Hands, Eyes, Hearts - A Collection of Supernatural Drabbles

8 // Monster

It can hear them through the walls. Talking, laughing. Boisterous and crude. The shorter one miming something with his hands that makes the taller one flush red in the dying light.

It remembers the taste of flesh, the smell of blood, the languorous afterglow of both coursing sluggishly through what passed as its veins.

The two are joined by a third, a sudden arrival into unoccupied space, and this one gives off such power that the thing recoils.

Run away, its memories scream, to live and fight another day.

It slinks back through the crawlspace, in the dark.

"So, this place is haunted?" Sam squints up at the moldering tenement.

"Something like that," Dean replies. He's checking the safety of his Taurus like he doesn't know it's in peak condition. He just cleaned the thing (again) sixteen minutes ago, and nearly broke his timing record on the back end. Front end was the same, four-point-two. "Reports of blood leaking through the walls, missing persons in a few mile radius, that sort of thing." He sticks the pistol in the waistband of his jeans, and grabs a shotgun.

"Just up our alley then, huh," Sam muses. He sounds like his mouth is running without anyone behind the wheel. Probably flicking through the Rolodex in his brain, looking for clues.

Castiel is silent, standing there like the living embodiment of awkward in that coat and backwards tie. Dean doesn't know if Castiel even realizes he's a walking cliche. "Hey, feathers," he says lightly. "Getting any vibes?"

The angel shoots him an inscrutable look. "Vaguely," he replies. "Something violent happened here, several times, but it is difficult to tell whether or not the act was human in origin."

Sam purses his lips up at the top few floors before they all three pass beneath the '70s deco awning. "Part of it could have been."

They crest the crumbling concrete steps in silence, and Dean takes care of the padlocked doors. The creak when they open is ominous, but subdued — the whole place has the general feel of abandonment on mute.

The floor is scattered with rat turds and drywall, amateur graffiti scrawled along the whitewashed walls. The carpet is that flat, gritty nylon crap that tries so hard to be blue. Even when it was new, Dean thinks, this place was a fucking hole.

The front desk has one of those hula girl things, like the dash of car, and Dean flicks her with a lewd little smirk as they pass.

Disrespect, pheromones and disrespect, the monster hisses to itself in its mind, having long since lost the ability to form human speech. These men are from the newer breed, they don't know. They can't know.

They're not the type of food we need.

But curiosity keeps it hovering there, just behind the wall.

"So the victims were all mid- to late-fifties or older," Sam says, hushed. "They disappeared from the general area and then more or less twenty-four hours later, reports trickled in of blood dripping down the outside walls, running into the streets."

Of course it did, the monster croons. So much blood, so full and still there was more.

"The official position of the city is more of a wait and see," Sam continues, "but the general opinion is that the people who reported it were just seeing things."

"Shared hallucinations?" Dean says absently.

"More like denial," Sam says. "The mayor is up for re-election and he'd look like a fool if he took their stand. Records have the disappearances labelled under general Missing Persons."

Castiel is frowning at the walls. Dean notices, and rams his shoulder into the angel's, nudging him maybe a little harder than he might have done to Sam. Cas can take it. "What do your elf eyes see?" he murmurs.

"I don't understand that reference," Castiel says with an undercurrent of frustration, you know I don't, "but I see all of the blood that Sam mentioned. It may have dried, or been cleaned away, but the memory of the blood is still very much present in these walls."

"The memory of blood?" Dean asks. "Like a death echo?"

"Yes, that, but also..." Castiel's face wrinkles up as he tries to explain. "The blood itself has memories of where it was before it was on this wall."

The monster smacks its lips, pressing a cold appendage to the joists. It can feel the currents running between these three. So much of the red they have spilled, whether their own, or —

No.

No!

Hunters, the monster hisses to itself.

Dean blinks at him. "So —"

"If I were to cut you right now, yes, I would see where your blood has been," Castiel says. He sounds distracted. "Individual molecules, and strands of your DNA, strewn across this mass of land in so many ways, for so many different reasons. Your blood sings, Dean."

"Sings?" Sam whispers.

"Perhaps a better word would be resonates," Castiel amends. He stops walking, and turns to face the wall.

Flee! Flee! Run and flee! the monster cries to itself. They are more than they appear!

It turns to run within the wall.

"Pain, there is pain here," Castiel says, short and surprised. He presses a hand to the flaking paint.

His eyes flare blue.

Flee —

Dean shouts, he can't help it, when a smoking something topples out of the massive hole Cas just smote right through the drywall. It looks like once, it might have been human, but time and unnameable other things have twisted its form and made it into something out of a nightmare. Its eyes are flooded white, with crimson leaking in around the edges. Its mouth is a gaping maw full of broken, sharp-edged teeth. It isn't wearing a shred of clothing, and every intact bit of skin is stained with old blood — the entire corpse is leaking the stuff, rusty and sluggish.

Frowning, Sam leans closer. Dean holds him back with a flick of his wrist and the shotgun across his brother's chest. Careful, his eyes warn, when Sam shoots him an annoyed look.

"It is dead," Castiel says, crouching beside the corpse. "It was dead long ago, sustaining its animation through the blood of those..." He closes his eyes briefly, like he's listening. "Those who showed the proper respect?" He opens his eyes again, confused.

"Oh, so it's like the whole your generation is so rude thing that old people do," Dean says, standing. Sam rolls his eyes. "What?"

"Well," Sam says, "our generation is pretty rude. Case in point, you."

"I'm fuckin' respectful!" Dean protests. "When the situation calls for it."

"You mean, when it pleases you," Castiel says. Both the brothers look at him — Sam grinning, Dean somewhat incredulously — but Castiel is smiling, just the barest hint of an upward turn to his lips.

"Yeah," Dean laughs. "And you know what'd please me best right now? Some fucking food." He slings the arm with the shotgun around Castiel's shoulders, and the other around Sam. "Let's blow this singing popsicle stand."

They leave the body for the police, or the next group of adventurous kids, its stolen blood seeping into the carpet and leaving its own memories behind.