Title: Corpse Fire
Summary: With the frigid wind whipping through the trees and an air temperature a few degrees below freezing, a little kid in a thinning coat and no gloves didn’t stand a chance.
Spoilers: None; pre-series.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, rated mostly for language and children in danger.
Disclaimer: John, Dean, and Sam Winchester belong to Eric Kripke and the CW. I'm just playing with someone else's toys.
Author's Note: Allenstown, New Hampshire is real, the events are not. Wee!Chesters: Dean is 14, Sam is 10.

-----

We're chasing fireflies! Dean Winchester silently grumbled as he slammed the passenger side door of the Impala closed. We’re going to freeze our asses off out here because of some freaking glow-in-the-dark insects.

The source of Dean’s unusual crankiness was the fact that he absolutely hated New England this close to winter. As if a week-long squat in a closed-for-the-season cabin at Lake Winnipesaukee wasn’t bad enough. If it was the middle of July, sure. That would have been nice and rather refreshing. But in the middle of November? On the eve of a frigid New England winter, lakefront property in New Hampshire might as well have been an igloo in Alaska.

When the water wraith that had taken up residence in the lake--a particularly nasty son of a bitch--was finally taken care of, Dean had silently rejoiced. He had every intention of getting out of New Hampshire and making sure his dad didn’t hear about anything else in the northeastern part of the country until, say, May? June? Somewhere around there. Unfortunately that plan was not meant to be, and Dean had only his own big mouth to blame.

He just had to remind his father that the snack stash was getting low. Actually, what he had said was, “We won’t be able to shut Sam up with Doritos anymore because we don’t have any.” The comment had earned him a smack in the arm from his brother and a scowl from his father, but it also got the point across. John had stopped at a Cumberland Farms in Weirs Beach to refill the boys’ junk food cache.

And it was between picking up a bag of gummy worms and a box of Milk Duds that John heard two teenagers talking excitedly but in hushed tones about ghost lights in a cemetery in a small town forty or so miles to the south. Ghost lights were interesting, sure, but it wasn’t until he heard one kid tell the other that three hikers died from exposure after becoming lost in the woods abutting the graveyard that he started entertaining the notion of going to the cemetery to investigate.

Once back in the Impala, John announced the change of plans and Dean was suddenly wishing he’d waited until they were back on the interstate to mention the missing snacks.

Now out of the car, gloves on, all he needed was his backpack. He had dumped it unceremoniously in the back at his brother’s feet for the sole purpose of crowding Sam and thereby driving him completely crazy. With a soft snicker at his own antics, he grasped the door handle and tugged.

He realized too late that his little brother had fallen asleep leaning against the door. The seatbelt was Sam’s savior; the thin strap was the only thing that kept him from tumbling right out of the car. Dean snorted and had to bite his lower lip to keep from laughing out loud at the groggy confusion on his poor brother’s face. “Sorry, Sammy.”

Sam grunted in response as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Where are we?”

“Welcome to glorious Allenstown, New Hampshire.” Dean reached past Sam to grab his backpack from the floor of the car. “Home of … well, not much, but maybe some dangerous fireflies.”

“Dean.”

The single word spoken forcefully from behind the open trunk was enough to make Dean cringe. “Sorry, sir,” he immediately replied. Crap. No mocking the ghosts while Dad is in earshot.

Sam gave his brother a puzzled frown. “Fireflies?” he whispered, casting a furtive glance over his shoulder at his father.

Dean shrugged, hooking one strap of his backpack over his shoulder. “Ghost lights.”

“But … ghost lights are caused by swamp gas, aren’t they?” Finally Sam climbed out of the car, stretching his arms and legs. He let out a large yawn but was soon wide awake as an icy gust of wind blew right through him. “Holy crap! It’s like the North Pole out here!”

John heaved a sigh as he slammed the trunk closed. “Ghost lights can be caused by swamp gas, yes.” He walked up to his boys and handed a small satchel and a flashlight to his youngest. “But in case you haven’t noticed, New Hampshire isn’t exactly swamp territory.”

Sam turned and flashed a teasing grin at his brother. “So that’s why we’re chasing dangerous fireflies!” he said brightly.

Not funny. Dean narrowed his eyes at Sam and waited for John’s back to be turned before reaching out and swiftly giving his little brother a thwack upside the head.

“Ow!” Sam cried, his hand flying to his head too late to protect it from Dean’s assault. “What the hell was that for?”

“Nothing,” Dean replied, snickering. “Wait ‘til you do something.”

Sam stood motionless, opening and closing his mouth as he attempted to come up with a proper retort. Dean was reminded of a few of the fish he’d seen at the aquarium in Boston.

The moment passed and unable to think of a good zinger, Sam just groaned and made a face at Dean before stomping off and sidling up beside John. When John looked down and rested a hand on Sam’s head with a half-smile, Dean rolled his eyes. Sammy could be such a suck-up when he wanted to be.

Dean followed a few paces behind his father and brother and allowed his attention to wander. The flashlight in his hand illuminated the thin, crumbling Reconstruction-era grave markers and as he passed, he noted dates of birth and death and mentally figured the ages of the people buried below the slate stones. Most of them were relatively young, just a little bit older than his father.

Shivering in the cold wind, he paused just to the side of one headstone in particular, the dates making him stop in his tracks. Buried below the grass was a boy his own age: fourteen. With one eye on his brother and father, he lingered a moment longer and wondered what could have killed the boy so young.

The Winchesters traipsed through Evans Cemetery for a fruitless hour. Sam had grown tired and cranky and was now whining about how cold he was and how much his feet hurt. Dean again rolled his eyes. He was cold and his feet hurt, too, but he knew better than to gripe about it.

“Sam, knock it off,” John snapped after a minute.

See? Dean thought. Complaining never got either of them anywhere.

“Come on, boys,” John grumbled, heaving a frustrated and disappointed sigh. He turned around and began making his way back towards the car. “There’s nothing here.”

“Great,” Dean muttered as he turned the collar of his coat up to cover the back of his neck. “Does that mean we can find something to hunt in, I don’t know, maybe Florida?” Florida was sunshine and warm breezes, seventy-five-degree days, and sixty-degree nights. Absolute perfection.

If John heard Dean’s muted mumbling, he didn’t acknowledge it.

The Impala was just coming back into view when Sam abruptly stopped his own quiet grumbling and pointed towards an expanse of woods to their left. “Dad, wait!” he hissed, afraid of making too much noise. “Can you see it?”

It was so faint that Dean didn’t see it at first. As he stared, it became clearer: a small orb of white light that flickered in and out of view as if slowly moving in and among the trees. “Nice going, Sammy,” he mumbled under his breath, both seriously and sarcastically.

“It’s kind of pretty,” Sam whispered. It was clear this time that he hadn’t meant to be heard.

Dean had to agree with his brother on that point. As pretty and interesting as it was, though, he didn’t think it looked like a real ghost light. Most likely some kids with a flashlight were playing pranks.

He flicked his eyes to his father and almost groaned aloud when he saw the small smirk on John’s face. Dean knew that smirk. The slight curl of his father’s lip meant that he could kiss his dreams of sunny Florida goodbye. A sudden gust of wind swirled through the cemetery and blew through his coat. Great, he thought with a deep shiver, it’s too damn cold for this.

-----

Stakeouts were supposed to be fun. At least, they were always fun on TV and in the movies! That was one Hollywood myth that Sam had shattered through his own experience. Real stakeouts were anything but exciting. They were endless and dull and uncomfortable. And to top it all off, this particular stakeout was cold.

Even though Allenstown, New Hampshire was a tiny little town, Sam was sure that he, Dean, and his dad had walked every inch of it over the course of the day, talking to the townspeople about the ghost light. The only thing they had learned was that the light always showed up the same couple of weeks in November.

And now the three of them were stationed in the Impala just outside the woods at the edge of Evans Cemetery. It had been two hours and counting with no sign of the ghost light. Sam wished it would just hurry up and show already because he was ridiculously close to falling asleep, both from boredom and from fatigue.

He shifted position in the back seat and sat on his hands to warm them a little bit. Now that he was thinking of it, he should have followed Dean’s lead of putting on two sweatshirts before leaving the motel room. Sam’s tattered winter coat was old and wearing thin in places, and the extra layer would have been helpful. And while he was putting on the second sweatshirt, he could have mentioned, if not to his father at least to Dean, that he’d lost his gloves up at Lake Winnipesaukee. His bare fingers were aching. “Dad,” he whined, “I’m freezing.”

“I’m sorry, Sammy,” John replied, his intense gaze never leaving the trees. “I know it’s cold.”

“Can we turn on the heat or something? Please?” As soon as he was through speaking, his teeth began chattering.

John sighed but without a word or looking away from the woods, he turned the key in the ignition and blasted the heat. Sam waited until the cold rush of air turned red hot before crawling across the seat and stretching his arms past his brother's shoulder towards the vents, grinning in sweet relief.

Dean grunted and pushed Sam’s hands away, intent on telling his little brother to get out of his face, but when he felt the poor kid’s ice-cold fingers, he held his tongue. “Where are your gloves?” he asked instead, casting a frown of disapproval in Sam’s direction.

Oh, crap. “Back up at the lake somewhere?” Sam said uncertainly, wincing.

“You lost your gloves? Again?” Of course the only reason John would tear his attention from the woods would be to glare over his shoulder at Sam. Of course. “Sam, that’s the third damn pair of gloves you’ve lost this month!”

“I’m sorry,” Sam grumbled, slumping back down in the seat. He was still cold but at least it no longer hurt if he bent his fingers. “It’s not like I meant to lose them. I didn’t even realize they were gone until we were already back on the highway.”

John just shook his head and gave an exasperated groan before returning his gaze to the woods.

His father’s reaction was exactly the reason Sam hadn’t said anything about the missing gloves. Sam crossed his arms over his chest and pouted, not caring that he was a touch too old to be sulking. After muttering under his breath about how he had thought his gloves were in his coat pockets, he went back to looking out the window.

A flash of white shimmered in and out of sight so quickly that Sam at first thought it was a trick of his eyes. But as he stared the light evened out and became a constant, singular point, twinkling like a star in the night sky. “Dad,” Sam said as he fumbled for the door latch in the dark. “Light’s back.”

Sam was the first one out of the car. He dashed towards the trees, switching on his flashlight as he ran.

“Sammy! Wait up!” he heard Dean call.

The sticky scent of pine sap was just hitting his nose when he stopped short and turned to face his brother and father, his impatience written across his features. Come on already! After sitting still in the cold for so long, he was antsy and itching for the chase.

John finally caught up with his youngest and gave him a sharp reprimanding glare directly in the eye. “Do not get ahead of us, you understand? You stay where I can see you.”

“Yes, sir,” Sam mumbled. After his father walked past him and into the trees, Sam rolled his eyes and began grumbling angrily under his breath. He was ten years old now, after all. Double digits and everything! He was certainly plenty old enough to walk a few paces ahead of his father and Dean.

The near-constant breeze running through the woods was making Sam shudder. He pulled the cuffs of his sweatshirt down over his hands to protect them from the biting wind. There! Who needed gloves anyway? If he could just stop shivering, he’d be all set!

He walked along at Dean’s heels as the three of them stalked the tiny ball of light. It steadily moved deeper in the woods, accelerating only when the Winchesters quickened their pace so that it was always the same distance ahead of them. After the third futile attempt to gain on it, Dean groaned in frustration. “This is pointless! We’re not going to catch it.”

Sam opened his mouth to toss in his own two cents about Dean’s assessment of the chase but stopped short when a sudden blue flash lit the air to his left. He whirled in the direction of the flash and was startled to see a second glowing orb hovering in the air about ten feet ahead of him. Like the white orb, the blue one was brightening and fading in the darkness.

“Dad, Dean! Wait a second,” Sam said, his voice soft as he stood mesmerized by the light.

The orb blinked once before abruptly zooming back into the trees. Without a second thought, Sam took off after it. As he ran, he stepped right into the middle of a small briar patch. Damn it! he thought as the thick thorns cut into the skin around his ankles. He didn’t have the time to stop and see if he was bleeding, though. This sucker was fast.

Finally the light slowed to a stop in a small clearing and flickered one final time before going out completely, leaving Sam panting from exertion in almost pitch-black darkness. He leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees in an attempt to catch his breath.

Once his gasps slowed, he straightened and searched the trees around him. What the hell? The light couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air. Could it?

It soon became clear to Sam that the light was not coming back. Oh well, he thought, letting out a resigned sigh as he switched on his flashlight. He had tried.

With his teeth chattering, he turned back the way he had come and tried to spot a footpath to follow. It was then that Sam discovered that the light had led him much deeper into the woods than he had originally thought. A pit formed in his stomach when the horrible realization hit him a split-second later: he had absolutely no idea how to get back to Dean and his dad.

-----

Dean was counting his blessings that his father had been paying attention to the twists and turns they had taken on their path because they were already deep into the woods before he had remembered to do so himself.

The chase after the white light had been slow and steady. They were following a good twenty feet behind it as it made its way deeper into the woods, giving the Winchesters no chance to gain on it. Then without warning, the orb blinked once and disappeared. “Damn it,” John muttered as he scanned the trees for the light.

Dean just sighed. No way that had been just kids with a flashlight. The light was too steady and the woods were way too quiet; he and his brother and father were the only ones out there. Frustrated both with himself for being wrong and with the stupid light, Dean turned on his heels to start on the trek back to the car. He discovered with surprise that his little brother was not behind him. Oh, what the hell? “Sam?” he called, his breaths coming out in puffs of white mist.

Nothing but silence answered him. “Sammy!” he yelled again after an annoyed roll of his eyes, louder this time. It was far too late at night for Sam to be playing games.

“Now where’d your brother disappear to?” John frowned, shining his flashlight at the trees surrounding them. “Sam!”

A stone formed in the pit of Dean’s stomach when Sam still didn’t respond. His brother knew better than to ignore his father’s no-nonsense call. “Dad, he was right behind me! I swear he was right behind me.”

“It’s all right, Dean.”

But even in the dark, Dean could see that the color had drained from his father’s face.

The two of them stood in place and shouted for Sam, but it soon became obvious that wherever Sam was, he couldn’t hear them. Without a word John began retracing their steps, and Dean figured that he was intending to follow their path back to the edge of the woods. Everything Dean knew was telling him to stay put and let Sam somehow find his way to them, but he also knew better than to second-guess his father. Especially in a crisis.

Shuddering, Dean pulled the zipper of his coat up as high as it could go. He was absolutely freezing, and he had gone out prepared! He couldn’t even imagine how cold Sam had to be.

And then it dawned on him. With the frigid wind whipping through the trees and an air temperature a few degrees below freezing, a little kid in a thinning coat and no gloves didn’t stand a chance. His heart started pounding as he realized that they needed to find Sam now.

On their way through the trail they both called for Sam, John’s voice relatively controlled and Dean’s rising frantically. When Dean could see the old headstones of the cemetery through the gaps in the trees, his heart dropped into his stomach. If Sam hadn’t gotten hung up on the path they had followed into the woods, he could be absolutely anywhere.

With a frustrated grunt John sped across the grass to the Impala. Dean winced when his father whipped open the driver’s side door. As he dug under the front seat, his hand closed around a worn Rand McNally book on New England. “Oh, shit,” John muttered after he located Allenstown on the New Hampshire map. He flipped to a different map further back then slammed the book shut. “Shit!”

When his father swore, it was never a good sign. Dean drew in a nervous breath before asking, “What is it?”

“Those woods are an offshoot of Bear Brook State Park.”

Dean connected the dots himself: if Sam wandered too far into the woods, he’d end up lost in the forest of the largest state park in New Hampshire. And on a cold November night, there weren’t likely to be any campers or hikers along the trails to help him.

When the terror began burbling in Dean’s stomach, it struck him as almost comical. With all the crazy stuff he and his father and brother had seen and done, he never dreamed that the thing would scare him the most would be something as simple and mundane as Sam getting lost.

Had Sam fallen somewhere and gotten hurt? If he was hurt, could be keep moving? Were there animals in the woods that could hurt him? Why the hell had Sam separated from them in the first place? He was told to stay where he could be seen. When--yes, when--Dean saw his brother again, he wasn’t sure whether he’d want to hug him or punch him.

A sudden burst of wind sent a shudder down his spine, which was enough to break the fog and kick-start his adrenaline. Precious minutes were ticking by! They needed to move. “Dad, we have to go back into the woods. Sam’s out there somewhere, and it’s cold, and we need to find him before--”

“Don’t you think I know that?” John yelled.

Dean flinched at his father’s tone and dropped his gaze down to his sneakers. Of course his father knew that.

John instantly softened when he saw the chastened look on his son’s face. “I’m sorry, Dean. I didn’t mean to snap at you.” He paused and let out a sigh. “But we don’t know how long he’s been on his own and those woods are huge. He could be anywhere by now.”

“Well, then we’ll have to split up,” Dean said, shrugging. “I head east, you go west.”

“That’s absolutely out of the question.” John tucked the map book under the front seat and slammed the door closed.

Dean frowned in confusion as his father rounded the car and popped the trunk. “But we’ll cover more ground that way--”

“No, Dean. No way in hell. I already have one son alone in those woods, and I will not have two.” He dug through a laundry bag--thank God for the emergency clothing stash--and pulled out two sweatshirts. He tossed one to Dean. “We’re no good to Sam if we freeze looking for him.”

Dean peeled off his coat and tugged the sweatshirt down over his head. With three shirts and a winter coat, he felt as if he were bundled up to go play out in the snow. The last time he and Sam had played out in the snow, Sam had started a snowball fight. It came to an abrupt end when Dean tackled Sam from behind, turned him around, and smashed a snowball in his face as if it were a whipped cream pie in an old slapstick comedy skit.

At first Sam had been both surprised by the suddenness of the attack and shocked by the cold snow, but even before the snow had begun melting on his face, he had fallen over into a snowdrift, laughing so hard that he had to hold his stomach.

That day, too, the boys were chilled to the bone but once indoors, Dean had microwaved some water and made two steaming mugs of hot cocoa. The sweet drink warmed them completely in minutes. I have a funny feeling that some hot water and a couple packets of Swiss Miss won’t be able to fix everything tonight, he thought bitterly.

John slammed the trunk closed, the sound startling Dean back to reality. John wordlessly began heading for the trees and Dean quickly followed suit, though he was struggling to keep up with his father’s hurried pace.

The urgency of their search hung in the air, a charged energy that was keeping Dean on edge. His knees were shaking, as well as his hands. His breath was hitching in his throat. Oh, the next time he saw Sam, he was going to pound him.

“Dean, keep up,” John grumbled, again breaking through Dean’s daydream. “We have to find your brother before this cold kills him.”

Dean stopped dead in his tracks. His father really had just said "kill" in reference to his baby brother. His heart skipped a beat then began racing faster than before. Hearing someone else say it confirmed it. Made it real. Sam could die.

The nausea was real now, churning in Dean’s stomach and threatening to come up. You’re supposed to put your head down when you feel sick, right? he silently asked himself.

He wound up not having a choice. He was not prepared for the sudden wave of dizziness and had to crouch down to the ground. Yeah. Head down. He put his hands flat on the grass, leaned forward, and swallowed hard, trying to calm the roiling in his stomach.

John sensed rather than saw Dean’s absence and looked over his shoulder. Seeing his son kneeling on the ground, white as a sheet, he swiftly backtracked, knelt down beside Dean and gripped his shoulders, trying to steady him. “Dean! Dean, you with me?”

Why did it sound like Dean was under water? He took a couple of slow, deliberate breaths, and he could feel himself beginning to calm down. His vision cleared a second or two later, and he was surprised at the amount of fear and concern on his father’s features. “Yeah,” he said, panting slightly as he sat back on his heels. “I … I think I’m okay now.”

“You sure?”

Dean nodded and scrambled to his feet, leaning on his father’s arms for support. By the time he straightened, he had regained complete control and was able to look his father in the eye. “I’m fine. We’re wasting time.”

John gave his son a half-smile before running his hand over Dean’s hair and resting it on his son’s shoulder. Dean inhaled sharply, knowing now that things were serious. The last time that John had comforted him like that, Dean had been about Sam’s age.

Dean took another deep breath and returned his father’s smile as the two of them began trudging back into the woods. The rush of adrenaline from earlier was gone, and now he just felt numb. He couldn’t be sure whether the quick flash of white light he saw as he again disappeared into the trees was real or just an illusion. But whether real or imagined, it seemed to wink at him.

-----

At some point in the last three hours, a light snow had begun falling from the sky. Sam shivered. His throat was sore and scratchy from hollering for his father and brother. His teeth were chattering, his fingers had gone numb, and his toes were threatening to do the same. And the stupid batteries in his stupid flashlight were either cold or they were dying because the beam of light was much fainter than it had been at the beginning of the night.

Sam clicked the button on the side of the flashlight, switching it off. “It’s no help anyway,” he muttered before stumbling over something hard under the carpet of dead leaves. He quickly regained his balance and leaned against a giant oak tree, whimpering softly. Walking was keeping his body relatively warm, but it had made him so, so tired. He sank to the ground and drew his knees to his chest in an attempt to warm up a little. He somehow managed to make himself comfortable and rested his head on his knees.

Sam could feel the snowflakes landing on his cheeks. Where were his dad and Dean? They were looking for him, weren’t they? Maybe they’d find him faster if he stayed in one place. Yeah. Sitting in one place was a better plan. Before long he felt his eyelids begin sliding closed.

He started awake. No, he couldn’t go to sleep. His dad had warned him more than once that going to sleep in the cold was a Bad Idea. But he was so tired.

No. Go to sleep and you might not wake up. Mustering all the strength and willpower he had, he shook himself awake and lifted his head from his makeshift pillow. He leaned back, resting his head instead against the tree trunk. Just as his eyes were closing again, a bright flash of blue light behind a nearby shrub startled him.

With a confused frown he pushed himself to his feet and began approaching the ball of light. When the orb darted behind a tree slightly further away, Sam groaned aloud. Not again! It was following that damn light that had gotten him lost in the first place!

But as he turned to sit back down, he found himself wondering if following the light again would really make the situation any worse. After all, he couldn’t get any more lost if he tried! At least if he followed the light, he’d have motivation to keep moving, and who knows, maybe the orb would lead him closer to the edge of the woods. And he wouldn’t be as sleepy if he were walking. Worth a shot, he figured.

This time the light’s pace wasn’t frantic. Did it know that Sam didn’t have the energy to run after it? If the white light had seemed to be playing follow the leader, then the blue one was playing hide and seek. It would disappear behind a tree only to dart to another any time Sam stepped within ten feet of it.

As Sam slowly followed after the light, he remembered his father’s instructions: keep track of the turns and keep an eye out for distinguishing features. Unfortunately all the trees Sam passed looked the same. Well, that needs to change, he thought somewhat giddily.

He flexed his fingers to get the feeling back in them as he walked up to a large maple tree. A minute or so later, the feeling in his hand returned and he pulled the small knife his father had given him from his back pocket. Smiling devilishly, he gripped the knife in his fist and began carving a large “SW” into the cold wood.

There! he thought when he finished. He backed up a couple of paces and surveyed his work with a slight, lopsided grin. He really wanted to finish the carving off with a “was here” underneath the initials, but his bare hands were aching from just the two letters. As he was slipping the knife back into his pocket, a sudden gust of wind blew through his coat and startled him back to attentiveness. Oh, right, he was supposed to be following the ghost light. Was wandering attention a sign of hypothermia?

The light, which had hovered in place as if patiently waiting while he defaced the tree, immediately flew further down the path. Giving a slight roll of his eyes, Sam followed where it led as the dead leaves crunched underneath his feet.

The snow was beginning to fall more heavily. Sam brought his arm up to his face in an attempt to protect it from the harsh wind and the thick, fluffy flakes. The path he was on had twisted and turned around trees and low brush and Sam had absolutely no idea where the hell he was. He was still hopeful, though, that the light was leading him out of the woods.

His hopes were soon dashed. Ahead of him stood his tree. The one with his initials. The ghost light had just cruelly led him in a gigantic circle.

The light brightened for a split-second--was it laughing at him?--then blinked once and disappeared. Nausea churned in his stomach as his mouth watered and he fought the urge to vomit. No, he couldn’t lose control. He was okay. He just needed to find the edge of the woods.

Sam clicked the button on his flashlight and fully expected a bright beam of light. Nothing happened. He whimpered and slapped the flashlight against the palm of his hand. His bare skin stung from the contact but he slapped it a couple more times and tried again. Nothing still.

Didn’t matter. He needed to keep going, needed to keep moving. Since he had followed the light to his right before, he went left this time. It made sense, but to be honest he wasn’t even trying to get out of the woods anymore. It was merely motion for motion’s sake.

When Sam realized that he was scuffing his sneakers along the ground in his fatigue, he wished so hard that his father were around to yell at him to pick up his feet. Where were his father and Dean? Why weren’t they coming to find him? He was cold and he was getting snowed on and he was tired and he just--

His thoughts came to a crashing halt as the toe of his shoe caught on an exposed root. As he felt himself going down, he let go of the flashlight. It clattered to the ground and rolled away into the leaves as he landed hard on his hands and knees. This time, he couldn’t quell the nausea.

He retched and his stomach emptied. He whimpered through a couple of dry heaves before he was finished. Gross, he thought, pushing himself to his feet. He only managed to walk a few yards before whimpering again and dropping to his knees, both discouraged and thoroughly exhausted.

Screw walking. He just needed to sit for a minute, rest his legs. Let the feeling come back in his toes. He crawled to the base of the nearest tree and leaned back against it as he dropped his head to his knees. A few tears of desperation slipped from his eyes.

It turned out that sitting still was the best idea Sam had had in hours. Despite the snow and wind, blissful warmth began creeping into his fingers and toes. The sensation worked its way up his arms and legs and then through his shoulders and hips. Soon his entire body felt wonderfully comfortable. Who cared if he was still shivering like mad? The warmth was soothing and relaxing and this time when Sam felt his eyelids drooping closed, he didn’t bother to fight it.

-----

Something was wrong. Dean knew that something was wrong. The snow had been falling for almost an hour now, and they had been searching for just over three and a half. In all that time, they had not found one single sign of Sam.

Dean didn’t understand why they hadn’t at least heard him. Wasn’t he calling for them just as they were calling for him? He had to be! But so far, the stillness of the night had only been broken by Dean’s own voice and that of his father.

John inhaled for another round of hollering but coughed instead, the chill of the night air catching in his throat. “Jesus Christ! Where the hell could he have gone?” The anger in his voice was doing nothing to mask the fear in it as well.

“Well, he knows to keep moving in the cold,” Dean spoke up almost hesitantly. Maybe if he could convince his father that there was still hope, he’d start believing it, too. “If he’s walking, we could be circling each other. Or he could be on the other side of the woods by now.” Or he could be--

Dean shook his head before the thought could finish. No. He couldn’t be. He was fine. Absolutely, perfectly fine. They were just circling each other.

John stopped walking so suddenly that Dean came within one step of crashing into him. John took a moment then set his shoulders. Dean frowned in confusion when his father took off with renewed determination in the direction from which they had just come. What? What were they doing now, trying to head Sam off at the pass? Dean was almost afraid to ask what the new plan was, but his curiosity got the better of him.

“We’re going to the police.”

Dean paused in place, his mouth dropping open in surprise. John never--never--involved the police in their hunts. He had to be absolutely desperate. “Really?”

John’s voice was quiet. “We’re running out of time, Dean. We need a search party. Should have done it to begin with.”

Dean had to bite his lower lip to keep from snippily reminding his father that he had suggested splitting up like, four hours ago. He followed a few paces behind John, shining his flashlight on the trees as they walked past. He was hoping that he’d see some kind of sign that his brother had been there. Something. Anything.

Two minutes later, he stopped short.

Illuminated in the beam of his flashlight was an answer to his prayers: a large SW carved into the trunk of a maple tree! The letters were unsteady, as if the carver’s hands had been shaking, but they were also bright against the dark wood, meaning that the carving was fresh. “Dad!” he yelled as he veered off the beaten path. “Dad, over here!”

John whirled on his heels in time to see Dean disappear into the trees behind a flurry of snowflakes. “Dean, for Christ’s sake, do not take off on--” The words died on his lips when he saw the initials on the tree. He broke into a sprint, easily catching up with his oldest and again began calling. “Sammy!”

For minutes that felt like hours, John and Dean stayed close to the tree, hollering for Sam. There were no sounds in the woods, no response. John felt like screaming. Reality was starting to set in. Sam could have carved those letters hours ago. Or maybe it hadn’t even been Sam! The disappointment and desperation in Dean’s eyes had to be mirrored in his own. “Goddamn it! Where the fuck is he?”

Honest to God, Dean wanted to break down in tears of frustration and hopelessness. They were never going to find Sam at all, much less find him alive. Too long. Sam had been gone too long, and it had been snowing too long.

A faint twinkle to his left caught Dean's eye. As he turned, the white light he and his dad had been following earlier appeared in the near distance and then darted to the right with seeming urgency. Dean frowned as he followed the orb with his flashlight. There, just below the hovering light, lay his brother, huddled on his side at the base of a tree. “Dad! It's Sammy!”

John followed the beam of Dean’s flashlight with his own and his heart jumped into his throat when he saw his Sammy lying motionless on the ground. Oh, no, no, no. Before Dean could even lift a foot to run towards his brother, John tightly grasped his shoulder. “No. Stay here.”

In a second flat, John ran forward and dropped to his knees next to Sam. The boy was curled up in a tight ball on his right side, his left arm pulled against his chest, his hand clenched in a fist and tucked underneath his chin. His right arm was cushioning his head from the cold, hard forest floor. His eyes were closed, his mouth partly open. Snow had begun to collect on his coat and jeans and in his hair. John placed his hand on Sam’s small shoulder and roughly shook him. “Sam?” A sour bile rose into his throat when Sam remained completely still. No. God, no, no, no. Not like this.

Hot tears pricked behind his eyes as John gently turned his little boy so that he was lying on his back. His head limply lolled to the side. “Sammy,” he choked, placing each hand on one of his son’s shoulders and giving them another rough shake. Still no response.

His hands trembling, he pulled his glove off and rested his fingers on the side of Sam’s neck. Beneath his fingers, he felt a weak pulse and he let out a cautious breath of relief. Cautious because although Sam’s heart was still beating, he didn’t appear to be breathing.

“Dad?”

Dean sounded as if he was miles away, but his voice was enough to kick John into gear. No. It was not going to end like this.

He rested his hand on Sam’s forehead and tipped his head back to open his airway. Just as he was bending down in preparation to breathe air into his son’s lungs, he felt a small puff of hot air hit his cheek. “Oh, thank God,” he whispered as a strong wave of relief washed over him. He dropped his forehead to his son's chest, suddenly lightheaded, and let out a heavy breath. It was slow and it was shallow, but Sam was breathing.

He lifted his head before running his hand over Sam’s forehead and right cheek. The poor kid’s skin was so cold. To John’s surprise, Sam stirred a little and nestled his cheek against John’s palm. John's heart broke; he knew full well that Sam was responding more to the warmth in his hand than the comfort of his touch.

He ran his thumb over Sam’s cheek in a most likely futile attempt to comfort the little boy any way he could before pulling off his own coat and spreading it over his son like a blanket. With Sam as covered as he could make him, John slid one arm under Sam's back and the other under his knees, lifted him off the ground, and held him close to his own body.

Dean dashed forward and was at his father's side in a heartbeat. “Dad? Sammy’s okay, right?”

“We have to get him to the hospital,” John muttered, turning on the path to head back towards the cemetery.

“But he’ll be okay?” Dean asked, struggling to keep up with John’s swift pace. “Once we get him to the hospital? He’ll be fine?”

There were far too many unknowns for John to comfortably answer Dean’s questions. How long had Sam been unconscious? How much damage had his body sustained from being out in the cold so long? “I don’t know, Dean. We need to get him to the hospital.”

A tense hush fell over the Winchesters as they continued their hurried trek to the Impala. After walking a mere couple hundred yards, John could see headstones through the gaps in the trees. “You were so close,” he whispered to Sam, shifting the boy’s weight in his arms so that his son was closer to him.

As soon as Dean could see the Impala, he dashed ahead to pull the back door open for his father. John tenderly set the still-unconscious Sam down on the backseat, then rounded the car, popped the trunk, and dug a small fleece throw out of the emergency bag. Leaving his coat draped over Sam, he spread the blanket on top of him and tucked in the edges. He locked eyes with Dean. "I want you to ride back here with him. Don’t rub his arms and legs to warm them up. Just keep your eye on him, keep his airway open. The second anything changes, you yell for me, got it?"

Dean gave a quick, "Yes, sir." He swiftly circled the car and climbed in on the passenger side.

Almost immediately, Dean began running his hand lightly over his brother's wet hair like a parent comforting a sick child. His heart aching for both his boys, John slammed the back door shut and settled himself behind the wheel. He blasted the heat before putting the car in gear and taking off, the squealing of the tires echoing through the silent cemetery.

-----

The nearest hospital was two towns over, in Pembroke. The triage nurses had taken one look at Sam and had immediately whisked him down the corridor to a stretcher and piled him with blankets. The doctor had come to take a look at him no more than ten minutes later and now John and the doctor were standing in the hall, engaged in a hushed conversation about Sam’s condition. Dean was left sitting in the waiting area, alone.

Dean caught himself swinging his legs under the chair and quickly stopped, rolling his eyes at the immaturity of his nervous habit. You know what? he thought. Screw the sitting and the waiting! He wanted--no, scratch that. He needed to check on his brother. To see for himself what kind of shape he was in. A quick glance around at the relatively quiet emergency room told him that no one was paying any attention to him. He crept up to the curtain surrounding Sam’s stretcher and took a deep breath before slipping behind it.

The knots in his stomach tightened. The thick blankets swaddling Sam made him look so small, so much younger than his ten years. The only parts of his body that remained uncovered were his head, presumably so that he could breathe, and his right arm, to accommodate the IV. The harsh fluorescent lighting of the emergency room was doing Sammy no favors; all it was doing was accentuating the pallor of his skin.

Dean had to force himself to walk forward. Right foot, left foot, one after the other. He stood next to the stretcher for a full minute, just staring down at his baby brother. Finally he reached out and took Sam’s cold, limp hand in his. Only then did he see that the skin under Sam's fingernails had turned a light shade of purple that matched the color in his lips almost exactly. Dean sniffled and found himself blinking back unexpected tears.

He felt Sam's fingers curl around his own, startling him. “Sammy?” he whispered, tightening his grip on his brother's hand.

Sam whimpered softly and nestled his head deeper into the pillow. He was quiet for a moment then stirred again with a soft moan, his eyelids fluttering. Dean watched as his groggy eyes searched and then became wide as he took in the unfamiliar surroundings. “It’s okay, Sam,” Dean said gently. He began running his thumb over the back of Sam’s hand, something he remembered his mother doing to soothe him after he’d had nightmares. “It's okay.”

Sam seemed to be moving in slow motion. He turned his head and met Dean’s eyes, but it was another moment or two before his eyes registered recognition. “Hey, squirt,” Dean whispered, smiling softly. “How’re you feeling?”

“Cold.” Sam’s voice was hoarse and unnervingly quiet. “Sleepy.”

Sam’s eyes began sliding closed again. “No, Sam,” Dean said, louder this time as he shook Sam’s hand in his. “Talk to me.”

“Tired, Dean. Don't wanna talk.” Speaking was an effort. He opened his eyes and focused on his brother for all of a second. “I threw up ... lost my flashlight. Don't tell Dad.”

Dean gave him a gentle smile. “I won't tell him.” Keep him talking, he thought as he saw his brother start to lose consciousness again. “What happened in the woods, Sammy? Why did you separate from me and Dad?”

“Was following the ghost light.” Sam let out a breath through his nose and forced his eyes open again.

“Right, and then you took off by yourself.”

“Followed the ghost light,” Sam repeated. This time, Dean picked up on the subtle correction. “The other one.”

“What other one?”

Sam just shook his head slightly and allowed his eyes to fall closed.

“No, Sammy.” Sam’s breathing evened out as he once again slipped into unconsciousness. Dean gave Sam’s hand a comforting squeeze before slipping his free and backing a couple of steps away from the stretcher.

The quiet screech of the metal curtain hooks scraping against the rod startled Dean. As he shot a sharp glare over his shoulder, he locked eyes with his father, who gave him an apologetic smile in return. John rounded the stretcher and stood on the side opposite Dean. The two of them were silent as they stared down at Sam, neither one knowing quite what to say to comfort the other. “He was awake for a minute,” Dean offered after a while.

“Did he say anything?” John ran the back of his hand down Sam’s cold cheek.

“Just that he was cold and tired.” John nodded. There was another long stretch of silence before Dean continued. “He said he was following another ghost light.”

“Another ghost light?”

Dean shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. He fell asleep again before I could ask him any more about it.”

“Huh.”

Dean could practically see the wheels turning in his father’s head. “What is it?”

John just shook his head. There was no sense in filling Dean’s head with conjecture and half-formed theories. Better to deal in certainties. “Doc says once his body temperature gets back to normal, we can take him out of here,” he said instead. “He’ll be in and out for a few hours, but he’s going to be perfectly fine.”

Dean let out a heavy breath, practically giddy with relief. “Oh, that’s great!”

All at once, the adrenaline and the fear that had been keeping Dean going since they had first realized that Sam was missing began melting away. His eyelids suddenly grew heavy, and he hid a large yawn behind his hand.

John finally raised his eyes from Sam and looked over his oldest, seeing for the first time the toll the past few hours had taken on him. “Dean, you’re asleep on your feet,” he said softly. “Go out to the waiting room, lie down in the chairs for a while.”

“No, I’m staying with Sammy,” Dean stubbornly insisted through another yawn. He reached down and slid his hand underneath his brother’s. Sam’s fingers twitched. Dean squeezed Sam’s hand then looked up at his father. “Dad?”

“What, son?”

“In the woods when you held me back …” He cleared his throat. “You thought he was dead, didn’t you?”

John waited a long moment before answering. At first Dean wasn’t sure why, but when his father did speak, he could tell it was so that his emotion wouldn't waver in his voice. “No, I didn’t. But I knew there was a chance that he could be.”

Dean swallowed hard and nodded, then returned his attention to his little brother. Oh, Sammy, you scared the hell out of us. It was in that instant that he came to the conclusion that once Sam was better, he was going to have to endure a smack or two as punishment. And Dean was going to make sure they hurt like hell.

-----

The first sound Sam became aware of was a child’s whimpering. It wasn’t until he felt a comforting hand begin to run up and down his cheek that he recognized the whimpering as his own. And even though he now knew that he was the one whining, he couldn’t seem to make himself stop. “It’s okay, Sammy,” a soft voice whispered.

Considering the whimpering and the unrecognizable voice, Sam should have been frightened, but for some reason, he wasn’t. Maybe he just didn't have the energy. Slowly he began to quiet down. He turned onto his right side and snuggled deeper under the blanket, tugging it tightly around his shoulders.

Wait a second. Blanket? When did he get a blanket? And why wasn’t he shivering? A smile began pulling at the corners of his mouth. He didn’t feel cold at all anymore. In fact, he could even feel his fingers! Taking advantage of the warmth and the calm, he allowed himself to start drifting back off to sleep.

“Sam? You awake?”

The whispered voice startled Sam. Who was talking to him? He tried to answer whoever it was, but the only thing that escaped his lips was another whimper.

The hand cupped his cheek. “Shh. It’s all right.”

Now he was able to recognize the voice as his father’s. He also managed to speak, even though it was a mere mumble. “Dad?”

“I’m here, Sam. Can you open your eyes for me?”

This time Sam whimpered on purpose. He didn’t want to open his eyes. They were burning and he was so warm and comfortable and he just wanted to go back to sleep.

“I know, Sammy, but please? Can you try?”

There was something in his father’s voice that Sam didn’t hear very often. Though he couldn’t quite put a finger on just what that something was, it was enough to make him try. It took a minute or so, but he was finally able to rouse himself.

The first thing his blurred vision settled on was a large window with thick, dark curtains. Okay, so he was back in the motel room, but … how? The next thing he noticed was that his father had pulled one of the chairs next to the bed as if standing guard and was leaning forward, brushing Sam’s shaggy hair off his forehead. A half-smile brightened John’s face as Sam’s bleary eyes focused on his. “Hi, Dad,” Sam whispered.

“Hey, kiddo,” John whispered back. “Welcome back to the land of the living. How’re you feeling?”

Sam’s head was foggy and he couldn’t think straight. “I … I don’t really know.”

The fog was making him feel like he was moving in slow motion. He struggled to sit up then gazed around the room as if it held the clues as to what had happened. Dean was sprawled out in the bed next to him, sound asleep. Sam’s eyes widened when he saw the reading on the bedside clock. It was two-thirty, and the bright sunlight filtering into the room around the edges of the curtains meant that it was the middle of the afternoon. But … it was just nighttime a couple minutes ago! “Wh-what happened? How’d I get out of the woods?”

John wrinkled his brow in a frown. “You don’t remember being at the hospital?”

Sam slowly shook his head. The hospital? Really? Though that would certainly explain the tension and concern in his father’s features.

“You were hypothermic when Dean and I found you, and we had to take you to the ER,” John explained gently. “After the doctors warmed you up, we brought you back here. You woke up a couple of times and talked to the doctors and to us. You really don’t remember it at all?”

Again, Sam shook his head no then matched his father’s frown. “The last thing I remember is the middle of the night. I was lost and it was snowing and I was really, really cold. I couldn’t stop shivering!”

“I can imagine.” John cleared his throat as quietly as he could so as not to wake Dean, and Sam knew just from the steely glint in his father’s eyes that he was going to have some questions to answer. “The first time you woke up, you told Dean that you followed another ghost light.”

“I did.” Suddenly the heavy blanket and comforter were too much for him, and he crawled out from under the covers. It wasn’t until he had completely repositioned himself on the bed that it dawned on him that he was actually hot! “I saw it out of the corner of my eye and I called to you and Dean, but then it just took off and I ran after it.”

“Did it look the same as the one we were tracking?”

“No!” Sam exclaimed, getting excited now. He almost never had an adventure on his own! “It was blue and it was brighter than the white one and a lot faster. I followed it for a while and then it disappeared and that was when I realized I was lost. But you know what was really weird?”

John couldn’t help but smile at Sam’s enthusiasm. “What’s that?”

“It came back! I walked all over calling for you and Dean and I was getting really, really tired, and it came back. I thought that maybe it would lead me out of the woods or closer to you guys but it just led me in a huge circle! I swear, Dad, it was like it did it on purpose.”

A sudden burst of recognition brightened John’s eyes. It was as if the final piece of the puzzle had shifted and finally fit, and everything now made perfect sense. The ghost lights. The deaths by exposure of the three hikers before they had arrived. Sam’s own close encounter with death.

John grinned at Sam. And Sam knew, in that instant, that not only had his father figured out exactly what they were hunting, he also had already formulated a battle plan.

-----

“You're telling me we have to go hunt down Tinkerbell?” Dean asked, his tone dripping with incredulity.

“Will o’ the wisp, Dean,” John grunted, his annoyance obvious, "not fairy."

Dean just shrugged. Same difference. As he climbed out of bed, he grumbled under his breath about being awakened out of a sound sleep to go chase after a freaking pixie.

Sam, on the other hand, was eating it all up. "So what's the deal with these will o' the wisp things?" he asked, bouncing slightly on the bed in excitement.

John gave his youngest a smile to encourage Sam's interest. He stepped around a pile of Dean's clothes on the floor and shook his head. For two boys who didn't own much, his kids certainly knew how to make a mess. "A will o' the wisp is a spirit that usually appears in woods or in cemeteries and tries to lead its victims to their deaths. They usually drown people in bogs or marshes, but neither of those exists in the woods behind Evans."

"So these ones get their victims lost in the woods," Sam interrupted with a knowing nod, "so they freeze to death."

“You got it in one,” John replied, nodding in Sam's direction.

Sam took that information in with a frown. “But ... how do we kill a ball of light?”

Dean again rolled his eyes, giving his little brother’s shoulder a small shove. “How do we kill any other spirit?”

Sighing heavily, Dean grabbed a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt out of his duffel bag and headed towards the bathroom to change. Something about this case was bothering him, but he couldn't quite figure out what it was. Then, as his fingers brushed the light switch in the bathroom, it hit him. “Dad?” he asked, turning slightly in the doorway. “Can will o’ the wisps be good?”

“No, not usually.” John frowned and stepped a little closer to Dean. “Why do you ask?”

Dean remained quiet. There was no way his dad was going to believe him. But he trusted his own eyes and he knew that if it hadn't been for that white light, they would probably still be searching the forest for his brother. "Because, um, the white one showed me where to find Sam."

John narrowed his eyes slightly without taking them off his son as he sat back down on his bed, silently demanding an explanation. “It was after we found the tree," Dean continued quietly. "Remember how we were so close but still couldn’t find him? The light reappeared and hovered right where Sam was lying.”

“I didn’t see it, Dean.”

“That’s because when I called you--when it knew I had seen Sammy--it disappeared.” His bit his lip and cringed inwardly, knowing how ridiculous the story sounded.

John inhaled deeply and held it a moment. “That may be true, but it also led us deep into the woods,” he argued after a short pause. “We would have been lost ourselves if we hadn’t been paying attention.”

Sam’s eyes widened as he looked over to his brother. Dean just smiled, instantly able to tell that Sam had caught onto his train of thought. “But that’s the difference, Dad! The one I followed was so fast that I couldn’t pay attention to where I was going. But yours gave you and Dean the time to pay attention. It wasn’t trying to get you lost!”

John darted his eyes from one son to the other before running his hand over his face in disbelief. “Boys, please. If the light is so damn good, why did it lead us into the woods in the first place, and why the hell did it wait almost four hours to direct us to Sam?”

The boys glanced at each other, both silently admitting that their father had a point. After a beat, Dean spoke up almost timidly. “But why did it direct us to Sam at all? If the goal really was to kill Sam, it would have just let him die out there.”

John let out a breath through his nose and shook his head slightly. Dean also had a point, one that he couldn’t counter at the moment. “All right, fine. We’ll keep it in mind. But first we have to go--”

“--to the library,” Sam and Dean finished in unison. Dean groaned and made a face at his brother and Sam pouted in return, both thinking the same thing, Libraries suck.

-----

"This damn machine needs a new light bulb or five," Sam muttered under his breath as he squeezed his eyes shut. He had been staring at the too-dull screen of the microfilm machine at the Allenstown public library for almost three hours, which was, if he did say so himself, about two and a half hours too long. When his vision blurred again, he finally tore his attention from the screen, turning in his chair and rubbing his eyes vigorously. "Dean, can you switch with me?"

Dean sighed but without a word he vacated his seat at the worktable. Sam grinned a thank you and happily turned his chair over to his brother. He sat down at the table and sighed in relief at the relative clarity of the newsprint.

Because Evans was an older cemetery that was still selling plots, Sam had begun checking obituaries in the oldest issues of the local newspapers while Dean had started with the most recent. As was typical with their research, neither brother knew exactly what they were looking for but they were certain they'd recognize it when they found it.

The hush that had fallen over the workroom was broken when Dean groaned in frustration and squinted at the screen. "Jesus, how the hell did you stare at this thing for three hours?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder at his little brother. "I've been looking at it for like, twenty minutes and I already have a headache."

"Now you know why I needed to switch," Sam replied without raising his eyes from his newspaper.

"Yeah, thanks for the warning."

Sam finally looked up, cringing. His unintentional deception was kind of mean. "Sorry."

"Yeah, yeah." Dean pressed his thumbs into his closed eyelids and shook his head before returning his attention to the screen. For the next few minutes, the only sounds in the room were the turning of the newspaper pages and the constant, low hum of the microfilm machine. Suddenly, one of the headlines caught Dean's eye: "Young Man Freezes to Death."

A fourteen-year-old named Joseph Quigley had succumbed to exposure after being lost in the woods near Evans Cemetery. Joseph Quigley. Why did that name sound so familiar? "Sammy, come here."

Sam, his mouth turned down in a curious frown, stood from his seat, crowded in behind Dean, and began reading the article over his brother's shoulder. "It says 'behind the new cemetery'," Sam said, nudging Dean with his elbow. "When's this from?"

Dean raised his eyes to the top of the screen. "November 1879."

"November what?"

"Twentieth."

"Tomorrow's the twentieth."

Dean turned his head and met his brother's eye. "He was missing for eight days and then found dead on the nineteenth. He was lost in the cold, Sammy. Certainly sounds like he could be one of our spirits." That was when it clicked. The fourteen-year-old's headstone that he had paused in front of that first night in the cemetery! It was Joseph Quigley's. "But is he the good one or the bad one?"

"We're still thinking there's a good one?" The uncertainty quivered in Sam's voice.

Dean just shrugged. "I can't understand why it would have shown me where you were otherwise. I don’t know, maybe we’re dealing with a spirit with a conscience."

Sam bit his lower lip before sitting back down in his chair. "I really scared you guys, didn't I."

It wasn't a question. Dean sighed softly and turned sideways in his seat. He had been furious with Sam when he was missing, mostly because it was easier to be angry with him than worried about him. It was easier than believing the worst. But now, seeing the remorse and unease on his brother's face, knowing that Sam had been tricked, he found he couldn't be angry. "Yeah, you did. When we found you, Sam, I thought …"

Sam didn't need the sentence finished. He studied his feet before raising his gaze to meet Dean’s. As he opened his mouth to apologize, Dean just held up his hand. "It wasn't a hundred percent your fault."

"I really thought you and Dad heard me call to you but by the time I realized--"

"Don't. Everything worked out okay, didn't it?"

Sam nodded.

"Then shut up."

There was a short pause before Sam returned Dean’s calm smile and then another before he faced forward in his chair and turned back to the newspapers. The brothers again worked in silence. All of a sudden, Sam gasped. "Dean, listen: 'A suspected bank robber who was last seen running into the woods behind Evans Cemetery last Tuesday was found dead from exposure early Monday morning. Police found a bag with a large portion of the stolen money on the body of David Moran and are still looking for his accomplices.' This paper’s from November 20, 1979. Two freezing deaths in the same woods exactly a hundred years apart."

"And two spirits," Dean mumbled under his breath. "How much you want to bet that this David Moran guy is the bad one?"

Sam was about to reply when an older man stepped into the work area on his way to the front of the library. Both boys quickly turned back to their respective newspapers, each one praying that the man hadn't heard even a little part of their conversation. As the stranger walked past the table, he glanced down at the map of Evans Cemetery Dean had copied from a local history book. "You boys aren't planning on trying to find those crazy lights, are you?" he asked, his tone friendly.

"No, sir," Sam answered quickly, looking up at the man to meet his eye. "We're working on a school project. History class."

"Good, good." Sam gave a slight smirk, always amazed by how easily people accepted the old "history project" excuse. "Those lights have appeared every November like clockwork, but too many young people are getting hurt now looking for them."

Dean's eyes widened at what the stranger had said. "What do you mean, now?"

"Those woods are a maze. They were bad enough in my day, but it seems like over the last fifteen years or so, more and more kids have gotten lost in there."

"Were they okay?" Sam asked quietly. How many other kids had been lost and wandering aimlessly the way he had been the night before?

"Most were, some weren't. A shame, really. The lights used to be fun, something to put this little town on the map, but now ..." The man shook his head before giving the boys a rueful smile. "Anyway, you two don't need to be bothered with that. Good luck on your project."

"Thank you," Sam said, smiling politely at the older gentleman.

Once he was sure the man was out of earshot, Dean turned to Sam. "Fifteen years? If David Moran is the bad one, it fits. And that means Joseph Quigley's the one people have been seeing for years. He must try to help! Maybe--"

"What, Moran gets them lost but Joseph leads them out?" Sam shook his head as he returned his gaze to his newspaper. "I don't know."

Dean sighed, knowing just from the morose look on his brother's face that Sam was wondering why, if that was the case, Joseph Quigley didn't try to lead him out of the woods the previous night. Truthfully, Dean would have liked the answer to that question as well, but he had learned long ago that nine times out of ten, there were no satisfactory answers. "Either way," he continued, clearing his throat, "if they only show a couple weeks out of the month, it's probably because of the anniversary."

"Which means that if both of them were found dead on the nineteenth," Sam concluded with a nod, "tonight's probably our last night."

-----

The fact that John’s research matched up with Sam’s and Dean’s was just about the only thing going smoothly for the Winchesters. True, both David Moran and Joseph Quigley were buried in Evans, but due to the decades separating their deaths, their final resting places were on opposite ends of the cemetery. Dean was tired and grouchy, Sam was still a little drained from the night before, and on top of it all, after the sun went down the temperature dropped to an unseasonably cold twenty degrees with a wind chill factor in the low single digits.

At least Sam had a pair of gloves tonight. They were of the cheap, stretchy one-size-fits-all variety--the best John could do on short notice--but they were infinitely better than nothing. And he had put on two shirts! Not that he was planning on getting lost again, but he didn’t exactly plan on getting lost the first time, either.

“Um, we’re still thinking of dusting David Moran first, right?” Dean hesitantly asked as John pulled the Impala to a stop on one of the narrow driveways near the oldest headstones. “Because he’s totally on the other side of the graveyard.”

“Yes, we’re going for Moran first,” John confirmed. “Would you rather hoof it all the way across the cemetery now or after we’ve dug two graves?”

Dean locked eyes with Sam and shrugged. Neither one of them wanted to ask why they needed to walk all the way across the cemetery at all when they had a perfectly good car to drive.

The boys climbed out of the car and sidled up on either side of John as he opened the trunk. He handed one shovel to Sam, two to Dean, and grabbed the bag of salt and the plastic container full of gasoline to carry himself.

“Sam, I don’t want you out of my sight,” John said as he slammed the trunk closed. Ordinarily Sam would have taken offense to the overprotective instruction, but after the scare he had given his father the night before, he obliged him without argument.

As the three of them trudged through the cemetery in dead silence, Sam kept his eyes glued to the path ahead of him. He used to study the headstones as they passed, but he would inevitably find a grave marker for a child, especially in the older cemeteries, and he didn’t like the thoughts those particular stones would turn up in his head. Thoughts of the death of innocence, of lives unlived, of wishes and dreams unfulfilled. Instead he had learned to stare straight ahead and to see without taking anything in.

It was because of his habit of looking without observing that he didn't notice the blue orb of light until he almost collided with it. He stopped short, staring as the dull light, growing brighter, moved from directly in front of his face down to his hip. As he walked forward it hovered next to him, following beside him like the little lamb to his Mary. John reached down and grasped Sam's free hand, tugging him further down the path. "Come on, Sam. He can't hurt you now and he knows it. Just trying to intimidate you."

Sam nodded warily. It’s just like a headstone you don’t want to see, he told himself as he fixed his gaze straight ahead. Out of his peripheral vision, he could see the orb abruptly stop moving, seeming to hang back in … disappointment, maybe? Sam allowed the tension in his shoulders to release.

The light's movement was so sudden that there was no way Sam could have anticipated it. A blue flash brighter than anything he'd ever seen up close lit the air directly in front of his eyes. The shovel dropped to the ground with a loud clatter as he released it to press his thumbs against his closed eyelids. His startled cry reverberated through the cemetery, causing a few birds that hadn’t yet flown south and had been resting on a nearby tree branch to flap their wings. "You okay, Sammy?" he heard his father ask. A hand rested on his shoulder and squeezed out of both comfort and concern, and he could tell from the size and the grip that it was John's.

Sam opened his eyes and blinked hard. A breath caught in his throat when all he could see was the same bright flash, but after a moment the flash faded and the cemetery began coming clear. "Yeah," he said shakily. He blinked again and the light faded further. "Remind me never to complain about flash bulbs on cameras again."

John chuckled and tousled his son's hair. Sam bent down to pick up the shovel while smoothing his hair back into place. They were approaching David Moran's grave, Sam realized. They were closing in, and the will o' the wisp was getting desperate.

As Moran's headstone came into view, Dean rushed ahead; he liked to be the one to break ground when they were digging. He jammed the tip of the shovel down into the dirt as far as it would go and pushed down on the handle. He grinned at the small bit of resistance he felt as fourteen-year-old grass roots were ripped from the soil with small, barely audible pops.

Despite the snow and the cold temperatures of the last few days, the ground hadn't yet completely frozen, and the digging went far more easily than John had expected it to. The ghost light hovered around their heads in a last-ditch effort to scare the Winchesters off the case, but all three were too focused on the job to be done. Soon the sound of wood splintering below the tip of Sam's shovel met their ears. Sam took the sound as his cue to scramble out of the hole and let his father bust into the casket.

The first time Sam ever laid eyes on a skeleton had been an accident. Dean and his father had left him asleep in the backseat of the Impala. He could no longer remember what woke him, but upon finding himself alone, he climbed out of the car in search of the rest of his family. Not ten feet from the car he found them. He ran up to them just as Dean began tossing handfuls of salt into the hole he and his father were surrounding. Neither one of them noticed Sam until it was too late.

He remembered that he didn't scream. He stood riveted, staring down into the hole at the splintered pine of an 1880s coffin and the dark, dingy remains of a man who had been alive a century before. His father cursed then slapped his hand over Sam's eyes as he gathered his son in his arms. Only then, in the safety of his father's arms, did Sam allow himself to cry softly. John whispered apologies into Sam's ear until he calmed down, assuring his father that he was okay. Then he had asked to see it again.

The second look had been an attempt to steel himself against the macabre sight that even in the three years since that night he hadn’t quite been able to master. The sound of the wooden boxes splitting under the force of their shovels was Sam’s signal to hide his eyes until the first handful of salt had been thrown onto the bones.

Dean covered the bones with salt and John poured the gasoline down into the hole. “Sammy,” John called, digging a book of matches out of his back pocket.

Sam stepped forward and looked expectantly up at his father. When John held the matches out to Sam, the boy’s jaw dropped open. “Really?” he asked, a slight smile curling on his lips.

John gave a curt nod. “It’s personal for you this time, son.”

Sam took the matchbook from his father, a twisted form of tradition handed down from father to son. He pulled a match off the cardboard and expertly pulled the head across the black strip. The flame flared bright then died down slightly. With a sly grin, Sam dropped the match down into the fresh grave and jumped back as the flame ignited the gasoline.

Sam handed the book of matches back to his father and watched with a delight that sort of frightened him as the flames turned the fragile remains of David Moran to dust. Once there was nothing left in the hole but ash, the three of them began filling in the grave, the softened soil depositing easily back into the hole.

All three were exhausted, but their job was only half-done. They began their walk to the older stones where Joseph Quigley had been laid to rest. This time the trip was uneventful. The white light, Joseph Quigley’s spirit, had appeared from behind one of the headstones midway through their trek and followed along beside them, but the energy surrounding it was much different than that of the blue light. David Moran had railed against the Winchesters but Joseph Quigley seemed almost to welcome them with open arms.

Dean broke ground on Joseph’s grave and watched the white light with a wary eye. He was expecting an attack, expecting that the spirit was merely lulling them into a false sense of security. But after an hour had gone by and the light hadn’t moved, Dean finally understood. “We’re releasing him.”

He hadn’t meant to say it aloud, but it was too late to rescind his words. John looked up at his older son sharply. Dean averted his gaze and instead concentrated on the digging.

Once Joseph’s bones had been unearthed, salted, and doused, John lit a match and dropped it into the open grave. As the fire ignited, the white ball of light brightened for an instant and then was gone. It would be later still, after the boys were tucked in and John was lying in bed himself, that he realized that in the only way he could, Joseph Quigley had said thank you.

-----

Joseph Quigley weighed heavily on John Winchester’s mind long after the streets of Allenstown, New Hampshire were behind them. He flicked his eyes up to the rearview mirror to check on Sam. His youngest was happily settled in the backseat, his feet tucked up underneath himself, deeply lost in the world of whatever book he was reading. He had no idea Sam managed to read in the car without getting sick, but he supposed that as long as it kept Sam quiet, he shouldn’t question it.

After ensuring that Sam was okay, he switched his gaze to his right side. His oldest was staring through the windshield but not actually seeing anything, his mind miles elsewhere. John returned his attention to the road ahead of him. Route 93 South to Route 3, he thought. Plymouth, Massachusetts was a zoo this close to Thanksgiving, but who knew if they were going to be anywhere near Plymouth for any future Thanksgivings?

The silence in the car was broken only when Dean asked in a plaintive voice, “Dad?”

“Yes, Dean?”

“Spirits aren’t always angry, are they?”

Dean, too, was thinking of Joseph Quigley. “No, son, they’re not.”

“He was stuck. Trapped somehow, and we released him.” Dean turned his head and tried to catch his father’s eye. John met Dean’s glance for a quick second before putting his attention back on the highway. “But he was still a spirit. So … was he good or bad?”

John was quiet. Joseph was a spirit, inherently unnatural, unholy. But in all those years that he haunted the cemetery and the woods surrounding it, not one person had died as a result of following his light. In fact, a select few over the years claimed to have been rescued, led to the edge of the woods by a mysterious white glow. The injuries, the deaths, the brushes with death began only after David Moran’s frozen body had been found among the trees.

John had dealt with shades of gray before, but nothing like this. A lost soul that was actually happy they were destroying him? That was not his usual prey. This was a gray he was not comfortable with in the slightest. “I don’t know, Dean,” John answered with a slight shake of his head. “I wish I did.”

Dean nodded and continued to stare out the window as he mentally added Joseph Quigley to the pile of questions that had no satisfactory answers.