Not Just the Family Business

Bad Day at Black Rock, Baby

The drive to Buffalo wasn't a bad one. We actually ended up in Black Rock, New York. Sam passed Dean's cassette collection back to me to become the DJ for the trip. Though Sam was rather annoyed, Dean and I had a great time trying to get him to sing along with us. It didn't matter how hard we tried, he was too focused on a book.

Getting into the storage facility wasn't difficult. Dean parked the car and we walked into the service elevator to get to the storage unit.

"Man..." Dean sighed.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Just Dad." Dean bent to walk under the elevator's guard door. "You know him and his secrets. Spend all this time with the guy and it's like we barely even know the man."

"Well, we're about to learn something." Sam followed him.

I dawdled behind them. This was something that the two of them needed to do together. It wasn't my dad. I'm sure he had his secrets, but I knew a lot of stuff about him. I guess that was the perk of growing up with a mom still around.

It was a short walk from the elevator to the storage container. Dean quickly unlocked the padlock. After a glance at his brother, Dean opened the sliding door. We all turned our flashlights on, prepared to strike something if it came out. 

As we scanned down the storage unit, we didn't notice anything unusual, until we got to the floor. John had laid a devil's trap at the entrance of the container to sufficiently trap anything of demonic nature that tried to trespass. The only issue was the dark red footprints leading deeper into the unit.

"No demons allowed," Sam said.

"Blood." Dean stepped forward. "Check this out."

His hand held a silver wire. I scanned along it to see a shotgun hidden in an animal skull.

"Whoever broke in got tagged," I said.

"Dear old Dad." Dean smiled fondly. "I got two sets of boot tread here. Looks like it was a two-man job. And our friend with the buckshot in him looks like he kept walking."

"So, what's the deal?" Sam stepped over the tripwire. Dean and I followed. "Dad would do work here or something?"

I looked around at the clutter. It'd be hard to get anything done in this mess.

"Living the high life, as usual." Dean poked around.

After seeing the tripwire at the front, I wasn't too keen on wandering off on my own. I didn't know this man. There was no way to know if there were more traps set, and I wasn't going to be the fool to discover them. I decided to help Sam search the desk for anything useful.

"1995," Dean said. When I turned, he was holding a trophy.

"No way!" Sam walked over and examined it. "That's my Division Championship soccer trophy. I can't believe he kept this."

"Yeah, about the closest you ever came to being a boy." Dean stepped around Sam and picked up a gun. "It's my first sawed-off. I made it myself. Sixth grade." He grinned proudly at me as he pumped the gun that I hoped wasn't loaded.

We quietly made our way toward the back of the container without making any other treasured discoveries. Near the back, there was a door. Sam cautiously opened it. The chain holding it closed had been cut. We all squeezed in and passed our flashlights over the room. 

"Holy crap. Look at this. He had land mines..." Dean looked over one of the tables. "Which they didn't take. Or the guns. I guess they knew what they were after, huh?"

"Hey Dean, Melanie, check this out." We walked over to Sam who pointed out some boxes with inscriptions on them. "See these symbols? That's binding magic. These are curse boxes."