You Found Me |Sam Winchester| [2015 Wattys Winner]

26. The Neighborhood Exorcist

26. The Neighborhood Exorcist

"I lived in a tightknit community," I began reminiscing. "It might as well have been a small town. Everyone knew everyone. There were a lot of block parties, they spiked especially during the summer. Everyone got along. It was the perfect neighborhood to live in. The houses were great too.

"Everything was in harmony for a long time, until the first murder happened." My hands began to shake. I evened my breathing and got it under control. "It rocked the neighborhood, it was the first time anything bad ever happened. We weren't a gated community, but we were the safest. No burglaries, no hit-and-runs. Nothing. We thought it was just a bad accident, but it had been ruled a murder-suicide. Nothing made sense to us.

"We thought that was a fluke, a one-time thing. Then came murder-suicide number two. These didn't happen in houses next to us, but it was still within the neighborhood. Cops had never come to our area until then.

"When the third murder-suicide happened, it peaked my interest. I mean, three of the same crime? It was very strange. I was the only one genuinely interested in the pattern. I had done some investigating of my own, after the police had done theirs in the houses. Yes, my breaking and entering started from there, but it was for a good cause at the time.

"When the fourth happened, I knew something was definitely up. And for some weird reason, your words came to me of all things." I shook my head. "What you told me about what your family did for a living, your 'family business.' I tried to find connections in each crime scene. It didn't dawn on me for a long time until I found one common factor: sulfur."

"That really kick-started the research for you?" Sam interrupted.

I nodded. "It was a long shot hunch, but it turned out you were right. All the hits related sulfur with demons. It took a while for me to admit that was who was behind these murders. Once I came to terms with it, I realized the problem wasn't going to stop at four. I couldn't understand why they were invading the neighborhood. I didn't know if there were accomplices in it. I was investigating with so many variables.

"I couldn't tell anyone this. You know how that goes: you start talking insane, they'll lock you up and throw away the key. So I had to keep it hush-hush, which wasn't that hard to do. Paranoia started to settle in the neighborhood, so my family was more worried about heightening security than browsing my search history."

"Look at you, taking action," Sam mused thoughtfully. "I would have never thought you'd have some knowledge prior to this."

"You and me both," I said. "So, I dug up anything I could find. I got an insane idea: I would try and save lives, run the Hell monsters back to where they came from. By the sixth incident, I got some decent traction on stopping the body count. I could pick up on some patterns. They'd try their hardest to play pretend, but little things they did tipped me off."

"How'd you get rid of them?"

"At the time, I didn't know about the Devil's trap, so I settled for salting the windows and the doors and such. I exorcised them and sent them away. I tell you, I had to teach myself to annunciate Latin for a while before I attempted this. I got lucky on my first exorcism."

It was strange, to nonchalantly discuss exorcising a demon from someone's body. But this was Sam Winchester I was talking to, someone who wasn't a stranger to demons. I guess that didn't make it so strange.

"So I had a streak going, being able to put a stop to their plans. I never wanted to go beyond that, go out into the world and do it for a living. I was content with saving my neighbors. I was an unsung hero, and nobody knew. I got more leads than the police ever did when they did their investigating. But who would suspect a supernatural being to be behind the murders, anyway?"