Supernatural - Chapter 10: Changelings (Patreon)

With the Seven Deadly Sins dealt with, Murphy and her three companions began the journey home, exhausted to the bone.

The moment they arrived at Bobby's place, Murphy took advantage of the others still unloading the cars and hurried up to the guest room she'd been using.

She lifted her pillow. Only when she saw the black notebook lying undisturbed beneath it did she finally relax.

The first page still held the same sentence.

[If I don't come back, you'll know how to use this notebook.]

Now that she was safely home, the words seemed rather unlucky, not to mention short on confidence.

She stared at them for two seconds, then left them alone and quickly flipped ahead to record the changes that had just occurred.

[Arrived in Lincoln one day early. The family at the farm still died. Isaac and Tamara also appeared one day early.

Cause unknown.

Isaac was originally meant to die. This time, he survived with serious injuries.]

She paused with her pen in hand before adding one more line.

[The future can change, but events seem inclined to return to their original course on their own.]

Footsteps approached outside the room. Murphy immediately closed the notebook and stuffed it into the bottom of her luggage.

Dean happened to pass the doorway. Spotting her furtive movements, he stopped to tease her. “Secret diary?”

Murphy laughed awkwardly. “Just a girl's diary. Girl stuff.”

Dean didn't think much of it. He and Sam didn't keep journals, but their father, John, had made a habit of recording things while hunting.

Murphy said no more, merely finishing her packing. Dean leaned against the doorframe and watched her for a while. Once he was satisfied she was all right, he turned and went downstairs.

That night, Bobby's dining table was once again buried beneath heavy books and loose papers.

Sam sat reading everything he could find about contracts, while Murphy compared the rules governing crossroads demons and wrote down every possible loophole on separate sheets of paper.

In her original world, a demon deal had been nothing more than a plot device. Here, it was a binding contract for somebody's soul, with no clear written terms, no original document they could examine, and no pretense that both parties had negotiated as equals.

The more she read, the deeper her frown became.

There was no way to kill Lilith at the moment, and Lilith couldn't be killed yet. But simply keeping Dean out of the Hellhounds' reach wouldn't work either. He'd never agree to spend his entire life locked away for his own protection.

“You're still looking into this?” Dean came downstairs and immediately noticed the books covering the table.

“Of course.” Murphy didn't even look up.

“I already told you. Anyone tries to break that deal, Sam dies.”

“But Dean, I can't stand by and watch the brother who means more to me than anyone else get himself killed for my sake,” Sam replied earnestly.

“...It was my choice,” Dean said, looking uncomfortable.

“And trying to save you is mine.” Sam bent over the papers again.

Dean scratched his head, at a loss for words. It felt as though a devil and an angel were arguing inside his skull. What if breaking the contract killed Sam? But what if there really was a way to save his soul?

The fight with the Seven Deadly Sins had proven that Murphy knew an extraordinary amount. She'd also told them Isaac was supposed to die in the original events, yet they'd managed to save him this time.

Didn't that mean the future could be changed after all?

Dean couldn't completely smother the little spark of hope that had rekindled inside him.

After a moment's silence, he set two cups of coffee down in front of them.

“Do whatever you want,” he said gruffly. “But nobody's secretly contacting another crossroads demon. And Sam, keep yourself safe. Don't get killed.”

Murphy looked up at him, a smile slowly curling her lips.

“What are you smiling at?” Dean folded his arms, rather put out by her expression.

“Nothing.” Murphy thought he really was like an enormous cat. “None of us is going to die.”

...

The next morning, Dean approached the breakfast table carrying a newspaper and slapped it down in front of Murphy and Sam.

“Cicero, Indiana.” He pointed to an inconspicuous article. “Guy fell on a running circular saw.”

Sam scanned the report. “Sounds more like an accident.”

“Maybe it wasn't.” Dean tried to sound indifferent.

“Based on this?” Sam looked at his brother in confusion. Dean seemed to be jumping to conclusions.

Dean's eyes slid away.

The moment Murphy heard “Cicero,” she put down her spoon. She knew this case, and she knew the real reason Dean was so interested in it.

Sam had noticed his brother's guilty expression too. He studied Dean suspiciously. “So is there somebody in Cicero?”

Seeing there was no point hiding it, Dean broke into a smug grin. “Woman named Lisa. Eight or nine years ago, when you and Dad went to Orlando to deal with a banshee, I spent a few days in Cicero.”

He paused, apparently reliving the memory with great fondness.

“The bendiest few days of my life.”

Murphy slowly raised her head and looked Dean up and down with something close to disdain. Then she lifted both hands and gave him an emphatic double thumbs-down.

Dean's grin froze. “What's that supposed to mean?”

Murphy didn't answer.

Sam looked at her two downward-pointing thumbs and suppressed a laugh. “Maybe it's sign language. You know, expressing... an opinion.”

“Oh, wow. Thank you, little Sammy. Never would've figured that out on my own.” Dean gave Sam a fake smile.

“I just have a vivid imagination, and the pictures in my head can be a little overwhelming,” Murphy said calmly, lowering her hands.

“Hey! Keep your imagination to yourself!” Dean clutched his chest as though somebody had walked in on him in the shower.

Sam was clearly more relaxed than he'd been a few days earlier. He glanced at the article, which hardly counted as a solid lead, then back at Dean. “So the person you're making excuses to visit during your last year on Earth is the woman from your 'bendiest few days'?”

Dean was beginning to feel cornered by the two of them. “What? Are we going or not?”

Murphy pulled the newspaper toward her. “There really is a case in Cicero.”

The mood around the table turned serious at once.

“Several people will die in what look like accidents in a gated community. There's a child in every victim's home.” Murphy recalled the original plot. “Those children have been replaced by changelings. They copy the real children's appearances and memories, feed on their mothers, kill adults who get in the way, and take the real children back to their nest.”

“Where's the nest?” Sam asked.

“In unfinished houses near the community. I don't know exactly which one, but there'll be red clay around the window frames. The mother changeling has something to do with a local real-estate company. Fire can kill them.”

She knew the central mystery and remembered most of the clues, but they'd still have to check how far events had progressed.

The Lincoln farmhouse had already shown that events could shift forward in an oddly synchronized way. Murphy figured that as long as she didn't interfere too much with the points where things were supposed to happen, and only tried to control the crucial developments, the impact might not be too great.

“We should leave today,” she said. “The longer we wait, the more children in that neighborhood will be replaced.”

Dean folded the newspaper and stood.

He'd originally wanted a reasonably respectable excuse to see Lisa again. He hadn't expected Cicero to have a genuine case.

“Then let's go.”

...

After reaching Cicero, the three of them checked into a motel near the Morning Hill community and took two separate rooms.

Murphy felt a little guilty about it. The brothers were already living on stolen credit cards, and now she'd joined them. That meant one more mouth to feed and an extra room to pay for in every town. Even if the money wasn't coming out of their own earnings, she couldn't quite bring herself to treat it as something she was entitled to.

Once they finished this case, she needed to find a computer and earn some money with her own skills. At the very least, she couldn't keep relying on the brothers to pay for her food, lodging and everyday necessities.

Dean changed clothes and prepared to visit Lisa alone. Murphy was sitting in the brothers' room with Sam, going through their research. When she saw Dean pick up his car keys, she couldn't help offering a warning.

“I don't know whether it's my place to say this. There's nothing wrong with wanting to see her, but your life is dangerous now.”

Dean stopped and looked back at her.

“Don't drag her back into it without telling her what she's getting involved in, just because you want to see her once,” Murphy said seriously. “Especially when she already has a life of her own.”

“Don't make it such a big deal. I'm just catching up,” Dean replied lightly. “I'm over it.”

Murphy studied him for two seconds without saying whether she believed him.

“Okay.”

She didn't interfere any further.

Whatever had happened between Dean and Lisa belonged to them. Murphy had no intention of meddling in their past. She'd only said those two things because she knew how their relationship would end later on.

Dean hesitated at the door but said nothing. He simply took his keys and left.

After the door shut, Sam looked up at Murphy.

“So you think something else is going to happen between him and Lisa?”

“It's not what I think. It was going to happen in the future I remember.” Murphy couldn't guarantee that the future would turn out that way now. “And I don't think it's fair to Lisa or her son.”

“Why not?” Sam sensed there was more she wasn't saying.

“...Suppose one day you were forced to leave Dean forever. What would you tell him? What would you want most for him?” Murphy asked instead.

Sam considered it, and then understanding lit his face. “Oh. Oh! I'd want Dean to have a normal life. So he'd go to Lisa.”

Sam didn't ask why he would supposedly have to leave Dean in the future. Deep down, he didn't believe such a thing could ever happen.

“If Dean could stay with Lisa and her son for good, that would be one thing. But what if he lets his guard down one day? Would a demon or monster come after Lisa? And what if you returned to Dean's side?” Murphy had made her point as clearly as she could.

“I see.” Sam understood why that would be unfair to Lisa, but he couldn't stop wondering whether the brothers were simply destined never to live ordinary lives.

Nobody could answer that question now.

...

Lisa was hosting an eighth-birthday party for Ben at her house.

When Dean appeared at the door, she clearly hadn't expected to see him. After a moment of surprise, though, she invited him in.

Children filled the party, and the yard was covered with food and presents. Dean was catching up with Lisa easily enough until a boy in a black jacket walked past carrying a record.

Lisa's son, Ben.

The boy was thrilled to have received an AC/DC record and used language that hardly sounded like something an eight-year-old would say. Passing a car parked beside the street, he stopped to admire it for several seconds.

Worse, when a pretty little girl walked past, the way Ben's eyes instinctively followed her looked exactly like Dean himself.

Dean's expression grew increasingly strange. The kid might as well have been a miniature version of him.

Lisa told him Ben had turned eight that very day.

Eight years ago.

Dean's mind raced through the dates. He couldn't shake the growing suspicion that Ben might be his son, but asking Lisa outright seemed impossibly rude.

He made an excuse about fetching something, slipped away from the guests and called the motel from the edge of the yard.

Somebody answered almost immediately.

“Hello?” It happened to be Murphy.

“Murphy, it's me.”

“Something wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong.” Dean lowered his voice, glancing over his shoulder at Ben, who was talking to some other children. “I need to ask you something.”

“Go ahead.” Murphy sounded perfectly calm.

Dean hesitated for several seconds, trying to make his voice sound casual.

“You're from the future, so you should know. Is... is Ben my biological son?”

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line.

Then Murphy answered with a level of exasperation that bordered on disbelief.

“Dude, have you ever heard of protection? Of course he isn't.”

Dean was embarrassed to be lectured about that by a younger woman. “Uh, accidents happen.”

“...You're really sure?” he asked, still unwilling to give up.

“I'm sure.” Murphy sounded ready to hang up.

“But he acts so much like me! He likes rock music, cars and pretty girls. You don't think that's a lot of coincidences?”

“An eight-year-old boy having exactly the same interests as you doesn't make him your secret love child.”

Dean stammered, unable to think of anything else to say. All Murphy could hear was a succession of “I, I, I...”

“And he certainly isn't the secret love child of Stammering Dean. If that's everything, quit bothering me and Sam. We're busy.” If Murphy hadn't had her hands full, she might have grabbed the receiver and shouted straight into it.

Dean went quiet for several seconds.

When he heard Ben wasn't his son, relief came first. But after that passed, he was left with a vague emptiness he couldn't quite explain, even to himself.

“Anyway, keep an eye on Lisa and Ben,” Murphy said, her voice serious again. “The changelings could come after him at any time.”

“I will.” Dean ended the call and went back to the party.

Meanwhile, Murphy and Sam had found several recent accidents in the Morning Hill community.

The circular-saw incident was only one of them.

Another resident had fallen off a ladder while changing a lightbulb, and someone had drowned in their own hot tub. Several other deaths had also been ruled accidents and attracted little police attention.

The timing matched Murphy's memory. Nothing seemed out of place.

“So far, this case looks like it'll unfold normally. We should be able to handle it,” Murphy said, relaxing a little. It wasn't a particularly difficult hunt, but a lot of families could get hurt if they mishandled it.

She recalled the details of one of the affected households.

Dana Keel had just lost her ex-husband, Richard. Their daughter, Katie, had returned to her mother's home from her father's shortly before his death. In the original events, Richard was the man killed by the circular saw, and the Katie now living with Dana had already been replaced.

Murphy and Sam changed into reasonably formal clothes and went to Dana's house posing as insurance investigators.

The woman who opened the door looked terribly worn down. Her face was pale, with dark circles beneath her eyes. She became emotional whenever she mentioned her ex-husband's death, yet kept casting uneasy looks at the daughter sitting in the living room.

On the surface, Katie seemed perfectly normal. She sat quietly with a doll in her hands, wearing an obedient little smile.

But that smile looked almost stamped onto her face, fixed in place like a pattern. There was something deeply unsettling about it.

Murphy noticed a ring of dark-red marks briefly exposed on the back of Dana's neck.

The changeling had already begun feeding.

As Murphy passed the living-room mirror, she deliberately slowed down and stole several seemingly casual glances at its reflection.

In the mirror, the child on the couch still wore Katie's dress, but her face was that of a gray, aged-looking creature, with raised black veins running beneath the skin.

Murphy kept moving, secretly pointing the mirror out to Sam. Their eyes met.

Only after they left Dana's house did Sam say quietly, “I saw it. That's not Katie.”

“No. She's already been replaced. And Dana has feeding marks on her neck.”

“Do you think the real Katie is still alive?”

“She'll be in the mother's nest with the other children.”

The important thing now was finding the changelings' nest. Murphy hoped it wouldn't be too difficult.

She watched children playing around the Morning Hill community, her heart growing heavy. She knew some of them had already been replaced, but she couldn't identify them all just by looking.

“Let's head back to the motel,” Sam said. “We'll check the real-estate company's construction records and have Dean confirm what's going on with Ben.”

...

Dean stayed at the birthday party a while longer.

Ben behaved normally, and so did Lisa, though she occasionally gave Dean a strange look. She was starting to wonder whether the ex-boyfriend she hadn't seen in years was paying a little too much attention to her son.

Dean found no red clay on the window frames and saw no monstrous reflections in the mirrors.

The changelings hadn't struck yet. But it was getting late. Though Dean made an effort to stay until the end of the party, Lisa eventually asked him to leave, politely but firmly.

Before going, he reminded Lisa to check her doors and windows and not to leave Ben alone in his room. She found the warning baffling but chalked it up to a sudden outbreak of responsibility in an old flame she hadn't seen for years.

By the time Dean returned to the motel, Murphy and Sam had identified several areas where the real-estate company was building new houses.

“Five deaths so far.” Sam handed him the documents. “The real kids could all be in these unfinished houses.”

“Ben hasn't been replaced,” Dean said.

Murphy visibly relaxed. “Good. Then we can find the mother and take care of her before she gets to him.”

They spent the night comparing construction records with the locations of the red-clay deposits. Eventually, they narrowed the search to several houses on the north side of Morning Hill.

But things didn't turn out the way they'd hoped.