Bless the Broken Road

22. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

The Impala zoomed down a two-lane blacktop. Dean was driving, Sam was passenger, and Zach and Lily were in back.

"Come on, Sam, I'm begging you. This is stupid," Dean said.

"Why?" Sam wondered.

"Going to visit Mom's grave? She doesn't even have a grave, there was no body left after the fire."

"She has a headstone."

Zach scoffed lightly. "Yeah, put up by her uncle, a man we've never met. So you want to go pay your respects to a slab of granite put up by a stranger?"

"Dean, Zach, that's not the point."

"Well then, enlighten us, Sam. Brighten Lil's day."

"It's not about a body, or, or a casket. It's about her memory, okay?"

"Hmmm," Dean hummed.

"And after Dad, it just... just feels like the right thing to do."

"It's irrational, is what it is."

"Look, man. No one asked you to come."

Lily frowned as she looked between the brothers. "Dean, Zach, go see your mom's grave if you'd like. Sam, if they don't want to, don't force them."

"Why don't we swing by the Roadhouse instead?" Dean suggested. "I mean, we haven't heard anything about the demon lately, we should be hunting that son of a bitch down."

"That's a good idea, you and the others should. Just drop me off, I'll hitch a ride, and I'll meet you two there tomorrow."

"Right. To be... stuck with those people, making awkward small talk until you show up?" Zach said. "No thanks."

Sam knelt before a headstone, digging in the ground with a folding knife. He pulled out a set of dog-tags from his pocket and sighed. "I think, um, I think Dad would have wanted you to have these." He buried them. "I love you, Mom."

Lily placed a hand on Sam's shoulder and offered him a small smile.

Nearby, Dean and Zach were standing by another gravestone, marked as "Loving Father". They walked toward a dying tree and frowned. They noticed a perfect circle of dead grass surrounding a gravestone. They crouched down, fingering dead flowers.

Dean took a card from a man in a suit, then walked over to Sam and Lily, followed by Zach.

"Angela Mason," Dean said. "She was a student at the local college, funeral was three days ago."

"And?" Sam and Lily asked.

"And? You two saw her grave. Everything dead around it, in a perfect circle? You don't think that's a little weird?"

"Maybe the groundskeeper went a little agro with the pesticide," Sam guessed.

"No, we asked him," Zach said. "No pesticide, no chemicals. Nobody can explain it."

"Okay, so what are you two thinking?" Lily questioned.

"I dunno. Unholy ground, maybe?"

"Un-"

"What? If something evil happened there, it could easily poison the ground. Remember the, the farm outside of Cedar Rapids?"

"Yeah, b-"

Dean cut her off. "Could be the sign of a demonic presence. Or the, the Angela girl's spirit, if it's powerful enough." Sam nodded and turned away. "Well, don't get too excited, you might pull something."

"It's just... stumbling onto a hunt? Here of all places?" Sam said.

"So?"

"So? Are you sure this is about a hunt and not about something else?"