serafina20 | Supernatral Fic: Ghost in the Photograph

Would anyone be interested in beta'ing this when I'm done? Or helpig me get a better title?

They usually avoid emergency rooms if possible, but Rachel had insurance, which was a good thing. There was no fucking way Dean was going to lay a finger on her, especially if she needed stitches. He'd sewn up his father plenty of times, Sam too, but never a stranger. And never one he was so incredibly pissed at he'd probably do more harm than good.

He gunned it to the nearest emergency room, following her directions as she and Sam sat in the back. Rachel had insisted she was fine, but she was bleeding too badly to keep a good pressure on the deepest part of the wound. It'd taken ten stitches and a blood transfusion to fix her up, and she hadn't been released until nearly just before dawn.

She let them into her apartment wearily. "Do you want any breakfast or anything?" she asked, dropping her keys in a small blue bowl next to the door.

"I want answers," Dean said, but Sam just said, "Breakfast would be fine."

She nodded listlessly and went into the kitchen, both boys on her heels. Sam took the carton of eggs from her hands and set about scrambling them. Surprise on her face, Rachel just set about making coffee and ignoring Dean as he prowled around her apartment, looking for clues as to who this girl thought she was.

Her bookshelf was full of books on English history, ghosts, demons, and English folklore. She had a subscription to "Fate" magazine; not only were the most recent editions on the coffee table, but she'd bound old issues together and made an index for them. Besides "Fate," which Dean had heard of and read in the past, she had a bunch of other ones he'd never heard of before. Most of them dealt with England or Europe; only one or two were even published in the United States. Weird.

"Dean."

Dean turned at the sound of his brother's voice. Sam had finished with the eggs and was placing them and a pile of toast in the middle of Rachel's hastily cleared off table.

"Okay, talk," Dean said, crossing to the table. He sat down and grabbed a piece of toast, staring at the girl. "Who are you?"

"I'm Rachel Adams. Who are you?"

"I'm Sam Winchester and this is my brother Dean," Sam answered. He looked at her intently, as Dean did, waiting to see if maybe she recognized their name. It was possible that their father had dealings with her or her family and that would explain the interest in the supernatural.

Rachel just looked back at them, no recognition on her face.

Oh well, there went that theory. "So. What were you doing at the inn last night?" asked Dean. "Thought it might make a good story for creative writing class or something?"

"No. I was trying to find out who the ghost was so I could lay the soul to rest. What about you?"

"The same," Sam answered quickly.

"And now, thanks to you, we still have no idea," Den couldn't help pointing out.

Rachel wrinkled her nose at him. "Look, I appreciate you for saving my butt back there, but I wasn't exactly dead yet. The thing took me by surprise and I fucked up. I admit that. But it's not all my fault. Besides, I was supposed to be there; you were breaking and entering."

"Why were you allowed there?" Sam said.

"Well, Amanda, the manager? She's a friend of mine. When the third murder happened and there was still no clues, she figured that it might be a ghost. The area is rife with them after all, and I was the only one available to look into it."

"How did you get into the business?"

"Family business, of sorts. I mean, my great-grandfather was the first of us to use his career to lay souls to rest and stuff. He was a historian, same as my parents, same as I'm studying to be. But we generally don't do individual ghosts, like this one; that'd take way too long and waste our assets."

Dean frowned, wondering if he and Sam were being insulted. She didn't seem malicious, but, then, she was on painkillers. Maybe the innocent act wasn't so much innocence as being stoned. "Your assets?"

She nodded. "My grandfather specialized in Civil War history. There are still a lot of ghosts wandering around left over from battles and the like. It was a violent era and it left a lot of damage on the spiritual world. Same with slavery. Same with the American Revolution and the Holocaust and the Crusades and everything. Everyone in my family chooses a time period and a specialty to focus on, and then we do what we can to get rid of the residuals consequences of humanity's tendency towards violence." She took a drink of coffee, then said, "You're turn."

Dean exchanged a look with Sam and shook his head slightly. He did not want to get into it now, not with a stranger. It was private. A thing for Winchesters only.

"Family business," Dean said. "Only, we're not historians and we do hunt individual ghosts."

"Basically, we look for anything that seems strange, and then go figure out what's happening," Sam put in. "Demons, Wendigo's, Jersey Devils, poltergeists, whatever. If it's evil, we get rid of it."

"Why?" Again, she sounded so innocent and was actually looking at them wide-eyed like she was some kind of brown-eyed Bambi or something. Freak.

"Because, if we don't, people die," Dean answered aggressively, waiting for her to challenge him.

But Rachel just nodded and looked down at her plate. "You travel all around?"

"Just the US," Sam told her. He smirked at Dean. "We try to avoid trans-Atlantic flights. Or any kind of flights."

Dean glowered at him.

"Well, yeah," Rachel said thoughtfully. "I mean, if you're going around all over the place, you'd need to take all your weapons and stuff with you. Like a traveling..." She yawned hugely before finishing, "base of operations." She yawned against and rubbed her eyes.

"Exactly," Dean said, vindicated. "So, you're ghost hunting in that inn because of a favor? Do you just naturally suck or are you out of practice?"

"A little of both." She pushed her plate away and rubbed her eyes. "I've never done this on my own before," she admitted. "I've always had family with me. But I didn't think it'd be hard. I just, you know. I knew the ghost was in the room, just not where. And then I was trying to be alert, but I got distracted while looking in the closet. Stupid, stupid, I know."

Now that she was showing the right amount of remorse, Dean didn't feel quite so pissed at her. Yeah, he wanted to get the job done and, yeah, she'd distracted them, but at least she wasn't some idiot kid out to prove something by staying in a haunted house. And he'd been a crap hunter once, too. Of course, he'd been nine when he was a crap hunter, but whatever.

"Well, just don't do it again," Dean said.

"I'm not stopping this job because I screwed up. I made a promise."

"I think what Dean means," Sam said, "is that don't go in alone again. Or ever turn your back on a haunted room."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Yeah, that's exactly what I meant. Anyway, if you're a historian, what's the history of that place?"

"Nothing that'd explain the murders," Rachel said, shaking her head. "It was built before the American Revolution. The owners were patriots. Husband and son both went to war, both came back. They were farmers. The house was sold in something like 1845 to a different family. Um... turned part of the underground railroad." She climbed out of her seat and crossed the room. Her backpack was on the floor next to the door; she opened it and pulled out a folder before coming back to the table. "Basically, there are no deaths that would result in the type of activity we've seen. The original owners tended to die in their own beds and of old age. After it became an inn in 1910, there were three reported deaths of heart attacks, one stroke. One person fell out of a tree on the property and died three days later. A kid who was staying here drowned while on a harbor cruise with her parents. A body was discovered in the barn, murder, but was later found to have been actually killed about six miles away. There was a fire in 1972. Three people died of smoke inhalation. Um... nothing with an ice pick, and the only people whose age seems to fit the ghost's were women." She looked up. "That ghost was definitely a man."

Dean tapped his fingers on his coffee mug. "Huh. Then where the hell did it come from?"

"Maybe there's something that fits in the surrounding city?" Sam suggested.

Rachel shook her head. "I've searched. There's nothing in the entire state of Connecticut about anyone dying of an ice pick through their ear."

"Does the ice pick stay after? I mean, how do they know that's what it is?"

"The wound itself. The closest match to a weapon is an ice pick. The weird thing is, usually when an ice pick is used, it's to make the cause of death seem natural. They scramble the brains around to make it look like a cerebral hemorrhage," said Rachel. She pulled a rubber band from her pocket and put her hair into a pony tail. "This murderer didn't do that. He just... stuck it in and moved it until the person was dead. But you can still tell it was an ice pick. Like he wanted us to know."

Dean frowned and said thoughtfully, "Maybe it's not a local ghost. Maybe, somehow, it got brought here."

"That's impossible."

"No, it's not. We just fought a ghost in Toledo, Ohio, only she'd originally come from Fort Wayne Indiana," Sam said. "She was trapped in a mirror and carrying out her vengeance through Bloody Mary-like murders."

Rachel shivered. "You're kidding."

"No, why?"

"No reason. I've just... always been stupidly afraid of Bloody Mary even though there's never been any evidence she was real." Rachel frowned. "But did she touch her victims? Or use weapons on them?"

Both brothers shook their heads, remembering the awful feel of having their eyes clawed out seemingly from the inside of their heads.

"I'm not saying this is... her," Sam said.

"It could be a similar thing," Dean said. "Ghost stuck in the mirror. There's a lot of evidence to support that they can capture souls."

The minute the words left his mouth, Dean knew. He could see a similar lighting-bolt expressions in Rachel and Sam's face.

The three of them looked at each other and smiled. "A photograph."