Seeing Blind

21. Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

The Impala zoomed down a two-lane blacktop. Dean was driving, Sam was passenger, and Alana was in back.

"Come on, Sam, I'm begging you. This is stupid," Dean said.

"Why?" Sam wondered.

"Going to visit Mom's grave? She doesn't even have a grave, there was no body left after the fire."

"She has a headstone."

"Yeah, put up by her uncle, a man we've never met. So you want to go pay your respects to a slab of granite put up by a stranger?"

"Dean, that's not the point."

"Well then, enlighten me, Sam. Brighten Alana's day."

"It's not about a body, or, or a casket. It's about her memory, okay?"

"Hmmm."

"And after Dad, it just... just feels like the right thing to do."

"It's irrational, is what it is."

"Look, man. No one asked you to come."

Alana sighed. "Dean, love, it might do you some good to see your mother's grave. But if you're not ready, that's all right. Sam, you can't force someone to do something they don't want to do."

"Why don't we swing by the Roadhouse instead?" Dean suggested. "I mean, we haven't heard anything about the demon lately, we should be hunting that son of a bitch down."

"That's a good idea, you and Alana should," Sam replied. "Just drop me off, I'll hitch a ride, and I'll meet you two there tomorrow."

"Right. To be... stuck with those people, making awkward small talk until you show up? No thanks."

Sam knelt before a headstone, digging in the ground with a folding knife. He pulled out a set of dog-tags from his pocket and sighed. "I think, um, I think Dad would have wanted you to have these." He buried them. "I love you, Mom."

Nearby, Dean was standing by another gravestone, marked as "Loving Father". He walked towards a dying tree and frowned. Alana followed the sound of his footsteps and frowned.

"Dean? The ground," she said. "It feels... different."

"It is," he told her. "The grass is dead."

"Which is why I hear crunching."

Dean stood next to her in a perfect circle of dead grass surrounding a gravestone. He crouched down, fingering dead flowers.

He took a card from a man in a suit, then walked over to Sam.

"Angela Mason," Dean said. "She was a student at the local college, funeral was three days ago."

"And?" Sam asked.

"And? You saw her grave. Everything dead around it, in a perfect circle? You don't think that's a little weird?"

"Maybe the groundskeeper went a little agro with the pesticide."

Alana shook her head. "No, Dean and I asked him. No pesticide, no chemicals. Nobody can explain it."

"Okay, so what are you thinking?"

"I dunno. Unholy ground, maybe?"

"Un-"

"What?" Dean interrupted. "If something evil happened there, it could easily poison the ground. Remember the, the farm outside of Cedar Rapids?"

"Yeah, b-"

Dean cut him off. "Could be the sign of a demonic presence. Or the, the Angela girl's spirit, if it's powerful enough." Sam nodded and turned away. "Well, don't get too excited, you might pull something."