Title: The Witch of November
Summary: A small Maine fishing town harbors a dark legend.
Spoilers: None.
Rating/Warning: PG-13, mostly for language. Gen.
Disclaimer: Sam and Dean Winchester belong to Eric Kripke and the CW. They were very nice to let me borrow them for a bit!
Author's Note: My first real casefile with the boys as adults. I also happened to sort of fall in love with Allie and Charlie, and they could quite posibly get spun off into their own novel. *wink*

-----

To say that the three-story Victorian mansion had seen better days would have been putting it mildly. Extremely mildly.

What was left of the paint that in decades past had been a soft and pretty robin’s egg blue had dulled and dirtied to a deep thunderstorm gray. The weathered clapboard was warped and dark green with mold from the decades of being out in the elements. All of the windows on the first and second floors sported jagged holes in the panes of glass.

Ten-year-old Allie Sullivan stared up at the menacing structure, her brown eyes wide with apprehension. She pressed her face between two bars of the wrought-iron fence surrounding the property, each of her hands wrapping around the bars at chest level. Why did Charlie have to throw the Frisbee so high? she grumbled silently as the corners of her mouth turned down into a pensive frown.

She felt rather than saw her knuckles turning white and released her death grip on the fence. After a cursory glance at the grounds for the Frisbee, Allie frowned again. The more appropriate question, she supposed, was that if Charlie was the one who had thrown the Frisbee, why was she the one retrieving it?

Probably because Charlie liked watching her squirm. There were plenty of other places to play, after all. Off the top of her head, she could think of at least three empty lots they passed on the way to Lancaster Road! She would have bet her allowance money that the only reason Charlie liked to ride his bike all the way down here to play in the vacant lot across the street was because he knew that the house freaked her the hell out.

She had just worked up the courage to slip her right leg between two of the bars when a harsh voice hissed in her ear, “The Black Widow’s going to get you!”

Allie let out an involuntary screech and whirled around before she had time to pull her leg all the way out of the fence. Crying out in pain as her hamstring stretched, she came face-to-face with a grinning Charlie Davis. His bright blue eyes were sparkling in the morning sunshine. “Ugh, I hate you!” she exclaimed, giving his shoulder as hard a shove as she could muster.

Charlie just snickered, completely unmoved by his friend’s anger, which caused Allie to pout. Honestly, sometimes she wondered why he was her best friend. “I mean it, Charlie. That wasn’t funny.”

“Oh, come on, Al. I was just playing.” As he slung his arm around her shoulders, her irritation melted and she was reminded of why the two of them were best friends. They’d known each other since they were babies and he was very much like the brother she never had. Older brother, she reminded herself. Charlie was two months older than her--two months to the day--and he lorded it over her every chance he got.

“If you’re really that scared, I’ll go get the Frisbee.” His voice was soft now, serious.

Allie smiled as the warm breeze blew wisps of light brown hair that had fallen out of her loose ponytail in her eyes. Charlie wasn’t going to make her go into the witch’s yard if she didn’t want to. But of course now she had to go; totally a pride thing. “I’m not scared,” she lied, pushing her glasses up on the bridge of her nose with one finger. “Besides, you can’t fit through the fence anymore. I have to go.”

“Oh, sure you’re not scared,” Charlie teased as Allie faced forward. Again she gripped the bars of the fence and squeezed in an attempt to muster her courage. “If you weren’t scared, we’d be back playing Frisbee already. And I can climb the fence, you know. I’ve done it before.”

Allie just gave her friend a weary scowl. Seriously, Allie, she commanded herself, get a grip. Everyone knew that the Black Widow wasn’t real. The Black Widow was just a town legend and her house was just an old, abandoned house that was falling apart. It wasn’t scary at all. It was actually rather sad.

She took a deep breath and held it for a moment before exhaling slowly through her nose in a final attempt to gather her nerve. Get in, get the Frisbee, get out. Nothing to it. Without another word to Charlie, she wedged her body between two black bars and squeezed through the fence.

She winced in pain and rubbed her sternum, where she was sure a bruise was already beginning to form. Yeah, she’d definitely grown since the last time she’d had to climb through the fence. No way she’d be able to fit through next summer. Oh well, Charlie would just have to scale the fence then. Since he’s done it before, she thought with a slight roll of her eyes.

The Frisbee was brand-new and white and would have been easy to spot if it had landed anywhere in the front yard or among the thin tendrils of the long-dead bushes edging the house. Unfortunately Allie hadn’t seen the Frisbee land. She had only watched it sail over the fence before turning an angry and exasperated glare on Charlie.

There was no sign of the Frisbee anywhere out front and Allie groaned aloud. Now she was going to have to trek all the way into the back yard and suddenly she was mad at Charlie all over again. The next time he threw the Frisbee this wild, he was going to be the one who had to venture into the witch’s yard to get it back. Whether it made her look like a chicken or not.

Allie’s heart pounded in her chest as she raced around the side of the decrepit building and into the back yard. After another swift visual scan, she finally spotted the white disc that Charlie had sent flying. She gave a soft cry of relief as she dashed forward, wrapped her hand around the edge of the plastic, and clutched it tightly against her chest. As she stood up straight, she heard Charlie’s voice impatiently calling her name. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” she shouted back, annoyed. “Relax! God.”

She had taken all of one step forward when sudden movement in one of the first floor windows caught her eye. She stopped dead in her tracks, her heart skipping a beat as her breath hitched in her throat. But after a moment she rolled her eyes. The source of the mysterious motion was just Charlie, who was making faces at her through the broken glass.

“Come on, Charlie!” she hollered. He did this all the time! She had no freaking idea what his fascination was with sneaking into the witch’s house but it probably had something to do with the fact that he could be really, really stupid sometimes. “Get back out here!”

The boy just shook his head, a devilish grin on his face. “Come and get me!” he yelled before disappearing into the darkness of the house.

“Charlie!” Allie whined. When he didn’t reappear at the window, she heaved a loud, infuriated groan. Now he was just being mean. He knew that she hated going into the Black Widow’s house.

There wasn’t a kid growing up in November, Maine who hadn’t been in the witch’s house at least once. Heck, kids had been sneaking into the old house even way back when Allie’s parents were kids! Her mom had only been inside once or twice but her dad’s adventures in the house were legendary. He had told her a few times about the Halloween that some of his friends had dared him to spend an entire night in the Widow’s house … alone. He assured her that nothing had happened and that the night had been more uncomfortable and cold than scary but just thinking about it gave Allie the creeps.

After standing rooted in fear for a full minute, Allie hesitantly climbed the porch steps and crossed the deck, her hand tightening around the plastic Frisbee. The back door stood ajar but she stopped with her toes on the threshold. There was no way in hell that she was setting foot inside that house. “I swear I’m going to leave you here, Charlie Davis!”

Only silence answered her. She waited another half-minute or so before turning on her heels and angrily scurrying across the deck. She wanted so badly to stomp away loud enough for Charlie to hear her but she didn’t dare. Between termites and rot, the old wood was so weak that she would have stamped her feet right through the steps.

As her left foot alit on the dead grass, a loud crash sounded from inside the house. A series of shouts and pained cries--a boy’s voice--came a split-second later. The cries continued for what seemed to Allie like forever and then it went quiet. Completely still.

For a moment Allie held her breath and stood motionless, unsure of what to do. She was frightened of the prospect of having to go into the house after her friend but she was also terrified of leaving him there if he was in trouble. “Charlie?” she called, creeping back up the porch stairs. “Charlie, are you okay?”

In the deafening silence Allie could hear her own heart throbbing. Then there was a strangled cry and Charlie’s voice, muffled and weak. “Help … me!”

Suddenly Allie felt sick. Charlie never asked for help. If he was asking for help now, he was in trouble.

She was terrified but for once she wasn’t afraid of the witch’s house. Her concern for Charlie was the only thing running through her mind. The Frisbee dropped from her hand, forgotten, as she dashed over the threshold.

Allie’s frantic eyes swept the kitchen. Nothing. No sign of Charlie. Dusty furniture and floor lamps and china hutches and dirty curtains passed by her in a blur as she ran from room to room, trying to find any indication that her best friend had been there.

“Charlie?” she hollered again. Convinced now that the downstairs was empty, Allie rushed up the staircase, taking the steps two at a time, to begin a panicked search of the second floor. “Charlie, where are you?!”

She was crying openly now, her tears streaming down her cheeks and dripping off her chin. Why the hell wasn’t Charlie answering her? If he were okay, he’d at least call out to her to let her know. He could be mean to her sometimes but there was no way that he would worry her like this just to play a joke on her. Oh God, what if he--

She shook the thought from her head before it could finish.

As her breath came out in ragged gasps, she opened each door she passed. Nothing in the guest rooms. Nothing in the upstairs den. Nada. No Charlie.

The room at the end of the corridor was the room that usually scared her the most: the Black Widow’s bedroom. But without a second thought she reached out with trembling hands and whipped open the door.

At first she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. No way in hell that was real. But as her eyes processed the scene in front of her, as it all sank in, she let out a loud, strangled scream.

-----

The high-pitched wailing of a siren greeted Dean and Sam Winchester as Dean slowed the Impala to a stop alongside a vacant lot on Lancaster Road. The brothers watched as an ambulance rounded the corner of the tiny side street on two wheels, angry red and white lights flashing, and parked with tires squealing outside a huge, rundown Victorian.

As Dean shifted the car into park, a little girl in glasses ran out of the house and down the front steps, sobbing. Her relief was palpable when two paramedics, one male and one female, leaped from the ambulance.

The female paramedic, laden with a case of portable equipment, dashed into the building, following the girl’s yelled directions. The other EMT whipped the back doors of the vehicle open and pulled out the stretcher and some more equipment. In three seconds flat he, too, disappeared into the house.

A third EMT stayed behind with the little girl. She wrapped a soft blanket around the girl’s shoulders and began running her hand in circles over the girl’s back while murmuring for her to “Shh.” The motherly gesture of comfort seemed to work. The girl soon quieted, her sobs dwindling to sniffles and hiccups.

Dean frowned at Sam, who just returned his brother’s confused stare. “What the hell?” Sam asked softly.

“Only one way to find out,” Dean said with a shrug. Before Sam even had the chance to protest, Dean was out of the car. When he heard Sam hiss his name in an attempt to get him back to the Impala, he just waved a dismissive hand at him.

The ambulance’s siren and that of the approaching police cruiser had alerted the neighbors and they had begun to drift from their homes and congregate on the sidewalk behind the little girl and the female paramedic. From the excited and concerned whispers around him, Dean gathered that nobody knew what the hell had happened.

After a few tense and curious minutes the paramedics that had gone into the house emerged, half-wheeling and half-carrying the stretcher over the threshold and down the front steps. A dark-haired little boy lay unconscious on the gurney with an oxygen mask over his mouth and nose. The areas of his arms and legs not covered by his T-shirt and shorts were riddled with dark bruises. A thick mark around his neck--Dean was unable to tell from his angle and distance whether it was a bruise or some kind of rope burn--made it clear that he had been strangled.

“That’s Charlie Davis,” Dean heard one of the women in front of him say to the neighbor to her right. She drew in an involuntary breath of shock at the boy’s condition. “He’s in my class this year. Was in my class this year.” She shook her head. “Keep forgetting the school year’s over.”

“That’s because it’s only been over for what, four days?” the neighbor whispered back.

“Three.”

Despite the paramedic’s valiant efforts to keep the girl’s line of vision blocked until the boy was safely loaded into the ambulance, she somehow managed to sneak a peek at her friend. Upon seeing him, her sobbing returned full force. “Charlie!” she choked.

“Oh, Allie,” Charlie’s apparently former teacher whispered, her voice full of sympathy. “She was in my class, too. Those two are joined at the hip.”

As the little girl took a step forward to run up to the stretcher, the EMT gently placed her hands on the girl’s shoulders to keep her in place and again leaned down to whisper comforts in her ear. The girl inhaled deeply and after the paramedics loaded the gurney into the back of the ambulance, the EMT walked the girl up to the vehicle and stood behind her as she climbed in as well.

Dean abruptly turned on his heel. “We’re following them to the hospital,” he muttered to his brother, who had finally drifted up behind him to see what was going on. “We need to talk to that kid.”

Sam just heaved a huge, put-upon sigh as he climbed back into the car. It would have been nice if Dean had told him why they were in November, Maine in the first place. Usually when Dean withheld information--and almost always when he gave “Because I said so” as a reason--it was because he knew Sam would try to talk him out of going wherever the hell they were going. And maybe if Dean had told him earlier why they were going to Maine, he would have argued but he certainly wouldn’t now. His curiosity was definitely what one would consider piqued.

Dean did a respectable job of keeping up with the ambulance as it flew down narrow side streets and picturesque lanes before finally turning onto Hospital Hill. As the Impala began climbing the steep hill, the brown brick building at the top grew larger in Sam’s line of vision. If the name of the street wasn’t enough of a clue, the unmistakable “H” on the directional signs in front of the building made it clear that they had arrived at their destination.

Just like most everything else in small Maine fishing towns, the hospital in November was tiny. Sam was vaguely surprised that the compact building even had the space for an emergency room. He had a sneaking suspicion that all of the truly critical patients were flight-lifted to one of the larger hospitals in the area.

The ambulance screeched to a stop in the emergency bay, the siren cutting off and the lights ceasing their bright flashing. Dean blew past the emergency vehicle, pulling the Impala into the parking lot instead. As he circled the lot in an attempt to find a space, Sam turned around in his seat and watched the paramedics unload the ambulance. “What’s our cover, Dean?” he asked after the small party had made its way inside. “I bet you everyone knows everyone in Cabot Cove, here.”

Dean groaned as he pulled into a vacated spot and shifted the car into park. “I don’t know which is sadder, the fact that you just made a Murder, She Wrote joke or the fact that I recognized it as a Murder, She Wrote joke.”

“Funny.”

“Heh. I’ve decided that you have a crippling migraine.”

Sam just raised an eyebrow at his brother. “I do?”

“Yes, you do. It’ll get us in the door but it’s not enough of an emergency that you’ll be seen right away.”

“How come you can’t have the migraine?” Sam asked, frowning as the brothers climbed out of the car. He realized that he was being somewhat immature but he didn’t particularly care.

“Because I’m the oldest and what I say goes.”

There it was, the other variation of “Because I said so” that was a favorite of Dean’s. “What are you, twelve?”

“Pot, meet kettle,” Dean said before flashing his brother a wide grin. “Break a leg, Sammy.”

Sam gave his second put-upon sigh of the day and only needed to think back to the last time he’d had a vision to remember how truly excruciating a migraine could be. He pressed one hand to his right temple while shielding his eyes with the other and hoped he was approximating the visible symptoms convincingly enough as Dean ushered him through the automatic doors of the emergency room.

The triage nurse at the front desk, whose nametag identified her as Julia, wasted no time in getting some paperwork started on Sam. After checking his vitals, she directed the brothers to the chairs in the waiting room with the promise that a doctor would be with them as soon as possible. Sam settled in a chair with his back to the desk so that he wouldn’t have to keep his face scrunched up in pretend pain. He did, however, slouch down in his seat and rest his head on a propped-up hand to keep up appearances.

The brothers sat in silence, both observing the limited activity in the emergency room. Sam’s eyes focused on a pale toddler whimpering in his sleep on his worried mother’s lap. Dean watched as a man tightened his grip on the bloody handkerchief wrapped around his left index finger.

As Julia called the man forward to put him in an examination room, the little girl and the paramedic that had remained with her outside the old house emerged from the hallway, the woman’s hand on the girl’s back. The little girl pulled her glasses off to dry her eyes as the paramedic sat her down in a chair diagonally opposite Dean.

The girl sniffled as she replaced her glasses on her face. The paramedic crouched down in front of the chair and smiled comfortingly up at her, brushing a few wayward strands of brown hair off of the girl’s forehead. “Your mom and dad are on their way, sweetie. I’m going to have to go back to work soon, so I’m going to have you wait out here with Julia until they come, okay?” she asked, gesturing towards the triage desk.

Panic lit the girl’s dark eyes at the prospect of being left alone but after receiving a friendly wave and a smile from Julia, she nodded. “Is Charlie okay?” she asked, her voice trembling with emotion.

The paramedic hesitated--the space of a heartbeat--and again pushed some hair out of the girl’s eyes. “Charlie’s hurt badly, sweetie, but I’m pretty sure he’s going to be fine.”

The little girl held her gaze on the woman for a long beat, searching the paramedic’s eyes. It was obvious that the girl knew the situation was being sugarcoated for her but she didn’t say anything to that effect. She just nodded and slumped back in the chair.

The automatic doors at the entrance of the emergency room slid open. Two official-looking men stepped through the doorway and immediately walked over to the little girl and the EMT. “Allie Sullivan?” the younger of the men asked. At the girl’s hesitant nod, the man continued. “We’re detectives with the police--”

Allie’s eyes immediately widened and she shrank back further into the chair.

“You don’t need to be afraid,” the other detective said, smiling kindly. “You’re not in any kind of trouble. We just need to ask you a couple of questions about what happened to your friend Charlie. Did you see the person who hurt him?”

Allie nodded. “It was the Black Widow,” she said so softly that everyone needed to strain to hear her. “The Black Widow beat him up and then she strangled him with some kind of scarf or something.”

The detectives exchanged a glance with the paramedic, who shook her head slightly in apology. “She’s understandably quite upset.”

The younger man nodded in understanding and waited to speak until the little girl met his gaze. He gave her a calm smile. “Allie, did the person who hurt Charlie make you promise not to tell the truth?”

Allie adamantly shook her head, her eyes filling with fresh tears. “I am telling the truth! The Black Widow was the one who hurt Charlie! I saw it myself.”

The detectives again exchanged a glance. They were both well aware that she was going to continue to insist that the Black Widow had attacked Charlie and the older man gave his partner a slight nod, silently telling him that they were going to play along with her. At least for the time being. He sat down in the chair next to Allie’s and gave her a calm smile. “What did you see her do to Charlie?”

The girl dropped her gaze to her hands as she tugged at the pink hair elastic she always wore around her wrist. She yanked the elastic off and instead nervously began twisting it around her fingers. “I-I don’t feel good. Don’t want to talk about this anymore.”

Just as the detective opened his mouth to try to calm Allie enough for her to be comfortable to talk again, the front doors slid open with another whoosh. Humid, salty air spilled into the hospital from outside as a man and woman stepped through the doors, their eyes frantic. The husband had his hand on his wife’s shoulder in an unconscious gesture of comfort but it was obvious that he was just as terrified as she was.

When she spotted the man and woman, Allie jumped to her feet with a soft, strangled cry. “Mom! Dad!” She dashed across the small foyer and wrapped her arms tightly around her mother’s stomach.

“Oh my God, Allie!” the woman cried, holding her daughter close to her. Her muscles visibly relaxed when it registered with her that Allie was okay--physically, at least. “Honey, what happened? Are you all right? You’re shaking!”

Allie shook her head and simply squeezed harder. “Mommy, I want to go home.”

Allie’s mother met her husband’s gaze over her daughter’s head. Something told Dean that the girl did not ordinarily address her mother as “Mommy.”

The older detective, sensing that the only person who could shed any light on what had happened in that house was about to slip from his grasp, stepped forward and introduced himself and his partner to Allie’s parents. “As you are well aware, Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan, your daughter is the only eyewitness to a brutal attack on a ten-year-old boy. We’d really like a chance to speak with her about what she saw before anyone else gets hurt--”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Mommy,” Allie mumbled, her face still buried in her mother’s chest. “Can you just take me home? Please?”

Mr. Sullivan met his wife’s eyes and she shook her head in response to whatever silent question he was asking. “Can this wait until tomorrow, detectives?” he asked, resting a protective hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “As you can see, Allie is very upset.”

The detective gave the worried parents a calm smile. He completely understood their hesitance to subject their obviously traumatized daughter to a police interview that would require her to recount everything she had seen in vivid detail. But ... “I’m sorry, but information is always freshest right after an incident. You and Mrs. Sullivan are welcome to sit in on the interview but we really need this information if we’re going to catch the person who attacked Charlie.”

“But I told you already that it wasn’t a person,” Allie sniffled. She finally freed herself from her mother’s embrace and wiped her eyes before turning to face the two detectives. “It was the Black Widow.”

Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan met each other’s eyes in another worried glance. Allie’s mother calmly rested her hands on her daughter’s shoulders and fixed an apologetic smile on the detectives. “Let us take Allie home and get her freshened up a little. We’ll bring her to station to talk to you--”

“No, Mom!” Allie cried, looking up at her mother with panicked eyes.

Mrs. Sullivan soothingly whispered, “Shh” to Allie and again addressed the two men. “We’ll have her at the station in about an hour?”

“That’s perfect,” the older detective nodded. He smiled comfortingly at all three Sullivans before offering to walk them to their car. Allie protested going to the police station the entire way out the door.

When the emergency room finally cleared, Sam frowned at Dean, completely confused. “Okay, what the hell was all that about?”

Dean just gave his brother a wide, shit-eating grin. “Well if you take Allie’s word for it, little Charlie Davis was attacked by a witch.”

-----

“A witch?” Sam’s voice dripped with incredulity. He shook his head as stately and ancient houses passed by the window in a blur.

He and Dean were back in the Impala in search of the town’s one motel. Sam had to admit to being mildly surprised that this part of Maine was considered enough of a tourist area to warrant having a motel in a town November’s size.

This was the first opportunity the brothers had had to talk since Dean had dropped the witch bomb at the hospital. The words were barely out of Dean’s mouth a second when Julia called Sam’s name and got him settled in a small exam room. Ten minutes later, he was being released with a prescription for naproxen, ostensibly to break his headache but which Dean intended on getting filled for the first aid kit.

Dean smiled, either oblivious to or ignoring his brother’s disbelief. “Yep, a witch. At least that’s what local legend says.”

Sam rolled his eyes and sighed. Oh, here we go, he thought, suddenly understanding why Dean hadn’t shared this information before. “What’s the legend?”

“Lillian Blackstone was still a newlywed when her fisherman husband’s boat went down in choppy water in the winter of 1876. As was appropriate for a young widow back in the day, she went into mourning but apparently she never came out.” He paused only long enough to clear his throat. “She dressed in all black and would spend hours standing on the widow’s walk, just staring out at the ocean that had claimed her husband.”

“And that makes her different from all other fishermen’s wives how?” Sam muttered.

“Wiseass,” Dean shot back. “Anyway. Years passed and she became a total recluse. Maintained the monochrome wardrobe, never left the house, the whole bit. Now think of how small this town is, how, as you put it, everyone knows everyone. Whenever there’s an old woman like that in the neighborhood--”

“--all the kids are afraid of her,” Sam interjected. “The rumors start flying: she’s mean, she’s a witch.”

“Exactly.” Dean slowed the car down as the traffic light ahead of him turned red. “Blackstone died in 1921 but for whatever reason no one ever bought her house and by now it’s practically condemned. Of course, that just fuels the legend; she ‘cursed the house’ or some other such crap. Lillian Blackstone is now known as both the Black Widow and the Witch of November.”

Sam scoffed. “I thought the witch of November was the winds off the Great Lakes that sank ships.”

“Well, yeah,” Dean said condescendingly, eyeing his brother. “It’s a play on words, Sammy.”

“It’s funny,” Sam said, his face deadpan.

Dean snorted and allowed silence to settle over the car. He held up a pamphlet on how to treat ear infections in children and squinted, trying to read the directions he’d scrawled across the back. After trying for another few seconds to read the pen markings across the printed words while still keeping his attention on the road, he handed it off to his brother. “I can’t even read my own writing. What street’s after Vernon?”

“Uh, looks like either Macon or Mason,” Sam replied, squinting at the pamphlet himself. As he tore his eyes from the paper, he realized that the street in question was coming up quickly on their left. “Dean, Macon, right there.”

“I see it,” Dean said, flipping the blinker and making the turn just in time.

Two more side streets and a traffic light later, Dean pulled the Impala into the parking lot of a quaint little inn that looked more like an old-fashioned bed and breakfast than a cheap motel. Sam frowned and turned to Dean. “You sure this is the place?”

“It’s the only place in town,” Dean confirmed. He slowed the car to a stop in a parking space and turned the key in the ignition to kill the engine. After staring up at the building for another long moment, he turned to face Sam and shrugged. “Can’t be any creepier than that place in Connecticut.”

“This isn’t creepy at all!” Sam exclaimed, smiling for the first time since arriving in November. He was envisioning thick, comfortable mattresses, light and airy bedspreads, windows that actually opened to let in the fresh night air. A bedroom, not just a motel room.

Dean eyed his brother and smirked at the dreamy look on Sam’s face. “Let’s go, Martha Stewart.”

Sam couldn’t think of a proper retort so he had to settle for giving his brother a scowl.

Check-in was completely painless and soon the brothers were standing in front of the door to their room, which still had its original glass knobs and an old-fashioned keyhole. To Sam’s immense disappointment, the key they had been given actually opened a deadbolt that had been added on the upper half of the door. Dean smirked over his shoulder at Sam. “No, sadly, we don’t have an old-school skeleton key.”

“Shut up,” Sam grumbled. “I was like, seven when I wanted one of those.”

“Yeah but Sam, you didn’t just want one,” Dean argued as he slid the key into the lock and turned it to the left. “You would have killed for one.”

Dean pushed the door open and the brothers stepped into the room. Smiles immediately lit both their faces as they drank in the details. Much nicer accommodations than they were used to.

The housekeepers had opened the windows and the room was filled with the warm June breeze and the scent of salt air. The lace sheers were fluttering in the soft wind. Both double beds were made of antiqued brass, the mattresses a good fourteen inches thick. The blue flowered comforters matched the pale blue patterned wallpaper, and the accents were done in calm whites.

Sam glanced over at his brother and smirked at the excited look on his face. “Dude, if I’m Martha Stewart, you’re totally Laura Ashley.”

“I’m going to pretend that you don’t know the name of a home designer other than Martha Stewart,” Dean teased, giving Sam a smack in the arm. He dropped his duffel bag on the bed nearest the door then sat down and bounced slightly to test the mattress. “It’s been a long time since we were in a room this nice.”

“I honestly don’t think we’ve ever been in a room this nice,” Sam said as he dropped his bag on the other bed. “Think we get turn-down service and mints on the pillows?”

“Heh, now you’re asking for a bit too much.”

“Well either way, I think November, Maine might just be my favorite place we’ve ever hunted.”

Dean watched as Sam did his usual cursory unpacking: enough clothes to last a couple of days but not enough that he was unpacked completely. As Sam was busying himself with his quick chore, Dean ran down the itinerary for the hunt. “First up we’re hitting the Blackstone house. I want to get in there with the EMF and take a look around. Then we have to try to talk to one of those kids.”

“Even if Charlie’s awake now, we’re not getting anywhere near him in that hospital.”

“Right, so Allie’s our best bet,” Dean agreed.

“Will she really be willing to talk to us, though? The police are going to make her tell the story to them over and over and over. I can’t imagine she’d want to tell the story again to two random strangers.”

“You know the difference between us and the cops, Sammy?” Dean asked. Sam shook his head. “These two random strangers are actually going to believe her when she says that the Black Widow did it.”

Sam closed the bureau drawer and turned to his brother. “You really think there’s a witch?”

“Maybe not a witch, exactly, but it could be a spirit or maybe something else entirely.” Dean shrugged. “But there’s definitely some ring of truth in this legend. That kid did not get knocked around by himself and the stories have been around too long for there not to be.”

After taking a moment to mull everything over, Sam nodded. “All right. To the witch’s house we go.”

-----

The first thing that crossed Dean’s mind as he pulled the Impala to a stop was that Lillian Blackstone’s house would have been really impressive--even beautiful--had it not been allowed to fall into ruin. The second thought that crossed his mind was that the house in its current condition looked like every single haunted house in every single haunted house movie he’d ever seen. And considering his taste in movies, he’d seen quite a few.

The manse appeared moldy and dingy, the windows dark and broken. What little of the lace curtains Dean could see through the jagged glass was a deep gray instead of the bright white he was sure they had once been. The wrought-iron fence that had been erected to give the estate an air of opulence now formed a barrier between the house and the rest of the neighborhood, sending a clear message: enter if you dare.

Dean couldn’t wait.

His gaze never left the foreboding structure as he climbed from the car and hooked a worn backpack over his right shoulder. Inside were his EMF reader, the camcorder, their flashlights--which they probably wouldn’t need during the day due to the broken windows allowing in a healthy bit of light--salt rounds and other ammo, everything. He noted with some disappointment that the house did not have a widow’s walk. There went that part of the legend.

Once Sam had taken the shotgun and a couple of other necessities out of the trunk and slammed it shut, the brothers crossed the street and stopped just outside the fence. Yellow crime scene tape was posted along the iron bars but there were no cruisers or other cars near the house. The brothers were sure to be alone inside unless the Black Widow deigned to grace them with her presence.

After a furtive glance over his shoulder, Dean deftly scaled the fence and jumped down on the other side. Sam tossed his supplies through the bars and did the same, landing hard on his feet. “There’s no way that little Allie is tall enough to climb this fence,” Sam said with a frown.

“Little Allie’s probably small enough to squeeze through,” Dean replied, shrugging.

Sam nodded and retrieved his supplies before following Dean around the house and into the back yard. The stairs leading up to the deck were so rotted through that Dean found himself wondering how they were even still standing. He gingerly climbed the steps and paused outside the opened door, looking down at the ancient lock that had been jimmied who knew how many years ago. “Now this lock would have taken a skeleton key,” he said to his brother, his tone teasing.

“Seriously, Dean. I was seven.”

Dean snickered but as he pushed the door open further, his amusement quickly turned to awe. He had stepped right into a page out of a history book.

He was standing in a kitchen that had been last updated somewhere in the early 1910s. To his left stood a large black cast iron stove and to his right was a large rectangular structure he could only assume was an icebox. Some rudimentary floor cabinets lined the wall ahead of him. A long, thick wooden counter ran the length of the cabinets and opened into a metal basin at the right end. Above the basin stood a water pump which had once been painted black but was now the color of rust. A hand-crank telephone on the right wall completed the picture.

“Hello, Little House on the Prairie,” Sam muttered under his breath.

Dean snorted. “Dude, this is awesome. You think that water pump still works?”

“Probably not,” Sam replied with a smirk, “but even if it does, all that will come out of it is water that’s been sitting in those pipes for like, eighty years.”

“Fair point.” Dean started carefully picking his way through the kitchen. Sam gave him a slight nod, an indication that he was going to leave the kitchen to Dean and start on the next room.

Dean crossed the room and pulled open one of the cabinets under the counter. He was surprised to see pots, pans, and other ancient cooking utensils piled up in the cupboard. Frowning, he opened the next cabinet and was shocked to find that it, too, was filled. Cupboard after cupboard, drawer after drawer, all of them filled to the brim with objects, now antiques--Lillian Blackstone’s possessions.

In the last cabinet he opened, he spotted a thin wooden case lying underneath some folded table linens. He stuck his hand under the cloth, grasped the box, and set it on the counter. After locating the latches that were holding the box closed, he flipped them and slowly lifted the lid. His jaw dropped.

He was staring down at a full set of flatware, service for twelve and all the requisite serving utensils, that underneath all the heavy black tarnish was real silver. “Holy shit,” he said with a low whistle. A set like this would be worth a hefty amount of money once it was cleaned and polished.

“Dean!” Sam hollered from the other room.

Dean tore his gaze from the silver with a frown and followed Sam’s voice into what had been Lillian Blackstone’s dining room. A long mahogany table stood centered in the room, a lace runner covered in years of dust and grime laid out in the middle. Two brass candlesticks had been placed evenly at each end of the runner.

Sam was standing at a huge china hutch situated along the far wall. “Look at this,” he said, gesturing inside the hutch. His voice was low, his amazement obvious. “This is real crystal, Dean. Wine glasses, champagne flutes, dinner glasses. All of it, real crystal.”

“I found silverware that’s really silver.”

“Why the hell hasn’t this house been raided yet?” Sam asked, his brow furrowing pensively. “I mean, the people in this town have been breaking into the house for years, right? This stuff is worth a small fortune. What’s it all still doing here?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Dean replied with a shrug. “Though now I’m wondering what other antiques Lillian Blackstone had.” He started to make his way to the next room then paused with a pensive frown. “Although I suppose they weren’t antiques when Lillian Blackstone had them.”

Sam snorted back a laugh. “Not so much.”

With his so far unresponsive EMF meter in hand, Dean meandered into the parlor. Though it shouldn’t have been a surprise, he couldn’t help but be fascinated when he saw that this room, too, was fully furnished.

“This is nuts,” he whispered as he ran his eyes over formal sitting chairs and a divan. Two hurricane lamps, complete with dingy tapered candles and a thick layer of dust collected in the glass, were still sitting on the fireplace mantel. Situated on the end tables were various knick-knacks: pewter candlesticks, silver portrait frames, porcelain trinket boxes and figurines.

He was left wondering what the hell these kids did in the house when they broke in. Obviously nothing was moved or stolen and there was no graffiti or other destruction to the structure itself. Despite--or perhaps because of--their fear of the Black Widow, they certainly treated her house and its contents with the utmost respect. Maybe the thrill of just being in the witch’s house was enough?

After exiting the parlor into a foyer, he climbed the main staircase ahead of him, running his hand over the intricate wooden banister. The wood was smooth and surprisingly free of dust, indicating use. Maybe the kids used it as a slide? He gave a half-smile as he stepped onto the landing on the second floor.

As he took in the brass mirrors and sterling wall sconces lining the corridor walls, he just shook his head. What a damn shame that all these things had just been left here to rot! Just like the first floor, every single room upstairs was furnished just as it must have been when Lillian Blackstone was alive.

It was in the master bedroom that his EMF reader began lighting up and buzzing like crazy and it was also in the master bedroom that Dean found the mother lode. Clothes, papers, jewelry, trinkets. Everything that Lillian Blackstone had believed to be of serious value had been kept close to her in the bedroom.

After taking a moment to run his eyes over the whole room and take in the larger details, he walked to the closet first and pulled open the heavy door. Surprisingly the closet was free of clothes but smallish steamer trunks lined the floor. He didn’t know why his eyes settled on a small wooden trunk seemingly buried underneath the rest but now he was curious. Dean dug the trunk out of its hiding place, lugged it out of the closet--for such a small box it was heavy--and set it down on the bed. The rusted springs screeched in protest under the weight.

He frowned at the lock in the middle of the trunk. Of course it was just his luck that rust had not eaten away at the locking mechanism, which still held strong. He was going to need the key.

With a soft groan, he ran his eyes over the room again. How in the hell was he going to find such a small piece of metal amid all these objects scattered throughout this old house with no real organization? Suddenly a jewelry box on the vanity caught his eye, and he grinned. Of course!

Dean crossed the room and opened the lid of the small box and then each of the tiny drawers in turn. In the bottom drawer, he finally hit paydirt: a tiny brass skeleton key, one that was sure to make Sam smile like a four-year-old on Christmas morning.

With a slight grin of his own, Dean stuck the key into the slot on the trunk and turned. The lock released with a soft pop.

Inside the trunk were more pieces of jewelry adorned with sapphires, rubies, diamonds, and other precious gems, some porcelain figurines, the death certificate of one Josiah Blackstone, and a copy of the last will and testament of Lillian Blackstone. In skimming the will, Dean learned why the house hadn’t been sold or torn down: the property had been bequeathed to Lillian’s second cousin and his heirs, who were bound by the will not to sell until 2021, a hundred years after Lillian’s death. It was obvious that Lillian had hoped the property would remain in the family beyond that date but for whatever reason the living descendants didn’t care too much about an old, rundown Victorian in November, Maine.

Sam walked into the bedroom then, following the sounds of the EMF reader. “Is there anything here?”

“Not that I’ve seen. There was something here, though, that’s for damn sure.”

Sam looked around at the bedroom, his mouth open in awe. “I don’t understand, Dean.”

“Property has to remain in the Blackstone family,” Dean said from his spot on the bed. He held the will out to his brother. “That's why it hasn’t been sold.”

“That only explains the condition of the house. Why the hell is all this stuff here?” Sam took a seat on the bed and snatched the will from Dean’s hand. “I mean, why hasn’t the family sold this stuff off yet? Or how come in the last eighty-odd years, no one that has broken into this place has thought of taking even a quarter of this stuff and trying to sell it?”

“I don’t know, Sammy,” Dean said with a heavy sigh. “Maybe people in Maine adhere to a stronger moral compass that the rest of us.”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.”

Dean let the conversation drop for a moment before reaching over and snatching the key from the lock of the small trunk. He stuck his hand under Sam’s nose. “Look what I found, though.”

Though he was no longer seven years old, Sam’s eyes lit up as he took the key from Dean’s outstretched palm.

“God, you’re such a geek,” Dean teased with a roll of his eyes. He stood, stretched, and kicked his brother’s shoe. “Come on. We still have the entire third floor to search.”

He didn’t look back into the room as he left but if he had, he would have seen Sam slip the tiny brass key into his pocket, unable to resist the culmination of a childhood dream.

-----

The last person Sam expected to see approaching the Blackstone house as he and Dean were depositing their supplies back into the trunk of the Impala was Allie Sullivan. She was on the opposite side of the street, her arms crossed protectively over her chest. Despite the humid sea breeze, she appeared to be shivering. “Dean,” Sam whispered before digging his elbow into his brother’s side to get his attention.

Dean looked up just as Allie froze in her tracks before the iron fence. For a long moment, she didn’t move a muscle but soon her fearful gaze traveled to the house. She stood still, staring at the building for another few seconds, then shook her head, looked both ways, and hurried across the street. Dean immediately understood; she was attempting to put as much space as possible between her and that house.

Once safely across the street, Allie cast a sideways glance at the house and shuddered. And then, before his brother had a chance to stop him, Dean stepped forward. “It’s Allie, right?”

Poor Allie jumped a mile. The fear in her eyes was soon replaced with both recognition and slight confusion. “Um, yeah. Were you guys at the hospital?”

“Yes, we were,” Sam replied, glaring at his older brother. Just scare the crap out of the kid, Dean. “I’m glad to see that you’re feeling better.”

“Yeah, you too.” Allie’s apprehension was palpable. Here she was, far from home and alone in front of the Black Widow’s house with two strangers. She gave a wary stare to Sam before fixing the same look on Dean. “I-I haven’t seen you around town before.”

“Told you everyone knows everyone in Cabot Cove,” Sam muttered to his brother.

Dean elbowed Sam hard in the ribs in response before giving Allie a calm smile. “I’m Dean and this is my brother, Sam. We’re in town visiting out uncle. Promised us some real Maine lobsters.”

At the mention of the seafood, Allie wrinkled her nose. “Lobsters are weird. They look at you when you eat them and they look like bugs.”

Sam laughed. “They do kind of look like bugs, don’t they?”

Allie smiled for the first time but Dean felt himself growing vaguely impatient. They were not making any progress whatsoever and he needed to get the interview back on track before Allie and Sam decided to hold a symposium on the pros and cons of seafood. “So, Allie,” he spoke up nonchalantly. When he leaned back against the car and crossed his arms over his chest in an effort to look comfortable, Sam rolled his eyes. “We’ve heard a lot of rumors about the witch’s house over there. Do you know what the real deal is?”

Sam was sometimes amazed by Dean’s lack of tact. This obviously scared child had just been in an ambulance, at the hospital, and at the police station because of what had gone down in that house and Dean was bringing it up like he wanted to discuss the previous night’s episode of Hannah Montana!

But to Sam’s immense surprise, Allie didn’t shy away from the subject at all. She turned her back to the house and met Dean’s eyes before saying, “Back in like, 1900 or whatever, a woman named Lillian Blackstone lived in that house. She was a witch--a real, evil witch--and the story goes that she used to make all these curses and stuff when she was alive and used them on the people in town. They say she also cursed the house and now her ghost haunts it. Doesn’t stop people from going in there, though.”

Her last sentence was quiet, rueful. Undoubtedly she was thinking of Charlie and wondering why he had been in the house that morning.

“Stories like that don’t usually stop people from going into supposedly haunted buildings,” Sam said with a gentle smile, hoping to calm her a little. “Makes them want to do it more, actually.”

Allie nodded; that was certainly the truth. All the boys she knew dared each other to go into the house and all the girls she knew made games of pretending they weren’t afraid to follow the boys inside. “We’ve all been playing in the house for years. My dad even stayed one night in there by himself when he was twelve.” She brushed fine wisps of light brown hair out of her eyes. “He says nothing happened, though.”

Allie coughed and she turned slightly, her gaze drifting to the house. “But it doesn’t matter what he saw or what he didn’t see. I know the Black Widow is real.”

Dean leaned forward slightly in an attempt to recapture the girl’s attention. “How do you know she’s real?”

It took a moment for Allie to respond and when she did, her voice was noticeably softer. “Because she hurt Charlie.” She bit her trembling lower lip and again turned her back to the house, staring instead at the lone bicycle in the empty lot, a boy’s. It was then that Sam figured she was only near the house at all because had been bringing her and Charlie’s bikes home after leaving them in the lot in the commotion.

Dean narrowed his eyes, trying to get a read on the little girl. Had she really seen something supernatural or was her traumatized mind simply confusing the town legend with a real, human attacker? “What did she do to Charlie?”

Sam opened his mouth to interrupt but Dean gave him a sidelong glance and shook his head slightly. He was trying to get into Allie’s head and the tiniest interruption could shut the girl up for good.

“She strangled him,” the girl answered after a short hesitation. “She was wearing this long black dress. It went all the way down to the floor and she was choking him with some kind of scarf or sash or something. It was hanging off the dress.”

There was a faraway look in the girl’s eyes and she cleared her throat when her voice trembled with emotion. “I yelled and yelled at her to let him go but she wouldn’t! She only let him go when I ran past her and grabbed Charlie’s hand. She disappeared then but Charlie still couldn’t breathe so I had to call the ambulance.”

Dean met Sam’s eyes and nodded, indicating that he believed that Allie was being truthful and that she did in fact see what she said she saw. “You saved Charlie’s life, Allie,” he said, once again locking eyes with the girl. “You should be proud.”

Allie blushed and looked down at her sneakers, a modest smile on her face. “He would have done the same thing for me.”

At that Sam smiled, touched by the innocence of the children’s friendship. It was very obvious that Allie cared deeply for Charlie and that seeing him almost lose his life that morning had shaken her to her core. “How’s Charlie doing?” he asked, his voice soft.

The girl shrugged and again crossed her arms over her chest. “His mom called my mom from the hospital. He wasn’t awake yet and they won’t know anything until he wakes up.” She searched Dean’s eyes, tears threatening to spill over onto her cheeks.

“What’s the matter, Allie?” Dean asked.

“The Black Widow … she didn’t look like I thought she would.”

“What do you mean?”

“I … I always imagined her looking like … well, like a witch. Like in The Wizard of Oz or on Halloween with a green face and crooked nose and carrying a broom and everything. But she didn’t look like that at all.”

“What did she look like?” Sam asked with a frown.

“Just an old lady, like my grandmother. An old lady in a long black dress.” Allie busied herself with poking at a small pebble on the ground with the toe of her sneaker. “But the look on her face … she was just so angry.”

“Angry with what?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know!” She sounded lost now, completely helpless. “I don’t know if she was mad at Charlie because he was in the house or if she’s just mad at everything.”

The threesome stood in silence for a long beat and then Allie looked up at the brothers, squinting against the afternoon sunlight. She looked first at Sam and then at Dean. “You do believe me, right? That I really saw the Black Widow hurt Charlie?”

The brothers both nodded.

Finally a small smile began tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Then you’re the only ones. I think the policemen at mad at me because they think I’m not telling them the truth. And my mom and dad think I’m … traumatized, I think is the word they used. I keep telling all of them that it wasn’t a random person, it was her! But every time I say that, they all just give each other these weird looks.”

When the brothers exchanged a glance, Allie gave a disappointed sigh. “Kind of like that.”

Sam crouched down so that he was eye-level with the girl. “Allie, it’s not that they think you’re lying. It’s just that adults … they don’t believe in ghosts and witches.”

“You guys are adults,” she pointed out. “How come you believe me, then?”

Dean once more leaned back against the car as Sam straightened. “Well, we can leave it at the fact that we just do,” Dean said, “or I can tell you the real truth. But I’m warning you right now, you’re not going to like it and once you know there’s no turning back the clock. No closing the opened door. It’s up to you and it’s perfectly fine if you say you don’t want to know.”

Allie was quiet for a long moment, clearly mulling over her options but she eventually nodded. She pushed her glasses back up on her nose with her finger and gave Dean a tiny attempting-to-be-courageous smile. “I want to know.”

No, Sam thought. He could not allow Dean to destroy this kid’s innocence. She’d been through enough for one day, what with seeing some sort of supernatural monster almost kill her best friend right in front of her.

But before Sam could even open his mouth, Dean held up a hand to him. For whatever reason, Allie was putting her trust in them and looking to them for answers. If she really wanted to know the truth, Dean could see no reason to lie to her.

“Sometimes ghost stories are real, Allie. Sometimes witches are real. Demons, goblins, monsters, all of it is real. Now don’t get me wrong, most of the stories and legends are just stories and legends but some of them aren’t. Like Sam said, your parents don’t think you’re lying, they just don’t believe that the supernatural world is real. Ignorance is bliss and this world is dangerous and it’s scary and it makes no sense.”

Allie took in the information with wide eyes and swallowed hard before she spoke. “How do you know about all this?”

“Trust me, Allie, that’s something you really don’t want to know,” Dean said, his tone and expression both completely serious. “But we’ve been at this a long time and we know more about this stuff than almost anyone. And we know how to get rid of the bastards.” As soon as the word was out of his mouth, he gulped, suddenly wary of his language in front of such a little kid. “Sorry.”

The tension finally released, Allie giggled and waved off his apology. “It’s okay.”

Again the three of them stood in silence for a moment before Allie spoke up again. “You’re not really here visiting your uncle, are you? You’re here because of her.” She nodded in the direction of the Blackstone house.

“Yes, we are,” Dean replied with a solemn nod.

“Do you really think you can make the Black Widow go away?”

“We’re certainly going to try,” Sam gently assured her.

Allie nodded and from the way that she set her shoulders Sam was instantly able to tell that she was doing her best to muster all her courage. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

The brothers looked at each other, both on the same page. No way in hell they were letting a ten-year-old in on their case. “Allie, this is extremely dangerous work,” Sam explained. “Trust me, you don’t want to help.”

Allie chewed on the inside of her cheek. “But she hurt Charlie.”

Dean immediately understood the girl’s emotional stance and the need she was feeling for revenge. He reached down and set his hands on her shoulders. He looked into her eyes, which were glistening with unshed tears, and he could see beyond her fear and her apprehension into the burning anger and hatred she felt for the Witch of November.

“We’re going to need information,” Dean finally said. “Everything you know about the Black Widow, everything your parents know about her, anything you can find. And when Charlie wakes up, we’re going to need to talk to him, too. Do you think you can help us with that?”

Her smile wide now, Allie nodded excitedly. “Research is actually sort of my specialty.”

“That’s my girl,” Dean said with a wide grin of his own. He removed his hands from her shoulders as he stood up straight and opened the passenger side door of the Impala. He plopped down in the seat and dug through the glove compartment. A couple seconds later, he turned up a napkin from Dunkin Donuts and a pen. After swiftly scribbling something down on the napkin, he pressed it into Allie’s hand. “This is my cell number. I want you to call us when you’ve got some news, all right?”

Sam was pretty sure that Allie was blushing as she stuffed the napkin into the pocket of her denim shorts. “I’m going to go get started now!”

Dean chuckled as the girl dashed into the lot and grabbed the bike before taking off down the sidewalk in a run. She turned around once to give the brothers a wave goodbye before disappearing around the corner. Once Allie was out of sight, Sam turned to his brother and raised a single eyebrow at him.

“What? At least this way she can help while staying off the witch’s radar.”

“Yeah, but Dean, you just pawned off our research on a little kid.”

Dean shrugged, his mischievous smirk making his eyes sparkle. “Added bonus.”

-----

“You couldn’t have really expected me to leave all the research up to Allie,” Sam muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Dean to hear him.

“Well, no,” Dean admitted. Sam was too much of a control freak to leave anything up to someone else. “But the kid did say that research was her specialty.”

“The key word in that sentence? ‘Kid.’” Sam stared at the laptop’s screen as he waited for the system to boot up completely. “I’m not putting my faith entirely in an inexperienced ten-year-old who simply has the misfortune of having a small-town legend be real.”

“What’s your problem?” Dean asked as he plopped down onto his bed.

Sam was quiet for a long moment before answering. “I just hate it when we have to involve kids.”

Dean gave his brother a sympathetic yet still unyielding look. “Sammy, this job came ready-made with the involvement of these kids. Allie was already involved before I asked for her help with the research.”

Sam opened his mouth to argue the point but Dean shook his head to stop the argument before it could begin. “That little girl needs to help, Sam. It’s a need for revenge and for justice for Charlie and she would have found the courage to do something on her own whether we were here or not. I’d just much rather have her poking around the November Public Library than the Blackstone house.”

Sam let out a tense breath through his nose. He had to admit that his brother had a reasonable point. Of all people he and Dean certainly understood the kid’s desire for payback and Dean’s idea of giving her charge of the research made her feel involved without putting her directly in danger. After a long beat of silent reflection, he nodded, conceding the argument to his older brother.

Dean heaved a sigh before sprawling out on his bed and closing his eyes. These lulls were the parts of the investigation that he absolutely hated. They couldn’t move forward without the proper information but getting information took time. He had been hoping that Allie could speed that process up a little but he knew all along that Sam would have to work his research magic as well. Because of course, Sam was correct: Allie was inexperienced and just a kid. He felt himself drifting and allowed the rhythmic tapping of Sam’s fingers on the laptop’s keys to lull him.

Though he hadn’t intended to, at some point Dean had fallen asleep. A series of crackles and buzzes brought him out of his slumber and he was confused for the tiniest of moments. As he woke up a little he realized that the sounds were coming from his EMF reader but it wasn’t until he heard his name being croaked out that he sat bolt upright.

It was Sam and he was in trouble.

In one swift movement he jumped off the bed and yanked his knife from its hiding place under the pillow. In the time he had been asleep, the sun had started to set. The room was illuminated only by the dusky sunlight filtering in through the windows and the dim glow from the laptop’s screen.

Though it was hard to see in the twilight, Dean was able to make out movement in the far corner of the room. Some unseen force had Sam pinned to the wall and a figure dressed head to toe in black was hovering closely in front of him. Wrinkled hands pulled on a black sash that had been somehow looped around his brother’s neck.

Well, this is useless, Dean thought as he tossed the knife aside. He instead stuck his hand under the bed and wrapped his fist around a Ziploc sandwich bag filled with rock salt. He thrust his hand into the bag, grabbed some of the hard crystals, and hurled them into the corner while calling a warning to Sam to shut his eyes. In an instant both the specter and the sash were gone.

Sam dropped to his knees, coughing violently and gasping for air. Dean was at his side in a flash. “Sammy, you okay?” he asked as he helped his brother to his feet.

“Yeah,” Sam croaked, his voice hoarse and his breath ragged as he refilled his lungs with precious oxygen. “Jesus Christ. How the hell did she even get in?”

“Don’t know, but there’s no way she’s getting in again,” Dean muttered angrily. Frustrated with squinting in the darkness, he turned on one of the bedside lamps.

The brothers stood in silence while waiting for Sam’s breathing to return to a regular rhythm. He brought his fingers to his neck and winced in pain. The area where the sash had chafed his skin was hot to the touch; he was going to have one lovely rope burn by tomorrow. “I guess now I have something in common with Charlie Davis,” he said through a final cough.

“Yeah, you’ve both seriously pissed off a little old lady,” Dean said as he looked over his brother in concern. “Have any idea why?”

Sam just shrugged. “I can’t know what I have in common with Charlie without talking to him, or at least to Allie about him. We never asked her what they were doing in the house this morning.”

“I want to know what the hell any of the kids do in that house,” Dean murmured. He frowned and tiredly ran his hand over his face. “You find anything worth mentioning before Lady Death showed up?”

Sam gave another half-hearted shrug of his shoulders. “I found more questions than answers. Since 1900, there have been four deaths with the same MO: strangulation with some kind of cord that left no distinguishing marks. Two in 1922, a year or so after Lillian’s death, one in 1957, and one in 1976. None of the victims were found anywhere near the Blackstone house, though.”

“You just proved that Lillian’s not bound to the house,” Dean reminded him. “Anything connecting the victims?”

“Nothing.” Sam shook his head and sighed. “Three of them are male, one is female. They’re all different ages, have different occupations and different social statuses. It’s not even like there’s any kind of timetable to suggest ritual killings.”

Dean stared at his brother in confusion. “What the hell?”

“I don’t know. None of it makes any sense to me, either.” Again Sam self-consciously touched the mark on his neck. “Dean, we need Charlie Davis.”

After giving a pensive nod, Dean began slowly pacing the length of the motel room. What the hell was the Black Widow’s deal? It made complete sense to him that a distraught widow who had spent decades in mourning would end up haunting the house she had lived in but for a spirit to go after random people at random times? Spirits didn’t do that. Spirits had reasons and Lillian Blackstone so far did not seem to have a reason.

The Winchesters had hit a wall. Either Allie Sullivan needed to come through with her research or Charlie Davis needed to wake up. Dean supposed the two of them could go back to the Blackstone house and look for something they must have missed before but Sam was on the Black Widow’s radar now and Dean was reluctant to bring him directly into the line of danger.

Sam crossed the room and grabbed his jacket off the bed. “We missed something, Dean. We need to go back to that house.”

“Sam, you’re not going anywhere,” Dean interjected with a shake of his head. “I refuse to deliver you right to her, gift-wrapped.”

“She’s coming after me whether I’m in the house or not,” Sam reminded his brother. He crouched down, picked up the bag of rock salt, and tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans. “Time’s wasting, not only for me but for Charlie, too.”

Dean narrowed his eyes at Sam. “What? Why?”

The younger Winchester cleared his throat as he gestured towards the laptop. Dean hit a couple of keys to bring the computer out of screensaver mode and ran his eyes over the page Sam had found. “It’s impossible to tell by now if it’s true or just part of the legend,” Sam explained while Dean read, “but apparently once the Black Widow has you in her sights, she doesn’t stop until you’re dead.”

-----

Dean had just slowed the Impala to a stop outside the Blackstone property when his cell phone rang. He dug into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew the phone. A cursory glance at the caller ID revealed an unfamiliar number. With his brow furrowed, he pressed the phone to his ear. “Hello?”

“Dean? Guess what!”

The young voice sounded so different that at first Dean couldn’t place it. Recognition registered a second later and he smiled. The little girl hadn’t sounded this happy before. “What is it, Allie?”

“Charlie woke up! He’s okay! Can you come to the hospital?” She lowered her voice. “He remembers things about her and he wants to talk to you.”

“We were going to hit up the house again but we can be at the hospital in about fifteen minutes,” Dean answered. “Can you meet us down in the lobby?”

“Yup! I’ll be waiting.”

Sam met his brother’s eyes with a perplexed frown as Dean ended the call, tucked the phone back into his pocket, and shifted the car into drive from park. “Charlie’s awake,” Dean explained. Sam let out a soft breath of relief. “I told Allie we’d come down to the hospital now. Hopefully we’ll be able to get some answers.”

The brothers made the trip to the hospital in silence. As Dean pulled the Impala to a stop in a parking space, Sam spoke up, his voice soft. “How are we going to protect this kid, Dean? It’s not like we can line his hospital room with salt.”

“We just have to hope that the Black Widow doesn’t like hospitals.” A quick glance over his shoulder at Sam told him that his brother had not appreciated the joke. “Honestly? I think he’ll be all right as long as he’s in the hospital. All of the other people were alone when they died and she waited until I was out cold to go after you. A hospital is too busy, too bustling. Too many people around.”

Sam just nodded, still somewhat unconvinced. He supposed that Charlie probably was safer in the hospital than anywhere else but he was still uncomfortable with two little kids having this level of involvement in his case.

As soon as the automatic doors at the hospital’s entrance slid open to allow the brothers entry, the two of them were greeted by a grinning Allie Sullivan. This being the first time Sam had seen the girl truly smile, he couldn’t help but smile back at her. “Hi, Allie. How’re you doing?”

“Much better now!” she exclaimed. Practically bouncing, she grabbed Dean’s hand and began tugging him towards the elevator. “Come on! I want you guys to meet Charlie.”

“Allie, wait a second,” Dean interrupted, pulling back against the girl’s grip. Allie stopped walking and frowned up at him. “We can’t talk about … what we need to talk about if his parents are in the room.”

A sly grin curled on Allie’s lips. “Oh, that’s easy. Charlie’s dad’s at home with his little sister and we can get rid of his mom for a couple of minutes. He’s already gotten her out of the room once so we could talk about what really happened. Told her he wanted some pudding.”

Dean glanced over his shoulder at Sam and smirked. These kids, they were two little rugrats after his own heart.

Allie didn’t let go of Dean’s hand until the trio reached the elevator. She pushed the call button and turned her attention to the brothers as the three of them waited for the car to reach the lobby. For the first time she noticed the mark around Sam’s neck. It was lighter than Charlie’s but otherwise the two burns looked exactly the same. “She came after you, too,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Sam gave her a nod. “That’s part of the reason we need to talk to Charlie. He and I obviously did something to make her target us.”

The ding of the elevator car finally reaching the lobby startled all three of them. Allie let out a nervous giggle and led the brothers onto the elevator. With a grin she pressed the button for the fourth floor, which a small directory posted in the elevator car identified as the pediatric unit.

The doors closed and the elevator began its slow ascent up the shaft. “I already told Charlie about you,” Allie said, addressing both Winchesters. “He was really excited when I told him that you might be able to make the Black Widow go away forever.”

“We’re going to need his help for that,” Dean reminded her.

“I know. I told him that, too. He wants to help.”

Oh great, Sam thought. Another kid who wants to help.

The doors finally opened on the fourth floor and again Allie acted as a tour guide, leading the brothers past the nurse’s desk, past a small toy room, and down a bright corridor to the room at the very end of the hallway. The little girl reached out and grabbed Dean’s hand to tug him into her friend’s room.

Mrs. Davis raised her head expectantly when Allie returned but her kind smile swiftly turned into a frown of slight confusion when the girl led two strangers into her son’s hospital room. “Hello,” she said, trying not to sound taken aback but also silently demanding an explanation.

“Mrs. Davis, this is Dean and this is Sam,” Allie jumped in, taking over the introductions before the Winchesters had a chance to do so. “They’re my cousins from out of town.”

Dean met Sam’s gaze, grinned, and almost imperceptibly raised his eyebrows. She hadn’t missed a beat! Who would have guessed that a little girl this sweet and innocent-looking would be such an accomplished liar? “Nice to meet you,” Mrs. Davis said, slightly letting down her guard. “Any friend of Allie’s is a friend of ours.”

Charlie Davis, with his brown hair and angelic blue eyes, proved to be just as smooth as Allie. “Mom? Can you go down and see if there are any puzzle books or something in the gift shop? I’m really getting bored.”

Charlie’s mother gave a suspicious glance to her son but she obliged him without argument. “Sure thing, baby,” she said, planting a kiss on the top of her son’s head. She gave Sam and Dean a nod on her way out of the room. “Excuse me.”

“Of course,” Dean said, flashing her a smile. He waited until he was sure that Charlie’s mother was out of earshot to turn a huge grin on both children. “You two are freakishly good at lying. I’m really quite impressed!”

Allie at least had the decency to look ashamed. All Charlie did was smirk. “Oh, this is nothing. My mom’s already said that she’s dreading when I get to high school and I have bigger things to lie about.”

Sam shook his head at the two children but he couldn’t help but chuckle at their antics. “How’re you feeling, Charlie?”

“Okay, I guess,” the boy answered with a shrug. He self-consciously touched the thick line around his neck and winced. “I have a killer headache, my chest really hurts, and I ache all over. Stupid witch.”

The last two words were muttered angrily and Dean wasn’t sure whether Charlie had meant for someone to hear him. He had a feeling, though, that even though Charlie seemed bitter with his aches and pains, the boy knew that he had been incredibly lucky. “What happened in the house?” Dean asked, trying to get down to business.

The head of the hospital bed was raised so that Charlie was sitting and he fidgeted and leaned his head back against the pillow in preparation for a bit of storytelling. “I really only went in there to scare Allie. She’s kind of a baby when it comes to that house.”

“Hey!” Allie’s eyes traveled to Dean as she shoved Charlie’s leg under the blanket.

“Well, you are!” Charlie snickered.

“Yeah well, looks like I have a reason to be scared, don’t I?” Allie shot back, holding her hands on her hips.

“Whoa, guys,” Sam interrupted, glancing over his shoulder at the door. The kids were getting loud and the last thing they needed was to draw the attention of the nurses working on the floor. Besides, Charlie’s mother would be back any moment. How long could it take to go downstairs, buy a book of crosswords, and return to the pediatric ward?

The children looked up at Sam and in that instant they both seemed to understand that they were up against the clock, so to speak. There was a lot of ground to cover in a short amount of time. “I was up in the witch’s bedroom,” Charlie continued, “and she just started attacking me!”

“Bedroom was where the EMF meter went nuts,” Dean muttered, nudging Sam. The younger Winchester nodded, an indication that he remembered.

“She grabbed my arms and legs,” Charlie said as he lifted his left arm to show the brothers. The dark bruises covering his arm looked vaguely like handprints. Sam wasn’t sure, though, that he would have recognized them as handprints if he wasn’t looking for them specifically. “Then she started choking me. I-I remember calling for Allie and that’s it. The next thing I remember is waking up here.”

“What were you doing in the bedroom?” Dean asked.

“Just poking around.” The little boy shrugged. “I was actually going to hide in the closet to scare Allie when she came looking for me but she yelled from outside that she was going home. Because she’s a wuss.”

Allie pursed her lips and shoved her friend’s shoulder this time. Her cheeks flushed pink when Dean snickered.

“Anyway,” Charlie said as he shot a teasing grin at Allie, “it was obvious that Allie wasn’t coming and I was just about to leave when the Black Widow started coming at me.”

The foursome fell into a silence that only lasted a few seconds before Sam asked, “What do you kids even do in the house? I mean, besides scaring the crap out of your friends.”

Charlie chuckled initially but he shrugged again as he considered Sam’s question. “Really, we don’t do much of anything. Hang out. Look around at all the old stuff. A lot of kids like just being there with the witch’s stuff because it’s creepy. Some kids hold séances, play with a Ouija board. When we were little, we just played. Like a huge game of House but in like, a museum.”

Sam raised an eyebrow at Dean. Séances and Ouija? Was it possible that the children of November had unwittingly brought back the Black Widow themselves? Dean just shrugged, an indication that he thought anything was possible, before turning to Charlie. “Do you guys play with any of her things? Some of that stuff is worth a fortune.”

“I know!” the boy exclaimed. “I was going through the things in her room and I found all these old coins. Indian head pennies and Liberty nickels. She even had Barber dimes! That’s like, the only coin in my collection that I don’t have so I stuck one in my pocket.”

Allie gasped, shocked. “You stole it?” Anger lit her eyes as she smacked her friend’s arm, not caring if she hit his bruises. “You know you’re not supposed to take anything from the witch’s house!”

Charlie scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, please.”

Dean, on the other hand, took Allie a little more seriously and frowned down at the little girl. “Why can’t he take anything from the witch’s house, Allie?”

“Because of the curse she put on the house.” Allie nervously switched her weight from one foot to the other, slightly uncomfortable under Dean’s pensive gaze. “It’s like King Tut. You can’t take anything from her house or else you die.”

“It’s just a story, Allie,” Charlie argued, his tone that of an impatient sibling.

Allie simply set her jaw and narrowed her eyes at her friend. “It’s obviously not just a story. You took the dime and you almost died.”

As the children argued, Dean drew in a heavy breath and glared sharply over his shoulder at his little brother. If the Black Widow came after people who stole things from the house … “Dude, you didn’t.”

Sam gave his brother a sheepish smile and after a second’s pause drew the small brass key from his jeans pocket. “Yeah, I kind of did.”

After a moment of silent boggling Dean reached out and gave his brother a slap upside the head. “What the hell were you thinking?!”

Sam brought his hand to the back of his own head as he glared at Dean. “Ow! Obviously I wasn’t thinking.”

“Damn right you weren’t! Since when do we take things from haunted buildings? That’s a bush-league mistake, Sam. Honestly--”

“All right,” Sam muttered through gritted teeth. He gestured with his head in the direction of the two children, who were exchanging amused grins.

Remembering that two children were in the room, Dean took a breath to calm himself and swallowed the rest of his tirade. There would be plenty of time for yelling at Sam later. Right now they needed to get back down to business. “Allie, what do you know about the curse?”

Allie hopped up on the bottom corner of the hospital bed and gave a slight shrug. “The Black Widow goes after anyone who takes anything from her house. She just keeps on coming after you until she either kills you or you give the thing back. I think.”

“You think?” Sam frowned

“Well … yeah.” She averted her eyes and studied her sneakers instead. “Some people say that all you have to do to make her go away is give her the stolen thing back but some people say she doesn’t care if you give it back and just kills you for taking it in the first place.” She shrugged. “There are so many different stories out there that it gets confusing.”

“Well, first things first,” Dean interjected. He waited until Allie looked back up at him before continuing with a calm smile. “Sammy and I are going to go back to the house to put the dime and the key back--”

“Aw, man!” Charlie interrupted with a grumble. “I’m never going to get a Barber dime!”

“Yeah well, I’d much rather have you be alive than have a stupid Barber dime,” Allie said sternly. She hopped down from the bed and grabbed Charlie’s khaki shorts from their place on the visitor’s chair. After arriving at the emergency room, he’d been given scrubs to wear. She unfolded the shorts and dug through the right pocket and then the left before her fingers finally closed around a thin piece of metal.

“Hey!” Charlie cried when Allie dropped the coin into Dean’s palm.

Allie reclaimed her seat at the foot of the bed. “Tough. It belongs to her, not to you.”

“But she’s dead, Allie!”

“And she can still hurt you, Charlie.” Her reprimanding tone was gone and in its place was the quiet voice of a frightened little girl who had seen her best friend almost die right in front of her. “Sam and Dean are giving her the dime back.”

Sudden realization lit Charlie’s eyes as it finally sank in exactly how hard this whole thing with the Black Widow had been on his friend. He nodded at her, acquiescing without another word.

Dean twirled the thin dime around in his fingers before giving a slight nod to Sam, an indication that it was time for them to leave the hospital for the Blackstone house. “We’ll come back when we have a better idea of what’s going on,” he promised as he gave both children a smile. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Charlie. Allie, take good care of him. And thank you both for your help.”

“I will,” Allie replied with a bashful smile.

Dean gave the girl another grin but as he turned away from the children, he finally allowed the concern and tension to show on his face. He could only hope that his theory about what was really going on at the Blackstone house was correct.

-----

Though the Impala was speeding down the quiet streets of November, Maine, it was not moving fast enough. Dean pressed his foot down harder on the gas pedal. The urgency was in the air and he was growing rather impatient. The lives of a little boy and his own brother depended on the secrets held deep within the Blackstone house.

“At least now we know why the house is so intact,” Dean muttered, breaking the tense silence in the car. “Those four random people all must have stolen something from the house.”

Sam gave a pensive nod, his eyes never leaving the blur of houses whizzing past the window. As he considered the curse on the Blackstone property and its implications, his eyes widened. A new thought had occurred to him. “Dean, what if they sold what they stole?”

“So what if they did?”

“Well, does the Black Widow go after whoever has the object or just the original thief? God only knows what was stolen or where the hell any of it is right now.”

Dean bit his lip and contemplated the question in brooding silence. “Well, let’s just hope that since Lillian Blackstone’s the one who comes after the people, stopping her stops the curse.”

Sam gave another nod and fell silent as Dean whipped the Impala around the corner and onto Lancaster Road. As Dean pulled the car to a stop along the sidewalk opposite the battered Victorian, Sam heaved a soft sigh. “You ready to go through everything again?”

“Yeah, looking for spell books and black candles and various other cliché signs of the occult,” Dean muttered. “Should be a blast.”

Sam rolled his eyes more out of reflex than anything as he hurried across the street and up to the iron fence surrounding the Blackstone property. He gave a cursory glance over his shoulder before swiftly scaling the fence and dropping to the ground on the other side. Dean tossed supplies through the fence and joined his brother a second or two later.

Without a sound the brothers circled the house and cautiously climbed the stairs to the back porch, taking care to avoid the weak spots in the wood. “Okay,” Dean said, “you take the attic, I’ll take the bedroom?”

“Sure,” Sam answered with an amenable shrug. He started to make his way through the ancient kitchen to the main staircase but stopped short when Dean called his name. “What?”

Dean responded by sticking his hand out, palm up. Sam just raised an incredulous eyebrow. “Give me the key,” Dean said by way of an explanation.

Sam gave his brother a withering look. “I’ll put it back.”

“Hey, don’t make faces at me; I’m not the one who stole a cursed key. You’re giving me that thing before you go upstairs.”

Sam’s eye-roll reflex was in overdrive as he pulled the key from his pocket and slapped it onto his brother’s open palm. “I’m not stupid enough to hang onto it when she has home-field advantage.”

“I know,” Dean said, grinning mischievously at his brother. “I decided I wanted to be the control freak this time.”

Deciding that his brother’s comment didn’t dignify a response, Sam took off for the attic, shaking his head.

The third floor of the old Victorian had no walls to section off the large open space into different rooms and it was filled with just as much stuff as the rest of the house. At least when there were rooms, everything had its place. The attic was just a mishmash of furniture, trunks, clothes, dressers, shelves, trinket boxes, and jewelry armoires, all haphazardly left wherever they had happened to fall. Sam had to admit to being a bit overwhelmed as his eyes scanned the space and he took in the sheer amount of stuff.

Well, there’s no place like the beginning, he thought as he looked at a chest of drawers to his immediate right. The easiest way to do this, he quickly decided, was to start at one end and work his way around the room in a circle. He opened top drawer and began picking his way through musty and yellowed men’s shirts and brittle, moth-eaten knickers.

When he was in the middle of searching through his fourth steamer trunk he found another skeleton key, this one silver and even smaller than the brass one he had taken. What the hell is this key to? he thought with an irritated frown. After staring at it for a long moment, he set the key out in the middle of the floor to ensure that he wouldn’t accidentally sweep it up into the piles of clothes he was pulling out of the trunks and drawers. He made a mental note to keep an eye out for anything with a lock that could possibly be opened by that key.

After an hour his hands were filthy and he was sneezing like crazy from all the dust he’d kicked up during his search. And he had made it only about three-quarters of the way through the attic! Even more annoyingly, aside from the key, he’d found nothing of value.

Suddenly Sam heard footsteps on the stairwell to the top floor. He stopped moving, held his breath, and began preparing to defend himself. He was visibly relieved when Dean emerged from the staircase. “Seems the widow Blackstone was a freaking pack rat,” Dean grumbled as he reached the top step.

“Yeah, you’re telling me,” Sam retorted, waving his hand around at the mess in the attic. “I didn’t even find anything good.”

“Yeah. I came up with nothing, too. ‘Cept for this one little jewelry box that was buried at the back of the closet. It’s locked and I can’t find the key. Can’t break it, either. I tried.”

A grin spread across Sam’s face as he swiped the silver key off the floor and held it up to Dean. “This look like it’d fit?”

Dean snatched the key from his brother’s hand with a smirk. “It just might. Where’d you find this?”

“One of those trunks over there,” he replied, gesturing with his head at the stack of steamer trunks. “It was at the bottom, underneath a whole crapload of black velvet dresses.”

“Huh.” Dean frowned. “I wonder if she meant to separate the key and the box or if it just happened by mistake.”

Silently, the brothers exited the attic with Dean leading the way back down to the master bedroom. If Sam hadn’t known that his brother had been tearing the room apart, he never would have believed it. The room, dusty and grimy and damaged by the passing of time, looked exactly as it had the first time he walked into it. Dean was obviously taking no chances of pissing off the Black Widow.

Dean had left the jewelry box on the bed while he went to collect his brother. He wedged the key into the hole and turned it to the left. When he felt the lock release, he grinned. “Bingo!” Leaving the key in place, he gingerly lifted the lid. Inside were two small black books.

A sudden gust of cold wind swirled through the room, sending chills down both Sam’s and Dean’s spines. “Oh shut up,” Dean grumbled as he removed the books and sank down on the bed. If the Black Widow wanted to scare them off the case, she was going to have to do better than a little bit of wind.

One of the books was bound in leather and filled with writing in an old-fashioned, spidery scrawl. The other was what amounted to little more than a Victorian-era pamphlet on how to contact someone beyond the grave. A quick scan of the pamphlet made Dean snort; the information couldn’t have been more wrong. But the handwritten volume was filled with information, research, and spells that were the real deal. “Holy shit,” he whispered.

“What?” Sam asked. He sat down on the bed, squinting as he tried to read the handwriting over his brother’s shoulder.

Suddenly Sam was flung backwards off the bed and landed hard on the floor. His hands flew to his neck as he coughed and struggled to sit up. Dean reacted in an instant, shooting a round of rock salt off into the air just above Sam.

The round hit the wall, digging shallow holes into the faded and peeling wallpaper, but it accomplished its goal: the force that had been holding Sam down was gone. “At least now we can let Allie know that you’re not safe if you give back the stolen goods,” Sam choked out through a final cough.

Dean ignored his brother’s joke, instead frowning in concern. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Sam said as he stood. He held his hand to his throat for a moment longer before settling back down on the bed. “Now that that interruption is out of the way, what the hell is so interesting about that book?”

Dean held a worried gaze on his brother for a beat before shrugging slightly. If Sam was willing to move forward with the investigation, Dean supposed he should be as well. “She really was a witch.” He handed the book to his brother and sank down on the bed. “Well, the public’s general notion of a witch. This is some seriously dark stuff, Sam.”

Sam ran his eyes over the first page and his jaw dropped open in surprise. He began flipping through the book, his eyes widening as he read. “How in the hell did she figure all this out?” he murmured.

“Her entire life was inside these walls,” Dean reminded him. “She never went anywhere or did anything, aside from going out for necessities. She must have holed up in here and practiced. Trial and error.”

Sam just shook his head as he set down the book and picked up the other volume. When he saw what it was, he wrinkled his brow and frowned. “This how she started, you think?” he asked as Dean snatched the handwritten journal. “Trying to reach her husband?”

“Probably. But there’s one hell of a difference between there and here,” Dean said, gesturing first towards the book in Sam’s hand and then at the one in his own. “Damn.”

“She has to have more books somewhere. More research.”

Dean just grunted in response as he flipped another page and squinted at the old, fading writing. “She must have written about the curse. It’s got to be here.”

Sam sighed heavily, stood from his seat, and ran his eyes over the room with a pensive frown. “Why would she have cursed the house in the first place?”

“Maybe she wanted to make sure all her belongings stayed together?” Dean asked without removing his eyes from the book. “She was nuts, Sam. She didn’t have to have a reason and even if she had a reason, it doesn’t have to make sense.”

“Huh.” Sam set the pamphlet down and instead picked up the small lockbox to inspect it a little more closely. As he switched his gaze from the inside to the outside and back again, he furrowed his brow. Judging from the size of the box, it should have been deeper on the inside than it was.

On a hunch, he set the box back down on the old mattress and ran his index finger along the inside walls. When his finger hit what felt like a thin staple, he heard a click. Then he felt a small depression in the wood. He wedged his finger into the hole and lifted up the bottom to reveal another small leather book in the extra inch of storage space. “Dean, look,” he said, grinning widely as he lifted the book from the box. “Damn thing had a false bottom.”

“Hey, let me see!” Dean swiped at the new book in his brother’s hand.

“Shh!” Sam hissed.

This hidden volume seemed to be both a diary in the traditional sense and a record of Lillian Blackstone’s dealings in the dark arts. She had indeed set out on her paranormal journey simply trying to reach her husband but when she couldn’t, she began to dig deeper and deeper, researching and trying this and that, trying to find something that would work. It didn’t take long at all for the darkness to consume her, corrupting her completely.

As Sam read through the diary, he was beginning to grow uncomfortable with the raw emotion and the depravity of the writings. But the more he read, the more curious he was. Suddenly he gasped.

“What? What is it?” Dean asked, anticipation lighting his eyes.

“Someone broke into the house and robbed her. Took a whole bunch of jewelry that apparently had been in the family for generations.” Sam still hadn’t removed his eyes from the pages of the journal. “The curse was supposed to punish anyone else who tried to steal from her.”

“For eternity?” Dean asked with a scoff.

Sam skimmed the rest of the entry. “Guess so. It’s written like a curse on an Egyptian tomb: doom to all those who enter, that kind of thing. ‘He who removes my possessions from this domicile shall be forced to face my eternal wrath.’”

“‘Eternal wrath?’ That’s it.” Dean snatched the book from his brother’s hands and replaced it in the box. After closing the false bottom, he dropped the other two books back into the box, closed it, and returned it to its rightful place in the closet. “We have an appointment at the cemetery.”

Sam’s eyes widened in surprise. “But what about the curse? We can’t just leave, Dean. A ten-year-old kid is next on the To Be Killed list--”

“It’s like I said earlier. Stopping her stops the curse. That damn curse is what brought her back in the first place.”

The look of confusion refused to budge from Sam’s face.

Dean just rolled his eyes. For someone so smart, Sam could be rather slow on the uptake at times. “Her eternal wrath. She set the curse up in such a way that she was one delivering the punishment and when the first guy in 1922 stole whatever the hell he stole, she had to come back in order to fulfill the curse.”

Realization finally brightened Sam’s eyes. “In cursing the house, she cursed herself.”

“Yep.” Dean headed for the door, motioning with his head for his brother to follow him. “This bitch has ruled November for long enough.”

-----

It turned out that the only area in November where the scent of salt air did not dominate was in Green Hill Cemetery. The chilly air in the cemetery instead smelled of dirt and pine sap. Sam assumed that the same was true for the other cemetery in town, Twin Pines. Green Hill had filled up at some point in the late 1960s but Twin Pines was not yet at capacity and still selling plots.

It also turned out that Lillian Blackstone’s final resting place had seen more than its share of vandalism in the decades since her death, somewhat of a stroke of luck for the Winchesters. The gray headstone was not as weather-beaten as the others around it, indicating that it had, in recent years, been replaced. There were a few small cracks in the granite, evidence of people--kids, most likely--knocking it off its small pedestal and onto the ground. Even still, Sam and Dean’s particular brand of desecration was bound to seem abnormal to the local authorities, so hopefully they would be able to hightail it out of town sooner rather than later.

Sam helped his brother scramble out of the freshly dug grave, then poured salt down over the exposed remains of the widow Blackstone. Dean doused the bones with lighter fluid, pulled a match along the black strip on the back of the matchbook, and dropped it into the hole. The small flame ignited the accelerant before Dean could even slip the book of matches back into his pocket. Within seconds the roaring fire set to work turning the brittle bones of the Witch of November to nothing but smoke and ash.

After sitting silently and watching the flames for a long moment, Sam cleared his throat. “Hey, Dean?”

“What?” his brother answered.

“How will we know if this really broke the curse?”

Dean pressed his lips together and let out a breath through his nose. “I told you already, it’s not going to break the curse. There is no breaking curses. This is just going to stop it. But in order to be absolutely sure, we’re going to have to tempt fate.”

At first Sam didn’t follow but a split second later, he understood. “We have to steal something else. Get her doubly pissed.”

“That’s the new plan, yeah.”

Sam sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. This whole job, he’d felt as if too many things were out of his control, too much was riding on other people, and if there was one thing he hated, it was when things were beyond his control. “But what if this doesn’t stop the curse?”

Dean’s hesitation proved that he was banking heavily on his hunch being right. “Then we’ll think of something else.”

Sam just gave a nod and returned his attention to the open grave below. The flames danced, casting flickering shadows on the trees and the surrounding headstones. Despite the heat from the fire, Sam shuddered, gripped by a sudden and overwhelming wave of sadness for Lillian Blackstone. This woman had been so consumed by her anger and her grief that she had completely given herself over to evil.

It was depressing enough that a young bride spent much of her life mourning the husband she’d barely had a chance to know, so much so that she’d shunned everyone and had grown into a sad, lonely, bitter old woman. A woman that all the children in town had been afraid of--in her life as well as in the decades after her death. A woman who was so feared that eighty-plus years later, her gravesite was no longer held sacred. And the saddest thing was that even in death, this woman had found no peace. She’d hung onto her sorrow so hard and for so long that she’d lost her humanity.

“Don’t do that.”

Sam jumped, inhaling sharply, and met his brother’s eyes, blinking away his daydream. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t be sad for her. She got herself into this mess, Sam. She was the one who refused to let go.”

And on the surface, Sam knew that Lillian Blackstone only had herself to blame for the path her life took. But Dean, his father, himself … they all could have ended up just like the Witch of November. After all, she hadn’t been an evil woman. Not at first. She was just a woman in pain, a woman in mourning. But her grief had led her down a road, one that ultimately ended in darkness. All it would have taken was one wrong decision, one time of indulging in the dark side, and the Winchesters could have been Blackstone’s fellow travelers on that road.

“I’m not sad for her,” Sam murmured after a bit of silence. “I pity her.”

“Well, don’t do that, either,” Dean instructed. “She chose her path.”

The brothers were silent as they waited for the flames to burn themselves out. Once the cemetery was again bathed in darkness, the brothers began filling in the grave with the softened soil. After all the dirt had been replaced, Sam pressed on the fresh mound with the back of his shovel, tamping it flat.

More silence followed the two of them on the swift walk back to the Impala. After Sam tossed the shovels into the trunk, he settled himself in the passenger seat. He blinked, startled, when Dean thrust his cell phone in his face after getting in behind the wheel. “Will you call Allie and let her know that we’re ninety-five percent sure that this thing is really over?”

“Are we really?”

Dean gave a weary sigh. “Sam, just do it. And don’t let her hear any of that brooding uncertainty in your voice, either. We want to calm the kid, not freak her the hell out.”

Sam rolled his eyes and scrolled down in Dean’s received call list for Allie’s cell number. He pressed the send button and waited for the call to connect, then turned to his brother. “Why the hell does a ten-year-old need a cell phone in the first place?”

“Aw, Sammy, they’re handing those things out at the maternity ward these days.”

Sam snorted but he didn’t get a chance to reply. “Hello?” Allie said, a tiny bit of trepidation in her voice.

“Hi, Allie, it’s Sam.”

“Hi, Sam! Did you guys …” She trailed off for a second. When she spoke up again, her voice was much softer. “Did you guys get rid of her?”

Sam gave a half-smile. One or both of her parents were probably in the room with her. “Yeah. We’re about ninety-five percent sure that this is over.”

“Not a hundred?” she asked.

Sam could envision the frown of worry he was sure was on her face. “No, not a hundred. We have to try something first, and we won’t know for sure if it really worked until tomorrow.”

“What do you have to do?” Her strong concern carried through in her tone. After a second, though, she answered her own question. “You have to take something else from the house.”

“Yes.”

She was quiet for a moment and then Sam heard a sharp intake of breath. “Can I come?”

“What?” he asked. “No, Allie. No way.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dean glance over at him and he just shook his head as an indication that he’d tell him later.

“Okay,” Allie said, her disappointment obvious.

Sam gave a soft sigh; he hadn’t meant to dishearten the kid. “Look, Allie, it’s still very dangerous. Until we’re positively sure that she’s gone, I don’t want you to even think about her, okay?”

“But …” She sighed into the phone. “Never mind.”

“No, what is it?”

“I …” She trailed off and was silent for a moment. “I don’t want to be afraid of her anymore.”

Oh, God. Sam’s heart skipped a beat, a small panic rumbling in his stomach. Although child psychology was not exactly his strong suit, he needed to tell Allie something. She needed an answer, needed to feel safe. Needed to feel like the danger to Charlie was gone. “There’s nothing to be afraid of anymore, Allie.” Was he calming her fears at all? “We’re pretty sure she’s gone but even if she’s not, we’re not leaving until it’s all over and everything is safe. I promise.”

“Yeah, okay.” There was a short pause. “But what about when you are sure? Can I come to the house with you when you are sure?”

At that, Sam allowed a smile. Allie was trying desperately to be brave and yet she still didn’t want to go to the house alone. Not that Sam could blame her after what she’d seen. He supposed that he and Dean could take a few extra minutes before taking off for parts unknown to walk the little girl through the house just to prove to her that the Black Widow was gone for good. “Yeah, I think we can arrange that.”

“Okay,” she said with a relieved sigh. “Thank you. Will you call me when you’re sure everything is okay? I-I want to be able to tell Charlie. He’d never tell me, but he’s really scared, too.”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay. Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

“We will,” Sam replied, touched by the little girl’s concern. “Bye, Allie.”

“We can arrange what?” Dean asked as Sam handed the phone back to him. “What the hell did you get us roped into now?”

Sam snickered. “Nothing bad, I promise. Allie just wants us to go into the Blackstone house with her so she can see once and for all that everything’s over. When we actually are sure that everything is over, of course.”

“Yeah, I guess we can throw the kid a bone,” Dean agreed, smirking. “We kind of owe her anyway.”

Sam nodded. Isn’t that the truth? Having Allie around had certainly made this case a hell of a lot easier. Though Sam had been reluctant to allow a little kid to do most of the research for this job, Allie had proved herself to be an invaluable resource. Research really was the kid’s specialty.

Sam was so lost in his own thoughts that he was surprised when Dean slowed the car to a stop outside the vacant lot across from the crumbling Victorian. The darkness of the night and the dim moonlight were combining to make the shadowy structure even more gloomy and ominous than it had been that afternoon.

As he ran his eyes over the huge gray monster, it occurred to him that regardless of what he and Dean accomplished in destroying Lillian Blackstone’s spirit and stopping--not breaking--the curse, the Black Widow would never fade from November’s psyche. She was too much a part of the history of the town now. A November without its Witch would be akin to Roswell without its UFOs. But if he and Dean could make it so that the stories were once again simply stories? He supposed that was good enough.

“Well,” Dean said as the two of them traipsed through the grounds of the Blackstone property for hopefully the second-to-last time, “we have our pick of things to steal from. What do you want?”

All Sam did was grin.

Dean met his brother’s eyes and shook his head in disbelief. “You could have anything you want. Anything. Jewelry, silver, china, crystal, antiques, and the only thing you want is a--”

“Skeleton key,” Sam said in unison with his brother. He shot Dean a mischievous smile in response.

Dean grunted and began carefully making his way up the rotted stairs. “It’s like I don’t even know you.”

-----

The bright sunshine beating down on Allie Sullivan’s back was making her light T-shirt hot against her skin. Despite the humid seafront breeze swirling around her, Allie shivered. She leaned against the wrought-iron fence, her face pressed between two of the black bars, and stared up at the dilapidated building in front of her. She took a deep breath and held it, an attempt to work up the courage to squeeze through the fence, into the witch’s yard, and then into the witch’s house.

“The Black Widow’s going to get you,” a whispered voice hissed in her ear. Unlike the day before, though, Allie was not startled. She rammed her elbow behind her and gave an impish grin when she felt her arm make contact with Charlie’s stomach.

Charlie let out a pained groan, and both Sam and Dean burst out laughing. “Watch out for this one, kid,” Dean said through a chuckle, ruffling Charlie’s dark brown hair. “She’s got a few surprises in her.”

The boy nodded vigorously, holding his arms over his aching stomach. “I guess so! As if I wasn’t beat up enough.”

Much to Allie’s excitement, Charlie had been released from the hospital that morning, twenty-six hours after having arrived at the emergency room. Mr. Davis had gladly taken an ecstatic Allie along when he went to the hospital to pick up his wife and young son.

Of course two young children with the entire summer stretched out in front of them would not be kept inside for very long. After a quick lunch they had taken off on their bikes despite Charlie’s mother’s wishes for her son to stay at home and rest. Allie had then called Dean to let him know that both she and Charlie would be there that afternoon to tour the Blackstone house with the Winchesters.

Sam leaned back against the iron fence, looking over the two children. The dark bruises on Charlie’s limbs had faded just a little bit and he still looked like he was in pretty rough shape. But looks were deceiving, and Charlie was certainly not acting as if he had almost been beaten to death the day before. “I can’t believe your mother let you come back here after yesterday,” Sam said to Charlie.

“She doesn’t know I’m here,” the boy replied with a sly grin. “She thinks I’m at Allie’s.”

“And my mom thinks I’m at Charlie’s!” Allie exclaimed, finally turning her back to the house.

“Whoa, whoa, back up a second.” Dean waved his hands and frowned down at the children, narrowing his eyes slightly. “That’s the oldest trick in the book and you two are going to get caught sooner rather than later.” Allie flicked worried eyes to Charlie.

“Next time?” Dean continued. “Get dropped off at some public place. The library, the mall, wherever, and once your parents have driven away, then go where you want to go. As long as you’re back in the same spot when they come back to pick you up, they’ll have no reason to believe that you weren’t there the whole time.”

As Allie and Charlie grinned playfully at each other and raised their eyebrows, Sam smacked his brother’s arm, glaring at him. “Do you really think we should be teaching the juveniles how to lie to their parents?”

Dean just shrugged. “If they’re going to lie, they need to learn to lie properly.”

Sam shook his head in typical kill-joy fashion but Dean caught the tiny smile on his face as he turned away. “Okay,” Dean said, turning to the kids. Time to get down to business. He clapped and rubbed his hands together. “Ready to go back into the witch’s house?”

The easy smile that had been on Allie’s face disappeared in an instant and apprehension clouded her eyes. “Are you sure she’s gone?” she asked the brothers as she fixed another wary gaze on the building.

Sam pulled the small silver key out of his pocket and held it up for Allie to see. “Positive,” he said, grinning. “Oh, that reminds me. I have something for you, Charlie.”

Charlie glanced at Allie excitedly as he watched Sam dig into his other pocket. He fished out two thin metal objects and dropped them both into Charlie’s open palm. “For your collection.”

Allie stood close behind Charlie, peering over his shoulder as the boy turned the objects over his hands. His eyes lit up when he realized that one of the small metal discs was a Barber dime, one dated even earlier than the one he had taken and ultimately had to return.

The other coin was one he’d never seen before. When he turned the coin over to inspect the reverse, his frown of confusion quickly turned into an amazed smile. “Oh my God,” he exclaimed breathlessly, “this is a twenty-cent piece! They only minted these for like, two years or something!” He grinned up at Sam. “Was this one in there with the rest of them?”

“Yep,” Sam answered, giving the boy a smile, “buried underneath some tangled necklaces.”

“God, you two are geeks.” Dean gave an incredulous shake of his head. “You actually bypassed jewelry--real jewelry--to get at two ratty coins?”

“Hey, that twenty-cent piece is probably worth a couple hundred bucks, give or take,” Sam argued.

“Yeah, but you’re not going to sell it, are you, Charlie.”

It wasn’t a question. Charlie proved Dean right when he eagerly shook his head no and once again stared down at his coin in amazement. “You kidding? My dad doesn’t even have one of these and he has everything.”

Dean clucked his tongue in disapproval. “Like I said. Geeks.”

Allie, who’d returned to gawking at the Blackstone house and had only been half-listening to the conversation, giggled.

“Oh, like you have room to talk, dork,” Charlie teased, giving her shoulder a small shove. “You’re the one sitting there afraid of a house that’s not even haunted anymore.”

“But I’m not afraid,” she argued weakly. After taking a moment to steel herself, she squeezed her body between two bars and emerged on the other side of the fence. She shot a smug grin at Charlie which quickly faded into a concerned frown when the boy attempted to scale the fence.

His face contorted in pain and he swiftly jumped down the small distance he’d climbed with a soft whimper. Allie was at the fence in a flash. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he replied although Allie could tell he was lying. “I … it hurts when I try to climb the fence, Al. And I can’t squeeze through like you can. I can’t go in the house with you.”

Allie’s panicked eyes instantly flicked to Dean. “It’s all right,” he said to her before quickly scaling the fence and dropping to his feet next to the little girl. “You’re not going to have to go in there alone.”

The girl gave him a grateful smile and sidled up next to him as the two of them made their way around the house and over to the back steps. “Dean? Can I ask you something?”

A look of panic crossed Dean’s face. He was no more a child psychologist than his brother was. But when Allie saw the hesitation in his eyes, she just giggled softly. “It’s not a bad question, I promise.”

“Then sure, kid. Ask away.”

“You and Sam see this kind of stuff all the time, right?”

“Yep.”

Allie inhaled deeply through her nose and sat down on the back porch. “How’d you learn how to not be afraid of it?”

Dean ran his hand over his head and sighed as he took a seat on the old wood next to her. This wasn’t a bad question? “Do you remember when you learned to ride a bike?”

Allie nodded, her brow wrinkling ever so slightly. What could riding a bike possibly have to do with seeing ghosts?

“Remember how you were afraid of falling and getting hurt?” The little girl nodded again. “But then after you fell the first time, you weren’t as afraid to fall again? And then after falling a couple more times, you weren’t afraid of it at all?”

“Yeah,” she answered, her voice a whisper. Now she understood where Dean was going with this line of questioning.

“It’s the same kind of thing with this stuff. The more you do it and the more you see, the more used to it you become. And then you just … aren’t scared anymore.”

“So the more I go into the witch’s house, the less afraid of it I’ll become?”

“You got it,” Dean said. He looked down at the little girl and smiled. “This is something that you need to do for you, Allie. I can tell you all I want that the Black Widow is gone and that she’s never coming back but unless you go into that house and face your fear, you’ll never not be afraid.”

Allie nodded and, after taking a final moment to prepare herself, she stood and gingerly stepped over the threshold into the old kitchen. Instantly she felt that something was different. The sense of foreboding that she had felt every other time she’d been in the house was nowhere to be found. Instead she felt only amazement and wonder and she was finally able to see just why Charlie liked it so much in the old house. It was like a museum that she could play in!

Dean smiled as he watched Allie walk around the ancient kitchen in awe. A wide grin broke out on her face, her fear already beginning to melt away. Her dark eyes were even twinkling! “See?” he said. “It’s not so bad.”

“No,” Allie said, her voice soft. “No, it’s really not.”

She and Dean toured the entire ground floor. Occasionally she would let out a tiny gasps of wonder upon seeing figurines she found cute or finding pieces of jewelry she could use to play dress-up. The two of them finally exited out the front door.

Allie locked eyes with Charlie. She gave a squeal of excitement as she ran down the steps, squeezed herself through the fence, and wrapped her best friend in an eager hug. “Whoa!” Charlie exclaimed, stepping backwards to support himself against the force of her embrace.

“Sorry!” she cried, giggling. She let him go and held him at arm’s length, her eyes shining. “She’s really gone, Charlie! It doesn’t even feel the same in there anymore. It’s … oh, it’s so much lighter now!”

“Good,” Charlie said with an emphatic nod. “She doesn’t deserve that house anymore.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Sam said, giving the boy a half-smile as he ruffled his hair.

Dean jumped down from the top of the fence and Allie turned to face him, the grin quickly dropping from her expression. “That means you guys have to leave now, doesn’t it?”

“Yep,” Dean replied, meeting his brother’s eyes. “Always more ghosts to bust.”

Allie opened her mouth to ask another question but for some reason thought better of it. Dean frowned at her. “What’s the matter?”

“Well,” she asked uncomfortably, twisting the toe of her shoe against the ground, “what if there’s another ghost?”

Dean rested a hand on her shoulder and waited to speak until she looked back up at him. “You have our number.”

A tiny smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Really? You really mean that?”

“You bet.”

After flashing Dean a grin, she blushed, bit her bottom lip, and again dropped her gaze down to her sneakers. “Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” After letting the moment hang in the air for a tiny bit longer, Dean slapped his brother’s shoulder. “Come on, Sammy. We’re running out of daylight.”

Sam nodded and followed Dean across the street and back to the Impala. As he climbed in on the passenger side, he glanced over his shoulder at the two children and gave them a goodbye wave. The kids waved back and Sam could have sworn that he saw Allie sniffle.

He furrowed his brow in confusion. Why was the kid so sad? They had saved Charlie and given Allie the freedom to finally enjoy spending time a place that her best friend loved. Then as Sam followed her gaze to his brother, it hit him. “I think someone has a little crush on you,” he murmured to Dean, gesturing for him to look at the children through the window.

Dean frowned, not understanding what Sam meant. Allie met his eyes, gave him a small wave, and then unconsciously brushed at her cheek, wiping away a tear. He flashed the girl a smile to allay her sadness and gave her a wave back as he took off down the street.

He watched in the rearview mirror until he turned off of Lancaster Road and the kids disappeared around the corner. When Sam snickered, Dean shot him a sharp glare. “What’s your problem?”

“Nothing,” Sam said through a chuckle. “I just didn’t realize that you were so popular with the fourth-grade set.”

Dean pursed his lips and chewed on the inside of his cheek before giving his brother a smack in the arm. But even as he did so, he was smiling.