( TIME AFTER TIME )
STREET
[ ☾]
A Man wearing a fedora hat and long coat walks along a sidewalk in front of a house, and then turns down an alley along the side of the house. Dean, Elena and Sam are in a parked car on the opposite side of the street. "All right, let's do this. Move fast." Dean cocks his gun.
"Wait, wait, wait. What's the plan exactly?" Sam asks.
"Don't die." Dean says as he, Elena and Sam get out of the car and hurry after the Fedora Man. "He's heading downtown. All right, you take the street. I'll take the alley. I'll meet you in the middle."
Dean turns an alleyway corner and sees the Fedora Man kneeling over and holding the head of another man, who is on his back on the ground. There is a red light above the prone man's face which seems to be being absorbed by the Fedora Man. "Son of a..." Dean runs towards the men and Elena follows Dean.
As the red light from the prone man is completely absorbed by the Fedora Man, the Fedora Man lets the prone man's head fall to the ground and stands up. Sam comes around the corner and sees Dean tackle the Fedora Man. Just as Dean does this, Elena catches up and touches Dean on the shoulder. They all disappear in an explosion of red and white light.
"Dean? Elena?" Sam holds his arms out in front of his face as the force of the explosion reaches him at the other end of the alley. The light then disappears and everything is still. Dean, Elena and the Fedora Man are gone.
"Dean?! Elena?!"
SUPERNATURAL
TWO DAY EARLIER
HOUSE
[ ☾]
Dean is sitting at a table with a bottle of whiskey and laptop, looking at websites related to Dick Roman: Global Economic Report: RRE, a search engine page, Financial Market Watch: Richard Roman Enterprises stock soars. A cell phone rings. Sam, who was asleep on a bed in the Same room, sits up and groans.
"Don't give me that dirty-diaper look. I ain't calling you." Dean says.
Sam answers the phone. "Hello?" He asks.
"Sam, it's Jody Mills. I wake you?" She asks.
"The Sheriff? Uh..." Sam turns on a lamp. "Yeah. Uh, I mean, uh—"
"Listen, I got something that smells like you boys." Jody is talking on the phone in her car. "A body turned up in Canton, Ohio. Local P.D.'s trying to bury the story and the body."
"Okay, um, so, uh, what's up with the body?" Sam asks.
"Well, when it went missing, it was a perfectly normal grad student named Charles Durbin." Jody says. "When it turned up, the thing was mummified minus the wrapping. This is actually the second body found like this in the last couple weeks. Sound like a song you boys tap to?"
"Yeah, yeah, that's, that's um... that's our kind of number. Hey, question—how does a Sheriff in Sioux Falls get wind of a case in Ohio?" Sam asks.
"I'm just that nosy. Look, after everything I've been through with you boys and..." Jody starts. "...with Bobby, you know, something like this pops up on the wire, it catches my ear. What can I say?"
"Well, we'll look into it. Thanks, Sheriff." Sam says.
"Call me after, okay?"
"Yeah." Sam hangs up. "That was Sheriff Mills. She caught us one."
"Oh, I feel bad. We didn't get her anything." Dean says.
"I can't believe I'm about to say this but I hope you're watching cartoon smut, 'cause reading Dick Roman crap over and over again is just self-punishment." Sam says.
After a pause, Dean closes the laptop. "It's called anime, and it's an art form." He says.
CANTON, OHIO
ABANDONED HOUSE
[ ☼ ]
Signs saying "For Auction" and "No Trespassing" are hung on a security fence around the house. Dean, Elena and Sam, dressed in suits, pull up in a car outside the house. "Well, this looks nice. Check around back?" Dean asks. They drive off.
Dean carries a table into an empty downstairs room. Sam comes down the stairs carrying a chair. "Well, there's a... semi-functioning bathroom and one un-rancid bedroom." Sam says.
"Define semi-functioning, and do not use the words "hole in the floor." Elena says. Sam holds out his right fist on his left palm and nods meaningfully to Dean. Dean takes up the Same position with a bit of a flourish. We see them hit their palms with their fists twice.
Sam rolls out a bedroll in an empty bedroom. Dean enters the room and stands near the door. "How does paper beat a rock? It's stupid." Dean says. Sam doesn't respond and Dean leaves the room. We see a close-up of a police file containing a picture of Charles Darbis and an autopsy report.
RESIDENTIAL STREET
[ ☼ ]
Dean is holding the police file. "Kids playing hide-and-seek found the body." Sam says.
"Wow. Very King Tut." Dean says.
"Yeah, so, uh, this is where the eyewitness to the assault lives, but the cops are calling him an unreliable witness." Sam says.
"Because?" Asks Elena.
"Let's find out." Sam says. Dean and Sam knock at the door of a house and hold out their I.D. A Man opens the door.
"Special Agent Smith. This is, uh, Special Agent Smith and Jones. No relation."
"Whoa. Do you mind if we, uh... My mom's sleeping in there." The Man steps outside and closes the door. "S-so, how can I...?"
"Oh, we, uh – we had a few questions about the incident you witnessed in the alley." Sam says.
"You just gonna laugh at my story like the rest of the suits?" The Man asks.
"We're not gonna laugh at you." Says Dean.
"All right, well, I'm on the steps... medicating... when I hear fighting. So I look. There's my neighbor Durbin, and some dude dressed like my grandpa's got him by the neck, right?"
"What do you mean he looks like your grandpa?" Elena asks.
"Uh... Snappy shoes, suit, one of those, um, Justin Timberlake hats."
"Y-you mean a – a fedora?" Sam asks.
"Aha!"
"Did you see anything else?" Elena asks.
"This red, like, energy passed through Durbin to hat guy. Even my watch stopped. Durbs... he aged before my eyes. He looked like a raisin."
"Well, we believe you." Sam says.
The Man nods appreciatively. "Oh!" He exclaims.
"Thanks for your help." Dean says.
"Thank you, officer – officers." The Man says as Dean, Elena and Sam turn to leave.
"Wow." Dean says.
ABANDONED HOUSE, DOWNSTAIRS ROOM
[ ☼ ]
Dean and Sam, still in their white shirts, ties and suit pants, are working at the table. Elena still wears her pencil skirt and dress shirt. Sam is using the laptop. Dean leafs through John's journal, then closes it and puts it down.
"Yep. Nothing that turns a dude into a Cryptkeeper. You?" Dean checks to see that a beer can next to him on the table is empty and takes two fresh beers out of a cooler.
"Uh, well, greater Canton turns out kind of a hot spot for weird dead bodies." Sam says.
"Hmm. You don't say." Dean says.
"Yeah. News archives." Sam turns the laptop towards Dean and Elena. "They're not exactly reporting, uh, mummifies. But still, uh – 1928..."
The laptop screen shows articles titled "Another Shriveled Body Found" and "Spontaneous Combustion Claims Life of Young Man" and a page of search engine results for "Canton Ohio mysterious deaths".
"...three deaths cited as spontaneous combustion. Bodies, quote, "shriveled despite no signs of fire." Sam continues.
"Little stretch, but okay." Elena says,
"'74..." Sam hits a button on the keyboard. "...three bodies found with leathery decay. Uh, '57..." Sam hits a button on the keyboard. "...three more –" The laptop screen shows articles titled "Strange Body Found", "Mummy Found By Boys" and "Bartender Falls Victim to Dehydration". "Severe dehydration. This time one made the front page." Sam hits a button and an old newspaper photograph appears on the screen.
In it, a young girl standing next to a policeman points at a corpse. In the background are a woman talking to another policeman and two men, one of whom is wearing a fedora and long coat.
"Girl named Terry Cervantes found a corpse near her church." Sam says.
"Any pattern here other than the location?" Asks Dean.
"Random vics, random years. But they seem to drop in threes." Sam says.
"That's two down, one to go. All right, let me drive for a sec." Dean says.
"What, are you gonna look up more anime, or are you strictly into Dick now?" Sam says.
Dean types "Canton web cams" into a search engine and brings up "Securi-Net Webcams," which shows ten images from security cameras. "Hmm." Dean says.
"Are those local feeds?" Asks Sam.
"Yeah." Dean says.
"How did you do that so fast?"
"A little tutorial from Frank. Don't worry. We'll pretend this never happened." Dean says. "Now, mummy numero dos was, uh, found at the Gas n' Sip near Main Street, correct?"
"Yeah." Sam says.
Dean enters "gas+main+st" into a search box on the Securi-Net Webcams site and brings up four security camera feeds. "All right, well, here's all the cameras around that store." He says.
"You need to teach me that trick." Sam says. A Man wearing a fedora and long coat appears in one of the feeds.
"Hey, check it out – Timberlake." Dean says.
"Wait a sec." Sam takes back the laptop.
"You can't let me bask in the glory for one second, can you?" Dean asks.
"Shut up. Look." Sam says
The laptop screen now shows a close-up of the man from the security camera feed, and a close-up of the man in the fedora and coat in the old newspaper photograph.
"He hasn't aged a day, has he?" Dean asks. "All right, well, if he's been popping up for decades now, then somebody's bound to know who he is, right? Is there any chance that, uh, Terry's still local?"
Close-up of the old newspaper photograph under the headline "Strange Body Found" from a copy of the front page of the Canton Post, Friday Morning, May 10, 1957. As the camera pans out, we see that a woman in a white coat is holding the article.
HOSPITAL
[ ☼ ]
"You know it's so pretty in the spring. Everything's blooming. That's why I walked home that way—to see the flowers." Terry says. "Instead, I found that body. I still have no idea what could have done that to a person."
"Do you recognize that man?" Asks Elena.
"Yeah. I mean, he lived on my parents' street. Mr. Snider."
"Where'd you say your parents live?" Dean asks.
STREET
[ ☾]
Dean, Elena and Sam are eating take-out in the car, which is parked where it was at the beginning of the episode, across the street from a house. "So, what exactly is this thing? Some sort of vampire who got too sucky?" Dean asks.
"Nope. Coroner's reports said there was blood in both bodies. 300-year-old blood, but blood." Sam says. The Fedora Man comes out of the house.
"Dude, dude. Uh, fedora dude." Dean says. The Fedora Man walks along the sidewalk and turns down the alley. "All right, let's do this. Let's move fast." Dean cocks his gun.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. What's the plan here, exactly?" Sam asks.
"Don't die." Dean says as he, Elena and Sam get out of the car and hurry after the Fedora Man. "He's heading downtown. All right, you take the street. I'll take the alley. I'll meet you in the middle."
Elena chases after Dean who turns an alleyway corner and sees the Fedora Man kneeling over and holding the head of another man, who is on his back on the ground.
There is a red light above the prone man's face which seems to be being absorbed by the Fedora Man. "Son of a..." Dean runs towards the men.
As the red light from the prone man is completely absorbed by the Fedora Man, the Fedora Man lets the prone man's head fall to the ground and stands up. Sam comes around the corner and sees Dean tackle the Fedora Man. Just as Elena touches Dean on the shoulder, they all disappear in an explosion of red and white light.
Dean and the Fedora Man are tussling on the ground and Elena stumbles. Dean grabs the Fedora Man's hand and sees that he is wearing a ring with an hourglass symbol. The Fedora Man breaks away and runs off.
"Hey!" Dean gets to his feet and hurries after the Fedora Man. He is in an alley. "Hey!" Dean draws his gun. "Hey!" Dean and Elena reach the street, Dean stops and looks around. Judging by the cars and clothes, he is in the 1940s. Two policemen get out of a police car and point guns at Dean and Elena.
"Hey, you! Drop the gun! Put it down! Drop the gun!" The Policeman yell.
"All right." Dean drops his gun to the ground. The policemen advance on them.
POLICE STATION
INTERVIEW ROOM
[ ☼ ]
A Policeman is examining Dean's possessions. Dean is sitting at the table in handcuffs. "Okay, can I just—" Dean starts.
"Don't. Listen to me. Hey, if you tell me you're from the Bureau one more time, I'm gonna air you out myself. Got it?" The Policeman turns on Dean's cell phone. "'No signal'. Are you some kind of Jerry spy?"
"Jerry who?" Dean asks.
"And a terrible one at that." The Policeman picks up Dean's FBI ID. "This badge was issued 68 years from now. Ace work, kraut-muncher. Your female partner in there had the same thing."
Dean calculates the date. "'44? I'm stuck in 1944?!" He yells.
"We're all stuck in 1944, ya bunny." The Policeman says as a Man enters the room. The Policeman gets up from the table and walks over to him.
"Take a powder." The Man says:
"Yes, sir." The Policeman leaves the room.
"Look I don't even like frigging sauerkraut, okay, so you can just skip the—" Dean starts.
"What happened in the alley? And paint me a real picture." The Man says.
"All right, well, I'm "twelve monkeyed" no matter what I say, so here goes. I was chasing this dude." Dean says. "Uh, I'd just seen him mummify a guy. Yeah. So, I jumped him. He lights up red. Poof, we're in 1944."
The Man tosses a folder onto the table and sits down across from Dean. "Tell me more about the red light." He says.
"Are you seriously asking—" Dean starts.
"You want out of this jail, you're gonna tell me everything you can about that man and the so-called light."
"Okay. I saw it, and then we were here." Dean says.
"Would you say that, uh... it was all around you or that more that it came from inside this fella?"
"You believe me. Are you...? You're a hunter." Says Dean.
"I don't know what you're talking about." The Man says.
"Demons, ghosts, shifters. Hey, I've killed 'em all. And you're the Same. Just 68 years before me, huh?"
The Man exhales sharply and holds out a hand. "And your name is...?" He asks.
Dean, who is still in handcuffs, shakes his hand. "Dean...Winchester." He says.
"Ness. Eliot Ness."