A Burdened Family

Chapter 10

Sam, Jo and I sat at the small table filing through old papers and research. Dean had gone out to find information of the girl who had disappeared. I tried to get Sam to go so I could watch Dean and Jo continue to coexist, but Dean insisted on going himself.

"Theresa Ellis, apartment 2F." Dean announced as he entered the apartment successfully. I was slightly startled by his sudden appearance, which led to a small coffee stain on my paper. "Her boyfriend reported her missing around dawn."

"Her apartment?" Jo asked.

"Cracks all over the plaster." Dean confirmed the patter. "Walls, ceiling. There's ectoplasm, too."

"Between that and that tuft of hair, I'd say the sucker's coming from the walls." Sam muttered quietly, still scanning through the papers on the table. 

"Great, we know where it's coming from," I pressed a tired palm to my forehead. "But who the hell is it? The building history's totally clean."

"Maybe we're looking in the wrong place," Jo mumbled as a photograph caught her attention. 

"What do you mean?"

"Check this out." Jo continued. 

"An empty field?" Sam asked. 

"We cracked the case!" I remarked with thick sarcasm. It was the fucking grass that did it. Now all we need is a lawnmower."

"No." Jo shoved my shoulder in annoyance. "Take a look at the building next to it. The windows."

"Bars." Dean's eyes widened with the realization. "We're next door to a prison?"

"So what?" I asked, still a little confused. "We're looking for a prisoner who died and came back to haunt the empty field beside their cell window?"

"We're gonna find out." Sam patted my shoulder. 

"I hate this job."

***

Jo made a call home, but she didn't talk to her mom. Because what kind of person would want to interact with their living, breathing, caring, mother? This girl even threatened poor Ash to do something with Pliers if Ellen found out she had called.

I was suddenly a little afraid of Jo.

"Okay, so... Moyamensing Prison." Jo introduced the building. 

"Fucking mouthful that is." I grumbled, attempting to sound it out and type it into the computer. 

"Build in 1835, torn down in 1963." Jo rolled her eyes at me as I grinned at her. "And get this, they used to execute people by hanging them in the empty field next door."

"That makes way more sense than my theory." 

"What was your theory?" Sam asked quietly.

"It involved a mass prison break, a rodeo competition, and roller skates."

"I want to hear that theory." Jo pointed at me, and I grinned at her.

"Let's follow Jo's theory first." Sam sucked his teeth. "Hers seems more realistic, so we're gonna need a list of all the people executed there."

"Ash is on it." Jo looked up smugly at my brothers. 

"You're my best friend, okay?" I threw an arm over Jo's shoulders and she grinned through an eye roll. "We could use another badass chick."

As it turned out, a lot of people were hung in the fucking field. 157 people, to be exact. 

"We gotta narrow that down, or we'll be digging up a hell of a lot of stiffs."