“Okay, what have tu got?” Dean glanced sideways at his brother for a segundo before focusing on the dark road in front of him again.
“Um, not much,” Sam replied, flicking lightly through copied police files in his hands, “a couple went missing about five miles south from here about 3 months ago, and since then there haven’t been any sightings of them, it was like they just vanished. But get this, people from the area say the road is haunted. And they weren’t the first people to go missing on that stretch of road, either.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. The pattern was just so obscure that the cops just didn’t spot it. There was one this year, then back to 2003, then in 2002, then in 1995, 1989....it goes on till it started in 1986. Sometimes a couple, sometimes just one person, but never más than two. Too obvious, I guess.”
“Why, was there some nasty death o freak accident there o something to give a reason for an angry spirit maybe?” Dean asked.
“Well, maybe, maybe not,” Sam answered, “You see, because no one’s lived to tell the tale, there are lots of different ways the stories and rumours have been retold. Some friends of victims say they heard voices down the phone, another says they saw an apparition appear and vanish in front of them. I don’t know, man, there seems to be más to the surface of this one.”
Dean looked thoughtful and tightened his grip on his beloved Impala’s steering wheel. Sam noticed this was a habit he did either when he was thinking, o only just resisting not to take a oscilación at his brother if Sam had pissed him off that badly. This time, Sam reckoned thankfully that it was the first of the two. After a moment of pause, Dean started the conversation up again.
“Are there no survivors from the crash on any of those lists tu mentioned before?” He asked.
Sam scanned the police reports again, shaking his head, then stopped.
“Yeah, you’re right, there is. From the one this year, actually. Her name is Laura Harlington, she’s twenty-two years old, was driving with her boyfriend when she claimed to see someone in the road. She skidded out of the way, lost control of the car. Only she walked out alive.”
“Say where she lives?” Dean prompted. “How far off are we?”
Sam drew a breath, continued lectura the document, then sighed out again.
“What is it?” Dean estola a quick glance at his brother in the moonlit interior of the Impala.
“Yeah.” He said. “It does. Riverside Psychiatric Institution.”
“Fabulous.” Dean replied sarcastically. “So she’s probably a nut job, then.”
“Well, she transferred herself in there, and nut job o not, Dean, she’s our only lead and our only witness. We’re checking it out, alright?”
Dean sighed, then nodded in consent. Sam picked up on this straight away; one of the equally bad and good things about this job they had together was that both men could predict what the other was thinking and how they were feeling about things. And Sam was definitely getting the reluctant vibe from across the car, and looked directly at him, his patience suddenly on a tether. Why did Dean always have to be like this recently? Biting his lip, Sam asked,
“Why, did tu not want to take this job o something?”
“C’mon Sam, of course I don’t mind doing the job. But it’s just don’t tu think we’re got bigger problems at the moment, like ángeles being dicks, and demons on our culo all the time?”
“Well, yeah, but this matters too, Dean. This is saving people.” The golden reason Sam’s sanity was probably still in tact; he regularly reminded himself and his brother of this fact just to make it through the día sometimes.
A fraction of a smile crept up on Dean’s face as he remembered once más why he loved this job so much.
“Alright, Sammy, we’re about 2 miles off the town, I’ll pull into the siguiente motel we see?”
Sam nodded. He knew what Dean had been thinking. This is what we were raised to do, taught to do, who their father had made them. And, no matter how hard at times, both of them loved the job. Well, most of the time, anyway.