tanaquiljall

Title: The Golden Hour
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: General
Warnings: None
Words: 3840
Summary: Clues are thin on the ground when a clutch of unexplained deaths brings Dean and Sam to a small town in Colorado. But Dean still finds plenty to keep him occupied. Written for the

story_lottery prompt "a dandelion".
Author's Note: Thanks to

scribblesinink for the beta.

oOo
"Mystery deaths of Colo. family; boy of nine only survivor." Dean read the headline on Sam's screen over his shoulder as he dumped the bag of take-out on the motel table. "You really think that's our kind of thing?"

"Uh-huh. Says here the kid claims they all dropped dead at the exact same time."

"Hmm." Dean straightened up from putting the spare beer in the fridge. "I guess it does sounds like our kind of thing."

oOo
"The autopsy says all four died of heart attacks." The sheriff shook his head in disbelief as he walked them over from his office to the elementary school.

"Wait." Dean resisted the temptation to tug at his collar; God, he hated wearing the FBI suit. "You're saying mom and dad in their thirties, and two kids of seven and twelve: all had their tickers give out at the exact same moment?"

The sheriff gave a defensive shrug. "That's what the pathology boys are saying."

"And there was no sign of poison? Anything that might have caused a heart attack?" Sam frowned as the sheriff led them through the swing doors of the school and into the hallway.

Their footsteps echoed in the almost deserted school—it was after the end of classes—as they made their way past lockers and classroom doors. Again, the sheriff shook his head. "All the bloodwork came back clean." He stopped and gestured at a row of windows letting out from a classroom onto the hallway. "Zach's teacher, Miss Budding, is looking after him while his grandparents make arrangements...." His voice trailed off. "I'll go tell her you're here."

When he headed into the classroom, Dean impatiently stepped up to the window and tried to peer past the artwork tacked to the other side to get a glimpse of the boy. "You think maybe something frightened them to death?" He quirked his eyebrows at Sam.

"Could be. Or something has a way of stopping the hearts of everyone in the vicinity at the same time. Although," Sam frowned, "that doesn't explain why Zach survived."

The artwork on the windows was clustered too thickly for Dean to see more than a glimpse of a striped T-shirt and a dark head, quickly blotted out as the sheriff paused in front of the boy. Dean turned away in annoyance. "Maybe Zach is the something...," he suggested. Wouldn't be the first time they'd run into a child-shaped monster.

Sam nodded, but before they could speculate further, the sheriff opened the door and gestured for them to come in. Sam led the way, which meant he got to do the introductions.

"I'm Agent Hamill. This is Agent Ford."

Dean was too busy looking at Zach's teacher to properly take in what Sam was saying, or that Sam was showing his badge. Because, goddammit, teachers hadn't looked like that back when he'd been in school.

He'd've probably paid more attention in class if they had. If not to his schoolwork.

Miss Budding was tall, slim, blonde, in her mid twenties, with cropped hair that emphasized her delicate features. She was wearing a green dress that clung in what Dean considered to be all the right places. When he dragged his gaze upwards and met hers, she arched her eyebrows at him and gave him a look that made him feel like a very naughty schoolboy who needed to stay behind and see the teacher after class. Dean grinned at the prospect.

"Agent Ford!" Sam elbowed Dean in the ribs.

"Oh, yeah, right." Dean wiped the grin from his face, and groped for his badge. "Agent Ford. Yeah, right."

By the time he'd flashed his badge at her and put it away, Sam had turned around the chair at the desk in front of Zach's and folded himself into the seat—all legs and arms—to bring himself down to Zach's level. He gave Zach a cautious smile. "So, can you tell us what happened?"

Zach shrugged silently, but the yellow crayon he held—he'd been drawing when they came in, Dean realized—wobbled uncertainly.

Sam dipped his head and caught Zach's gaze. "You were having a picnic?"

Zach nodded. "Down near the river." He dropped his gaze and added in a whisper, "Dad was going to take us fishing...."

"Did the rest of your family eat anything you didn't? Do anything you didn't? Was there anyone else there?" Zach shook his head in answer to each question, his gaze fixed on his drawing.

Dean stepped up behind him and looked over his shoulder at the picture Zach had been working on. It showed four people—four bodies, Dean thought, with a shiver—lying around a picnic table, surrounded by long grass dotted with splodges of yellow that Dean guessed were supposed to be some kind of flower "Is that where you had the picnic?"

Zach nodded. He put down the yellow crayon, picked up an ordinary pencil, and began adding little circles of dots in between the yellow splodges—some other type of flower, Dean supposed.

"I thought it might help if Zach did some drawings...." Miss Budding's voice was soft and light, and she had an accent that Dean couldn't quite place: some part of New England, maybe.

Dean looked up at her. "Good, uh," he cleared his throat, "good idea, Miss Budding."

"Leanne, please." She smiled at him and held his gaze, and again there was a suggestion he was in need of some special after-hours tuition....

Sam coughed pointedly and Dean shook himself and looked back down at the drawing. Apart from the bodies, which could have simply been people lying around sunbathing, there was nothing about it that suggested anything out of the ordinary.

"Maybe we should go take a look." He gestured at the picture.

"Sure. I can take you—." The sheriff's offer was interrupted by the crackle of his radio.

"Sheriff, you're needed over at the Thompson's place." The dispatcher's voice sounded strained.

The sheriff grimaced. "I should—." He gestured at the radio.

"We can find our own way out there," Sam promised him.

oOo
The trip out to the picnic area proved to be a bust. Nothing showed up on the EMF detector; the video they took didn't reveal any ghostly traces when they played it back; and there were no signs of tracks other than those made by the sheriff's deputies and the coroner's staff as they dealt with the crime scene. All they saw was a grassy field, dotted with wildflowers and bordered on one side by trees, that sloped down to the river.

A gloomy silence settled over the Impala as they drove back into town, past comfortable suburban houses set back from the road by acres of neat, perfect lawns. The bodies, the crime scene and their only witness didn't seem to be telling them anything that would give them any place to start figuring this one out. Dean wasn't looking forward to poring over police reports or badgering Zach again in the hopes he'd give up something useful. But what else could they do?

They pulled into a space in the parking lot of the sherrif's office. Dean was about to kill the engine when he saw a deputy hurrying toward them.

"Agent Ford?" The deputy leaned down to talk to Dean through the rolled-down window. "The sheriff would like you to head over to the Thompson house. There's something you need to see...."

oOo
The something turned out to be another four bodies. This time, the victims were all kids: the Thompsons' two children and their neighbors' from along the street.

"They were playing happily together," Mrs Thompson pulled another tissue from the box and blew her nose. "I was doing chores, but I kept checking on them out the window, and they seemed just fine."

"Did you see what happened? Hear anything? Smell anything?" Dean looked from the kitchen window to where sheets covered the painfully small corpses, and estimated that it was thirty yards at most.

Mrs Thompson shook her head. "They just went quiet. Never a good sign, right?" She gave a laugh that turned into a sob and dabbed at her eyes. "Always means they're up to some kind of mischief.... When I looked out, they were just... lying in the grass. I thought maybe it was another game, or they'd got some dare about who could stay quietest longest. Except," she stopped and gulped, "except the way Josh was lying looked kinda uncomfortable. And then I realized none of them were moving...."

"And you didn't notice anyone, anything—an animal, maybe—in the yard?" Sam offered Mrs Thompson a fresh tissue.

"No. No, there was nothing. Just...." She looked across at the bodies and began crying harder again.

"Okay. Okay. Thank you." Sam patted her on the shoulder and nodded to the woman deputy looking after her. With a tilt of the head, he indicated Dean should step away with him. "We should check...."

Dean nodded; the scene was fresher, so maybe something would show up on EMF or video. But when they reconvened after he'd done his best to sweep the garden while not getting caught by any of the various deputies, medics and coroner's assistants milling around, and Sam had shot some more footage, there was nothing to report. The garden seemed completely undisturbed: not a leaf or blade of grass out of place. How the hell could this sonafabitch, whatever it was, kill four kids practically in front of their mom, and not leave a trace?

Watching the coroner's assistants loading the bodies onto gurneys, he muttered to Sam, "You think the number's significant? Four victims each time." He knew he was clutching at straws, but he was damned if he was gonna let whatever was responsible strike again before they figured it out.

Sam shrugged. "I know it's considered unlucky in China. It's almost the same word as death. And Pagans have the four seasons; Christianity has the four gospels; Judaism the tetragrammaton—."

"That's that four-letter thing for the name of God, right? That's too holy to be spoken?"

"Right." Sam frowned at the bodies being taken away. "But three and seven have much more significance in... our world." Looking up, he nudged Dean to warn him the sheriff was approaching.

"You boys got all you need for the moment?" When Sam nodded, the sheriff turned and gazed after the gurneys being wheeled away and sighed. "Haven't had this many deaths so quick since that really bad traffic accident ten years back. Sure are glad to have you guys around to help." He peered back at Sam. "Why did you say you got involved here again?"

"We're investigating interstate, uh, product tampering," Sam offered.

"Huh." The sheriff snorted. "Was beginning to think you were a real-life Mulder and Scully."

Sam let out an awkward laugh, but Dean grinned. "Hell, no." He tilted his head towards Sam. "He's not nearly cute enough to be Scully."

oOo
While the doctors at the tiny local medical center pulled an all night stint to get the autopsy reports out because, as the grim-face sheriff had said, "we need to figure this out and stop it now", Dean and Sam spent the rest of the evening and the next morning putting in phone calls to Bobby, reading through police reports of the very small number of previous cases of unexplained deaths that the town offered, and trawling the internet—although "mystery death" wasn't really much to google on.

It was Sam's turn to buy lunch, with strict instructions not to come back with tofu burgers or some other shit like that. He was gone a long time—so long that Dean was almost on the point of setting out to look for him, because his stomach was rumbling—but he came back with something even more interesting than lunch.

"I got the autopsy reports on those four kids yesterday," he said, slapping a stack of folders down on the motel table, along with the groceries.

"And?" Dean dived into the groceries and pulled out a bag of Cheetos.

"Same as before." Sam shrugged. "Another four deaths all apparently within a few minutes of each other. All heart attacks. And all kids under ten."

"And you know what?" Dean crossed over to the fridge and pulled out two beers. "I checked with the sheriff and two of those kids were in the same class as Zach." He handed a beer to Sam. "I think we should go interview Leanne Budding. See if she's noticed anything... unusual."

"Dean, she wasn't even there," Sam rolled his shoulders. "She was talking to us when those kids died."

"Still think we should talk to her." Dean took a swig of beer.

"And the fact she's hot has nothing to do with it?"

"Dude." Dean managed to sound deeply offended. "She's an important part of the case."

"And I guess you'd need to be the one to go talk to her alone, while I...?" Sam raised his eyebrows and waved his hands vaguely.

"...take another look at the autopsy reports to see if there's any other connection between them?" Dean finished for him smugly "Right." Seeing Sam's expression, he added with a shrug, "Look, you're good at what you're good at, and I'm good at what I'm good at. I'm just facing facts."

oOo
Dean found Leanne supervising recess. The kids were holding hands in a circle, playing some kind of game, as Dean reintroduced himself. Although Leanne gave him a look that suggested she hadn't forgotten him.

"So. Two of the kids who died yesterday were in your class?" Dean glanced again at the circle of children, who were chanting some kind of rhyme as they skipped around. He caught what sounded like full of posies.

Leanne nodded and sighed. "Yes. It's...terrible."

Dean noticed again that accent he couldn't quite place. "You're not from around here?"

Atishoo, atishoo....

"England." She smiled at him. "The one across the Atlantic, not the New variety. I came here on a cultural exchange; there's a teacher from here taking my class back home. I just hope...." She looked back at the circle of children.

We all fall down!

To Dean's horror, all the children fell to the ground at the same time. He took a step forward, but managed to swallow his cry of horror when he saw the children were giggling and beginning to get back to their feet.

"That's kinda sick!" he muttered to himself, but apparently loud enough for Leanne to catch it.

"Maybe." She put a hand on his arm, drawing his attention back to her. "Or maybe it's their way of coping." She shrugged. "I've been teaching them some of the playground games we have in England. That was one of them."

A bell rang, and the children began to stream back towards the school building. Leanne gave him an apologetic smile. "I have to go back to class."

Dean cleared his throat. "Maybe we could talk when you get out of school?"

Leanne tipped her head regretfully. "I have a meeting. We have to discuss...." She waved a hand, and he guessed she meant the current crop of deaths. "But maybe afterwards. There's a place on Main Street called Casey's. Meet you there?"

oOo
Dean spent a full minute wondering if he should go back and help Sam review the autopsy reports. Nah. Sam probably had some kind of system worked out that Dean would only mess up and get yelled at for. Best leave him alone.

Instead, he spent two hours or so working his way down the stores on Main Street, trying to find any kind of evidence of anything strange going on. Apart from the recent deaths, the town seemed entirely unremarkable. A little Stepford, maybe: everybody was inordinately proud of the place, and how nice it was, and how everyone kept their yards real nice. Dean had a horrible feeling that the sheriff spent most of his time issuing citations for lawns being half an inch over regulation length or for failing to deadhead the flowers.

But Casey's turned out to be a homey enough bar, where Dean could get a decent burger and a cold beer while he waited for Leanne.

He'd just finished both when she arrived. He ordered another beer, while she had a Manhattan.

"Another part of the cultural exchange," she explained, with a chuckle. "Clare—she owns the place—said I couldn't leave the States without trying a few Manhattans and Cosmopolitans à la Sex and the City. 'Course," she lowered her lashes and looked up at Dean from under them, "I never expected to meet a cute FBI guy like you see on TV...."

"Well," Dean leaned forward and smiled back at her. "Here in America, we aim to please."

The last word was obscured by the opening notes of Smoke on the Water as Dean's phone began to ring. He ignored it, continuing to gaze into Leanne's eyes.

"Aren't you going to answer that?" Leanne sat back and, picking up the cocktail stick from her Manhattan, sucked the cherry off the end.

Dean glanced at the phone's display and grimaced. "Nah. It's just going to be my annoying partner being annoying."

Leanne ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. "But it might be important," she pointed out with an innocent air.

With a sigh of frustration, Dean flicked open his phone "Sam. This had better be good."

"I think I've found it." Sam's voice came tinnily through the phone's speaker into his ear. "All the victims had seeds of Taraxacum officinale on their hair or clothing."

"Tar—what?"

"Common dandelion. Meet me back at the motel and I'll fill you in."

oOo
"So you're saying—" Dean paced up and down the room "—that kids in England blow the seeds off dandelion clocks and use the number of puffs it takes to tell the time." He gave Sam a disgusted look. "Couldn't they just, you know, use a watch?"

"It's just an old custom." Sam had adopted the overly patient tone that Dean found particularly irritating. "But the bit that's not so well known is that there was a case in 1833 in a village in..." He fiddled with something on his laptop for a moment. "...Gloucestershire, where there were a bunch of unexplained deaths just like the ones here. Folklore says it was an angry anthousa who—."

"A what?" Dean stopped pacing and fixed Sam with a look.

Sam rolled his eyes. "A spirit associated with a particular kind of flower." He gestured toward the laptop. "Anyway, the legend says she was angry because the local lord of the manor had acquired this new-fangled invention called a lawnmower and used it to create this perfect lawn, without a single dandelion in sight."

"Kinda like round here?" Dean jerked his head toward the window. "You know these people have an annual Best Kept Lawn competition?"

"Yup. Which is why I think our dandelion spirit has pitched up here. Anyway," Sam tapped the laptop screen, "the legend says that one of the guy's kids found a dandelion clock in the churchyard one Sunday afternoon after the service, blew the seeds off, and half the people in the vicinity dropped dead thirty minutes later—just as the church clock was striking the exact same hour as the dandelion clock gave."

"Which would fit what happened here." Dean gestured at the autopsy reports spread across the table.

"Uh-huh. The question is, how do we find the spirit."

"We—." Dean smacked himself in the forehead. "Oh shit!"

"What?"

"Leanne. She's from England, and she's been teaching her class some of the stuff kids in England do. And I bet this shit about dandelions and clocks is part of it."

"You think our spirit hitched a ride?"

Dean nodded. "So, how do we get rid of this bitch?"

oOo
Finding the necessary combination of wildflowers for the ritual wasn't easy: the sun had set by the time they figured things out, and Dean flat out refused to go stumbling around in the dark looking for stuff they were going to have trouble finding in broad daylight. In any case, he had a feeling some of the things they needed just didn't grow over here; Bobby confirmed it when he called to check, and they spent another two hours figuring out which New World plants they could substitute for Old World ones. And then, after the two of them got up at dawn, they had to drive a ways out of town just to reach a field with the right kind of weeds.

But it did the trick: They pitched up at Leanne's place just as she was about to leave the house for work, and Dean held on to her while Sam did the stuff with the Latin and the burning. The spirit cursed and gibbered at them, contorting Leanne's pretty features, before it finally left her, with an anguished scream, and went back to whatever particular demon hell those kind of nature spirits went to.

As soon as it was gone, Leanne passed out. Dean carefully lowered her to the floor, cradling her while he waited for her to wake up. Sam busied himself packing away the paraphernalia they'd brought with them.

Sam was outside, stowing their things away in the car, when Leanne's eyelids finally fluttered open.

"Hey." Dean smoothed a lock of hair back from her forehead.

"What—?" The confusion cleared from her face. "Oh. She's gone?"

"Yeah. For good." Dean helped her stand up. "You were awake in there?"

She nodded. "Yes. She was—. Oh my." Leanne swallowed. "The things she did.... Those poor people...."

"Well, she's not going to do them any more." Dean gave her a reassuring grin, his hands still on her shoulders to steady her.

"No. No, she's not." Leanne nodded fiercely. "Thank you. Thank you so much. I don't know how I'll ever be able to thank you enough."

"Well," Dean waggled his eyebrows, "I can think—." The words died on his lips as Leanne went bright red.

"Oh my." She covered her face with her hands. "The things she made me do. My hair. These clothes. The way I acted...."

With a sigh, Dean let go of her and took a step back. "You just take care, okay?" Not stopping for an answer, he headed outside to where Sam was waiting for him.

oOo
The hunt hadn't been entirely without its... compensations, though, Dean reflected, as they headed out of town a few hours later. Ignoring Sam's exasperated eyerolling, he'd convinced the sheriff that the deaths were down to contamination of a particular batch of snackfoods by something that wouldn't show up in the bloodwork. Turning onto the interstate, he glanced in the rear mirror and smirked: the backseat of the Impala was stacked with boxes of impounded Cheetos.