Fic Post: Trost Und Freude (Chapter 1/17)
Dec. 24th, 2007 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwendolyngraceTitle: Trost und Freude (Comfort and Joy) (Chapter 1/17)
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Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gwendolyngrace
Recipient:celtic_cookie
Request terms: Sam and Dean of course, and I love John: Lots of John! A Pre-series Christmas Story! Familial bonding, maybe a holiday-themed hunt?
Summary: Saginaw, Michigan, 1990: Going holiday shopping may hold more hazards than just the insane crowds and parents hell-bent on the buying the latest toy. John goes undercover to look into a series of accidents at the local mall. Meanwhile, Dean and Sam respond to Christmas-season festivities at school with unexpected results.
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen
Wordcount (this chapter): about 5,140
Spoilers: All three seasons through 3x08, may or may not be Origins-compliant
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended, not mine, just my fantasy.
Author’s Notes: As luck would have it, 1990’s Thanksgiving and Christmas fell on the same dates – and days of the week – as this year’s. Helpful! This fic started as a small casefile and it’s grown like whoa, so look for additional chapters between now and the January 31 deadline. But I wanted to at least *begin* posting in time for the holiday. So:
Trost Und Freude, Chapter 1
Saginaw, Michigan
November 1990
Wade Ellis’s boot treads squeaked slightly with every step he took down the wide, central mall corridor. At this time of night, there were no crowds to absorb the sound. His step echoed off the skylights, which weren’t yet covered in snow. The muted nighttime lights of the corridor reflected in the darkened store windows. Every so often, Wade’s security badge glinted in the window display opposite him. It made him twitch every time until he realized it was just his own reflection. Back in the video room, Jerry was probably laughing his ass off every time Wade jumped.
Up ahead, at the center of the mall, the two wings formed a crossroads and the giant space where they met had been transformed with a host of decorations and tiny twinkling lights. Santa’s Workshop had just been opened for the season two days ago, one week before Thanksgiving. Wade didn’t care for that—the holidays were encroaching on each other more and more every year. It was only a matter of time, he thought, before the mall started putting up its Christmas decorations before Halloween. But here the display was, all ready to go, and well in place in time for Black Friday. That tradition, Wade figured, was secure for the ages.
Wade wandered on his rounds toward the vast array of decorations. The Workshop was laid out in a large circle. At the center of everything stood the massive Christmas tree, nearly 20 feet high. It was so tall that the company had had to bring in a cherry-picker to place the tree-topper, which changed every year. This year it was an angel with an enormous wingspan. Wade wasn’t sure how it stayed up there.
In front of the tree, fanning out from 2:00 to 10:00 on the “clockface” of the circle, the red carpet wound through a miniature labyrinth back and forth through the majority of the decorations, comprising enough square footage to hold about a thousand little ankle-biters on line to sit on Santa’s knee. They did that at the entrance to the Workshop façade, which was built out in front of the tree where the kids could see him nearly all the time while in line. Santa’s throne stood under the eaves, animated elves visible through the “window” cut into the wall. From there, they passed out to the left side, past the photographers’ tables. Their parents could pick them up and order photos at the same time. As they progressed through the display in the line, they were treated to a number of distractions: three-foot-tall skaters on a “lake” made of blue foil, an actual “North Pole” complete with red and white barber’s stripes, reindeer, and a snowman made to look enough like Frosty to be unmistakable, but not so close they’d get sued.
As if anyone would bother with a small-time mall in Saginaw.
There was also “Mrs. Claus’s Kitchen,” as everyone referred to it, which was a little hut where the employees could take a little breather if they needed it. This was placed to the right of the workshop façade, with a short track running between the two in what Wade thought of as the “back” of the display.
The whole area pretty much resembled a miniature village in the middle of the mall, There were even archways at the “front” and “rear” entrances to the carpet. Wade thought it looked like a Kincaid print…if Kincaid had been drinking heavily.
And not a menorah in sight. Wade grinned. Take that, you Christmas-killing fucks, he thought.
The animatronics were all turned off, of course, but the mall had left the tree lights twinkling during the night. Wade paused and lit a cigarette, admiring the view. He liked it better this way, even if the decorations looked a little unsettling at night. The tree was the only pretty part of the display, as far as he was concerned.
But then Wade remembered, standing there with his smoke, that the lights weren’t supposed to stay on until two weeks before Christmas, when the mall’s extended hours kicked in. He crossed the rope and stanchion line to dig under the tree for the cord. He’d unplug, save the company money. He might even leave a note giving himself the credit.
As he knelt down, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked over, shining his flashlight; the beam fell on a skater, smiling creepily in the dimness. Deciding it was a trick of light like the glint off his badge, Wade bent down under the branches again.
This time, he heard a thud behind him.
“Jerry, if that’s you playing games,” Wade threatened, feeling foolish for getting spooked.
His hand found the electric cord. He gave it an experimental tug to figure out where the plug end could be.
One of the tree branches thwapped him in the face. His cigarette fell out of his mouth and he leaned forward to put it out hastily. He lost his balance and sprawled in the fake snow blanketing the tree skirt. Spitting plastic confetti, Wade got to all fours.
Something kicked him in the seat of his pants.
“Jerry!” he shouted, flipping over.
It wasn’t Jerry. It wasn’t anyone. He blinked, but no person materialized in front of him. “Dammit,” he muttered. He rolled to his knees again, reached for the cord….
ZZZT! The electric shock made him jerk his hand back.
Shaking his hand in pain, Wade decided to abandon his act of goodwill. Screw the company if they were dumb enough to leave the lights on over a month ahead of schedule. He flexed his toes to leverage himself to his feet. He took a step on his right…and tripped when his left foot insisted on following—as if attached to his other shoe. He cracked his chin on the stanchion post going down, bit his tongue and chipped one of his teeth on the impact. As he lay on his back, staring up at the angel atop the tree, Wade wondered how on earth “Nobody” could have tied his shoelaces together.
~*~
Saginaw, Michigan
December 1990
Dean kicked snow off his boots and watched how the clumps melted in the steam rising from the vent by the curb. He shifted his backpack up on his shoulder.
“Come on, Sammy,” he muttered. “Where the hell are you?”
A gust of wind blew up and snow dusted his face. “Dammit,” he grumbled, and braced himself for the shitstorm of woe that would accompany his next action. But there was no help for it: He had to go inside Jerome Elementary and find his brother.
At eleven years of age, Dean had already seen the inside of at least eight school systems—nine if you counted that horrible parochial school in Denton, which Dean didn’t, because Dad had pulled him out inside of a week. Here in Saginaw, they had the most complicated system Dean had ever encountered. Dad had tried to get him and Sammy enrolled in one of the combined K-8 schools, but class sizes had dwindled and they’d closed one of the two in the district; the other was full. So Dean went to South Middle and Sam was placed at Jerome, just over half a mile away.
At least it wasn’t horribly out of the way for Dean to drop Sammy off and pick him up each day—he’d turn on Division, hook a right onto Sweet, and then they’d cut back to Elm on Vermont, to the grungy apartment Dad had found by the railroad, just off Maine. But Sammy had a habit of not being where he was supposed to be, especially as it got colder, which meant that Dean had to go look for him more often than not.
And Dean stuck out every time he had to go into the building. Everything was sized for kids at least half a foot shorter than him, from the placement of the water fountains to the size of the desks and tables. He tried to imagine Dad fitting himself into one of the miniature plastic molded seats that Sammy and his classmates used, on a parent-teacher night or something, and just couldn’t picture it.
Not that they’d been around for parent-teacher night. They’d come into town about two weeks too late for his. Or so Dean’s teacher, Mrs. Fontana, had informed his father. Dean wasn’t too sure whether Sammy’s class even had parents’ nights, but if they had, he supposed it would have been around the same time of year.
And what on earth had possessed his father to move to Michigan a month before Christmas still eluded Dean completely. Dad had picked them up at school when they were released at noon on the day before Thanksgiving, and they’d driven to Pastor Jim’s. On Friday morning, they were off again, and by the following Monday, they had started in their new, separate, schools.
So here they were, and had been, with only two weeks left before the holidays. At least this Christmas would most definitely be white, from the look of the grounds outside the school.
Dean stamped his feet to get feeling back in them. He hated going in the “little kids’ school” as one of his classmates had called it on his first day at South. It would have been different if they’d shared the same building. Dean knew his dad had done the best he could to find two schools so close to together—he’d explained to them both that most all of the middle schools and elementary schools were much farther apart than these two. Dean knew the location of their apartment was deliberate, too, allowing Sam an easy walk and Dean a slightly longer one. Still, Dean found it hard enough to feel comfortable among the strangers in his class without the additional stigma of “hanging out” with the babies.
Dean’s teeth were chattering and it was getting dark enough that the streetlights outside were coming on. He walked up to the double-doors and ducked inside. A wave of warm air blasted him as he passed into the foyer. Dean shed his hat and unzipped the puffy coat Dad had bought for him at a thrift store within a day of arriving in Saginaw. It was amazing how much colder it was here compared to Blue Earth, even though Pastor Jim’s place was almost at the same latitude. Dad said it was because of the lake.
Dean’s nose started running from the change in air. He wiped it on the cuff of his sleeve, stuffing his gloves in his pockets. Sam still wore mittens, and Dad even had to put the clips on them and string them through his sleeves so he wouldn’t lose them (“idiot mittens,” Dean delighted in telling Sam), but Dean had been wearing gloves since before he was Sam’s age. “Can’t pull a trigger wearing mittens,” he’d argued to his Dad soon after their third shooting lesson. Dad saw the logic in that, and the following winter, he presented Dean with a new pair of Thinsulate gloves for Christmas. They were a little big, but Dad said he’d grow into them.
He had. He’d grown into and out of them, poking a hole through the right index finger before Dad replaced them with another pair. These had Velcro straps across the wrist, like racing gloves, and non-skid pads on the thumb and fingers, for reinforcement. Like his watch cap and the knitted scarf that Mrs. Hildegaard had made for him last year, they weren’t remotely fashionable, but they were warm, and more importantly, they were cool.
It must have been really cold, or the wind was blowing really hard, though, because even through his gloves, Dean’s hands had turned red. He felt pins and needles jab his fingers as the heat of the school corridor hit them. He lingered another moment under the hot air blower by the door before tromping down the hallway toward Sam’s classroom.
He didn’t get as far as Room 224, however. As he passed the lower doors of the auditorium, he saw kids inside and heard a teacher’s voice.
“Make a straight line—no a single straight line, Michael Foucault—and let Ginny be in the middle, Chris, she is the Narrator—everyone in line, Sam Winchester—”
Dean reversed himself and walked into the auditorium. What was Sam doing in there? Sam was always volunteering to do things in school—things he should have known better than to offer. Like when his class at Piedmont Central had a bake sale and Sam said he was sure he could bring cupcakes. Or the time he told his teacher that their father would be happy to chaperone a field trip to the Children’s Museum, since he didn’t actually work during the day. Dad had been livid over that one—not because of the trip, but because some woman from the County had shown up to “verify his employment status” and Dad had had to pull some fast moves to avoid getting investigated. As Dean threaded his way into the auditorium past the rows of seats toward the stage, he braced himself for whatever fresh torture Sam had stuck up his hand to undergo.
He stopped at the edge of the seats, just short of where the teacher would notice him, but where he could see the action. The teacher finished arranging the kids the way she wanted and signaled to another adult who was seated at the piano.
“And all together, please,” she chanted over the intro. As a ragged body, the kids started singing:
O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter….
All except Sammy. Sammy looked from side to side at the others in the line, as if reading their lips would help him learn the song. As he cast about, he saw Dean and grinned. Dean shook his head violently, willing his brother not to give his position away. But Sammy broke ranks and zoomed down the line to the steps at the edge of the stage, closest to the aisle where Dean stood.
“Dean!” he shouted. “Sorry, Miz Johnson! M’bruther Dean’s here. I tolja I’d hafta go when he came for me,” he said very quickly to the teacher in the second row of seats. Sammy didn’t wait to be dismissed; he just bolted to a section of seats on his left (Dean’s right) where kids’ coats and bags were all strewn about. “Come on, Dean! We better hurry or Dad will wonder what happened to us!” Sammy said pointedly.
“Uh…yeah,” Dean said, coming out from his shadow. “Hi,” he added shyly at the teacher, who was clearly not happy at the ruination of her tableau.
“Keep singing!” she ordered the others. It was only then that Dean realized they had all trailed off to watch the drama. The piano-player executed a flourish to take the song back and kids began to chime in again.
“Sorry to drag him away,” Dean said brightly to Miss Johnson, “But it’s getting late and we walk, so….”
“Wait!” Miss Johnson said. “You can’t walk, not when it’s so cold out. Sam, back up on stage. I’ll take you both home when we’re done.”
“Oh, that’s not—”
“I insist. It’s much too cold and the streets are slick, it’s dark… No, you sit there and we’ll be done shortly.”
Dean shrugged at Sammy. Sammy, aware that his reprieve had just evaporated, handed his bag and coat to Dean and made his way back to his spot in line.
“From the top of the number, please, Mrs. Olean,” Miss Johnson requested. “Smile, children!”
O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter!
O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter….
Dean resisted the urge to plug his ears. The song was incomprehensible, for one thing, but more to the point, the sounds of all those treble, slightly off-key voices grated on his ears as sharply as fingernails on reinforced glass.
By the time the song was over, a slew of parents had shown up to collect their kids. They all seemed to have a question for Miss Johnson, or want “just a moment” of her time. Dean suspected that this was another case of Sam not passing along a note that had been meant for Dad: The children will be kept late on Monday for rehearsal of our crappy holiday pageant. Please come and get them an hour later than usual after school, because they need a scarring experience that will damage them for life and give them something to discuss with their shrinks when they grow up. Oh, and in case you were wondering, no, none of them have any talent.
He felt Sam lean against his arm while they waited. “Please, please, tell me we’re moving before the holidays,” Sam said. It was uncharacteristic of Sam to hate school, but Dean couldn’t argue, not if this was what the 2nd Grade had been up to.
The throng of parents and kids soon dissipated and Miss Johnson gathered up her things and put on her coat. “My car’s in the back,” she announced, leading them out the back of the auditorium to a different hallway, down half a flight of stairs, and out the back door.
Fresh snow had begun falling while they were inside, so Dean helped her clean the car off while she got it started and Sam settled himself in the back. Her heater worked really well, at least, and by the time Dean climbed in, the car was very warm.
“Where do you live?” she asked him.
“Sixteen hundred Maine Street,” Dean recited. Of any move to a new town, learning the new address and phone was easily the most tedious task, but it was just about as important as rehearsing the story of why they’d moved, where they came from, and what Dad supposedly did.
“That’s the apartment building on the corner of Maple?”
“Yes’m,” Dean said.
“Oh, you really do live close then, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Dean told her. He left off his rebellious thought, and we could’ve been home a long time ago if you hadn’t made us stay. But it was nice not to have to walk, even if it was a pain to wait around.
The drive took about as long as it had taken to clean off the car. Sam and Dean thanked her for the ride, politely, because Dad wouldn’t have had it otherwise. Dean pulled the key out of his pocket.
“Oh, wait a minute!” Miss Johnson called out through the passenger window. “Sam, is your father home?”
Sam looked at Dean before answering. “No, he’s at work.”
“Oh,” Miss Johnson said. She looked disappointed. “Only, it sounds like he didn’t know that you’re in the pageant, Sam. Otherwise I’m sure he would have arranged it so you and Dean didn’t have to walk after dark. So I wanted to make sure he knows about the rest of the rehearsals, and also find out for sure whether he’ll be able to come see you.”
Dean put himself between his brother and her window. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Miss Johnson,” Dean said.
She smiled at him the way someone smiles at people who say they believe in ghosts. “Why is that, dear?” she asked. “Don’t you think your father would want to see Sam in his show?”
“Oh, it’s not that,” Dean said, warming to his lie. “It’s that…we’re Jehovah’s Witnesses,” he supplied. “So technically, we aren’t supposed to be in any kind of…um…Christmas pageant, like that.”
Miss Johnson’s smile never wavered. “Well, technically, it’s not religious,” she said, using his word back on him. “This is a public school. It’s more of a celebration of multiple cultures and holiday traditions. In the spirit of the season.”
Dean nodded with a knowing grimace. “Yeah, but really? Any kind of performance like that…it’s kind of against our religion.”
At that, Miss Johnson’s smile finally withered and was replaced by a horrified, guilty look. “Oh, my. But…Sam never said…and I’m sure I checked his records and it didn’t say anything about….”
“That’s okay, Miss Johnson,” Dean assured her quickly. “Sometimes when we transfer in the middle of a term, they don’t get all the records right. I’m sure it’s not your fault. But…” he leaned over the door, “it would probably be better if you didn’t make Sammy be in the thing. Just…our Dad? He’s pretty strict about that stuff.”
Miss Johnson ducked her head a few times. Dean shielded her from Sam’s view. He didn’t trust that Sam would be able to keep a straight face. He was grateful that between leaning into the car and the noise of Miss Johnson’s heater and the car engine, Sam couldn’t hear what Dean was telling her.
“I…I’ll make sure that we reassign his part. It’s funny, you know, because we actually had to take lines away from other kids to give Sam something to do. We’ve been planning this since Fall Break.”
Dean quirked the corner of his mouth in sympathy. “Gosh, I wish someone had told you. We could have saved you the trouble.”
“Well…thank you, Dean,” Miss Johnson said.
“Sure thing, Miss Johnson. Oh, and by the way? You need a new fan belt. You might want to check the compressor on your heater, too.” He tapped the windowsill as he pulled himself back out of the car and walked Sam up the steps. He opened the vestibule door with his key and once inside, they turned and waved to signal her that they were okay.
As her car pulled away from the curb, Dean smiled at Sam.
“Whaddidja tell her, Dean?” Sam asked once they passed through the second security door.
“Told her you couldn’t be in that dumb pageant. Against our religion.”
Sam beamed up at Dean. “Dean, that’s like the best lie ever!”
~*~
John got home that night after the boys were in bed. Dean had left the kitchen light on and a sandwich in the refrigerator. John wrapped up the sandwich for his lunch the next day and pulled out a can of soup. While he appreciated Dean’s effort, it was bitter cold out and he desperately wanted something hot for supper.
While the soup reached the boil, John unbuckled his wide, patent-leather belt and sat down on the couch. His black boots were leaving puddles on the floor, but he had to sit to get them on and off—the store hadn’t had a pair with wide enough calves, so these were a really tight fit. He struggled with the left one, unsure how the boots had turned into giant suction cups. With a sound not unlike a bowstring releasing, the boot came free. Groaning in relief, John wiggled his liberated ankle and repeated the process on the right.
He unbuttoned his red jacket and poured himself a finger of Beam, not bothering with ice. He’d had enough of ice and snow today—surrounded by the fake stuff all day and confronted with the real stuff on the drive home. He thought about the all-weather radials on the Impala and wondered if he should trade in the rear ones for snow tires. Decided against it; with any luck, he’d wrap up this job by the end of the year and he’d move them someplace warmer for the rest of the winter.
He stirred the soup, letting the aroma and the steam follow the hard burn of the alcohol to warm him up. His “work uniform” was warm—red velour did not breathe—but the wind around the mall parking lot had been fierce. Especially since by the time he left, there really weren’t many other cars to help absorb the gusts.
Working as a department store Santa sucked.
But it meant honest pay without a lengthy background check, and for once having his own kids was considered an asset rather than a liability. Most importantly, working at the chain store gave him access to the mall after hours.
The mall where a series of odd accidents had been occurring since mid-November.
Small accidents, such as a malfunctioning alarm, had escalated toward the end of the month, and seemed only to be getting worse as the Christmas season wore on. Every day and night, shoppers were either tripped while walking through the mall, or someone spilled hot chocolate and got burned, or even (John’s favorite) got hit by a moving ashcan. At least one unlucky shopper had been taken to the emergency room for her injuries. Most recently, one of the Santas had been attacked, or so he claimed, by a rain of glass ornaments. He had been hospitalized, lucky to keep his eye.
Unfortunately, whatever it was didn’t show up on EMF, and it didn’t seem to be very active when the mall was empty.
John left the soup on the stove to change out of his Santa suit before eating. The last thing he needed was to get a stain on the damn thing and lose the deposit he’d had to pay for it. Strictly speaking, he should have changed at the store, but he had to admit he liked the extra warmth it provided when he was coming home so late. He checked inside the boys’ room on his way through the hall. They shared a mattress on the floor and a hodge-podge of sheets, two Army blankets, and an acrylic University of Michigan throw that had been left by the apartment’s previous occupant. Sammy as always was recognizable only from the tufted dark hair that stuck out between sheet and pillow; Dean had folded himself into his usual pretzel, one leg hugged against his chest and the other outflung, arms tucked fore and aft. From the door, John could see that the salt line on the windowsill was undisturbed. Smiling, he pulled the door closed on them quietly.
The soup was hot and filling, if not particularly delectable. John washed up efficiently and came into the living room. The previous tenant had been evicted, according to the building superintendent; John had kicked in an additional two weeks’ rent in exchange for the items that the landlord had put into storage to sell later, including the sofa and a fairly new TV. Settling himself on the former, he clicked the latter’s remote and thumbed the “mute” button until he found something suitably mindless. Then he turned the volume low enough to avoid disturbing his sons’ slumber. He flipped open his journal and sipped the shot of whiskey while he consulted his old case notes and added a few new ideas.
The witnesses’ accounts strongly suggested a supernatural source, rather than teen pranks, but John wasn’t sure yet whether the victims pointed to a common denominator. Other than they had been at the mall, near the central North Pole display. The Santa’s Workshop Santa had been the most recent victim. John thought maybe he could scam a shift or two as the mall Santa, rather than playing Santa at the anchor store, since it seemed to be centered on that area. He could keep an eye out for anything strange while he was sitting there enduring the succession of kids so much like his own, and yet so different.
Dean believed in things most people didn’t think existed, but they weren’t happy things like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Sam might still have some innocence, but to be honest, John wasn’t sure how much the little boy had begun to suspect. He still slipped a quarter under Sam’s pillow whenever he lost a tooth, but he was fairly certain Sam knew that it came from him and not the Tooth Fairy. (Dean, of course, had come out of the bathroom and run to John just after Sam’s first birthday, bloody tooth in one hand, and the other one outstretched. His look had said, “We both know it’s not real, so just let’s not pretend.” John had forced himself to smile, made a big deal out of keeping the tooth, and given Dean the quarter, which Dean immediately put into the slot of a prize dispenser at the diner they’d been in at the time. Later, when Dean was sleeping in the car, John had pulled over, laid his head and arms on the steering wheel, and cursed himself for ten minutes.) He’d been utterly unable to keep the truth from Dean; if he had anything to say about it, he would let Sammy keep his childish beliefs as long as possible.
John finished off his drink and got himself a beer to chase it, dragging himself back to the present. He felt sure that the North Pole and Santa’s Workshop were tied to what was going on. Even so, there was a staggering amount of crap stuffed into the display, any item of which could be the source of the trouble, like a haunted object or a focus for an evil spirit to latch onto. John groaned at the thought of having to research the history of every ornament and decoration.
His doodles in the journal turned into a rough sketch of the Workshop display. He outlined the large hut where Santa’s throne stood, its candy cane pillars and gingerbread roof overhanging the rich backdrop, against which hundreds of kids got their pictures snapped each day. He made a note of the photography stand and the table where parents paid (through the nose) for the color prints. Next he added in the false lake where the animatronic figures skated on tracks…. “Real, not plastic?” he noted next to one of his drawings, with an arrow pointing to it. He drew in a rendering of the giant archway at the end of the rope and stanchion area. Finally, in the back of the drawing, he cross-hatched lightly the shape of the 20-foot Christmas tree that served as the North Pole centerpiece. Where the mall stored that monstrosity, John couldn’t imagine. They probably had a warehouse for the assorted Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, and Halloween displays.
After an hour or so of idle sketching, he scanned his work. The best bet looked like the idea that one of the mechanical figures might be possessed…that or that one of the employees was a supernatural creature masquerading as human. He could look into the history of the animatronics tomorrow. As for the employees, he could ask around on his next shift. And he decided he’d definitely try to pick up some time working the North Pole. Heck, at this rate, even if he didn’t solve the case right away, he’d be able to get Sam the giant Transformers remote controlled action figure he wanted, and Dean’s dream Gameboy, too.
To Chapter 2
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Author:
gwendolyngraceRecipient:
celtic_cookieRequest terms: Sam and Dean of course, and I love John: Lots of John! A Pre-series Christmas Story! Familial bonding, maybe a holiday-themed hunt?
Summary: Saginaw, Michigan, 1990: Going holiday shopping may hold more hazards than just the insane crowds and parents hell-bent on the buying the latest toy. John goes undercover to look into a series of accidents at the local mall. Meanwhile, Dean and Sam respond to Christmas-season festivities at school with unexpected results.
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen
Wordcount (this chapter): about 5,140
Spoilers: All three seasons through 3x08, may or may not be Origins-compliant
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended, not mine, just my fantasy.
Author’s Notes: As luck would have it, 1990’s Thanksgiving and Christmas fell on the same dates – and days of the week – as this year’s. Helpful! This fic started as a small casefile and it’s grown like whoa, so look for additional chapters between now and the January 31 deadline. But I wanted to at least *begin* posting in time for the holiday. So:
Trost Und Freude, Chapter 1
Saginaw, Michigan
November 1990
Wade Ellis’s boot treads squeaked slightly with every step he took down the wide, central mall corridor. At this time of night, there were no crowds to absorb the sound. His step echoed off the skylights, which weren’t yet covered in snow. The muted nighttime lights of the corridor reflected in the darkened store windows. Every so often, Wade’s security badge glinted in the window display opposite him. It made him twitch every time until he realized it was just his own reflection. Back in the video room, Jerry was probably laughing his ass off every time Wade jumped.
Up ahead, at the center of the mall, the two wings formed a crossroads and the giant space where they met had been transformed with a host of decorations and tiny twinkling lights. Santa’s Workshop had just been opened for the season two days ago, one week before Thanksgiving. Wade didn’t care for that—the holidays were encroaching on each other more and more every year. It was only a matter of time, he thought, before the mall started putting up its Christmas decorations before Halloween. But here the display was, all ready to go, and well in place in time for Black Friday. That tradition, Wade figured, was secure for the ages.
Wade wandered on his rounds toward the vast array of decorations. The Workshop was laid out in a large circle. At the center of everything stood the massive Christmas tree, nearly 20 feet high. It was so tall that the company had had to bring in a cherry-picker to place the tree-topper, which changed every year. This year it was an angel with an enormous wingspan. Wade wasn’t sure how it stayed up there.
In front of the tree, fanning out from 2:00 to 10:00 on the “clockface” of the circle, the red carpet wound through a miniature labyrinth back and forth through the majority of the decorations, comprising enough square footage to hold about a thousand little ankle-biters on line to sit on Santa’s knee. They did that at the entrance to the Workshop façade, which was built out in front of the tree where the kids could see him nearly all the time while in line. Santa’s throne stood under the eaves, animated elves visible through the “window” cut into the wall. From there, they passed out to the left side, past the photographers’ tables. Their parents could pick them up and order photos at the same time. As they progressed through the display in the line, they were treated to a number of distractions: three-foot-tall skaters on a “lake” made of blue foil, an actual “North Pole” complete with red and white barber’s stripes, reindeer, and a snowman made to look enough like Frosty to be unmistakable, but not so close they’d get sued.
As if anyone would bother with a small-time mall in Saginaw.
There was also “Mrs. Claus’s Kitchen,” as everyone referred to it, which was a little hut where the employees could take a little breather if they needed it. This was placed to the right of the workshop façade, with a short track running between the two in what Wade thought of as the “back” of the display.
The whole area pretty much resembled a miniature village in the middle of the mall, There were even archways at the “front” and “rear” entrances to the carpet. Wade thought it looked like a Kincaid print…if Kincaid had been drinking heavily.
And not a menorah in sight. Wade grinned. Take that, you Christmas-killing fucks, he thought.
The animatronics were all turned off, of course, but the mall had left the tree lights twinkling during the night. Wade paused and lit a cigarette, admiring the view. He liked it better this way, even if the decorations looked a little unsettling at night. The tree was the only pretty part of the display, as far as he was concerned.
But then Wade remembered, standing there with his smoke, that the lights weren’t supposed to stay on until two weeks before Christmas, when the mall’s extended hours kicked in. He crossed the rope and stanchion line to dig under the tree for the cord. He’d unplug, save the company money. He might even leave a note giving himself the credit.
As he knelt down, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked over, shining his flashlight; the beam fell on a skater, smiling creepily in the dimness. Deciding it was a trick of light like the glint off his badge, Wade bent down under the branches again.
This time, he heard a thud behind him.
“Jerry, if that’s you playing games,” Wade threatened, feeling foolish for getting spooked.
His hand found the electric cord. He gave it an experimental tug to figure out where the plug end could be.
One of the tree branches thwapped him in the face. His cigarette fell out of his mouth and he leaned forward to put it out hastily. He lost his balance and sprawled in the fake snow blanketing the tree skirt. Spitting plastic confetti, Wade got to all fours.
Something kicked him in the seat of his pants.
“Jerry!” he shouted, flipping over.
It wasn’t Jerry. It wasn’t anyone. He blinked, but no person materialized in front of him. “Dammit,” he muttered. He rolled to his knees again, reached for the cord….
ZZZT! The electric shock made him jerk his hand back.
Shaking his hand in pain, Wade decided to abandon his act of goodwill. Screw the company if they were dumb enough to leave the lights on over a month ahead of schedule. He flexed his toes to leverage himself to his feet. He took a step on his right…and tripped when his left foot insisted on following—as if attached to his other shoe. He cracked his chin on the stanchion post going down, bit his tongue and chipped one of his teeth on the impact. As he lay on his back, staring up at the angel atop the tree, Wade wondered how on earth “Nobody” could have tied his shoelaces together.
~*~
Saginaw, Michigan
December 1990
Dean kicked snow off his boots and watched how the clumps melted in the steam rising from the vent by the curb. He shifted his backpack up on his shoulder.
“Come on, Sammy,” he muttered. “Where the hell are you?”
A gust of wind blew up and snow dusted his face. “Dammit,” he grumbled, and braced himself for the shitstorm of woe that would accompany his next action. But there was no help for it: He had to go inside Jerome Elementary and find his brother.
At eleven years of age, Dean had already seen the inside of at least eight school systems—nine if you counted that horrible parochial school in Denton, which Dean didn’t, because Dad had pulled him out inside of a week. Here in Saginaw, they had the most complicated system Dean had ever encountered. Dad had tried to get him and Sammy enrolled in one of the combined K-8 schools, but class sizes had dwindled and they’d closed one of the two in the district; the other was full. So Dean went to South Middle and Sam was placed at Jerome, just over half a mile away.
At least it wasn’t horribly out of the way for Dean to drop Sammy off and pick him up each day—he’d turn on Division, hook a right onto Sweet, and then they’d cut back to Elm on Vermont, to the grungy apartment Dad had found by the railroad, just off Maine. But Sammy had a habit of not being where he was supposed to be, especially as it got colder, which meant that Dean had to go look for him more often than not.
And Dean stuck out every time he had to go into the building. Everything was sized for kids at least half a foot shorter than him, from the placement of the water fountains to the size of the desks and tables. He tried to imagine Dad fitting himself into one of the miniature plastic molded seats that Sammy and his classmates used, on a parent-teacher night or something, and just couldn’t picture it.
Not that they’d been around for parent-teacher night. They’d come into town about two weeks too late for his. Or so Dean’s teacher, Mrs. Fontana, had informed his father. Dean wasn’t too sure whether Sammy’s class even had parents’ nights, but if they had, he supposed it would have been around the same time of year.
And what on earth had possessed his father to move to Michigan a month before Christmas still eluded Dean completely. Dad had picked them up at school when they were released at noon on the day before Thanksgiving, and they’d driven to Pastor Jim’s. On Friday morning, they were off again, and by the following Monday, they had started in their new, separate, schools.
So here they were, and had been, with only two weeks left before the holidays. At least this Christmas would most definitely be white, from the look of the grounds outside the school.
Dean stamped his feet to get feeling back in them. He hated going in the “little kids’ school” as one of his classmates had called it on his first day at South. It would have been different if they’d shared the same building. Dean knew his dad had done the best he could to find two schools so close to together—he’d explained to them both that most all of the middle schools and elementary schools were much farther apart than these two. Dean knew the location of their apartment was deliberate, too, allowing Sam an easy walk and Dean a slightly longer one. Still, Dean found it hard enough to feel comfortable among the strangers in his class without the additional stigma of “hanging out” with the babies.
Dean’s teeth were chattering and it was getting dark enough that the streetlights outside were coming on. He walked up to the double-doors and ducked inside. A wave of warm air blasted him as he passed into the foyer. Dean shed his hat and unzipped the puffy coat Dad had bought for him at a thrift store within a day of arriving in Saginaw. It was amazing how much colder it was here compared to Blue Earth, even though Pastor Jim’s place was almost at the same latitude. Dad said it was because of the lake.
Dean’s nose started running from the change in air. He wiped it on the cuff of his sleeve, stuffing his gloves in his pockets. Sam still wore mittens, and Dad even had to put the clips on them and string them through his sleeves so he wouldn’t lose them (“idiot mittens,” Dean delighted in telling Sam), but Dean had been wearing gloves since before he was Sam’s age. “Can’t pull a trigger wearing mittens,” he’d argued to his Dad soon after their third shooting lesson. Dad saw the logic in that, and the following winter, he presented Dean with a new pair of Thinsulate gloves for Christmas. They were a little big, but Dad said he’d grow into them.
He had. He’d grown into and out of them, poking a hole through the right index finger before Dad replaced them with another pair. These had Velcro straps across the wrist, like racing gloves, and non-skid pads on the thumb and fingers, for reinforcement. Like his watch cap and the knitted scarf that Mrs. Hildegaard had made for him last year, they weren’t remotely fashionable, but they were warm, and more importantly, they were cool.
It must have been really cold, or the wind was blowing really hard, though, because even through his gloves, Dean’s hands had turned red. He felt pins and needles jab his fingers as the heat of the school corridor hit them. He lingered another moment under the hot air blower by the door before tromping down the hallway toward Sam’s classroom.
He didn’t get as far as Room 224, however. As he passed the lower doors of the auditorium, he saw kids inside and heard a teacher’s voice.
“Make a straight line—no a single straight line, Michael Foucault—and let Ginny be in the middle, Chris, she is the Narrator—everyone in line, Sam Winchester—”
Dean reversed himself and walked into the auditorium. What was Sam doing in there? Sam was always volunteering to do things in school—things he should have known better than to offer. Like when his class at Piedmont Central had a bake sale and Sam said he was sure he could bring cupcakes. Or the time he told his teacher that their father would be happy to chaperone a field trip to the Children’s Museum, since he didn’t actually work during the day. Dad had been livid over that one—not because of the trip, but because some woman from the County had shown up to “verify his employment status” and Dad had had to pull some fast moves to avoid getting investigated. As Dean threaded his way into the auditorium past the rows of seats toward the stage, he braced himself for whatever fresh torture Sam had stuck up his hand to undergo.
He stopped at the edge of the seats, just short of where the teacher would notice him, but where he could see the action. The teacher finished arranging the kids the way she wanted and signaled to another adult who was seated at the piano.
“And all together, please,” she chanted over the intro. As a ragged body, the kids started singing:
O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter….
All except Sammy. Sammy looked from side to side at the others in the line, as if reading their lips would help him learn the song. As he cast about, he saw Dean and grinned. Dean shook his head violently, willing his brother not to give his position away. But Sammy broke ranks and zoomed down the line to the steps at the edge of the stage, closest to the aisle where Dean stood.
“Dean!” he shouted. “Sorry, Miz Johnson! M’bruther Dean’s here. I tolja I’d hafta go when he came for me,” he said very quickly to the teacher in the second row of seats. Sammy didn’t wait to be dismissed; he just bolted to a section of seats on his left (Dean’s right) where kids’ coats and bags were all strewn about. “Come on, Dean! We better hurry or Dad will wonder what happened to us!” Sammy said pointedly.
“Uh…yeah,” Dean said, coming out from his shadow. “Hi,” he added shyly at the teacher, who was clearly not happy at the ruination of her tableau.
“Keep singing!” she ordered the others. It was only then that Dean realized they had all trailed off to watch the drama. The piano-player executed a flourish to take the song back and kids began to chime in again.
“Sorry to drag him away,” Dean said brightly to Miss Johnson, “But it’s getting late and we walk, so….”
“Wait!” Miss Johnson said. “You can’t walk, not when it’s so cold out. Sam, back up on stage. I’ll take you both home when we’re done.”
“Oh, that’s not—”
“I insist. It’s much too cold and the streets are slick, it’s dark… No, you sit there and we’ll be done shortly.”
Dean shrugged at Sammy. Sammy, aware that his reprieve had just evaporated, handed his bag and coat to Dean and made his way back to his spot in line.
“From the top of the number, please, Mrs. Olean,” Miss Johnson requested. “Smile, children!”
O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter!
O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,
wie treu sind deine Blätter….
Dean resisted the urge to plug his ears. The song was incomprehensible, for one thing, but more to the point, the sounds of all those treble, slightly off-key voices grated on his ears as sharply as fingernails on reinforced glass.
By the time the song was over, a slew of parents had shown up to collect their kids. They all seemed to have a question for Miss Johnson, or want “just a moment” of her time. Dean suspected that this was another case of Sam not passing along a note that had been meant for Dad: The children will be kept late on Monday for rehearsal of our crappy holiday pageant. Please come and get them an hour later than usual after school, because they need a scarring experience that will damage them for life and give them something to discuss with their shrinks when they grow up. Oh, and in case you were wondering, no, none of them have any talent.
He felt Sam lean against his arm while they waited. “Please, please, tell me we’re moving before the holidays,” Sam said. It was uncharacteristic of Sam to hate school, but Dean couldn’t argue, not if this was what the 2nd Grade had been up to.
The throng of parents and kids soon dissipated and Miss Johnson gathered up her things and put on her coat. “My car’s in the back,” she announced, leading them out the back of the auditorium to a different hallway, down half a flight of stairs, and out the back door.
Fresh snow had begun falling while they were inside, so Dean helped her clean the car off while she got it started and Sam settled himself in the back. Her heater worked really well, at least, and by the time Dean climbed in, the car was very warm.
“Where do you live?” she asked him.
“Sixteen hundred Maine Street,” Dean recited. Of any move to a new town, learning the new address and phone was easily the most tedious task, but it was just about as important as rehearsing the story of why they’d moved, where they came from, and what Dad supposedly did.
“That’s the apartment building on the corner of Maple?”
“Yes’m,” Dean said.
“Oh, you really do live close then, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” Dean told her. He left off his rebellious thought, and we could’ve been home a long time ago if you hadn’t made us stay. But it was nice not to have to walk, even if it was a pain to wait around.
The drive took about as long as it had taken to clean off the car. Sam and Dean thanked her for the ride, politely, because Dad wouldn’t have had it otherwise. Dean pulled the key out of his pocket.
“Oh, wait a minute!” Miss Johnson called out through the passenger window. “Sam, is your father home?”
Sam looked at Dean before answering. “No, he’s at work.”
“Oh,” Miss Johnson said. She looked disappointed. “Only, it sounds like he didn’t know that you’re in the pageant, Sam. Otherwise I’m sure he would have arranged it so you and Dean didn’t have to walk after dark. So I wanted to make sure he knows about the rest of the rehearsals, and also find out for sure whether he’ll be able to come see you.”
Dean put himself between his brother and her window. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Miss Johnson,” Dean said.
She smiled at him the way someone smiles at people who say they believe in ghosts. “Why is that, dear?” she asked. “Don’t you think your father would want to see Sam in his show?”
“Oh, it’s not that,” Dean said, warming to his lie. “It’s that…we’re Jehovah’s Witnesses,” he supplied. “So technically, we aren’t supposed to be in any kind of…um…Christmas pageant, like that.”
Miss Johnson’s smile never wavered. “Well, technically, it’s not religious,” she said, using his word back on him. “This is a public school. It’s more of a celebration of multiple cultures and holiday traditions. In the spirit of the season.”
Dean nodded with a knowing grimace. “Yeah, but really? Any kind of performance like that…it’s kind of against our religion.”
At that, Miss Johnson’s smile finally withered and was replaced by a horrified, guilty look. “Oh, my. But…Sam never said…and I’m sure I checked his records and it didn’t say anything about….”
“That’s okay, Miss Johnson,” Dean assured her quickly. “Sometimes when we transfer in the middle of a term, they don’t get all the records right. I’m sure it’s not your fault. But…” he leaned over the door, “it would probably be better if you didn’t make Sammy be in the thing. Just…our Dad? He’s pretty strict about that stuff.”
Miss Johnson ducked her head a few times. Dean shielded her from Sam’s view. He didn’t trust that Sam would be able to keep a straight face. He was grateful that between leaning into the car and the noise of Miss Johnson’s heater and the car engine, Sam couldn’t hear what Dean was telling her.
“I…I’ll make sure that we reassign his part. It’s funny, you know, because we actually had to take lines away from other kids to give Sam something to do. We’ve been planning this since Fall Break.”
Dean quirked the corner of his mouth in sympathy. “Gosh, I wish someone had told you. We could have saved you the trouble.”
“Well…thank you, Dean,” Miss Johnson said.
“Sure thing, Miss Johnson. Oh, and by the way? You need a new fan belt. You might want to check the compressor on your heater, too.” He tapped the windowsill as he pulled himself back out of the car and walked Sam up the steps. He opened the vestibule door with his key and once inside, they turned and waved to signal her that they were okay.
As her car pulled away from the curb, Dean smiled at Sam.
“Whaddidja tell her, Dean?” Sam asked once they passed through the second security door.
“Told her you couldn’t be in that dumb pageant. Against our religion.”
Sam beamed up at Dean. “Dean, that’s like the best lie ever!”
~*~
John got home that night after the boys were in bed. Dean had left the kitchen light on and a sandwich in the refrigerator. John wrapped up the sandwich for his lunch the next day and pulled out a can of soup. While he appreciated Dean’s effort, it was bitter cold out and he desperately wanted something hot for supper.
While the soup reached the boil, John unbuckled his wide, patent-leather belt and sat down on the couch. His black boots were leaving puddles on the floor, but he had to sit to get them on and off—the store hadn’t had a pair with wide enough calves, so these were a really tight fit. He struggled with the left one, unsure how the boots had turned into giant suction cups. With a sound not unlike a bowstring releasing, the boot came free. Groaning in relief, John wiggled his liberated ankle and repeated the process on the right.
He unbuttoned his red jacket and poured himself a finger of Beam, not bothering with ice. He’d had enough of ice and snow today—surrounded by the fake stuff all day and confronted with the real stuff on the drive home. He thought about the all-weather radials on the Impala and wondered if he should trade in the rear ones for snow tires. Decided against it; with any luck, he’d wrap up this job by the end of the year and he’d move them someplace warmer for the rest of the winter.
He stirred the soup, letting the aroma and the steam follow the hard burn of the alcohol to warm him up. His “work uniform” was warm—red velour did not breathe—but the wind around the mall parking lot had been fierce. Especially since by the time he left, there really weren’t many other cars to help absorb the gusts.
Working as a department store Santa sucked.
But it meant honest pay without a lengthy background check, and for once having his own kids was considered an asset rather than a liability. Most importantly, working at the chain store gave him access to the mall after hours.
The mall where a series of odd accidents had been occurring since mid-November.
Small accidents, such as a malfunctioning alarm, had escalated toward the end of the month, and seemed only to be getting worse as the Christmas season wore on. Every day and night, shoppers were either tripped while walking through the mall, or someone spilled hot chocolate and got burned, or even (John’s favorite) got hit by a moving ashcan. At least one unlucky shopper had been taken to the emergency room for her injuries. Most recently, one of the Santas had been attacked, or so he claimed, by a rain of glass ornaments. He had been hospitalized, lucky to keep his eye.
Unfortunately, whatever it was didn’t show up on EMF, and it didn’t seem to be very active when the mall was empty.
John left the soup on the stove to change out of his Santa suit before eating. The last thing he needed was to get a stain on the damn thing and lose the deposit he’d had to pay for it. Strictly speaking, he should have changed at the store, but he had to admit he liked the extra warmth it provided when he was coming home so late. He checked inside the boys’ room on his way through the hall. They shared a mattress on the floor and a hodge-podge of sheets, two Army blankets, and an acrylic University of Michigan throw that had been left by the apartment’s previous occupant. Sammy as always was recognizable only from the tufted dark hair that stuck out between sheet and pillow; Dean had folded himself into his usual pretzel, one leg hugged against his chest and the other outflung, arms tucked fore and aft. From the door, John could see that the salt line on the windowsill was undisturbed. Smiling, he pulled the door closed on them quietly.
The soup was hot and filling, if not particularly delectable. John washed up efficiently and came into the living room. The previous tenant had been evicted, according to the building superintendent; John had kicked in an additional two weeks’ rent in exchange for the items that the landlord had put into storage to sell later, including the sofa and a fairly new TV. Settling himself on the former, he clicked the latter’s remote and thumbed the “mute” button until he found something suitably mindless. Then he turned the volume low enough to avoid disturbing his sons’ slumber. He flipped open his journal and sipped the shot of whiskey while he consulted his old case notes and added a few new ideas.
The witnesses’ accounts strongly suggested a supernatural source, rather than teen pranks, but John wasn’t sure yet whether the victims pointed to a common denominator. Other than they had been at the mall, near the central North Pole display. The Santa’s Workshop Santa had been the most recent victim. John thought maybe he could scam a shift or two as the mall Santa, rather than playing Santa at the anchor store, since it seemed to be centered on that area. He could keep an eye out for anything strange while he was sitting there enduring the succession of kids so much like his own, and yet so different.
Dean believed in things most people didn’t think existed, but they weren’t happy things like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. Sam might still have some innocence, but to be honest, John wasn’t sure how much the little boy had begun to suspect. He still slipped a quarter under Sam’s pillow whenever he lost a tooth, but he was fairly certain Sam knew that it came from him and not the Tooth Fairy. (Dean, of course, had come out of the bathroom and run to John just after Sam’s first birthday, bloody tooth in one hand, and the other one outstretched. His look had said, “We both know it’s not real, so just let’s not pretend.” John had forced himself to smile, made a big deal out of keeping the tooth, and given Dean the quarter, which Dean immediately put into the slot of a prize dispenser at the diner they’d been in at the time. Later, when Dean was sleeping in the car, John had pulled over, laid his head and arms on the steering wheel, and cursed himself for ten minutes.) He’d been utterly unable to keep the truth from Dean; if he had anything to say about it, he would let Sammy keep his childish beliefs as long as possible.
John finished off his drink and got himself a beer to chase it, dragging himself back to the present. He felt sure that the North Pole and Santa’s Workshop were tied to what was going on. Even so, there was a staggering amount of crap stuffed into the display, any item of which could be the source of the trouble, like a haunted object or a focus for an evil spirit to latch onto. John groaned at the thought of having to research the history of every ornament and decoration.
His doodles in the journal turned into a rough sketch of the Workshop display. He outlined the large hut where Santa’s throne stood, its candy cane pillars and gingerbread roof overhanging the rich backdrop, against which hundreds of kids got their pictures snapped each day. He made a note of the photography stand and the table where parents paid (through the nose) for the color prints. Next he added in the false lake where the animatronic figures skated on tracks…. “Real, not plastic?” he noted next to one of his drawings, with an arrow pointing to it. He drew in a rendering of the giant archway at the end of the rope and stanchion area. Finally, in the back of the drawing, he cross-hatched lightly the shape of the 20-foot Christmas tree that served as the North Pole centerpiece. Where the mall stored that monstrosity, John couldn’t imagine. They probably had a warehouse for the assorted Christmas, Easter, Fourth of July, and Halloween displays.
After an hour or so of idle sketching, he scanned his work. The best bet looked like the idea that one of the mechanical figures might be possessed…that or that one of the employees was a supernatural creature masquerading as human. He could look into the history of the animatronics tomorrow. As for the employees, he could ask around on his next shift. And he decided he’d definitely try to pick up some time working the North Pole. Heck, at this rate, even if he didn’t solve the case right away, he’d be able to get Sam the giant Transformers remote controlled action figure he wanted, and Dean’s dream Gameboy, too.
To Chapter 2
