I walk into Sam and Dean's motel room as I dry my blonde hair with one of the white bath towels.
"Did you find anything while I was in the shower?" I ask Sam. I glance over at Dean watching him sniff his clothes and shrug before throwing them on the bed. I roll my eyes at the sight.
It's like dealing with a teenager.
"Yeah, so there's the three drowning victims this year." Sam starts.
"Which we already know about. What about before that?" I ask, looking back over to Sam.
"Six more, spread out over the past 35 years. Those bodies were never recovered, either."
"And, for some reason, the body count is suddenly spiking." I point out.
"If there is anything out there, it's picking up its pace." Sam keeps his focus on his laptop.
"So we got a lake monster on a binge?" Dean questions.
"This whole lake monster theory... it just bugs me." Sam shakes his head.
"Why?" Dean asks, walking towards Sam. I throw my towel on one of the beds and move to stand next to Dean.
"Loch Ness, Lake Champlain...there are literally hundreds of eyewitness accounts, but here, almost nothing." Sam explains.
"Whatever it is out there, no one's living to talk about it." Sam sighs. I lean closer towards the article links Sam pulled up when one of the victims stuck out to me.
"Wait, Christopher Bar? Wasn't Andres's last name Bar?" I ask, narrowing my eyes slightly. Sam clicks on the article and a picture of Lucas
wrapped in a towel covered most of the page. The headline read:
'Local Man in Tragic Accident'
"Oh. Christopher Bar was Andrea's husband—Lucas' father." Sam says once he skimmed through the article.
"Apparently, he took Lucas out swimming. Lucas was on a floating wooden platform when Chris drowned two hours before the kid got rescued." Sam reads. He enlarges the photo and I stare at Lucas' scared face with overwhelming sadness.
"Maybe we have an eyewitness after all." Sam scratches his head.
"The poor kid, it explains why he seemed so scared and quiet. I mean it's only been like five months or so since Chris died, right?" I shake my head.
"It's not easy getting over a family member's death, especially when you witnessed it." I sigh, walking over towards the bed and sitting on it.
"You sound like you're speaking from experience." Dean looks at me. I stare at him for a minute before taking a deep breath and looking at Sam.
"So, what now?"
"Now we talk to Lucas." I nod in agreement.
"Andrea said they'd be at the park after three." I tell them as I look to the clock and see it's about 3:10.
"Well then, let's go." Dean grabs his keys.
It wasn't hard to find the park. There were only two in the area and we found Andrea at the first one we went to. I watch all the children run around on the playground with an envious look as we walk up to Andrea.
"Can we join you?" Sam speaks up, grabbing Andrea's attention. I smile at her in greeting.
"I'm here with my son." She tries to decline politely.
"Oh." Dean looks over towards Lucas. I follow his gaze and see Lucas coloring again all by himself and it makes me frown.
"Mind if we say hi?" Dean doesn't let Andrea answer and pulls me with him towards Lucas.
"Why'd you drag me with you?" I ask, wrapping my hands around his arm. I got a whiff of the leathery and musky smell, the same smell I got back in Colorado when I woke up with his jacket around me. It was a good smell, I hate to admit.
"You seem like someone who would be good with kids." He says honestly. I smile up at him.
"You're not wrong." I shrug as we near Lucas. "Hey there, Mister." I gently say, stepping away from Dean and kneeling on the opposite side of Lucas once we got to him.
"How's it going?" Dean asks, following my actions by crouching down next to me with a soft chuckle. We look at each other when Lucas doesn't spare us a glance.
"Oh, I used to love these things." Dean grabs one of the green army men and makes shooting noises. I look at him weirdly, but amusingly, and shake my head to tell him to stop, which he does.
"I see you like to color a lot." I say instead, looking back at Lucas.
"You're really good too. Got talent." I smile, looking towards his drawings.
"Do you mind if we color with you?" I reach for a piece of construction paper and Dean gets up to sit on the bench, grabbing his own paper and crayon.
"You know, I'm thinking you can hear us. You just don't want to talk." Dean starts. "I don't know exactly what happened to your dad, but I know it was something real bad." Dean looks to Lucas before going back to his drawing. I continue with mine. I draw a little house and my family, smiling sadly as I draw my mom.
"I kinda know how you feel, Lucas." I speak up. I feel Dean look towards me, but I just continue to draw, moving onto my dad.
"I saw something real bad too, when I was a little older than you. I lost..." I clear my throat as I draw my sister. "I lost my family as well." My voice cracks slightly, but I cover it up with a small cough. "So maybe you think that no one will listen to what you have to say, and I get it, I felt the same way." I look up to Lucas halfway through drawing my brother. "But know that Dean and I will listen to you and believe you." I finally meet Dean's gaze and he's looking at me curiously. I smile sadly at him before looking down at my drawing and moving onto my other brother.
"You don't even have to say anything. You could draw us a picture about what you saw that day with your dad on the lake." Dean tells him gently. I was surprised to hear him speak like that, more used to his sarcastic and flirty tone. It was a nice change. However, it still didn't get Lucas to budge. I sigh in defeat, shrugging and shaking my head at Dean telling him we should just go.
"Here I want you to have this." I turn the picture towards Lucas. "This is my family, and our old house." I start with a smile. "This is my mom, my dad, my grumpy older sister, and my two annoying twin brothers." I chuckle lightly as I point to them, but Lucas didn't bother looking up. I know Dean was though, I could feel his gaze burning through my skull.
"It's not the best drawing, but uh, maybe you'll teach me how to draw as good as you some time." I set down my picture on top of his other ones and get up from the floor. I look over at Dean and nod, so he gets up as well.
"We'll see you later, Lucas." I tell him before we walk away from him. I put a couple inches between Dean and I, feeling too exposed at the moment, and we didn't talk on our way back towards Sam and Andrea.
"Lucas hasn't said a word, not even to me..." I hear Andrea tell Sam as we reach them. She glances at us, then quickly back to him. "...not since his dad's accident."
"Yeah, we heard. Sorry." Dean tells her.
"What are the doctors saying?" Sam asks. She sighs.
"That it's a kind of post-traumatic stress."
"I'm sorry, that can't be easy for you both." I say sincerely. She looks between the three of us.
"We moved in with my dad. He helps out a lot." I watch her glance over at Lucas and I do the same. He's still in his same spot, drawing.
"It's just..." I look at her when she pauses. "When I think about what Lucas went through, what he saw..." she trails off again. I look between Dean and Sam.
"Kids are strong. You'd be surprised what they can deal with." Dean tells her.
"You know, he used to have such life. It was hard to keep up with him, to tell you the truth." She smiles widely at us, then it falls slightly. "Now he just sits there, drawing those pictures, playing with those army men. I just wish..." she stops suddenly when Lucas appears next to Dean.
"Hey sweetie." She greets happily. Lucas ignores her and walks up to where I stood across from her. Lifting his hand up with his head faced down, he holds out a picture that he drew and I take it slowly.
"Thank you, Lucas. This means a lot." I smile down at the picture. Keeping his head down, he turns away and walks towards his bench. Everyone looks at me with shocked expressions.
"I have no idea." I say honestly, looking back down at the picture.
It was weird between Dean and I for the rest of the day, or at least I thought so. I felt uneasy around him, like he was gonna pounce on me at any second, waiting for the right moment to interrogate me.
I knew it was a risk saying what I did to Lucas in front of Dean, but I felt I needed to comfort him in any way I could, help Lucas not feel so alone. Except now, I'm gonna have a lot of explaining to do—something I wanted to avoid.
Honestly, it was only a matter of time before I had to come clean to Dean. He's a smart guy, hell he was raised by John Winchester, so I knew he'd connect the dots eventually once he had enough information about me. I'm genuinely surprised he hasn't figured it out sooner.
"Alright, I'm gonna head to the library, see if there's anything else I can find out about the area." Sam tells us the next morning after we finish our breakfast in their motel room.
"Sam...let me come with you." I start towards the door. He chuckles, walking up to me.
"Jen, you've been glued to my side since the park yesterday." He puts his hands on my shoulders and smiles.
"I won't be long." He grabs the Impala keys and walks out the door.
"Wait-" I call but he closes the door. I sigh and stare at the door, skin instantly crawling. It's quiet for a while before Dean finally speaks.
"What you told Lucas, about something bad happening to your family...was it true?" He asks me. I nod my head, still not turning around.
"Mind me asking what happened?" Dean clears his throat. I'm quiet for a moment, then I take a deep breath and turn back towards Dean.
"A monster got'm." I smile sadly, walking over towards the table again. "Something came into my house late one night and killed everyone one of them. My mother. My father.-" I sit down at the table again, across from Dean. "-My sister and my brothers." I frown at him.
"How old were you?" He asks, eyebrows furrowed sadly.
"10 years." I look down at my hands.
"Does Sam know about what happened?"
"Yeah, for the most part. He knows that I lost everyone in my family at least." I shrug.
"So I'm guessing you know all the things you do because..." he trails off. I look up into his eyes and sigh.
"I'm a hunter? Yeah, you guessed right." I smile slightly.
"I should've known." Dean points a finger at me, wagging it. "You know way too much about the supernatural to be just an ordinary girl." I laugh at that, nodding in agreement.
"I guess you're right about that one."
"Does Sam know you're a hunter?"
"Yeah, told him back in Colorado. That heated argument you saw us having? That was me telling Sam that I've been a hunter the whole time. He obviously didn't take it very well at first."
"Figures." Dean nods, then it's quiet again. I just let him process what I've told him and silently wait for him to ask more questions.
"What about our dad? How do you know him?" I hesitate, not knowing how I wanna answer that question.
"Ran into each other during a hunt, thank goodness for that because he saved my ass." I decide to say it with a chuckle.
"I don't...I don't get it. Why not just tell me in the first place that you were a hunter?" He tilts his head slightly, laying his hands out on the table.
"I didn't know how you'd take it. I get different reactions from different people. Most of the time, they're bad." I shrug.
I can tell Dean is about to question me on what I meant when Sam slams their door open and walks in.
"Why do you have to burst through the door like an animal?" I glare at him. He looks between Dean and I suspiciously, but I just put on a smile.
"I think it's safe to say we can rule out Nessie." Sam moves to sit down on one of the beds.
"Why, what did you find out?" I ask.
"I just drove past the Carlton house."
"Yeah, and?" Dean presses.
"How, you weren't even gone long." I say, surprised.
"What can I say, I drive fast. And, yes, Dean, the car is fine. Anyway, there was an ambulance at the house. Will Carlton is dead." Sam tells us, sitting on his bed.
"Did he drown in the lake too?" I ask. Sam shakes his head.
"In the sink." He stresses the word.
"What the hell?" Dean moves to sit on his own bed. "So, your right. This isn't a creature. We're dealing with something else." He points out.
"Yeah, but what?" Sam shakes his head.
"I don't know." Dean admits.
"Well, it can control water, that we know for sure. So maybe it's a spirit or demon of some kind." I speak up with a shrug. They both look at me.
"I can't believe I didn't think of you possibly being a hunter sooner. It's pretty obvious you are now that I realized." Dean scoffs lightly with a shake of his head.
"So you told him?" Sam looks at me.
"He kinda figured it out on his own." I tell him with a half shrug.
"The water source must be coming from the lake." Dean points out, hopping back to the important topic at hand.
"Which would explain why it's upping the body count." I look at Sam weirdly and he notices. "The lake is draining. It'll be dry in a few months. Whatever this thing is, whatever it wants, it's running out of time." He explains.
"And if it can get through the pipes, it can get anyone almost anywhere. This is gonna happen again soon." Dean realizes, getting off the bed to sit at the table again, putting on his shoes.
"Well, this definitely has to do something with the Carlton family." I point out, walking over towards the door to put on my shoes.
"More specifically, Bill Carlton." Sam says.
"Yeah, it took both of his kids." Dean nods.
"And I asked around. Lucas' dad, Chris...Bill Carlton's godson." Sam tells us.
"Huh. What a coincidence." I say sarcastically.
"Let's go pay Mr. Carlton a visit." Dean gets up, heading out the door. And visit him we did.