Roads of Reckoning

Phantom Traveler

December 2nd, 2005
I'm asleep on a springy motel bed, Dean is snoring on the other bed across from me. It was Sam's night on the couch. I hear the door click and my hand wraps around the dagger under my pillow. I turn to look and see Sam entering, carrying coffee and a takeaway bag.
"Morning, sunshine." He smiles. I groan and roll over. Dean grunts.
"What time is it?" He says.
"Uh, it's about 5:45." He replies, checking his watch.
"In the morning?" Ask Dean.
"Yep." Sam goes over to the table. I roll out of bed, gather my clothes and go into the bathroom to make myself presentable.

When I come out Sam is pulling out some pastries from the bag and he passes me one alongside a coffee as I sit down.
"Did you get any sleep last night?" I ask as I take a bite. Sam looks up at me.
"Yeah, I grabbed a few hours." I nod as I take a bite of my food.
"Liar!" Yells Dean from the couch. "Cause I was up at three, and you were watching a George Foreman informercial." I look at Sam and raise my eyebrows.
"Hey, what can I say? It's riveting TV." I smirk and take a sip of my coffee. Dean gets up from the couch and sits at the table.
"When was the last time you got a good night's sleep?"
Sam shrugs.
"I don't know, a little while, I guess. It's not a big deal."
"Yeah it is." Says Dean.
"Look, I appreciate your concern~"
"Oh I'm not concerned about you. It's your job to keep my ass alive, so I need you sharp." Sam shrugs.
"Seriously. Are you still having nightmares about Jess." I freeze and look up. Sam gets up and crosses to my bed and sits down.
"Yeah." My stomach sinks. "But it's not just her. It's everything. I just forgot, you know? This job. Man, it gets to you."
"You can't let it. You can't bring it home like that."
"So what? All this it...never keeps you up at night?" Dean shakes his head.
"Never? You're never afraid?"
"No not really." Sam reaches under Dean's pillow and pulls out a large hunting knife. I choke on my coffee.
"That's not fear. That is precaution." Dean says, snatching it off Sam.
"All right. Whatever. I'm too tired to argue." Sam flops back onto my bed.
I feel bad that he slept on the couch. It's not comfortable at all and the nightmares don't help. Maybe he could...
Dean's phone rings.
"Hello?" Dean goes back and forth with the person on the other end. Dean looks over at us.
•———————————————————————•
Dean pulls up at a hangar. Planes litter the field. We get out of the car and are greeted by a guy named Jerry.
"Thanks for making the trip so quick. I ought to be doing you guys a favour, not the other way around. Dean and your dad really helped me out." He says to Sam.
"Yeah, he told me. It was a poltergeist?" Says Sam.
A worker walks past. "Poltergeist?" Man, I loved that movie."
"Hey nobody's taking to you." Snaps Jerry. "Damn right it was a poltergeist, practically tore our house apart. Tell you something, if it wasn't for you and your dad, I probably wouldn't be alive. Your dad said you were off at college. Is that right?"
"Yeah, I was ~ I'm taking some time off."
Jerry looks over to me. "I didn't know you two had a sister?" Dean and Sam's eyes widen and the speak at the same time.
"No!" I cross my arms. Sam clears his throat and looks at me. "She's a family friends. We've know her for a long time." He gives me a small smile and I relax. Jerry nods slowly and turns back to Sam.
"Well your dad, he was real proud of you. I could tell. Talked about you all the time." I look up at Sam. He tenses.
"He did?"
"Yeah you bet he did. Oh, hey, you know I tried to get a hold of him, but I couldn't. How's he doing anyway?"
Sam looks at Dean.
"He's, um, wrapped up in a job right now." Says Dean.
"Well, we're missing the old man, but we get Sam and..." he trails off, looking over at me.
"Demi." I introduce myself.
"...Demi! Right. Even trade huh?" Jerry says. Dean laughs.
"Not by a long shot." Says Sam.
"I got something I want you guys to hear." Says Jerry.
•———————————————————————•
We enter Jerry's office and he puts a CD into a drive.
"I listened to this. And well, it sounded like it was up your alley. Normally I wouldn't have access to this. It's the cockpit voice recorder for United Britannia flight 2485. It was one of ours."
The recording starts to play.
"Mayday! Mayday! Repeat! This is United Britannia 2485 ~ immediate instruction help! United Britanis 2485. I copy your message ~ May be experiencing some mechanical failure..." There is a loud whooshing sound and Jerry cuts it off.
"Took off from here." He says. "Crashed about two hundred miles south. Now they're saying mechanical failure. Cabin depressurised somehow. Nobody knows why. Over a hundred people on board. Only seven got out alive. Pilot was one. His name is Chuck Lambert. He's a good friend of mine. Chuck is, uh well, he's pretty broken up about it. Like it was his fault.
"You think it was?" Asks Sam. Jerry shakes his head.
"No I don't."
"Jerry, we're gonna need passenger manifests, um, a list of survivors." Says Sam. Jerry nods.
"And um, can we have a look at the wreckage?" Asks Dean.
"The other stuff is no problem. But this wreckage...the NTSB has it locked down in an evidence warehouse. No way I've got that kind of clearance." Dean frowns.
"No problem."
•———————————————————————•
Sam and I are waiting for Dean outside of a copy place. He finally walks out.
"You've been in there forever." Sam says. Dean holds up three IDs.
"You can't rush perfection." I roll my eyes as I take one of the IDs and look at it.
"Homeland security?" I ask looking at Dean. "That's pretty illegal, even for us." Dean shrugs.
"Yeah well, it's something new. You know? People haven't seen it a thousand times." We get into the car.
"Alright, what you got." Dean asks.
"Well there's definitely EVP on the cockpit voice recorder." Says Sam. "Listen." He plays a tape that has been edited to pull out a scratchy voice.
"No survivors!"
"'No survivors'? What is that supposed to mean? There were seven survivors." Dean says, confused. Sam and I shrug.
"So what? A haunted flight?"
"There's a long history of spirits and death omens on planes and ships, like phantom travellers." I say.
"Remember flight 401?" Sam quizzes.
Dean nods.
"Right. The one that crashed, the airline salvaged some of its parts, put it in other planes, then the spirit of the pilot and copilot haunted those flights." I'm impressed.
"Right. Maybe we got a similar deal." Says Sam.
"Alright. So, survivors. Who do you want to talk to first?"
"Third on the list: Max Jaffey."
"Why him?"
"Well for one, he's from around here. And, if anyone saw something weird, he did."
"What makes you say that?"
"Well I spoke to his mother. And she told me where to find him."
•———————————————————————•
We pull up out the front of the Riverfront Psychiatric Hospital. We walk through the gardens with Max.
"I don't understand. I already spoke to homeland security." Says Max.
"Right. Some new information has come up. So if you could answer a couple of questions..." answers Dean.
"Just before the plane went down, did you notice anything...unusual?" I ask.
"Like what?"
"Strange lights, weird noises, maybe. Voices." Says Sam.
"No nothing."
"Mr. Jaffey, you checked yourself in here right?" Asks Dean. Max nods. "Can I ask why?"
"I was a little stressed. I survived a plane crash."
"That's what terrified you? That's what you were afraid of?"
"I don't want to talk about this anymore."
"See, I think maybe you did see something up there. We need to know what."
Max shakes his head
"No. No, I was...delusional. Seeing things."
Dean turns to Sam and I.
"He was seeing things." He says sarcastically. I shake my head at him.
"It's okay." Says Sam to Max. "Then just tell us what you thought you saw please."
"There was...this~man. And uh, he had these...eyes - these black eyes. And I saw him ~ or I thought I saw him..."
"What?" I say.
"He opened the emergency exit. But that's...that's impossible right? I mean, I looked it up. There's something like two tons of pressure on that door."
"This man, uh, did he seem to appear and disappear rapidly? It would look something like a mirage?" Asks Sam.
Max looks at him with a shocked look.
"What are you, nuts?"
Sam tilts his head.
"He was a passenger. He was sitting in front of me."
•———————————————————————•
The Impala pulls up in front of a new house.
"So here we are. George Phelps, seat 20C." I say, looking up at the house. We all get out of the car.
"Even yoked up on PCP or something, no way you can open up an emergency door during a flight." Says Dean.
"Not if you're human. But maybe this George was something else. Some kind of creature, maybe, in human form." Suggests Sam.
"Does this look like a creature's laid to you?" We look up at the perfectly ordinary house. I shrug.

We sit across from Mrs. Phelps. Sam and I look at a photograph.
"I this your late husband?" I ask.
"Yes, that was my George." She replies.
"And you said he was a...dentist?" Dean says. Mrs Phelps nods.
"He was headed to a convention in Denver. Do you know that he was petrified to fly? For him to go like that..."
"How long were you married?" Asks Sam.
"Thirteen years."
"In all that time, did you ever notice anything...strange about him, anything out of the ordinary?" I pry.
"Well...uh, he had acid reflux, if that's what you mean."
The boys and I look at each other.

We exit out of the house and down the stairs.
"I mean it goes without saying. It just doesn't make any sense." Says Sam.
"A middle aged dentist with an ulcer is not exactly evil personified. You know what we need to do is get inside that NTSB warehouse, check out the wreckage." Dean says.
"Okay. But if we're gonna go that route, we'd better look the part." Says Sam. I look at him with raised eyebrows.
•———————————————————————•
We exit the suit rental place, clad in crisp black suits. The collar is too tight on mine. As I pull at it I look over to Sam. He looks good...
"Man, I look like one of the Blues Brothers." Dean complains. I hide a smirk.
"No you don't. You look more like a...seventh grader at his first dance." I say. Sam laughs out loud. It's a cute laugh.
"Hey you want into that warehouse or not?" Says Sam.

We enter the warehouse and show our badges to the security guard, he just nods and lets us in. We walk among the plane wreckage and Dean pulls out a device and puts earbuds in his ears.
"What is that?" Asks Sam.
"It's an EMF meter. Reads electromagnetic frequencies." Dean explains.
"How's your head Dean? Those are some big words." I say with a smile. He shoots me a look.
"Yeah, I know what an EMF meter is, but why does that one look like a busted up Walkman?"
"Cause that's what I made it out of. It's homemade." He grins, proud of himself.
"Yeah I can see that." Dean's grin disappears.
Dean runs the EMF meter over a piece of the wreckage that's speckled with yellow dust, and gets an audible spike.
"Check out the emergency door handle." Says Dean. I scratch at the yellow dust.
"What is this stuff?"
"One way to find out." Sam scrapes some of the dust off and into a bag. A door opens in the distance and we freeze. Dean directs us around a corner and we wait. After a moment of silence we peer around the corner and try to walk out casually. Suddenly an alarm blares and we run to the gated exit. Pulling off his suit jacket, Dean throws it over the barbed wire at the top. Dean climbs over first. Sam stops and nods his head at the fence, gesturing me to go first. I hoist myself over and Sam follows and grabs the jacket on the way down.
"Well, these monkey suits do come in handy." Dean says as we run off.
•———————————————————————•
Jerry is looking through a microscope at the yellow powder. We look at the screen.
"Huh, this stuff is covered in sulfer." He says.
"You're sure?" Says Sam.
"Take a look yourself." There is banging outside of the office and Jerry excuses himself. I lean down and look through the microscope.
"You know. There's not too many things that leave behind a sulfuric residue." Says Dean.
"Demon possession?" I suggest as I look up.
"It would explain how a mortal man would have the strength to open up an emergency hatch." Says Dean.
"If the guy was possessed, it's possible." Sam agrees.
"This goes way beyond floating over a bed or barfing pea soup. I mean it's one thing to possess a person, but to use them to take down an entire airplane?"
"You ever heard of something like this before?" I ask.
"Never." Says Dean.
———————————————————————