looked around the living room, looking for anything that was incongruous “ but the only thing that came to mind was the furniture. The couch was upholstered in pure Italian leather, and the grandfather clock next to the entryway to the dining room was carved cherry wood and worth at least two thousand dollars. And both of them looked brand-new.
“Please, sit down,” Maria said. “Can I get you gentlemen anything to drink? Coffee, hot chocolate?”
“We’re fine, but thank you,” said Dean. “I don’t want to take up any more of your time than we need to. We have to compile a list of traffic fatalities taking place within a certain radius over the last twelve months, and I have a few routine questions to ask you regarding your son, if you don’t mind.”
Maria sat down hard on the leather love seat and closed her eyes. “I have already answered more questions than I ever want to.”
“I know it’s hard,” said Sam, “but we’re trying to prevent more accidents in the future. This won’t take long. I promise.”
She opened her eyes and looked up at them, at Sam’s sympathetic smile and Dean’s straight game face, and slowly nodded. “All right.”
“Thank you,” Dean said. “Just to verify, in the two-car collision that your son was in last year, the occupants of the 1998 Hyundai Excel were your son Jorge and your sister Elena?”
“Yes. She was driving him back from school because I had to work late that day. Elena had only minor injuries “ whiplash, some bruising, and a cut on her leg from broken glass. But my Jorge-”
“It’s all right. We know. What do you do for a living?”
“I was a dental hygienist. I quit in November.”
“I understand. It must be a hard time for you.”
Maria started to cry, and Sam carefully took her hand. They were quiet for a few moments before she started to speak again. “He was such a good boy. Straight A’s, played soccer, never any trouble. We were going to take him trick-or-treating with his friends that night. Had his costume all ready.”
“What was it?” Sam asked.
“Superman. Jorge loved Superman. Always has “ his blue and red pajamas were his favorite.” She wiped at her eyes.
Sam and Dean exchanged glances. X-ray, Sam mouthed.
“I liked Superman when I was little, too,” said Sam. “Flight was my favorite of his powers. I used to imagine that I could fly around my teachers at school and sit on the roof.”
“Jorge wanted to be able to see like Superman, you know, see through things. We even thought about buying him some goggles for Christmas.”
Sam felt the hairs on his neck stand on end again. “X-ray vision,” he said. “That, too.” He paused thoughtfully. “Would Jorge have ever wished for such a thing? For himself or for somebody else?”
“He might have,” said Maria. “He never did tell anyone what his birthday wishes were “ although I thought it might have been for a Playstation.”
“What about at any wishing wells that might be around here?” Dean asked.
“I don’t see what this has to do with the… the crash.”
“It doesn’t, but I’m curious. I thought you might want to just talk about it.”
“There was one. He got the map from a man we met at the doctor’s office, who said that good things came from the well. In September Hector and I took Jorge out to the well and he made a wish there. He wouldn’t tell us what it was.” Maria paused. “I’m pretty sure it was the Playstation, though. He wanted one so much, and just that afternoon, we stopped into a convenience store for snacks and picked up a scratch-off lottery ticket. We won a quarter of a million dollars. My son was the one who picked out the ticket, too.”
“Can you remember how to get to the well?”
“I really don’t remember much,” she said, and then looked at each of them in turn. “You’re not really from the Department of Public Safety, are you.” It wasn’t a question.
“Well, no, ma’am, we’re not,” Dean admitted. “But we think there’s something going on with that well, and we’re trying to make sure nobody else gets hurt.” He stood up. “Thank you for talking to us. I know it wasn’t easy. We’ll be on our way now.”
She smiled without moving the rest of her face and nodded. “I hope you find what you’re looking for,” she said. “Nobody should have to lose their children like this.”
“I hope we find it, too. Take care, Mrs. Sanchez.”
Near Denton, Texas
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
“There’s definitely something going on with that well,” said Sam, trying to talk over the music. He looked down at his notebook, where he’d written down four names with a few notations beside each one. “Here’s what happened. Donna Fredericks was the first person that we know of who went to the well, when her son Kevin was sick with cancer and not responding to chemotherapy. She wished for her son to get better. That was the same day that her co-worker Cindy Harper died of a brain aneurysm, which might or might not be related. Her husband, Charles, wished for a quarter of a million dollars. Within a week, Kevin’s condition started to improve and he’s now completely cancer-free.”
Dean nodded. “So Kevin said he gave the map to Jorge, who might or might not have asked for X-ray vision. Jorge ended up with the quarter of a million dollars. Then Joshua gets the map, goes out, and wishes for his brother to get killed “ and gets X-ray vision. There’s a pattern here.”
“Whatever one person wishes for, the next one receives,” said Sam.
“Which means that if somebody else has the map, his brother is in a world of trouble. We’re going to have to shut that well down.”
“We don’t know what’s making it work.”
“It doesn’t really matter. If it always follows the same pattern, then we can turn the pattern against it. We just need two people to wish for the well to stop.” Dean parked the Impala at the bottom of a tree-covered hill. “This is the place. There used to be a small farm here owned by a man named Eugene Townsend. All we have to do now is find the well and wish for it to stop granting wishes. Then everybody is safe.”
“Two problems with that, Dean.” Sam made no move to unbuckle his safety belt. “First of all, everybody who made a wish there is dead “ except for Joshua, and it’s only been five days since he came here. There might be some kind of time limit on a person’s life, and the fact that they all died on the same day, in the same collision, worries me. The second problem is that neither one of us can deactivate the well as long as Joshua’s wish is still hanging around.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Remember what he wished for? That his older brother would die. If I make a wish now, that means that you’re going to die, even if the time limit doesn’t count anymore. You’ll be its last victim.” Sam’s mouth contracted and he pressed his lips together. “I’m not taking that chance.”
“That’s why we have to go in the right order. That means me first. I don’t have an older brother, so nothing is going to happen, and then your wish will make the well spirit stop.”
“What if we do have another brother? Do we know that Dad didn’t sleep with anybody else before our mother? Do we know that they didn’t have a son before you and gave him up for adoption?”
“Quit it with the what-ifs. Anything we do could hurt somebody if the conditions are right. Taking a certain exit could hurt somebody if it delays them five seconds and makes them miss their bus. We can’t worry about it if we really don’t have any control over it.” Dean climbed out of the car. “Are you coming or not? I have a feeling that whatever’s haunting the well is going to get kind of pissed off at me and I need you as backup.”
Sam quietly followed him. Dean opened up the trunk and pulled out their usual complement of guns and knives, and Sam wordlessly took his. “Hey, Sam?”
“What?”
“Do you have the pennies?”
“Right here,” said Sam, and he showed the two 1947 pennies that he had in his hand. They’d had to buy ten rolls of pennies from a local bank to find them “ the alternative was wasting five dollars apiece for collectors’ coins at the “mini-mall” in the center of town, which was nothing more than a pair of indoor flea markets.
“Then let’s get started.”
Dean pulled out his EMF monitor and scanned the ground around them, looking for signs of increased electromagnetic activity. They moved farther and farther up the hill, and after a few minutes, the monitor started to light up and beep in faint tones. “I think we’re getting warmer.”
“Hardly,” said Sam, all too aware of the cold air blowing through his thin jacket. He shivered and turned on his flashlight.
“Don’t be a baby. We’re in Texas. This isn’t exactly the middle of a Minnesota winter.”
The monitor beeped more and more as they climbed the hill, and they had almost reached the top of the gentle slope when Dean knelt down and leaned over a weathered wooden circle in the ground. “And look what I found,” he said. “The EMF’s off the scale here. Bring your flashlight over.”
Dean pulled open the two halves of the circle to reveal a pit in the ground that was about three feet wide and deeper than he could see. Even when Sam shined the flashlight into the well, they couldn’t see the bottom of it, until Dean dropped a small rock down and watched the faint perturbation of stagnant water many meters down.
Dean took one of the pennies and held it over the water, but Sam grabbed is hand. “What the hell are you doing?” Dean asked.
“This is dangerous!”
Dean scrunched his face and stared at Sam. “Do we ever do anything that isn’t dangerous?”
“Dean, you could get killed if something goes wrong.”
“I’m still failing to see how this is different from the usual.”
“What if Josh’s wish skips you and falls on me? I don’t want to lose you, Dean.”
“Sam. We have a job to do. Get your hand off my arm.”
Sam jerked his hand back as if he’d been bitten. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Now is not the time to get all touchy-feely, all right? Stand back and get ready to shoot if you see something that shouldn’t be here.”
Sam gripped his gun and waited. It gave him something to do; something to focus on that was outside of himself. Dean dropped his coin, turned around three times, and then said: “I wish that no more wishes would be granted to anyone who comes to this well, and that Joshua Gregory would be released from the effects that came upon him last Saturday.”
“Dude, that’s two wishes,” said Sam.
Dean glared at him, but then noticed a flash of light at the bottom of the well, and glowing, iridescent vapors beginning to circle just above the surface of the water. Sam emptied his gun into the pit, but the bullets had no effect except making the vapors swirl faster before settling back down. Dean’s hips twitched, but only once.
“Are you all right?” Sam asked anxiously.
“I’m fine. I think it was that greasy bacon I had on my burger. Now you go.”
Sam holstered his gun and wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. He had so many misgivings about messing with a spirit that they didn’t even know the origins of, but he didn’t sense any unusual fear coming from Dean, and even though his brother wasn’t one to show fear, he was always honest with Sam about danger that was present. Anything less would get them both killed in short order. Sam took a deep breath and did his own coin drop and triple spin.
“I “ I wish that no more wishes would be granted to anyone who comes to this well,” he said hesitantly, and when Dean nodded towards him and the well, he continued: “and that Joshua-”
A pillar of faint light shot out from the well, materializing over it in the form of a woman. The air filled with salt pellets and bullets, and the woman’s shape dissolved into wisps and then into nothing. Sam spoke the words to banish the spirit, and when the incantation was finished, the air was still.
“Got her,” said Dean. “There, see? That wasn’t so hard.”
“How can we be sure that she’s gone?”
“We’ll go down and check on Joshua tomorrow morning, before we head out for Austin. It’s only about three hours from here “ maybe four if we have to drive through Dallas traffic. And tonight, we’ll get some beer and go back to the hotel.”
“So I’ve gone from your weapon to your play toy again?”
“Sam, knock it off and let’s get back to the car. We have to get to the store before midnight or we’re not going to be able to buy any beer.”
Sam sighed and followed Dean back down the hill. Eventually, they were going to have to talk about this dichotomy between their life in the light and life in the dark. However, there never seemed to be a right time, and the twilight between the two was so short.
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