Homing (3 of 3)
Aug. 13th, 2008 10:53 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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spn_summergenHoming (3 of 3)
Part One Part Two
The Roadhouse used to belong to someone else, although there are hunters who claim it had been 'Harvelle's' all the way back to forever. Some are joking, others aren't. A few even said that Samuel Colt had passed through there, while he was working on that gun and building the world's largest Devil's Trap. These were mostly the same people who joked about Ellen teething on pool cues.
Truth was, before it was Harvelle's, it was just a plain old bar owned by a man named Casey Durant. If hunters ever passed through there, it was only by accident and in anonymity.
Ellen and Bill had only meant their stay to last a few days, maybe a week at most.
They were desperately low on cash, and they'd seen the 'Help Wanted' sign on their way to a Woman in White outside of Brewster. Ellen figured she'd earn a few days wages, plus tips, while Bill took care of what should be an easy case.
But then the Woman in White tossed Bill off a bridge, breaking his leg in two places. Six months of recovery time meant six months of working behind a bar, and eventually word got around that there was a place where hunters could go to swap stories and compare notes. Then, Jo was on her way, and after that, Ellen wasn't about to pick up and leave. By then, she'd heard tales about this one hunter who was all but living out of his car with his two little boys. That was not the life she wanted for her child, and she told Bill as much.
Besides, she found she'd gotten used to putting her clothes away in drawers, and knowing exactly when the bedspread had last seen the inside of a washing machine.
From time to time, Bill got the itch to head back on the road, or he got a call from an old buddy who needed a hand. Ellen never stopped him from going, but she found it harder to maintain her temper when he was gone, especially when she had a toddler who always seemed half again as willful and fractious than normal when her daddy wasn't around to dote on her.
For her part, Ellen went on a few jobs of her own when she was feeling restless, or when the rumors of a haunt had too familiar a ring for her to ignore.
Then, when Jo was four, she flew out to the east coast to help out Katie Corrigan for a couple of weeks after Bud passed away. In some ways, it was harder than any hunt, but Ellen would have cause to be grateful for time spent.
Other than that, though, they were mostly content to stay put. And when they left, they always came back. The Roadhouse was home. Still, up until the day he left on that last hunt, Bill continued to call it the longest temporary job in the history of mankind.
* * *
There was only a week and a half left in August, and still her father said nothing about when they were going to leave. Ellen only had a dollar eighty-five left of the twenty she'd taken, and she clung to those five quarters and six dimes with miserly fervor. Her father and Janis always used to have 'discussions' (never arguments) about money running out, and it always ended with Janis yelling and with her father apologizing over and over until Ellen wished he'd just shut up already.
She figured they'd probably leave right before it was time for her to start school, so it was no big deal. One morning, though, she walked into town and after a long internal debate, stopped in at the bakery to use one of the five remaining quarters on a muffin. The screen door and its bells clattered behind her and she exchanged a "good morning, Maggie," for the warm "good morning, Ellen," that made her feel somehow superior to the day-trippers and weekenders and run of the mill 'summer folk.'
She tried not to smile too much as Maggie asked if she'd have her 'usual.' She just nodded curtly and raised up on tip-toe to hand the quarter over and receive a dime back in return. If she was lucky, Miss Sylvia would stop in not long after to get a cup of coffee and the morning gossip. Then, if it wasn't too miserably hot, according to Miss Sylvia's rather erratic internal thermostat, they'd go sit on a bench down by the marina and watch the cars coming off and going on the ferry.
That morning, though, things didn't happen quite as planned.
She handed the quarter over, and this time Maggie paused before reaching into the case for a corn muffin.
"Your father stopped in the other day for a cup of coffee. I was surprised to hear him say you'd be starting school here in the fall."
So was Ellen. She hadn't heard a word of it, unless it was part of one of the conversations she half-heard through closed doors. Her father'd been on the phone a lot, lately. On the phone and worried. It knotted her stomach to think about it, but when she asked, her father would only smile and tell her not to worry, and hey, let's go to the beach--it'll be okay. There was no more talk about getting what he was owed.
It was just like Janis getting sick all over again. No one told her anything. No one talked to her. No one let her know.
All Ellen could do for a moment was stare. Maggie blushed and leaned down to get Ellen's muffin, even though the last thing Ellen wanted right now was a stupid muffin. She apologized for letting the cat out of the bag and told Ellen to tell her father that the people who owned the tavern would get back to him about doing a reading.
"That's what the Edgartown bookstore people said back in July," Ellen pointed out. Maggie started to turn red again, but then she saw the look on Ellen's face and the blush turned to a wry, knowing smile.
"I can't blame him for trying," she said. "I like his poems, for what it's worth."
Ellen smiled back, just a little. "So do I," she admitted.
One of these days, her father would find a place where he could write all the time, or talk about writing, and they could stay in one place and not worry about money. At least, that's what she told herself. Most of the time, though, it sounded like just another story.
Where were they going to stay? Her father had said Professor Jameson would let them stay in the house all summer. He was out of the country or something, but her father never told Ellen any details. He'd also stopped talking about the job he was starting that fall. She also heard him up in the study, yelling at someone over the phone. Ellen was starting to worry about that, but she knew the only answer she'd get if she did ask was "don't worry."
Being told not to worry was almost enough to send her into a sheer panic.
* * *
Right now, the only thing that's really eating at her mind is Ash, and how secretive he's being. The rest of it is finally starting to settle. Still, she worries, and after picking up a few cartons of pretzels, Ellen decides she's owed something decadent after dealing with the morning's upset.
So, instead of heading straight back to the roadhouse, she heads another ten miles out to her favorite diner. They got an espresso machine in a few years back, and they'll make her the kind of froofy coffee she loves but will never admit to drinking. These days, she doesn't even have to tell them to add another glug of caramel syrup to the thing. They know.
On her way out of the diner, she reaches into her jacket pocket for her keys and her fingers brush against the North Carolina magnet. She smiles, and she figures she'll tell Ash about it when she gets back.
And then she'll make damn sure he tells her what's got him so het up. This is no time for secrets.
* * *
Bill wouldn't always volunteer what he'd done to get himself hurt, or what kind of jackassery had landed him in the drunk tank in Providence.
If she asked him, though, he'd generally be straight with her. Early, early on he'd learned in no uncertain terms that Ellen did not like to be protected from so-called 'hard' truths.
Her father had tried to protect her when Janis was sick and then dying. Ellen never did find out what it was that killed her mother. Once, when she went in for a pre-natal checkup and couldn't check a single damned box about her family medical history, she wondered which of those blank boxes might wind up biting her or her baby in the ass one fine day.
Hell, even Miss Sylvia had tried to protect her, at first.
As for Ellen, she watched her daughter mooning over Dean Winchester for well over a month before she got up enough mad to tell Jo exactly who it was her father was working with when he died, and what happened to people who were fool enough to trust their lives to impetuous idiots.
When she saw the look on Jo's face as her castles came crashing down out of the sky, Ellen had one of the few flashes of empathy she had ever had for her poor, well-meaning idiot of a father.
* * *
"I have a few things I need to tell you about, Ellen."
It was August twenty-ninth, and Ellen sat in Miss Sylvia's parlor, nearly lost in a huge, chintz-covered chair. She held her glass of lemonade carefully in both hands, and her toes only barely touched the floor. Miss Sylvia sat in a straight-backed chair, one she could get out of easily. She didn't look very comfortable.
"Is it the ghosts?" Things had been moving around more and more lately. Ellen's father had cussed up a storm when he found that his papers had been strewn all over the study. Later, he snapped at Ellen for leaving her books and sandals on the stairs where he could trip on them.
He believed in the ghosts, or said he did, but when a window was left open, soaking his bed with rain, he was faster to blame his own idiocy than playful ghosts.
Miss Sylvia didn't answer at first. "How much has your father told you about what is going on?"
Ellen shrugged. "He's writing a book."
"Oh, is he now?"
Ellen flinched at the sudden waspishness in Miss Sylvia's voice.
"He hasn't said anything about that job of his, has he?" This time, Miss Sylvia sounded more tired than annoyed, and Ellen really didn't want to hear what she had to say next.
As the end of August drew near, father had been staying up in his study more and more. Ellen thought he slept up there. He'd also stopped insisting on taking her along to those parties with all those boring, snooty people. From the way he talked about how dull it would be for her, you'd think she hadn't been telling him that all summer long. He would talk about who he'd met, and who they promised they'd introduce him to, and what they thought of his writing and his ideas, but...
"No. He hasn't." Ellen's voice, like her body, was swallowed up by the chair. "He keeps saying it's gonna work out, that people keep promising something good's gonna happen."
Miss Sylvia took off her glasses, and covered her eyes for a moment, ropy hand trembling a little.
"What's wrong? Miss Sylvia, what is it?"
Ellen had only known her new friend for a few weeks, but she already trusted Miss Sylvia to tell her what was wrong. She wouldn't say 'don't worry about it' or 'it's okay.'
She didn't. She told Ellen how she knew most of the old families, and how many of her friends knew people in Boston or in Philadelphia, or who knew people who knew people.
"You see, Ellen, I had heard about you and your father weeks before I met you. I knew you were staying in the Jamesons' house while they were out of the county." She paused, and put her glasses back on. "I knew that you had lost your mother, and that there were people who worried about how your father was handling that--and you. I don't know exactly how Ed Jameson met your father, but I know Ed, and know that he's a generous man. He gave you a place to stay. He said he'd talk to some friends of his at Tufts and, well, see if there was a possibility of an opening as, oh, I don't know, a freshman composition or introductory literature class."
Ellen knew 'we'll see.' All too often it meant 'no.' She hugged her knees up to her chest, hiding her face.
"He keeps yelling at someone about promises," she said into her thighs. She looked up, though, when Miss Sylvia told her to please speak up and get her sandals off the upholstery. "He says he's not going to give up until he gets what he's promised. What does that mean? Does it mean he's not leaving the house? He's not telling me anything because he doesn't want me to worry. Doesn't he get that that only makes it worse?" At the end, her voice shot up to a strangled squeak, and she pitched forward, arms wrapped around her head to block out the light and to muffle the sound of her frantic breathing.
There was a long silence, and then Miss Sylvia spoke in a cold, calm voice. "I'll see what I can do. There's nothing I can do about the job, but I'll see what I can do to make the house safe until he gets his act--until things are more settled for the two of you. Meanwhile, do you think you can get your father to agree to leave the house if I can find you another place to stay?"
Ellen nodded, even though her head was still tucked under her arms.
"Ellen? Can you?"
"Yes." She sat up slowly. "Can the ghosts hurt us? Can I stay here?"
Miss Sylvia didn't answer for what felt like ten minutes but was probably only ten seconds. "If you're scared, or you think you're in danger, you can absolutely come here. As for the ghosts, I think they'll mostly stick to mischief. I do think, though, that the sooner we get you out of that house, Ellen, the better."
"Can you say something to my father?" Miss Sylvia was older, and she knew the island. She sounded like she knew all those people her father was trying to impress. "He might listen if you said something, if you said he was in danger."
Again, there was that long but not long silence as Miss Sylvia seemed to pick through her words before letting them out of her mouth.
"Your father might be more likely to listen to his own daughter than a crazy old lady. You have to understand, Ellen, there's more people who don't believe in ghosts than do."
"He believes in them." Ellen couldn't look Miss Sylvia in the eye. Instead, she kept focused on the big bowl of beach glass on the coffee table. "He thinks they're neat. He says he wants to talk to them."
There was a sharp hiss of breath from Miss Sylvia. "Did he say about what?"
Ellen shook her head.
"Not good, not good..." Miss Sylvia tapped her fingers against her lips and she stared up at the ceiling as she thought. "They've always been harmless, but with the wrong sort of stimulus, the wrong sort of mind, the wrong circumstances... Oh, this could be tricky."
They'd only met a few times, but Ellen knew to wait while Miss Sylvia muttered her way to a conclusion. In a way, it was comforting to hear not just what Miss Sylvia was thinking, but how she was thinking.
"Normally, I'd say let me find what's doing the haunting place and have Ollie Coombs burn it to bits. Unfortunately, we've never been able to find the what or who or how many when it comes to the Jameson place, and I'm not one to think we'll miraculously find the answer now. Doesn't mean I won't be looking, though."
Ellen nodded. Miss Sylvia thought a bit longer, silently this time.
"Talk to him, Ellen. Let him know that I have a spare bedroom here if he needs it."
The shift in what Miss Sylvia was offering was not lost on Ellen. Her eyes grew wide.
"Listen to me, Ellen--all you can do is try to talk to him. He may not listen, and if he doesn't, that is not your fault. Talk to him, and tell me what happens, how he acts, what he says. It's early yet, and maybe we still have time. Talk to him today, tomorrow at the latest. Can you promise me that? Talk to him, and tell me what happens."
Ellen nodded.
"Speak up, Ellen."
"I promise."
Miss Sylvia nodded in satisfaction then made her recite back the instructions she'd been given on what to do if the ghosts started scaring her too much.
When it was time to go home, Ellen had two amulets she'd made by herself (but all according to Miss Sylvia's instructions) and all sorts of instructions rattling around her head.
Miss Sylvia had offered to come inside with her when they got back to the Jamesons', and while it was tempting, Ellen said she'd rather be dropped off on the side of the road.
It was a good thing she did, because as soon as she stepped through the gap in the privet, Ellen could hear her father yelling and pleading with whoever it was on the other end of that phone.
"Please," came floating down from up above. "Please... please... please..."
It sounded like he was crying. It was worse than listening to him swear.
"Can't you please just let me talk to her?"
When Ellen went inside, she ignored the clattering checkers, and instead went to sit on her favorite landing, listening to the ocean and waiting for her father to get off the phone.
* * *
Ellen's phone rings just as she puts the keys in the ignition. She fumbles the coffee, swearing at the sudden heat scorching through to her knee.
"Ash? Everything all right? Mac and Wally didn't come back and start trouble, did they?" Whatever comfort she took from the magnet and from her treat is wiped away cold
It takes her longer than it should to figure out Ash is babbling about the safe and something she needs to get for him.
"Ash... Ash, hold on. You're not making a lick of sense. Where are you going? What's going on. And what the hell is it I'm supposed to get for Dean? A map? What's it a map of?"
A hurried oh fuck, oh shit, gotta go... and the line goes dead. There's not even a dial tone, just a chunk of metal and plastic in her hand that's not telling her a damned thing.
Ellen throws the truck into reverse and there's a heart-stopping moment when she thinks the thing has gone dead on her.
She shoves the panic aside, takes a deep breath, and turns the key in the ignition.
* * *
The last time Bill ever called her, there wasn't a sign that anything was wrong or was about to go wrong. He was just checking in the way he always did when he got to whatever motel he was staying at.
"How's Jo doing? She asleep yet?"
Ellen smiled to hear the slight anxiety in his voice. "Sent her to bed about ten minutes ago. I'll wake her so you can give her a second 'good-night.' Won't kill her to lose a half hour of sleep, and but she might kill me if she knows I let her miss your call. Be careful, though--I told her not to nag you about her birthday, but she probably will."
"Got it." Jo would try to wrangle a promise out of him not to miss her tenth birthday party, and would no doubt sulk when Ellen and Bill told her it was unfair to ask that of them.
Jo was delighted to be able to talk to her daddy, and was sulky when Ellen once again commandeered the phone. It was nothing new. Once Jo had been ushered back to bed and her lights turned out, Ellen retreated to her and Bill's bedroom and they talked for another hour. She was careful to keep her voice low so as not to distract Jo, but Bill did most of the talking, as usual. He told her his theories about what it was they were hunting, his thankfulness that the Good Lord did not see fit to make him like John Winchester, and his opinion that those boys of his needed to be off the road. As for her part, Ellen just enjoyed listening to his voice and ignoring what seemed to be some mighty big hints.
There was nothing at all, nothing to tell her that everything was about to go so wrong.
* * *
Her father eventually stopped shouting, and the sound of waves came tumbling back down the stairs one more. Ellen's head snapped up at the sudden shift in noise, and she blinked herself back to wakefulness. It was well past sunset, and the house was filled with a gray half-light that just made the post-nap haze that much harder to shake off. She picked herself up off the landing, wincing the way Miss Sylvia did when she stood up.
She called up to her father as she walked up the upper flight of stairs. The waves seemed louder than before, no surprise given that the winds had been picking up of late, but Ellen still thought she could hear the reassuringly familiar sounds of puttering and pacing.
Ellen raised her hand to knock on the door, but after a moment's though, she simply opened it and peeked inside.
Her father was sitting at his desk, holding something in both hands. At first, Ellen thought it was a book, but it was too thin for a grown-up book. When he settled back in the old wooden chair, light glinted off the front of it. A picture frame, then, but because of the reflection, Ellen couldn't see what it was of.
"That you, Nelly-belle?" he asked without looking up. His hair looked liked he'd combed it by running his fingers through it over and over.
"Yeah." Who else would it be? Still, her father looked a little disappointed.
"Probably dinner-time, huh?"
Ellen nodded even though he couldn't see her.
"Wanna go get burgers? It'll be just the two of us, of course," he said. It was just like the ride up, Ellen thought, just like the first few weeks here, before he started holing up in the attic study. When he looked over at her, he had that glint in his eye, the one that said he was going to try to be clever about something.
"Okay."
"That's my girl!" He put the picture down, then danced across the study and tried to swoop her up. Ellen skittered back out of reach, but instead of looking hurt, her father just laughed.
"You're getting too big for that, aren't you, Nelly-belle?"
"Dad?"
"What?" his smile was fixed, expectant.
"Can we leave? Please? I know a place we can stay, one that doesn't have ghosts in it."
It sounded so stupid, now that she said it aloud. What was Miss Sylvia thinking?
Her father stopped smiling. "We are not leaving."
He sounded so final about it. He'd never sounded like that before.
"What we are going to do, though," he said, the 'aren't I clever?' smirk returning, "is go out and get hamburgers to celebrate."
"Celebrate what?"
He wouldn't tell her. He just laughed and challenged her to race down the stairs, cheating the way he always did by not challenging her until he was already too far ahead for her to catch up. All he'd tell her when he asked, was "you'll see."
She meant to ask him over dinner, but when they got to the Ocean View, some of her father's buddies were there, and they kept on talking and talking while Ellen nodded off in her chair. She vaguely remembered waking up in the back seat of the station wagon, but it was probably just a dream, because they were driving along State Beach, and she was listening to the waves and listening to her father telling Janis about concerts and plays, clambakes and gallery openings, and how much fun they'd have, just the three of them.
The next morning, Ellen woke up to the sound of her father shouting again. Her stomach flopped over. She'd told Miss Sylvia she'd talk to him yesterday, today at the latest.
She'd tried, and that's all Miss Sylvia said she had to do, but that wasn't enough. Ellen got dressed to the sound of waves and the sound of her father's voice. One seemed to grow louder as the other grew softer, over and over again.
One more try, she told herself. Once he quieted down, she would tell him how worried she was. She could tell him she was having bad dreams, that she couldn't sleep. Breakfast first, though.
Ellen passed through the living room on her way to the kitchen and saw the checkerboard set up and waiting for her. Black had made its first move, but something about the board seemed too still, as if the other player had made his move and then given up on the game. As usual, she walked up to the board and reached out to make her move.
The checker shot out from under her hand like a bullet. Ellen screamed as it ricocheted off the hall phone, knocking the receiver off its cradle.
Her father started shouting even louder than ever. No! Today! That's what you promised!
Ellen stared at the receiver. She thought she could hear another voice, now, hissing, crashing, rising up and down like the waves. Or maybe they were the waves.
She picked up the receiver, meaning to put it back gently and hoping her father hadn't heard it when it fell. But the temptation to listen in was just too much. She shouldn't, she knew she shouldn't, but she did anyway.
All she heard was a dial tone.
Ellen dropped the receiver and ran for the stairs, pitching forward and using her hands as well as her feet as she scrambled up the steep, steep steps as fast as she could.
The door to the attic study was closed, but she could hear her dad all the same. He almost sounded happy, now, and that scared her more than all the angry shouting.
Ellen tried to open the door, but the glass knob was so cold it burned. Ellen yanked her hand back, and blew on the sear marks. The lines on her palm matched the pattern of the cut glass. She stared at the door for a moment, then hiked up the hem of her tee shirt and used that to grab the doorknob. The door opened an inch. Ellen looked inside, and then slammed the door shut and lit off down the stairs.
She didn't stop to use the house phone. She just ran and ran down the hill and into town, not stopping when she got a stitch in her side, not stopping when two guys in a pickup truck shout at her, not stopping until she got to the Steamship Authority. She dropped one of her last dimes, her hand was shaking so bad, and she dropped the next, but she didn't stop to pick them up. She just kept fishing them out of her change purse until she could get one in the slot.
Miss Sylvia didn't ask any questions. She just said she'd be right there.
Ellen hung up the phone and sat down on a bench to wait, right underneath the ferry schedule she'd memorized so long ago. She waited, and thought about the ferry taking her away, taking her home.
She didn't know where that was, but she wanted to go there. She wanted to go there so bad.
* * *
In the end, it wasn't the phone that brought her the bad news. It was a car, long and low and as black as a hearse, pulling up to the Roadhouse three hours before they were due to open.
It was John Winchester, and he was alone. He got out of the car, and would not look up as he walked towards the door. Ellen stayed just inside, gripping tight to the edge of a table. She knew what he was going to say even before he got to the door.
Knowing didn't make the waiting any easier. The only thing that allowed her to keep standing was knowing that she had to be there for Jo, and that Jo would be there for her.
* * *
Ellen sees the pillar of smoke from the highway. She smells the tang of sulfur, and she knows exactly what she's going to see when she gets home.
What's left of home.
Every instinct says to slam on the brakes, to turn around, to get the hell out of there. She's not going to like what she sees. She knows it'll be worse than it imagines.
But Ellen vowed long ago that she'll never run away again. She pushes the accelerator down as far as she dares, speeding up until the truck's shimmy is too much for her to handle, driving home as fast as she can.
When she gets there, it's almost too hot to leave the truck. There's other vehicles around, twisted and burnt. Still, she recognizes them all. There'll be time to mourn them later, and time to give thanks for all the trucks and cars she doesn't see.
Right now, there's work to be done, and only one person to do it. People are dead, but if she understands Ash's last message, there are still people counting on her.
* * *
It took Miss Sylvia nearly thirty minutes to come get her, thanks to the Friday morning ferry traffic. Cars were bumper to bumper, and tourists cut through, ignoring crosswalks on their way to the tee shirt and souvenir stands. It was so clogged up along Water Street that even two police cars with sirens screaming moved through at a crawl.
Ellen watched the families arriving for the long weekend, saw them chattering and laughing and complaining and arguing. She wondered how many of them knew that ghosts were real. They'd come here for a weekend, and they'd go home again, and their lives would be just the same.
"You did what you could, Ellen," Miss Sylvia said on the drive up West Chop. Ellen had barely been able to get the story out straight, and there was a lot she'd left out. "You tried your best to tell him, and that's all anyone can ask."
Ellen looked down at the red marks on her hand, fading now, and tried not to think about what she'd seen when she opened the door. The memory was fading along with the marks, but Ellen remembered enough to wish she hadn't run.
"We'll see what we can do when we get there. I'm not sure I can talk any sense into him, but I'll try. That's all I can do."
It seemed like it was taking forever to get back to the house. Ellen looked out the passenger side window, squinting whenever the trees broke and the light glared off the water. She'd remember that silver, that sunlight that was not-gold, even when she was four times as old as she was then, looking at a refrigerator magnet and thinking it was the wrong color.
She wished her father had let her cry about Janis. She wished she could have seen him cry.
When they rounded the corner and the privet hedge, she saw a flashes of light that weren't the ocean. Two police cars and ambulance blocked the driveway. The yard people were there, too, the two Brazilian men waving their hands wildly.
"Ellen, wait!" Miss Sylvia's shout came too late. Ellen didn't even close the car door behind her as she ran to the house. One of the policemen grabbed her roughly before she could get too close to the cloth-covered body on the grass. She got close enough, though, close enough to see the picture of Janis, its glass spiderwebbed and frame bent.
Her father's notebook, the one where he wrote all his poems, fluttered next to him, pages lifted and dropped by the ocean breeze. It would be the one thing of his she kept, after. Well, not all of it. The last poems he wrote, and the scraps of novel about a man who brings his love back from the dead? Those she eventually burned. As far as Ellen was concerned, it wasn't her father who wrote those.
At the time, then, the policeman told her don't look, little lady, don't look hurting her as he grabbed her head and turned it so she couldn't look. In the end, she looked up, up to the window of the attic study.
As she often had before, she saw a figure moving up there. Just a reflection, she told herself, but there was no glass in that attic window. It had all been broken away.
"Ellen, let me take you home," Miss Sylvia said. "Let's go."
There was no more shouting, just the sound of the waves being carried on the sweet-smelling breeze.
"Where?" Ellen asked.
It sounded like they were laughing at her.
* * *
Sometimes, she and Jo would laugh together. Sometimes, they'd fight. That's the way it was with mothers and daughters.
They fought, they made up, they cried. After Bill died, they both cried a lot. When Jo needed to cry, Ellen would let her cry, holding her and rubbing her back the way Miss Sylvia would do for her. She wouldn't deny Jo that, just as she wouldn't hide how much she missed Bill herself.
Sometimes, she saw something of Bill in the way Jo would lean against the bar, or snort in laughter. It warmed her heart and just about killed her at the same time.
Later, when Jo was old enough, and they were both in the right sort of mood, Ellen would tell her some of Bill's funnier stories, some of the ones that she was far, far too young to hear when he was alive. It wasn't quite like having Bill back, but Ellen had a deep sense of satisfaction when the story about the pig had Jo so stricken with laughter she was begging her mother to stop, just stop already.
She told Jo about the magnets, the earliest ones that Jo couldn't remember, and she gave thanks that she already had a California, and that Bill hadn't sent one from the hunt where he died. That way, she can point to each magnet as a promise as she tells Jo stories about the people her daddy helped and all the crazy trouble he got himself into.
She even told Jo a few stories about her own early years. Later, of course, Jo would throw that back in her face, demanding to know why she couldn't hunt when her mother did her first solo hunt when she was fifteen. Ellen's response was that's how she knew Jo was too young. The argument only spiraled down from there, ending with an ultimatum and a slamming door.
All Ellen had wanted was to keep Jo home a little bit longer.
The only problem was, the Roadhouse seemed a little less like home once Jo was gone. It might have been different if Jo called, or did a bit more than just send a postcard once in a while.
* * *
Ellen has put North Carolina on the dashboard. It's a magnet, not a compass, but it's leading to her where she needs to go.
It's leading her home.
The Roadhouse is gone. Good friends are dead. She's just seen the gates of Hell broken open. It still hasn't all had time to settle. It probably wouldn't settle for years. She's already had nightmares about sifting through the rubble and seeing Ash's arm sticking out. She has a nasty feeling she'll see other bodies in there in other nightmares--Jo, Bobby, Diana, Joshua, Dean, Sam--people she knows weren't there but who she could lose at any time.
But she's going home. She's still working out the details, but once everything was as settled as it could be back in Wyoming, she headed east. Bobby's making some calls for her, calling people he knows in the South, trying to see what gossip there is about any action in North Carolina.
Neither of them has Jo's cell number, but someone is bound to, somewhere. It's only a matter of time. Meanwhile, Ellen knows how to get from Wyoming to the Roadhouse. And from the Roadhouse, she knows how to get just about anywhere.
Thing is, when she was studying those maps, it wasn't as much knowing how to get from the Roadhouse to far off places as it was the reverse. It's why she studied ferry schedules and bus schedules. It was always about going home. Wherever that was.
Right now, Ellen isn't sure where that's going to be. There will be one, though. She's not a ghost who can't let go of the past, who insists on staying in one place past her time to go. It's not easy, letting go, and she's still got a lot of tears to shed, but it's what has to be done.
It's what she saw Katie Corrigan do after Bud died. It's what she tried her best to do after Bill died.
Home is not a place. It wasn't until she was older that she realized that her first 'home' had nothing to do with student housing in Berkeley, a commune in Indiana, or an ugly little house outside of Philly. Home was her father reading out loud to her, changing the bits of stories he didn't like. Home was Janis singing along to Peter, Paul and Mary while she painted. The where doesn't matter. It's the who.
She'll miss that cigar box of hers, with all its keepsakes, but she misses the people who gave them to her even more. Bill's books are still out there, she thinks. One of Tessa Corrigan's books left before it could be burned to powder. Marilyn Tuck is still alive, still remembers Miss Sylvia and would no doubt welcome a call--Ellen memorized the number long ago.
When she's just a few miles away from the intersection of I-80 and 83, her phone rings.
Given what happened last time, she hesitates to answer, but it's probably just Bobby, checking in with what he has or hasn't heard.
"Hello?"
She can't understand a damned word on the other end of the line. It's all babbling and snuffling and hysterics, but Ellen knows who it is. She crosses over two lanes and pulls onto the shoulder. There's no way she can drive and take this call.
"Jo-baby, where are you? How are you?" All the times she's rehearsed this call, Ellen has always asked Jo when she's coming home. "Are you okay?"
Jo doesn't answer, not right away. She'd had no idea if Ellen would even answer, and she's still in shock It takes a good ten minutes of "I'm okay, I'm right here," before it really sinks in that Ellen is alive.
Ellen wants to find whoever told Jo what happened to the Roadhouse and hit them upside the head with the butt of her shotgun. If Bobby'd gotten to Jo first, he'd have made sure Jo got the important news first.
"Jo, I'm in Nebraska. I just crossed over from Wyoming." She names the intersection and knows Jo will know exactly where that is. "I'll come find you. Where are you?"
In a day, maybe less, she'll see her baby girl again. What happens next, they can figure out then.
"K-kentucky. You're okay, you're really okay?"
"I'll be fine." She's not okay, not yet, and she still has to tell Jo about Ash, and about all that happened back in Wyoming. Time for that later, though. They can decide all of that later.
Maybe they'll rebuild the Roadhouse, or find another place that they can make into a home for people like Diana, Roger, Sam and Dean.
"Jo, you sound awful. I don't want you driving this late at night. Find someplace safe to sleep tonight. I'll keep driving, and we can meet up in St. Louis before noon tomorrow. No, I mean it. Fine...I'll stop for a few hours myself once I hit Kansas City."
They might decide to stay on the road. Together, hopefully. There's a whole lot of nasty that's just been released into the world, and dealing with it isn't a one-person job. They know each other, know their strengths, their weaknesses. They might be tempted to kill each other from time to time, but they'd make a hell of a team.
"Oh, baby, I know. I love you. I'm so sorry... no, don't you apologize. God, I don't want to hang up, but..."
There's so much to say, but every minute she spends on the side of the road is another minute longer she has to wait to see her baby girl.
"I'll call you when I find a place to stay for the night. The phone's got your number. We'll work out the details when I call back. Love you too, baby. See you soon."
Her voice breaks a bit on the last, but that's okay. Jo is bawling openly, and Ellen suspects she doesn't turn off her phone for a while after Ellen hangs up.
That night, as she sleeps in a motel outside of Kansas city, the wind kicks up and wails across the roof and through the trees, but Ellen doesn't dream of the ocean at all.
Part One Part Two
The Roadhouse used to belong to someone else, although there are hunters who claim it had been 'Harvelle's' all the way back to forever. Some are joking, others aren't. A few even said that Samuel Colt had passed through there, while he was working on that gun and building the world's largest Devil's Trap. These were mostly the same people who joked about Ellen teething on pool cues.
Truth was, before it was Harvelle's, it was just a plain old bar owned by a man named Casey Durant. If hunters ever passed through there, it was only by accident and in anonymity.
Ellen and Bill had only meant their stay to last a few days, maybe a week at most.
They were desperately low on cash, and they'd seen the 'Help Wanted' sign on their way to a Woman in White outside of Brewster. Ellen figured she'd earn a few days wages, plus tips, while Bill took care of what should be an easy case.
But then the Woman in White tossed Bill off a bridge, breaking his leg in two places. Six months of recovery time meant six months of working behind a bar, and eventually word got around that there was a place where hunters could go to swap stories and compare notes. Then, Jo was on her way, and after that, Ellen wasn't about to pick up and leave. By then, she'd heard tales about this one hunter who was all but living out of his car with his two little boys. That was not the life she wanted for her child, and she told Bill as much.
Besides, she found she'd gotten used to putting her clothes away in drawers, and knowing exactly when the bedspread had last seen the inside of a washing machine.
From time to time, Bill got the itch to head back on the road, or he got a call from an old buddy who needed a hand. Ellen never stopped him from going, but she found it harder to maintain her temper when he was gone, especially when she had a toddler who always seemed half again as willful and fractious than normal when her daddy wasn't around to dote on her.
For her part, Ellen went on a few jobs of her own when she was feeling restless, or when the rumors of a haunt had too familiar a ring for her to ignore.
Then, when Jo was four, she flew out to the east coast to help out Katie Corrigan for a couple of weeks after Bud passed away. In some ways, it was harder than any hunt, but Ellen would have cause to be grateful for time spent.
Other than that, though, they were mostly content to stay put. And when they left, they always came back. The Roadhouse was home. Still, up until the day he left on that last hunt, Bill continued to call it the longest temporary job in the history of mankind.
There was only a week and a half left in August, and still her father said nothing about when they were going to leave. Ellen only had a dollar eighty-five left of the twenty she'd taken, and she clung to those five quarters and six dimes with miserly fervor. Her father and Janis always used to have 'discussions' (never arguments) about money running out, and it always ended with Janis yelling and with her father apologizing over and over until Ellen wished he'd just shut up already.
She figured they'd probably leave right before it was time for her to start school, so it was no big deal. One morning, though, she walked into town and after a long internal debate, stopped in at the bakery to use one of the five remaining quarters on a muffin. The screen door and its bells clattered behind her and she exchanged a "good morning, Maggie," for the warm "good morning, Ellen," that made her feel somehow superior to the day-trippers and weekenders and run of the mill 'summer folk.'
She tried not to smile too much as Maggie asked if she'd have her 'usual.' She just nodded curtly and raised up on tip-toe to hand the quarter over and receive a dime back in return. If she was lucky, Miss Sylvia would stop in not long after to get a cup of coffee and the morning gossip. Then, if it wasn't too miserably hot, according to Miss Sylvia's rather erratic internal thermostat, they'd go sit on a bench down by the marina and watch the cars coming off and going on the ferry.
That morning, though, things didn't happen quite as planned.
She handed the quarter over, and this time Maggie paused before reaching into the case for a corn muffin.
"Your father stopped in the other day for a cup of coffee. I was surprised to hear him say you'd be starting school here in the fall."
So was Ellen. She hadn't heard a word of it, unless it was part of one of the conversations she half-heard through closed doors. Her father'd been on the phone a lot, lately. On the phone and worried. It knotted her stomach to think about it, but when she asked, her father would only smile and tell her not to worry, and hey, let's go to the beach--it'll be okay. There was no more talk about getting what he was owed.
It was just like Janis getting sick all over again. No one told her anything. No one talked to her. No one let her know.
All Ellen could do for a moment was stare. Maggie blushed and leaned down to get Ellen's muffin, even though the last thing Ellen wanted right now was a stupid muffin. She apologized for letting the cat out of the bag and told Ellen to tell her father that the people who owned the tavern would get back to him about doing a reading.
"That's what the Edgartown bookstore people said back in July," Ellen pointed out. Maggie started to turn red again, but then she saw the look on Ellen's face and the blush turned to a wry, knowing smile.
"I can't blame him for trying," she said. "I like his poems, for what it's worth."
Ellen smiled back, just a little. "So do I," she admitted.
One of these days, her father would find a place where he could write all the time, or talk about writing, and they could stay in one place and not worry about money. At least, that's what she told herself. Most of the time, though, it sounded like just another story.
Where were they going to stay? Her father had said Professor Jameson would let them stay in the house all summer. He was out of the country or something, but her father never told Ellen any details. He'd also stopped talking about the job he was starting that fall. She also heard him up in the study, yelling at someone over the phone. Ellen was starting to worry about that, but she knew the only answer she'd get if she did ask was "don't worry."
Being told not to worry was almost enough to send her into a sheer panic.
Right now, the only thing that's really eating at her mind is Ash, and how secretive he's being. The rest of it is finally starting to settle. Still, she worries, and after picking up a few cartons of pretzels, Ellen decides she's owed something decadent after dealing with the morning's upset.
So, instead of heading straight back to the roadhouse, she heads another ten miles out to her favorite diner. They got an espresso machine in a few years back, and they'll make her the kind of froofy coffee she loves but will never admit to drinking. These days, she doesn't even have to tell them to add another glug of caramel syrup to the thing. They know.
On her way out of the diner, she reaches into her jacket pocket for her keys and her fingers brush against the North Carolina magnet. She smiles, and she figures she'll tell Ash about it when she gets back.
And then she'll make damn sure he tells her what's got him so het up. This is no time for secrets.
Bill wouldn't always volunteer what he'd done to get himself hurt, or what kind of jackassery had landed him in the drunk tank in Providence.
If she asked him, though, he'd generally be straight with her. Early, early on he'd learned in no uncertain terms that Ellen did not like to be protected from so-called 'hard' truths.
Her father had tried to protect her when Janis was sick and then dying. Ellen never did find out what it was that killed her mother. Once, when she went in for a pre-natal checkup and couldn't check a single damned box about her family medical history, she wondered which of those blank boxes might wind up biting her or her baby in the ass one fine day.
Hell, even Miss Sylvia had tried to protect her, at first.
As for Ellen, she watched her daughter mooning over Dean Winchester for well over a month before she got up enough mad to tell Jo exactly who it was her father was working with when he died, and what happened to people who were fool enough to trust their lives to impetuous idiots.
When she saw the look on Jo's face as her castles came crashing down out of the sky, Ellen had one of the few flashes of empathy she had ever had for her poor, well-meaning idiot of a father.
"I have a few things I need to tell you about, Ellen."
It was August twenty-ninth, and Ellen sat in Miss Sylvia's parlor, nearly lost in a huge, chintz-covered chair. She held her glass of lemonade carefully in both hands, and her toes only barely touched the floor. Miss Sylvia sat in a straight-backed chair, one she could get out of easily. She didn't look very comfortable.
"Is it the ghosts?" Things had been moving around more and more lately. Ellen's father had cussed up a storm when he found that his papers had been strewn all over the study. Later, he snapped at Ellen for leaving her books and sandals on the stairs where he could trip on them.
He believed in the ghosts, or said he did, but when a window was left open, soaking his bed with rain, he was faster to blame his own idiocy than playful ghosts.
Miss Sylvia didn't answer at first. "How much has your father told you about what is going on?"
Ellen shrugged. "He's writing a book."
"Oh, is he now?"
Ellen flinched at the sudden waspishness in Miss Sylvia's voice.
"He hasn't said anything about that job of his, has he?" This time, Miss Sylvia sounded more tired than annoyed, and Ellen really didn't want to hear what she had to say next.
As the end of August drew near, father had been staying up in his study more and more. Ellen thought he slept up there. He'd also stopped insisting on taking her along to those parties with all those boring, snooty people. From the way he talked about how dull it would be for her, you'd think she hadn't been telling him that all summer long. He would talk about who he'd met, and who they promised they'd introduce him to, and what they thought of his writing and his ideas, but...
"No. He hasn't." Ellen's voice, like her body, was swallowed up by the chair. "He keeps saying it's gonna work out, that people keep promising something good's gonna happen."
Miss Sylvia took off her glasses, and covered her eyes for a moment, ropy hand trembling a little.
"What's wrong? Miss Sylvia, what is it?"
Ellen had only known her new friend for a few weeks, but she already trusted Miss Sylvia to tell her what was wrong. She wouldn't say 'don't worry about it' or 'it's okay.'
She didn't. She told Ellen how she knew most of the old families, and how many of her friends knew people in Boston or in Philadelphia, or who knew people who knew people.
"You see, Ellen, I had heard about you and your father weeks before I met you. I knew you were staying in the Jamesons' house while they were out of the county." She paused, and put her glasses back on. "I knew that you had lost your mother, and that there were people who worried about how your father was handling that--and you. I don't know exactly how Ed Jameson met your father, but I know Ed, and know that he's a generous man. He gave you a place to stay. He said he'd talk to some friends of his at Tufts and, well, see if there was a possibility of an opening as, oh, I don't know, a freshman composition or introductory literature class."
Ellen knew 'we'll see.' All too often it meant 'no.' She hugged her knees up to her chest, hiding her face.
"He keeps yelling at someone about promises," she said into her thighs. She looked up, though, when Miss Sylvia told her to please speak up and get her sandals off the upholstery. "He says he's not going to give up until he gets what he's promised. What does that mean? Does it mean he's not leaving the house? He's not telling me anything because he doesn't want me to worry. Doesn't he get that that only makes it worse?" At the end, her voice shot up to a strangled squeak, and she pitched forward, arms wrapped around her head to block out the light and to muffle the sound of her frantic breathing.
There was a long silence, and then Miss Sylvia spoke in a cold, calm voice. "I'll see what I can do. There's nothing I can do about the job, but I'll see what I can do to make the house safe until he gets his act--until things are more settled for the two of you. Meanwhile, do you think you can get your father to agree to leave the house if I can find you another place to stay?"
Ellen nodded, even though her head was still tucked under her arms.
"Ellen? Can you?"
"Yes." She sat up slowly. "Can the ghosts hurt us? Can I stay here?"
Miss Sylvia didn't answer for what felt like ten minutes but was probably only ten seconds. "If you're scared, or you think you're in danger, you can absolutely come here. As for the ghosts, I think they'll mostly stick to mischief. I do think, though, that the sooner we get you out of that house, Ellen, the better."
"Can you say something to my father?" Miss Sylvia was older, and she knew the island. She sounded like she knew all those people her father was trying to impress. "He might listen if you said something, if you said he was in danger."
Again, there was that long but not long silence as Miss Sylvia seemed to pick through her words before letting them out of her mouth.
"Your father might be more likely to listen to his own daughter than a crazy old lady. You have to understand, Ellen, there's more people who don't believe in ghosts than do."
"He believes in them." Ellen couldn't look Miss Sylvia in the eye. Instead, she kept focused on the big bowl of beach glass on the coffee table. "He thinks they're neat. He says he wants to talk to them."
There was a sharp hiss of breath from Miss Sylvia. "Did he say about what?"
Ellen shook her head.
"Not good, not good..." Miss Sylvia tapped her fingers against her lips and she stared up at the ceiling as she thought. "They've always been harmless, but with the wrong sort of stimulus, the wrong sort of mind, the wrong circumstances... Oh, this could be tricky."
They'd only met a few times, but Ellen knew to wait while Miss Sylvia muttered her way to a conclusion. In a way, it was comforting to hear not just what Miss Sylvia was thinking, but how she was thinking.
"Normally, I'd say let me find what's doing the haunting place and have Ollie Coombs burn it to bits. Unfortunately, we've never been able to find the what or who or how many when it comes to the Jameson place, and I'm not one to think we'll miraculously find the answer now. Doesn't mean I won't be looking, though."
Ellen nodded. Miss Sylvia thought a bit longer, silently this time.
"Talk to him, Ellen. Let him know that I have a spare bedroom here if he needs it."
The shift in what Miss Sylvia was offering was not lost on Ellen. Her eyes grew wide.
"Listen to me, Ellen--all you can do is try to talk to him. He may not listen, and if he doesn't, that is not your fault. Talk to him, and tell me what happens, how he acts, what he says. It's early yet, and maybe we still have time. Talk to him today, tomorrow at the latest. Can you promise me that? Talk to him, and tell me what happens."
Ellen nodded.
"Speak up, Ellen."
"I promise."
Miss Sylvia nodded in satisfaction then made her recite back the instructions she'd been given on what to do if the ghosts started scaring her too much.
When it was time to go home, Ellen had two amulets she'd made by herself (but all according to Miss Sylvia's instructions) and all sorts of instructions rattling around her head.
Miss Sylvia had offered to come inside with her when they got back to the Jamesons', and while it was tempting, Ellen said she'd rather be dropped off on the side of the road.
It was a good thing she did, because as soon as she stepped through the gap in the privet, Ellen could hear her father yelling and pleading with whoever it was on the other end of that phone.
"Please," came floating down from up above. "Please... please... please..."
It sounded like he was crying. It was worse than listening to him swear.
"Can't you please just let me talk to her?"
When Ellen went inside, she ignored the clattering checkers, and instead went to sit on her favorite landing, listening to the ocean and waiting for her father to get off the phone.
Ellen's phone rings just as she puts the keys in the ignition. She fumbles the coffee, swearing at the sudden heat scorching through to her knee.
"Ash? Everything all right? Mac and Wally didn't come back and start trouble, did they?" Whatever comfort she took from the magnet and from her treat is wiped away cold
It takes her longer than it should to figure out Ash is babbling about the safe and something she needs to get for him.
"Ash... Ash, hold on. You're not making a lick of sense. Where are you going? What's going on. And what the hell is it I'm supposed to get for Dean? A map? What's it a map of?"
A hurried oh fuck, oh shit, gotta go... and the line goes dead. There's not even a dial tone, just a chunk of metal and plastic in her hand that's not telling her a damned thing.
Ellen throws the truck into reverse and there's a heart-stopping moment when she thinks the thing has gone dead on her.
She shoves the panic aside, takes a deep breath, and turns the key in the ignition.
The last time Bill ever called her, there wasn't a sign that anything was wrong or was about to go wrong. He was just checking in the way he always did when he got to whatever motel he was staying at.
"How's Jo doing? She asleep yet?"
Ellen smiled to hear the slight anxiety in his voice. "Sent her to bed about ten minutes ago. I'll wake her so you can give her a second 'good-night.' Won't kill her to lose a half hour of sleep, and but she might kill me if she knows I let her miss your call. Be careful, though--I told her not to nag you about her birthday, but she probably will."
"Got it." Jo would try to wrangle a promise out of him not to miss her tenth birthday party, and would no doubt sulk when Ellen and Bill told her it was unfair to ask that of them.
Jo was delighted to be able to talk to her daddy, and was sulky when Ellen once again commandeered the phone. It was nothing new. Once Jo had been ushered back to bed and her lights turned out, Ellen retreated to her and Bill's bedroom and they talked for another hour. She was careful to keep her voice low so as not to distract Jo, but Bill did most of the talking, as usual. He told her his theories about what it was they were hunting, his thankfulness that the Good Lord did not see fit to make him like John Winchester, and his opinion that those boys of his needed to be off the road. As for her part, Ellen just enjoyed listening to his voice and ignoring what seemed to be some mighty big hints.
There was nothing at all, nothing to tell her that everything was about to go so wrong.
Her father eventually stopped shouting, and the sound of waves came tumbling back down the stairs one more. Ellen's head snapped up at the sudden shift in noise, and she blinked herself back to wakefulness. It was well past sunset, and the house was filled with a gray half-light that just made the post-nap haze that much harder to shake off. She picked herself up off the landing, wincing the way Miss Sylvia did when she stood up.
She called up to her father as she walked up the upper flight of stairs. The waves seemed louder than before, no surprise given that the winds had been picking up of late, but Ellen still thought she could hear the reassuringly familiar sounds of puttering and pacing.
Ellen raised her hand to knock on the door, but after a moment's though, she simply opened it and peeked inside.
Her father was sitting at his desk, holding something in both hands. At first, Ellen thought it was a book, but it was too thin for a grown-up book. When he settled back in the old wooden chair, light glinted off the front of it. A picture frame, then, but because of the reflection, Ellen couldn't see what it was of.
"That you, Nelly-belle?" he asked without looking up. His hair looked liked he'd combed it by running his fingers through it over and over.
"Yeah." Who else would it be? Still, her father looked a little disappointed.
"Probably dinner-time, huh?"
Ellen nodded even though he couldn't see her.
"Wanna go get burgers? It'll be just the two of us, of course," he said. It was just like the ride up, Ellen thought, just like the first few weeks here, before he started holing up in the attic study. When he looked over at her, he had that glint in his eye, the one that said he was going to try to be clever about something.
"Okay."
"That's my girl!" He put the picture down, then danced across the study and tried to swoop her up. Ellen skittered back out of reach, but instead of looking hurt, her father just laughed.
"You're getting too big for that, aren't you, Nelly-belle?"
"Dad?"
"What?" his smile was fixed, expectant.
"Can we leave? Please? I know a place we can stay, one that doesn't have ghosts in it."
It sounded so stupid, now that she said it aloud. What was Miss Sylvia thinking?
Her father stopped smiling. "We are not leaving."
He sounded so final about it. He'd never sounded like that before.
"What we are going to do, though," he said, the 'aren't I clever?' smirk returning, "is go out and get hamburgers to celebrate."
"Celebrate what?"
He wouldn't tell her. He just laughed and challenged her to race down the stairs, cheating the way he always did by not challenging her until he was already too far ahead for her to catch up. All he'd tell her when he asked, was "you'll see."
She meant to ask him over dinner, but when they got to the Ocean View, some of her father's buddies were there, and they kept on talking and talking while Ellen nodded off in her chair. She vaguely remembered waking up in the back seat of the station wagon, but it was probably just a dream, because they were driving along State Beach, and she was listening to the waves and listening to her father telling Janis about concerts and plays, clambakes and gallery openings, and how much fun they'd have, just the three of them.
The next morning, Ellen woke up to the sound of her father shouting again. Her stomach flopped over. She'd told Miss Sylvia she'd talk to him yesterday, today at the latest.
She'd tried, and that's all Miss Sylvia said she had to do, but that wasn't enough. Ellen got dressed to the sound of waves and the sound of her father's voice. One seemed to grow louder as the other grew softer, over and over again.
One more try, she told herself. Once he quieted down, she would tell him how worried she was. She could tell him she was having bad dreams, that she couldn't sleep. Breakfast first, though.
Ellen passed through the living room on her way to the kitchen and saw the checkerboard set up and waiting for her. Black had made its first move, but something about the board seemed too still, as if the other player had made his move and then given up on the game. As usual, she walked up to the board and reached out to make her move.
The checker shot out from under her hand like a bullet. Ellen screamed as it ricocheted off the hall phone, knocking the receiver off its cradle.
Her father started shouting even louder than ever. No! Today! That's what you promised!
Ellen stared at the receiver. She thought she could hear another voice, now, hissing, crashing, rising up and down like the waves. Or maybe they were the waves.
She picked up the receiver, meaning to put it back gently and hoping her father hadn't heard it when it fell. But the temptation to listen in was just too much. She shouldn't, she knew she shouldn't, but she did anyway.
All she heard was a dial tone.
Ellen dropped the receiver and ran for the stairs, pitching forward and using her hands as well as her feet as she scrambled up the steep, steep steps as fast as she could.
The door to the attic study was closed, but she could hear her dad all the same. He almost sounded happy, now, and that scared her more than all the angry shouting.
Ellen tried to open the door, but the glass knob was so cold it burned. Ellen yanked her hand back, and blew on the sear marks. The lines on her palm matched the pattern of the cut glass. She stared at the door for a moment, then hiked up the hem of her tee shirt and used that to grab the doorknob. The door opened an inch. Ellen looked inside, and then slammed the door shut and lit off down the stairs.
She didn't stop to use the house phone. She just ran and ran down the hill and into town, not stopping when she got a stitch in her side, not stopping when two guys in a pickup truck shout at her, not stopping until she got to the Steamship Authority. She dropped one of her last dimes, her hand was shaking so bad, and she dropped the next, but she didn't stop to pick them up. She just kept fishing them out of her change purse until she could get one in the slot.
Miss Sylvia didn't ask any questions. She just said she'd be right there.
Ellen hung up the phone and sat down on a bench to wait, right underneath the ferry schedule she'd memorized so long ago. She waited, and thought about the ferry taking her away, taking her home.
She didn't know where that was, but she wanted to go there. She wanted to go there so bad.
In the end, it wasn't the phone that brought her the bad news. It was a car, long and low and as black as a hearse, pulling up to the Roadhouse three hours before they were due to open.
It was John Winchester, and he was alone. He got out of the car, and would not look up as he walked towards the door. Ellen stayed just inside, gripping tight to the edge of a table. She knew what he was going to say even before he got to the door.
Knowing didn't make the waiting any easier. The only thing that allowed her to keep standing was knowing that she had to be there for Jo, and that Jo would be there for her.
Ellen sees the pillar of smoke from the highway. She smells the tang of sulfur, and she knows exactly what she's going to see when she gets home.
What's left of home.
Every instinct says to slam on the brakes, to turn around, to get the hell out of there. She's not going to like what she sees. She knows it'll be worse than it imagines.
But Ellen vowed long ago that she'll never run away again. She pushes the accelerator down as far as she dares, speeding up until the truck's shimmy is too much for her to handle, driving home as fast as she can.
When she gets there, it's almost too hot to leave the truck. There's other vehicles around, twisted and burnt. Still, she recognizes them all. There'll be time to mourn them later, and time to give thanks for all the trucks and cars she doesn't see.
Right now, there's work to be done, and only one person to do it. People are dead, but if she understands Ash's last message, there are still people counting on her.
It took Miss Sylvia nearly thirty minutes to come get her, thanks to the Friday morning ferry traffic. Cars were bumper to bumper, and tourists cut through, ignoring crosswalks on their way to the tee shirt and souvenir stands. It was so clogged up along Water Street that even two police cars with sirens screaming moved through at a crawl.
Ellen watched the families arriving for the long weekend, saw them chattering and laughing and complaining and arguing. She wondered how many of them knew that ghosts were real. They'd come here for a weekend, and they'd go home again, and their lives would be just the same.
"You did what you could, Ellen," Miss Sylvia said on the drive up West Chop. Ellen had barely been able to get the story out straight, and there was a lot she'd left out. "You tried your best to tell him, and that's all anyone can ask."
Ellen looked down at the red marks on her hand, fading now, and tried not to think about what she'd seen when she opened the door. The memory was fading along with the marks, but Ellen remembered enough to wish she hadn't run.
"We'll see what we can do when we get there. I'm not sure I can talk any sense into him, but I'll try. That's all I can do."
It seemed like it was taking forever to get back to the house. Ellen looked out the passenger side window, squinting whenever the trees broke and the light glared off the water. She'd remember that silver, that sunlight that was not-gold, even when she was four times as old as she was then, looking at a refrigerator magnet and thinking it was the wrong color.
She wished her father had let her cry about Janis. She wished she could have seen him cry.
When they rounded the corner and the privet hedge, she saw a flashes of light that weren't the ocean. Two police cars and ambulance blocked the driveway. The yard people were there, too, the two Brazilian men waving their hands wildly.
"Ellen, wait!" Miss Sylvia's shout came too late. Ellen didn't even close the car door behind her as she ran to the house. One of the policemen grabbed her roughly before she could get too close to the cloth-covered body on the grass. She got close enough, though, close enough to see the picture of Janis, its glass spiderwebbed and frame bent.
Her father's notebook, the one where he wrote all his poems, fluttered next to him, pages lifted and dropped by the ocean breeze. It would be the one thing of his she kept, after. Well, not all of it. The last poems he wrote, and the scraps of novel about a man who brings his love back from the dead? Those she eventually burned. As far as Ellen was concerned, it wasn't her father who wrote those.
At the time, then, the policeman told her don't look, little lady, don't look hurting her as he grabbed her head and turned it so she couldn't look. In the end, she looked up, up to the window of the attic study.
As she often had before, she saw a figure moving up there. Just a reflection, she told herself, but there was no glass in that attic window. It had all been broken away.
"Ellen, let me take you home," Miss Sylvia said. "Let's go."
There was no more shouting, just the sound of the waves being carried on the sweet-smelling breeze.
"Where?" Ellen asked.
It sounded like they were laughing at her.
Sometimes, she and Jo would laugh together. Sometimes, they'd fight. That's the way it was with mothers and daughters.
They fought, they made up, they cried. After Bill died, they both cried a lot. When Jo needed to cry, Ellen would let her cry, holding her and rubbing her back the way Miss Sylvia would do for her. She wouldn't deny Jo that, just as she wouldn't hide how much she missed Bill herself.
Sometimes, she saw something of Bill in the way Jo would lean against the bar, or snort in laughter. It warmed her heart and just about killed her at the same time.
Later, when Jo was old enough, and they were both in the right sort of mood, Ellen would tell her some of Bill's funnier stories, some of the ones that she was far, far too young to hear when he was alive. It wasn't quite like having Bill back, but Ellen had a deep sense of satisfaction when the story about the pig had Jo so stricken with laughter she was begging her mother to stop, just stop already.
She told Jo about the magnets, the earliest ones that Jo couldn't remember, and she gave thanks that she already had a California, and that Bill hadn't sent one from the hunt where he died. That way, she can point to each magnet as a promise as she tells Jo stories about the people her daddy helped and all the crazy trouble he got himself into.
She even told Jo a few stories about her own early years. Later, of course, Jo would throw that back in her face, demanding to know why she couldn't hunt when her mother did her first solo hunt when she was fifteen. Ellen's response was that's how she knew Jo was too young. The argument only spiraled down from there, ending with an ultimatum and a slamming door.
All Ellen had wanted was to keep Jo home a little bit longer.
The only problem was, the Roadhouse seemed a little less like home once Jo was gone. It might have been different if Jo called, or did a bit more than just send a postcard once in a while.
Ellen has put North Carolina on the dashboard. It's a magnet, not a compass, but it's leading to her where she needs to go.
It's leading her home.
The Roadhouse is gone. Good friends are dead. She's just seen the gates of Hell broken open. It still hasn't all had time to settle. It probably wouldn't settle for years. She's already had nightmares about sifting through the rubble and seeing Ash's arm sticking out. She has a nasty feeling she'll see other bodies in there in other nightmares--Jo, Bobby, Diana, Joshua, Dean, Sam--people she knows weren't there but who she could lose at any time.
But she's going home. She's still working out the details, but once everything was as settled as it could be back in Wyoming, she headed east. Bobby's making some calls for her, calling people he knows in the South, trying to see what gossip there is about any action in North Carolina.
Neither of them has Jo's cell number, but someone is bound to, somewhere. It's only a matter of time. Meanwhile, Ellen knows how to get from Wyoming to the Roadhouse. And from the Roadhouse, she knows how to get just about anywhere.
Thing is, when she was studying those maps, it wasn't as much knowing how to get from the Roadhouse to far off places as it was the reverse. It's why she studied ferry schedules and bus schedules. It was always about going home. Wherever that was.
Right now, Ellen isn't sure where that's going to be. There will be one, though. She's not a ghost who can't let go of the past, who insists on staying in one place past her time to go. It's not easy, letting go, and she's still got a lot of tears to shed, but it's what has to be done.
It's what she saw Katie Corrigan do after Bud died. It's what she tried her best to do after Bill died.
Home is not a place. It wasn't until she was older that she realized that her first 'home' had nothing to do with student housing in Berkeley, a commune in Indiana, or an ugly little house outside of Philly. Home was her father reading out loud to her, changing the bits of stories he didn't like. Home was Janis singing along to Peter, Paul and Mary while she painted. The where doesn't matter. It's the who.
She'll miss that cigar box of hers, with all its keepsakes, but she misses the people who gave them to her even more. Bill's books are still out there, she thinks. One of Tessa Corrigan's books left before it could be burned to powder. Marilyn Tuck is still alive, still remembers Miss Sylvia and would no doubt welcome a call--Ellen memorized the number long ago.
When she's just a few miles away from the intersection of I-80 and 83, her phone rings.
Given what happened last time, she hesitates to answer, but it's probably just Bobby, checking in with what he has or hasn't heard.
"Hello?"
She can't understand a damned word on the other end of the line. It's all babbling and snuffling and hysterics, but Ellen knows who it is. She crosses over two lanes and pulls onto the shoulder. There's no way she can drive and take this call.
"Jo-baby, where are you? How are you?" All the times she's rehearsed this call, Ellen has always asked Jo when she's coming home. "Are you okay?"
Jo doesn't answer, not right away. She'd had no idea if Ellen would even answer, and she's still in shock It takes a good ten minutes of "I'm okay, I'm right here," before it really sinks in that Ellen is alive.
Ellen wants to find whoever told Jo what happened to the Roadhouse and hit them upside the head with the butt of her shotgun. If Bobby'd gotten to Jo first, he'd have made sure Jo got the important news first.
"Jo, I'm in Nebraska. I just crossed over from Wyoming." She names the intersection and knows Jo will know exactly where that is. "I'll come find you. Where are you?"
In a day, maybe less, she'll see her baby girl again. What happens next, they can figure out then.
"K-kentucky. You're okay, you're really okay?"
"I'll be fine." She's not okay, not yet, and she still has to tell Jo about Ash, and about all that happened back in Wyoming. Time for that later, though. They can decide all of that later.
Maybe they'll rebuild the Roadhouse, or find another place that they can make into a home for people like Diana, Roger, Sam and Dean.
"Jo, you sound awful. I don't want you driving this late at night. Find someplace safe to sleep tonight. I'll keep driving, and we can meet up in St. Louis before noon tomorrow. No, I mean it. Fine...I'll stop for a few hours myself once I hit Kansas City."
They might decide to stay on the road. Together, hopefully. There's a whole lot of nasty that's just been released into the world, and dealing with it isn't a one-person job. They know each other, know their strengths, their weaknesses. They might be tempted to kill each other from time to time, but they'd make a hell of a team.
"Oh, baby, I know. I love you. I'm so sorry... no, don't you apologize. God, I don't want to hang up, but..."
There's so much to say, but every minute she spends on the side of the road is another minute longer she has to wait to see her baby girl.
"I'll call you when I find a place to stay for the night. The phone's got your number. We'll work out the details when I call back. Love you too, baby. See you soon."
Her voice breaks a bit on the last, but that's okay. Jo is bawling openly, and Ellen suspects she doesn't turn off her phone for a while after Ellen hangs up.
That night, as she sleeps in a motel outside of Kansas city, the wind kicks up and wails across the roof and through the trees, but Ellen doesn't dream of the ocean at all.
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