Chapter 20
It took a full minute until the ringing in his ears stopped, thankfully not causing them to bleed this time.
Looking up from his crouched position in front of the couch showed the others were in a similar state. He winced when he saw Sam’s smoking laptop.
“What the hell was that?” Dean voiced what they were all thinking.
“That’s what caused the car crash.” He informed them, then he added, “The new one.”
At his dad’s look, he gave his theory as he pulled himself back onto the couch, “I think it’s what brought me back. It feels… like the bullet felt. Like the handprint feels, like my soul is being bleached.”
He saw his dad’s hand move half an inch to the bullet wound in his leg before he stopped the unconscious action.
“It started smoking the mechanics of the car with just its voice. It made my ears bleed. It pulled me from Hell. What kind of monster can do that?”
“I will find out.” John spoke as if he was making a vow.
“How?” Sam asked.
Everyone turned their attention to Sam.
“Look, we have nothing. We got a pile of questions and no shovel. We need help.”
“I know a psychic. A few hours from here. Something this big, maybe she's heard the other side talking.” Bobby offered.
“Hell yeah, it's worth a shot.” Dean said.
Bobby stood, “I'll be right back.”
Harry watched him as he walked out.
It felt weird to see someone you thought you would never be able to again.
“Harry?”
Harry turned his attention back to Sam, suddenly getting the feeling that both of his whole family had one of their silent eye-based conversations without him.
“What?”
“What was it like?”
Harry knew what Sam was asking about.
“It was Hell, Sam.”
-----
Bobby knocked on the door in front of them, and moments later a woman opened the door. She stood just a bit taller then Dean, likely the same height as his dad, brown hair in waves down to her shoulders, she wore a tank top with a couple necklaces around her neck, each with one or two charms hanging from it.
She grinned.
“Bobby!”
The woman pulled Bobby into a hug that briefly lifted him a few inched off the ground.
“You're a sight for sore eyes.” It was about as close to as ‘I missed you too’ Bobby would ever get.
Pamela steps away from the hug, turning her eyes to Dean and slowly tracing his figure.
“So, these the boys?”
Bobby turned to them, side by side with the woman the familiarity they had with each other was obvious and said, “This is Pamela Barnes, best damn psychic in the state.”
“Hey~” Dean said in a tone that spoke of something more.
As Sam was behind him, and somehow succeeding in hiding himself despite his ridiculous size, her eyes skipped over him and straight to Harry.
“Hello ma’am.”
“Aw he’s adorable!”
He shot a bewildered look at Bobby; If she thought his torn-up face was cute, then he was a little concerned for her mental state.
Bobby just gave him a small smile.
She turned around and walked back inside, calling behind as she did so, “Come on in.”
They moved into the, surprisingly, normal looking living room, decent sized tv and all.
“So, you hear anything?” Bobby questioned.
“Well, I Ouija'd my way through a dozen spirits. No one seems to know who broke the kid out, or why.”
“So what's next?”
“A séance, I think. See if we can see who did the deed.”
“You're not gonna... summon the damn thing here.”
“No. I just want to get a sneak peek at it. Like a crystal ball without the crystal.”
She turned to him, looking as if she was crouching down to get on his level without actually doing the action; it was patronizing.
“That okay with you kid?”
“Yes. I need to know what it is.”
-----
The room she led them in reminded him strongly of the divination classroom, sans Prof. Trelawney’s tea obsession. Walls lined with tapestries, floor covered in a half dozen different rugs, knickknacks from glittering crystals to bleached bone filling every available surface apart from the center table.
“That’s the door people use when their buying,” she nodded to a dark door he hadn’t noticed before, “Can’t have ‘em thinking that I’m both a psychic and someone that can appreciate good television.”
She turned to Dean and made eyes that he vaguely recognized Lavender Brown making at Krum every time he so much as walked by, though it looked much more natural on Pamela then it did on a teenage girl.
“Just set yourselves around the table, kay?” The statement should have been towards all of them, but the psychic kept her eyes locked on Dean’s. “I got to grab a lighter, so get comfortable~”
Harry cringed.
They had to squeeze themselves around the small table to fit, leaving an empty place for when the psychic returned. Harry almost wanted to take it, if only to stop the crawling under his skin he felt from being squished between his brothers.
It had taken everything in him not to flinch when Dean had thrown his arms around him, the body contact taking him back to the fleshy cocoon Alastair had experimented with. The moist material had squeezed around him, forcing the air out of his lungs and not letting it back in. He had spent days there, trapped, fleshy membrane covering his attempts to suck air into his lungs. He could still taste it as he thought of it, sweat mixed with the faint taste of iron.
As he sat in that claustrophobic folding chair, surrounded by his brothers he forced his breathing to stay consistent, telling himself that as long as he was breathing, he couldn’t be back there. He had to look calm.
His family had enough to deal with without adding his issues to the pile.
He realized he had been too caught up in his head to be listening, a stupid mistake, when he heard Dean say, “Who am I to refuse if she’s offering?”
The rattling sound of the lines of beads that Pamala used instead of a door announced her return, “Sorry for the wait, got a little distracted.”
She eyed Dean before going about the room lighting candles and sticks of incense. There must have been a method to her madness because she carefully considered each item before either leaving or lighting it.
Harry felt an energy slowly rise with each one, it almost felt like magic- his magic. Was this what a psychic- a real psychic, not like Trelawney’s predictions that were always just as likely to be true as false, or Sam’s powers that were forced onto him through demon blood- felt like?
It felt like power.
Unconsciously, he searched his magical core for his own familiar power and found it barren. He felt a pang of grief for his own magic, before he quickly pushed it away from him.
Self-pity didn’t help anyone.
While he knew Dean couldn’t consciously feel the thickening power, seemed to nonetheless sense it, seeming to switch from his flirty, one-night-stand persona that was only half real to a more serious one.
Pamela turned off the lights leaving the candles as the only source of light before taking her seat.
“I need to touch something our mystery monster touched.”
She smiled at him, probably to ease any tension he was feeling, like she needed to make sure he was okay just because he looked young. He hated how it worked.
He stuck his hand out obligingly and made sure not to show how patronized he felt.
She stared for a moment at the mark the shape of hand on his, as if he had desperately gripped someone and they in turn did the same to him, before sliding her hand into his. Her slightly smaller hand failed to cover all the bleached white letting some of it shine through.
She breathed in, looked at him one last time before shutting her eyes and beginning to chant.
“I invoke, conjure, and command you, appear unto me before this circle.”
A small wind began, so small he would have missed it if not for the strands of his hair shifting at the top of his vision.
“I invoke, conjure, and command you, appear unto me before this circle.”
The wind grew stronger, the tablecloth beginning to ripple slightly.
“I invoke, conjure, and command you, appear unto me before this circle.”
He could feel something then, almost like a faint memory. It was energy, one that felt so alien to any witch or wizard had, like a cleansing flame.
“I invoke, conjure, and command... Castiel? No. Sorry, Castiel, I don't scare easy.”
“Castiel?” Dean asked.
“Its name. It's whispering to me, warning me to turn back.”
Her eyes squinted in concentration, the wind rising and making the beads behind them rattle, the candle’s flame rose in intensity, color shifting through a light blue to a bright white and exaggerating the shadows on the psychic’s face.
Harry felt something growing in his gut, a feeling that they should stop.
“I conjure and command you, show me your face.”
That they were going too far.
“I conjure and command you, show me your face.”
He pushed the feeling away from him.
“I conjure and command you, show me your face.”
He needed to know.
“I conjure and command you, show me your face.”
“Maybe we should stop.” Bobby suggested.
“I almost got it.”
He needed to know.
“I command you, show me your face!”
The grip on his hand tightened.
“Show me your face now!”
He needed to know.
Pamala screamed as the candle flames erupted, bright white coating the room. Her eyes flew open, staring directly at him. Flames burst from her eye sockets, bubbling and melting the flesh around them.
He didn’t notice when she collapsed.
He didn’t notice when bobby held her, cradling her head in his hands as he started crying.
He didn’t notice when Sam called 911.
He didn’t notice when she screamed about not being able to see.
He didn’t notice when paramedics rushed in, and took Pamella away in a stretcher.
A sentence kept repeating in his head, over and over again.
‘I made her look.’