Season 1, episode 6: A Day In The Life

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After a couple of hours on the road, Ellen and John stopped for lunch.

"What's your plan for hunting this ghost?"  John asked.   He'd hunted a few times with Ellen's husband Bill, but never with Ellen herself.  She'd been busy running the roadhouse and caring for Jo, who'd been just a little girl at the time.   The thought inevitably flooded John's mind with guilt, but he kept his expression neutral.  Ellen hadn't brought up the past.  If she wasn't going to broach the subject of Bill's death, then he wouldn't either.  

"Don't have a plan,"  Ellen said.   

John couldn't help it;  his eyebrows arched in surprise.   

"I figure you can handle a vengeful spirit with one hand tied behind your back,"  Ellen went on.  "Meanwhile, I've got a hunt of my own to attend to.  This is where we part ways for a day or two."   

"I knew there was something off about this whole thing!"  John felt satisfaction.  Dead or not, his instincts were still sharp.  "The ghost was just an excuse to leave the house without anyone asking questions.  Tell  me what you're hunting, Ellen."  

"The ghost is real,"  Ellen assured him, "but you're right.  I didn't want to argue with Bobby.   I made a few calls and found out that Caleb skipped town again after Bobby tracked him down.  I don't believe for a second that Caleb's forgotten who he really is.  That boy's up to something, and I'm going to find out what."

After Ellen left, John went to the local library.  He researched for hours, but found nothing about any girls who'd died on prom night.  As the sun set, he headed to the new development on the outskirts of Petersburg where the ghost had attacked.

This is just half-assed.  A kid was killed here!  I'd expect the construction company to have hired a guard, at least, but everything is dark, John thought to himself as he made his way cautiously among houses in various stages of construction.  It soon became clear he was the only person patrolling the site.  

John felt a chill, though the night was mild and there wasn't a breeze.   It was the sort of sensation that would have the average person hurrying to get out of the dark and eerie silence of the construction site and back to somewhere brightly lit, preferably with a crowd of people.  John wasn't the average person, though.   He was a hunter.   He turned toward the shell of the house that gave off that icy sense of foreboding, and slipped inside.

He walked through the structure, but found nothing out of the ordinary...

...Until a barely-audible indrawn breath alerted him to two girls cowering in a corner.  The older one took a protective stance in front of the younger one.

"I'm not going to hurt you.  I'm here to help,"  John said.  "What are you doing in here?"  

"Nobody believed me that I saw the ghost that killed Eric Porter,"  the little girl piped up. 

John couldn't help but chuckle.  "Do you believe now?"  he asked, but just then the air around them grew cold.  This was not the time for banter.  

"Get out!  Go, go!"   

He turned as the girls ran, pulling out the sawed-off shotgun loaded with salt rounds.

"You ditched me!  On prom night!  How could you?" the ghost shrieked.

John didn't bother trying to answer.  He fired three rock salt blasts into the spirit.   She vanished with a wail.  He knew the salt wouldn't end her,  only slow her down.  He had to find those girls and get them to safety.

"Hey!  You can't go shooting up the place!  You're trespassing, buddy."  

"You're damn lucky I was here!"  John was immediately annoyed.  "What, were you sleeping on the job, 'buddy'?  A kid is dead, doesn't that mean anything to you?"   Who was this inept civilian to tell him he was trespassing?  Hell, if not for him trespassing, there might be two more dead kids in Petersburg.  

"A kid died of hypothermia,"  the watchman scoffed.  "There's no such thing as ghosts-"  It was almost comical, John thought, when the ghost chose that moment to appear behind him.  

"It was our senior prom and you ditched me!" she screamed her accusation.

"Prom?  What the hell?  I'm thirty-t-t-t-two, I'm not going t-t-t-to no prom."  The guard's teeth were chattering with the sudden cold.  John swore under his breath.  He couldn't shoot the prom queen without hitting the civilian, too.  He didn't think the guy would appreciate being blasted with rock salt at point-blank range.

John dropped the sawed-off in favor of a length of rebar.  Always have a plan B. 

His 'buddy' the watchman fell, shivering uncontrollably.  John noted that the prom queen's ghostly touch had left a haze of frost on the man and determined to keep the bitch at a good distance.

"Why didn't you take me to prom?"  she shrieked.  

John hit her with the rebar.

"Sorry, sweetheart.  I'm fifty-two,"  he quipped as the iron did its job and she blurred out.  "I'd be arrested for taking you anywhere."

"Come on, man, get up."  The guard seemed frozen, whether from the cold or from fear, John couldn't tell.   Probably some of both.  The ghost reappeared but he had the shotgun ready.

"You ditched me--"

"At prom.  Yeah, yeah.  Give it a rest."  He blasted her again.

It took more time than John would have liked, but he finally managed to herd the frightened civilians into the structure set up as the night watchman's office.

John laid down salt across the thresh hold and along every windowsill.  

"Salt'll keep the ghost out until I can figure out how to get rid of it for good.  And if any more kids come poking around, you have got to do your job and make 'em go away,"  he told the watchman sternly.  

"You want me to go out there?"  

"You want to be responsible for any more kids getting killed?  If she comes after you again, hit her with the rebar."  John said.  "Now I'm going to get these girls home safe."

"You saved our lives.  Thank you!"

"That's my job,"  John said gruffly.  "You,"  he told the guard, "re-draw that salt line across the doorway once we leave."

Something about the supposed prom queen wasn't adding up.  It was well known lore that ghosts made the temperature around them drop, but John had never heard of any ghost creating temperatures cold enough to freeze a person.  There had to be something he'd missed in his research.   First thing the next morning, he went back to the Petersburg public library.

John approached an employee.

"Excuse me, ma'am, is there any sort of local tradition of a school formal dance?  You know, like a prom, but in the wintertime?

"Well, as I recall the high school holds a dance right before winter break.  The Winter Ball.  Not quite as big a deal as prom, but it is a local tradition."    

Armed with that information, John finally found what he was looking for in a newspaper article from the eighties.   

A boy and girl coming home from the dance, John read.  Their car had gone off the road into a ditch.  The couple had been injured badly, but the girl had managed to climb out of the car and go for help.  Back in those days, John thought, the road would have been a back country lane.  There was no one around, and of course, the kids wouldn't have had cell phones. 

Those poor kids had died of shock and exposure.   Basically, they'd frozen to death, just like Eric Porter.  That explained the ghost's ability to create extreme cold.   And her boyfriend had ditched her.   Literally.  John snorted at his own macabre joke.  The ghost had haunted that stretch of road for more than thirty years.   No wonder it had turned vengeful, stuck on earth and unable to move on for all that time.  But it hadn't been any harm to anyone until the bustle of new construction had disturbed it.  "All right, Evelyn Fink,"  he murmured, memorizing the girl's name.  "Time to finally move on."

John spent the better part of the night digging up Evelyn's corpse so he could salt and burn her bones and put her spirit to rest.  He was feeling every minute of his fifty-two years as he walked away from her grave.

"Your timing is perfect,"  he said dryly when he saw Ellen.  

She chuckled.   "I have to agree with you on that.   Well, I'm parked over by the entrance.  I found where Caleb is staying.   We should be able to get to his place before he leaves for his job tomorrow morning."

"Ellen, I just put a vengeful spirit to rest.  I was hoping for a good night's sleep.   A shower, at least."

"I'm sorry.  You can sleep in the car on the way there."

"Ellen, has it occurred to you that this thing with Caleb taking on a new identity is voluntary?   Maybe he didn't forget.  Maybe he's turned himself into Blake of his own free will.   Did you ever think that might be it?"

"Oh, John Winchester, you know I'm countin' on it."

"Then why go after him, if he wants to be left alone?   Ellen?"

"I thought you wanted to get some shut-eye.   Come on,"  she called back over her shoulder, clearly dismissing his question.   John swore under his breath.   Then he picked up his shovel and followed her.

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