athazagoraphobia, supernatural

who needs friends when you have the voices in your head

"What was he hunting?" Sam sighed, finally giving in to his brothers' persuasion.

Jamie smiles, excited to see his brother again. He was around 9 when Sam left for college, and Sam promised to visit him but never did. Sam probably said that to get Jamie to stop crying and begging him to not leave.

Dean opens the trunk of the Impala, then the spare-tire compartment/arsenal. He props the compartment open with a shotgun and digs through the clutter.
"All right, let's see, where the hell did I put that thing?" Dean muttered to himself.

"So... how's college?" Jamie asked to crush the slightly awkward silence.

"College is good..." Sam answered.

"It must be so good that you forgot to visit." Jamie mumbled, but Sam still heard him.

"I'm sorry, Jamie. I just-"

"It's okay, at least you got to get away from all this. Are the parties fun? I've never been to a party."

"Parties aren't really my style, but yeah. When we find dad, I could sneak you into one."

"Who are you and what have you done with Sam?"

Sam laughs, "So when Dad left, why didn't you guys go with him?"

"We were working our own gig. This, uh, voodoo thing, down in New Orleans." Dean spoke, still rummaging through the trunk.

"Dad let you two go on a hunting trip by yourselves?"

Dean stands straight and looks at Sam, "I'm twenty-six, dude."

"I'm almost fourteen." Jamie said, offended.

Dean pulls some papers out of a folder, handing one of the papers to Sam.
"All right, here we go. So dad was checking out this two-lane blacktop just outside of Jericho, California. About a month ago, this guy.
They found his car, but he vanished. Completely MIA."

Sam reads the printed out article of the missing man and glances up, "So maybe he was kidnapped."

"Yeah. Well, here's another one in April." Jamie takes the stack of papers and tosses down another article for each date he mentions. "Another one in December 'oh-four, 'oh-three, 'ninety-eight, 'ninety-two, ten of them over the past twenty years."

Dean takes the article back from Sam and picks up the rest of the stack, putting them back in the folder.

"All men, all the same five-mile stretch of road." Scott informed.

"It started happening more and more, so Dad went to go dig around. That was about three weeks ago. We haven't heard from him since, which is bad enough." Dean said.

Dean grabs a handheld tape recorder,
"Then I get this voicemail yesterday."

When he presses play, the recording is staticky and the signal was clearly breaking up.

"Dean...Jamie... something big is starting to happen... I need to try and figure out what's going on. It may... Be very careful, boys. We're all in danger."

"You know there's EVP on that?" Sam pointed out.

"Not bad, Sammy. Kinda like riding a bike, isn't it?" Dean teased. "All right. I slowed the message down, ran it through a gold wave, took out the hiss, and this is what we got."

He presses play again. "I can never go home..."

"Never go home." Sam repeated.

Dean drops the recorder in the trunk, puts down the shotgun, shuts the trunk, then leans on it.