Season 1, Episode 3: Cat's in the Cradle and the Silver Spoon

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Sometime in the hours before dawn, a new suite of rooms added itself on to the A-frame at the end of Wanek Way.  Well, it was new in the sense that it hadn't existed the night before, but the worn wooden flooring, dated wallpaper, and jalousie windows were hardly new construction.  Anyone not in on the joke would never know the rooms hadn't been a part of the house all along.  

The arrival was almost silent, marked only by the typical faint creaks and sighs of an aging house settling more comfortably on its foundations.  The whole quiet, gentle process went unnoticed by the slumbering residents of the house...Even the newest occupant sleeping in the bedroom itself.

John Winchester woke with a gasp and pushed himself upright, on the verge of panic.  Where was he?  What was he?  Not alive, he reminded himself as the initial shock wore off.   Even if he felt very much alive, his heart pounding.   Head pounding, too.  He pushed the dingy covers aside, noting that he hadn't bothered to take off his boots before falling asleep.   Waking up fully clothed, disoriented, and in need of a little hair of the dog actually gave John some grounding in reality.  A hangover, at least, was normal. 

He reached for the nightstand drawer,  feeling vulnerable without a weapon. 

John expected to find the pistol lying on top of that old motel standby, a Gideon's Bible.

What he didn't expect to see was the Colt, that damned near mythical weapon that could kill just about   anything.  The weapon on which he'd pinned his hopes of revenge.

John checked to see if it was loaded.  It was.  Samuel Colt's gun, back in his possession, and fully loaded, too!   But how?  That was the question.  He'd given up the Colt, along with his soul, in exchange for his oldest son Dean's life.   

John used his waistband as a makeshift holster, concealing the Colt at the small of his back under his shirt.  He made up the bed, an absurd task under the circumstances, but one so ingrained his hands could perform it without input from his brain.   He'd drilled the importance of neatness into his boys' brains, too, or at least he'd tried.   Sam had made it a habit.  Dean, well, Dean maintained his weapons in perfect condition.  His side of a motel room, not so much.

The reminiscing was a delaying tactic.   Impatient with himself, John pushed open the bedroom door and scanned the living area of the suite.  Time to find out what was going on.  

The little soccer trophy was not part of the décor.  That was Sammy's, from when he was just a kid.

And there on a chair, wasn't that Dean's first sawed-off shotgun?  John remembered how proud Dean had been.  Kid had cut down the barrel all by himself.  What were these mementos of his boys' childhoods doing here?  John looked around, making note of the bowling theme.   He'd dismissed it as unimportant, just another tacky themed motel room, another hunt, the details blurring into obscurity.   But he recognized this room.   This hunt had been significant for some reason.

John sat abruptly, cradling the sawed-off.  Fitchburg, Wisconsin.  He'd left Dean and Sam at this motel while he hunted a monster nearby.   No, not a run of the mill monster, a shtriga.  A creature that preyed on children...Kids like little Sammy.

John had counted on Dean, at eleven years old, to take care of his little brother.  That lapse of judgement had nearly cost him Sammy.   Well, at least that solved one mystery.   No matter that this looked nothing like hell.  Demons knew how to torture the mind as well as the body, John thought grimly.   They'd dredged up this place, these memories, to torture him.  He was back in the pit.

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