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He sat on her couch with his head in his hands. “What am I supposed to do?” his deep voice growled, emotionally.
Her deep brown eyes looked at him with sadness. “You’re gonna raise those boys, John.” She pressed her lips together. “It won’t be easy, but you don’t have the luxury of shutting down.”
His blue eyes looked at her, frowning deeply. “Missouri,” he shook his head. “What do you know?”
She shook her head and stood. “You don’t want to know, John.” She walked out of her parlor and into her kitchen.
He stood and followed her, his large frame filling the doorway. “Yes,” he growled. “I do.”
She frowned at him, then turned her back to him and pulled the kettle from the stove. “Well, I don’t want to tell you. It won’t do any good. You can’t do anything about it.”
John frowned. “It was supernatural, wasn’t it?”
Missouri paused pouring the water into her teapot.
John stepped further into the room. “She was pinned to the ceiling, Missouri! Bleeding from her stomach. She couldn’t talk! Then the flames--” his voice became thick with emotion. “They came from behind her! I barely had time to get Sammy out! What was it, Missouri?!” The volume of his voice became louder and louder with each sentence, until his last question was nearly a shout.
Missouri turned, her brown eyes snapping and her soft voice sharpened. “Don’t you raise your voice at me, John Winchester! I didn't do this awful thing!” She resumed making her tea.
He took a deep breath and pressed his fingers and thumb to his eyes, as if to physically push tears back into his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
She frowned deeply at him, then her face gentled and she took a deep breath. “Sit down, John,” she sighed, setting the timer for the tea.
He sat at her small kitchen table.
She sat across from him and took his hand. “The thing that came into your home is evil. Pure evil.”
“What was it?”
She took a deep breath and released his hand, straightening in her chair. “All I’ve seen is a demon, with yellow eyes.”
“Can you find him? Using your…skills?”
She shook her head. “Not without a name.” She leaned forward again, her eyebrows drawing together over worried eyes. “And I wouldn’t if I could! You have those boys, John! That’s where your priorities lie. Not this thing!”
He shook his head. “I have to find it. Kill it. Make sure it never threatens my boys or another family.”
Missouri reached across the table and touched his hand, again, shaking her head. “If you go down this road, John, there’s no turning back for you. You and Mary were blessed to have gotten out. She never wanted the boys to know anything about that part of your lives. Do you think she’d want you to get back into it? To expose the boys to it?”
John stood. “I have to, Missouri.”
She shook her head.
John covered her hand with his. He felt his throat close up and he looked down at the table, focusing on keeping control of her emotions. He cleared his throat. “Please, Missouri,” he whispered, lowly.
Missouri Mosley considered him for a long moment, then stood, and took a deep breath. She moved past him into her parlor again. “If you want to do this thing, John Winchester, it will require blood. Your blood.” She pulled a copper bowl out of the cabinet and set it down on the table. She began to put ingredients into the bowl, then looked at him, expectantly.
He pulled the Leatherman’s Tool out of his pocket, sitting down across from her, and used the pliers to pull out his fingernail, grimacing against the pain - at the same time welcoming it because it gave him something to focus on aside from the pain in his heart. He dropped the nail into the bowl.
Missouri looked at him. “If we do this, there will be no going back, John. Your life will be forever changed - and that means your boys will never have the kind of life Mary wanted for them.”
John frowned. “It’s just until I find and kill this thing.”
Missouri shook her head. “That road is longer than you think, John. Please, don’t go down it.”
He leaned toward her, his bloodshot eyes filled with conviction and determination that she could feel emanating from him. “I have to.”
She sighed deeply, then lit the match and dropped it into the bowl. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she began to weave slightly in her chair. Her eyes returned to their natural position and she frowned. “This thing is pure evil. But I can’t see it.” She looked down into the bowl. “Come with me,” she said, suddenly standing.
Missouri led him out of the house to the neighbor’s house, almost at a run. She looked at the front door and pointed. “It’s open.” She looked at the driveway. “But they’re not home.”
John frowned. “What is it?”
“Oh, I hope I’m not right!” She stepped up the porch steps, slowly. John followed her.
She put the side of her hand against the door and pushed slightly. The dark wood floors were spotted with a dark liquid. “Oh, no,” she whispered. She walked in gingerly, careful to not touch the liquid.
John’s Marine Corps training and experience told him what the dark liquid spots were as he followed her in: blood. “Missouri.”
Missouri stood at the door of the room, transfixed. “John,” she began, her voice rising in pitch as she said his name.
“What is it?!” He was starting to lose what little patience he had left when he got to the door and looked over her head at what she was looking at. “Wha--” his eyes grew large at the sight.
Before he could do anything else, she turned to him and pushed him backward. “Go get your boys!”
He ran out of the house at top speed. Jumping over the hedge at the edge of the property to Missouri’s driveway, he reached his car.
Missouri turned again to face the room as she heard his car roar to life and leave her neighborhood. She said a prayer, as she read, again, the words scrawled in blood on the opposite wall:
WE’RE COMING FOR THE CHILDREN
John’s heart was in his mouth as he raced through town to where his friend Julie was watching his boys. It’s only been two weeks since Mary--
He was out of his car almost before it stopped and running up the stairs to her front door, which showed evidence of having been forced open. “Julie!” he called as he pushed the door open. Familiar dark droplets led down the hall past the stairs in the front of the house. He decided to not follow them and ran up the stairs to where he knew Julie had set up a playroom and a bedroom for them. “Dean!” he called as he took the stairs two at a time. “Julie?!”
He threw the first door open, the door to the bedroom, and moved to the crib. Both boys were there: Dean with his arms around his baby brother as they slept - as if even in his sleep he could protect little Sammy.
John reached out and touched his son’s face, fearful.
Dean’s green eyes fluttered open and looked at John.
“Oh, thank god!” John breathed, pulling his son into his arms, hugging him tightly until the four year old protested. “Come on,” he said, gruffly. He put Dean back in the crib, standing, as he picked up still sleeping Sam. Once Sam was cradled in his arm, he picked up Dean and put him on his hip, then he turned and moved them out of the house and to the car.
He put Dean in the backseat and handed him Sam. “Dean, stay here until I come back. Don’t get out of the car for any reason. Okay?”
As he was closing the door and turning back to the house, another car arrived. Missouri emerged. “John?”
“The boys are in the car. But there’s blood in the house.”
Missouri nodded. “This isn’t going to be pleasant, John. I’m glad you got the boys out.”
They walked back into the house. Slowly, they followed the blood droplets to the back of the house where the kitchen was.
There was blood everywhere, on the floor in pools, the cabinets in splatters and smears, even droplets of the ceiling. In the midst of all the mess was a body.
John had seen one of his buddies destroyed by a landmine in Vietnam. For nearly a year after, he carried that friend’s silver crucifix as shrapnel in his arm as a result of his proximity when that mine went off.
This was worse.
“What could do this?” he whispered.
“Evil,” Missouri responded. “Like none I’ve ever seen before.”
He looked at the body more closely. “I think it’s Julie.”
Missouri nodded. “I’m sure it is.” She moved in closer to look the body over. She bent and pulled something from a bit of flesh still attached to the body. “I think it’s a tooth. Look at the markings.”
John pulled his eyes from Julie’s mangled form and looked at the twisted tooth she placed in his hand. “What are these?”
“I don’t know. But what I do know is that I need to call the police.”
“Oh, god! They’re going to think I’m responsible! Julie is Mary’s best friend! Two weeks?”
Missouri shook her head. “You take those boys and you leave Lawrence right now. I will call the police and they will never know you were here. Your friend Mark bought your half of the garage this morning, right?”
John didn’t know why her knowledge of this surprised him, but it did. “Yes.”
“If they ask about you, I will tell them you came to me shortly after leaving Mark’s house--”
“Which I did.”
“And that you… that I watched you drive out of town from my house. You were never here, John.”
John nodded.
“But, John,” she started, touching his sleeve. “John Winchester, you look at me.”
John pulled his eyes from the disaster in the kitchen and looked into the eyes of the psychic.
“Don’t go hunting this thing,” she pleaded, softly. “It will take you down a long and dark path and lead to your death. And it will affect your boys, horribly.” She grasped his sleeve. “Go, but go build a new life for you and your boys. Don’t go down that path.”
“Thanks, Missouri. I’ll keep in touch,” he nodded and touched her hand. “Thanks for everything.”
He turned on his heel at that moment and walked out of the house. He got into his car, looked back at Dean, holding a still sleeping baby Sam. He smiled, sadly, at his son with a nod, then started the car and headed out of Lawrence with no intention of ever returning.