Musings of the Diseased || Oneshots

Forgotten and Found || Crossover

The curse of the house on the hill was nothing more than an urban legend. That's what people liked to tell themselves, anyway. It was what everyone told themselves, even when teenagers on dares started coming back with odd burns splashed across their faces and bodies, like they'd been drizzled with acid.

It became harder to ignore when a construction crew went to renovate the shambling building and returned two members short. The survivors all heard the same thing- crying and wailing from inside, then screams of hysteria from the same voice just after the workers who didn't make it back went inside. None could quite describe the voice, and when each of the workers tried, the only thing that remained consistent across all their accounts was how truly pitiful the sounds were.

Sam skimmed the article on the tragedy in the local newspaper. He and Dean happened to be passing through a quaint little town in Kansas, and the motel they were staying in was kind enough to provide a bit of reading material for its guests, or at least the ones who weren't interested in the bibles in the nightstand drawers. He took a sip of his coffee. "Dean, you're gonna want to see this."

Sam slid the newspaper across the table to his brother, pointing out the headline of the article in question. Dean lifted an eyebrow. "House on the Hill Takes Another Victim? Top quality journalism, right here." At Sam's stern look, he shook his head. "Fine, fine. I'll take a look."

After a minute or two, Dean had all the information he needed. "Well, clearly there's something in that house. We'll check it out." He pocketed the keys to the room, and Sam followed him out the door. "What do we bring? Salt? I'm thinking ghost."

Sam nodded, Dean opened the car doors, and they took off.

After some driving, including a wrong turn Dean refused to ask for directions to remedy, the brothers arrived at the base of the infamous hill. They climbed out, Dean popped the trunk open, and each grabbed an iron crowbar and a decently sized pouch of rock salt. In addition, Sam took a lighter and a tank of gasoline, for burning bones, and Dean picked up a shotgun loaded with pellets of salt. The two gave each other one last look before they started up the hill.

The hill, steep enough that the house on top couldn't quite be seen from the bottom, was not easy to climb. Both Sam and Dean were winded to some extent when they finally got close enough to get a good look at the house. It was obvious nobody had lived in it for a very long time. The plaster of the walls was crumbling, and what few stubborn splinters of white paint remained on it were hardly enough to tell that the house had ever been painted in the first place. Holes, some big, some small, littered the roof, with the odd wooden shingle lying on the ground nearby, several already rotting into the earth.

Sam could tell the front porch was barely holding his weight by the way it creaked and cracked beneath his feet as he walked across it, hefting his plastic tank with one hand and brandishing his crowbar with the other. He took a breath to focus himself before giving the door a solid kick. The thing hadn't even been locked, it turned out, and it slammed against the inside wall with a loud bang. A wail came from inside, definitely of the ghostly variety, and the brothers had their weapons at the ready as they cautiously made their way inside.

Yellowed papers crinkled under their feet, and scribbles in red and black crayon lined the walls. The workers' bodies, despite never having been recovered, were nowhere to be found, though traces of gore dotted the floor. At the front door, the drawings consisted of stick figures, unintelligible writings, and random shapes. A little further down the hall, crude pentagrams started to appear, and some of the stick figures sported little horns or bat wings. "Lost" seemed to be a recurring word. Past a boarded up area that would appear to be a living room if one looked through the gaps in the shoddy barricade, several broken tips of crayons were strewn across the floor, along with more papers. Someone had scrawled the words "I'm sorry" in all capital letters over every surface that could be drawn on, even the ceiling. More imagery of demons was present, as well as smaller stick figures torn apart in various ways.