I bit back my laughter as Dean leaned over to put a plastic spoon in a sleeping Sam's open mouth. He grinned at me as he took a picture with his phone and then turned the volume of the music up loudly, singing along.
"Fire... of unknown origins... took my baby away!"
Sam jerked awake, realizing there was something in his mouth, and panicked, flailing his arms and spitting the spoon out. I was openly laughing now while Dean air drummed along to the song on the steering wheel. He grinned over at Sammy, who was wiping his mouth, and turned the music down again.
"Ha ha, very funny, " Sam grumbled.
"Heh, heh, heh. Sorry, not a lot of scenery here in East Texas, kinda gotta make your own," Dean shrugged.
"Man, we're not kids anymore, Dean. We're not gonna start that crap up again."
"Start what up?" Dean asked innocently.
"The prank stuff. It's stupid, and it always escalates."
"Aw, what's the matter, Sammy? Afraid to get a little Nair in your shampoo bottle again?"
I snickered at the thought of a younger Sam temporarily bald because of a prank war.
"Alright, just remember you started it."
"Ah ha, bring it on, baldy."
"Where are we, anyway?"
"A couple hours outside Richardson. Gimme the lowdown again?"
Sam started reading from a paper printout from some website he found.
"All right, about a month or two ago this group of kids goes poking around in this local haunted house."
"Haunted by what?" I asked.
"Apparently, a pretty misogynistic spirit. Legend goes, it takes girls and strings them up from the rafters. Anyway this group of kids see this dead girl hanging in the cellar."
"Anybody ID the corpse?" Dean asked.
"Well, that's the thing. By the time the cops got there, the body was gone," Sam continued. "So cops are saying the kids were just yanking chains."
"Maybe the cops are right," I suggested.
"Maybe, but I read a couple of the kids firsthand accounts. They seemed pretty sincere."
"Where'd you read these accounts?"
Sam squirmed in his seat, clearly a bit embarrassed about whatever he was about to say.
"Well, I knew we were going to be passing through Texas. So, umm, last night, I searched some local..." he paused then continued quickly. "...paranormal websites. And I found one."
"And what's it called?" Dean smirked.
"HellHoundsLair.com," Sam muttered.
"Lemme guess," Dean was full on grinning now, "streaming live out of Mom's basement."
"Yeah, probably," Sam grinned a little himself.
"Yeah. Most of those websites wouldn't know a ghost if it bit 'em in the persqueeter."
"Look, we let Dad take off," Sam sighed. "Which was a mistake, by the way. And now we don't know where the hell he is, so in the meantime we gotta find ourselves something to hunt. There's no harm in checking this out."
Dean nodded in understanding, though I could tell that the mention of John was a touchy subject. It had been nearly two weeks since the incident in Chicago, and I think we all were still reeling a little bit from the experience. Since we moved on, I hadn't had any gut feelings or heard the Voice again.
"All right. So where do we find these kids?"
"Same place you always find kids in a town like this."
⁘
While there were similarities, all the reports came back different. The house itself was described as having walls painted either black or red. One girl thought it was blood. Apparently there were a lot of symbols everywhere from crosses to stars to pentagons to pentacostals. They all agreed there was a girl that had black, blonde or red hair that was either moving or completely still. However, there was only one thing that was the exact same in every single person's account:
"Craig took us."
So, we headed to the local record shop where Craig worked to talk to him.
"Fellas. Miss. Can I help you with anything?" the guy behind the counter asked.
"Yeah, are you Craig Thurston?" Sam asked.
"I am," Craig nodded.
"Well, we're reporters with the Dallas Morning News," Dean began. "I'm Dean, this is Sam and Ellie."
"No way. Well, I'm a writer, too. I write for my school's lit magazine."
"Well, good for you, Morrissey," Dean quipped.
"Um, we're doing an article on local hauntings and rumor has it you might know of one," I drew Craig's attention to me, giving him a flirtatious smile.
"You mean the Hell House?" Craig asked.
"That's the one," Dean nodded, but Craig was only paying attention to me.
"I didn't think there was anything to the story."
"Why don't you tell us the story," I suggested.
"Well, supposedly, back in the '30s this farmer, Mordechai Murdock, used to live in this house with his six daughters. It was during the Depression, his crops were failing, he didn't have enough money to feed his own children. So I guess that's when he went off the deep end."
"How?" Sam asked.
Craig continued the story, directing it toward me.
"Well, he figured it was best if his girls died quick, rather than starve to death. So he attacked them. They screamed, begged for him to stop, but he just strung 'em up, one after the other. And when he was all finished, he just turned around and hung himself. Now they say that his spirit is trapped in the house forever, stringing up any girl that goes inside."
"Where'd you hear all this?" I questioned him.
"My cousin Dana told me," he smiled. "I don't know where she heard it from. Ya gotta realize, I- I didn't believe this for a second."
"But now you do," Dean noted.
"I don't know what the hell to think, man," Craig shrugged, finally tearing his gaze away from me to look between Sam and Dean. "You guys, I- I'll tell you exactly what I told the police, okay? That girl was real. And she was dead. This was not a prank. I swear to God, I don't wanna go anywhere near that house ever again, okay?"
"Thanks," I told him.
YOU ARE READING
Dawson's Daughter | {BOOK 1}
Fanfiction-BOOK 1 IN THE DAWSON'S DAUGHTER SERIES- ___ She was just a supplier's daughter. But not just any supplier. James Dawson, a name loved and respected both in her home town, and in the hunting community. They were her best friends until they stopped c...
