Learn Me Right

23. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

The Impala zoomed down a two-lane blacktop. Dean was driving, Sam was passenger, and Nori and Phoebe 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."

"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, that's not the point."

"Well then, enlighten me, Sam. Brighten Nori and Phoebe's day."

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

"Hmmm."

"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."

Phoebe glanced up. "Daddy, I wanna see Gramma's stone."

"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 Nori should, and take Phoebe," Sam said. "Just drop me off, I'll hitch a ride, and I'll meet you all there tomorrow."

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

Sam knelt before a headstone, digging in the ground with a folding knife. Phoebe stood next to him. 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."

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

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

Dean took a card from a man in a suit, then walked over to Sam and Nori.

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

"And?" Sam and Nori asked.

"And? You all 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 aggro with the pesticide," Sam guessed.

"No, I asked him, I asked him. No pesticide, no chemicals. Nobody can explain it."

"Okay, so what are you thinking?"

"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 him 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?"

"So?"

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