A/N I was generously purchased by Calcium77 for the charity fiction auction held by K Hanna Korossy, which some of you have probably heard of through the grapevine and whatnot. Anyway, this is the story she asked for. Thanks for your generosity and for digging into your purse for such a worthy cause.

Huge thanks also go out to Leigh for the awesome beta job - and for such a quick beta job considering the length of the piece - and to Beth for holding my hand through most of this process.

Phantom Hitchhiker: Chapter One

The steady fall of rain echoed against the metal frame of the car in a constant drum beat. John Winchester latched on to it like a rope tossed to a drowning man and tried to pull himself out of the murky waters of unconsciousness.

His brain felt detached, his body borrowed. Nothing seemed willing to comply with his requests to move. Even when he managed a tremulous twitch, John wished he hadn’t. Violent pain raced up his left side, almost tipping out the contents of his stomach and it took a couple of seconds for the bile to retreat down his raw throat.

Eyes still tightly shut, John ran his tongue over his cracked lips and tried to remember what the hell had happened. For a moment he was sure he had been on a bender the night before; the headache kneading behind his eyes certainly felt alcohol induced, but he didn’t remember drinking. In fact, he didn’t remember anything. He had also done enough drinking in his lifetime to know that while killer migraines were a given, sharp agonising pain to his side was something else.

Slowly, and carefully, John forced open one eye, managing nothing more than a half-mast slit. The other followed a moment later. Stabbing pain lanced through his head and dizziness swept over him in heavy squalls but he somehow managed to swallow down the nausea.. He shuttered his eyes and waited for everything to come back into focus, unable to make out anything through the haze, and the darkness, that had completely consumed his vision.

Fragmented white light in front of him illuminated a thick, gnarled tree trunk through the oppressive night. Something about that didn’t seem right either, but John was too disoriented to make sense of it.

He closed his eyes again and took shallow breaths through his mouth. Every inhalation made his chest throb violently and made his vision wobble.

“D-dad?” The voice sounded distant and hollow, like he was listening to it underwater. John couldn’t push through the muddy air enveloping him to answer. He wanted to sleep, wanted to give in to the pull of unconsciousness.

“Dad? Answer… me, please!” Frightened and panicked… It was enough to push the looming fog out of John’s head and attempt to answer.

Groaning, John slowly turned his head towards the voice. His neck howled in protest of the movement, his surroundings fracturing briefly before sharpening once again.

Unable to fully turn his head, John slid his gaze as far right as he could.

“Dean?” His voice cracked and hitched, his throat felt scratched as it attempted to push it through unfeeling lips.

The sigh of relief was audible even over the ringing in John’s ears.

“Thank God,” Dean murmured. “I thought you were-“ A shaky breath was the final response.

Yeah, you and me both, kid, John thought, a little panicked himself by the gravity of the situation.

John winced as he let his gaze wander sluggishly around the space. He was in the car, in the Impala - at least what was left of the damn car. Twisted metal was pushed inside the vehicle itself, the hood practically part of the dashboard now. The entire right side of the car was pushed so close to John’s side that he wasn’t sure how he hadn’t been cut in half. His seatbelt was pressed against his chest, his ribs practically creaking under the crushing weight and his legs were numb.

The car itself was tilted on a forty-five degree angle, sandwiched against a stand of trees, the driver’s side higher than the passenger’s. John winced, letting half-slitted eyes shift around the crumpled car.

“You hurt?” John asked quietly, his eyes shutting again as he swallowed hard.

“Fine,” Dean murmured, sounding anything but fine. There was a slur in the teenager’s voice that John hadn’t noticed before and for once he wished Dean wouldn’t play the tough guy routine so well.

“Dean! Are you hurt?” John repeated, injecting a little more bite into his tone. This wasn’t the time for lies. John needed to assess the situation and figure out how the hell to deal with it.

“My…my back…” Dean admitted.

“Any blood?” John asked clinically even as he was attempting to move his own legs. It took him a moment but he managed to wiggle his feet. It was enough. At least his spine was still in one piece. Everything else he could deal with.

There was a rustling of material. “Don’t think so,” Dean said finally, a muted whimper escaping his lips. Evidently the kid was lying through his ass.

“Dean?” He tried for a tone that brooked no argument.

Dean sighed. “No blood. Just bruised I think.”

John needed to get out of the car and assess his son, but his thoughts didn’t seem to want to come together to tell him how to do that.

“Your head… it’s bleeding, Dad.”

John blinked at the statement, his fingers instantly moving towards his head to test the truth of his son’s words.

“What?” He felt blood and grimaced.

“You must have hit the wheel when we crashed.”

Yeah, that made sense. It explained the headache from hell as well, but not the sharp pain in his abdomen. With gentle fingers he’d probed his side and felt warm stickiness there too. He pulled a face. He’d deal with that later, for now the main priority was getting out of the twisted wreckage.

“I’m ok, son,” John assured him even as he wiped his bloodied hand on his jeans. No need to worry the boy, not yet anyway. Not until he could see what he was dealing with himself.

“Can you see Sammy from there?” Dean asked in a small pained voice. “I’ve tried callin’ him but he’s not answering.”

Sam…Sam had been with them on this trip?

He couldn’t recall the details before the crash, couldn’t visualise if his youngest son had been with them or not. His brain kept flashing images of motel rooms and he couldn’t discern between them and reality. Dean’s insistence was confirmation enough.

John couldn’t twist to look in the backseat at all, in fact trying to move period made white spots spill across his eyes and made his stomach roll. He shuttered his lids and took a couple of convulsive gulps before he was able to speak.

“S-Sammy?” That sounded pathetic, but John didn’t care. He needed to know if his youngest was ok.

For a moment everything was deathly silent apart from the incessant ringing in John’s ears and his own laboured breathing.

“Sam?” John tried again, barking the command, hoping beyond hope that his son would respond to the order. His heart sputtered over several beats when he still got no response.

Carefully, tilting his neck backward, he managed to slide his gaze towards the rear-view mirror. John’s lips parted as he took in the empty backseat. The door was ajar but Sam was nowhere to be seen. Where the hell was his youngest? Bile crept up his throat. No…no…no… Dean had made a mistake… he must have. Sam couldn’t have been with them, and yet there was evidence to suggest otherwise. Sam’s rucksack was tossed haphazardly on the seat, the plaid, threadbare blanket pooled on the floor, a small pile of books littering the space. The absent teen made John’s stomach clench impossibly tight.

“Dad?” Dean spoke, his voice hitching. “Can you see him? Tell me he’s ok.” The tone of his eldest son’s voice made John ache. All pretence of being strong was gone. Dean was crumbling, and it wasn’t because of the crash.

John’s mind was racing as he tried to remember everything that had led up to the accident. What the hell had happened? They had been heading for… Sioux Falls… Sam was… Sam had been lying in the back… Sam had been in the backseat prior to crashing, so where the hell was he now? John took a deep breath, trying to curb the icy panic that was racing through his veins.

“Is he ok, Dad?” Dean demanded, desperation and fear undisguised in his tone.

John swallowed hard, his own stomach turning inside out. He felt numb, hollow… He was starting to remember what had happened, was starting to piece it together and John didn’t like the way the pieces were coming together. He was filled with the burning desire to pound something – or someone.

“Dean… before the crash… what do you remember?”

He could feel Dean’s incredulous stare burning into him, but ignored it, ignored everything. He had to know what Dean knew. He had to know if what he was remembering was correct or if it was some strange side-effect of what was without a doubt a concussion.

“Dad? Is Sam-“

“Please, son, just… just answer me.”

There was a long pause and, for a moment, John thought Dean wasn’t going to answer.

“I… I don’t know,” Dean stumbled over the words, uncertainty in his tone. John knew he sounded scared. He could only imagine how that was making his eldest feel. John, who wasn’t scared of anything, who fought monsters on a daily basis and survived, was scared. Worst case scenarios had to be racing through Dean’s head, but John didn’t have time to reassure him. He had to know what the hell they were dealing with here.

“Think, Dean,” John pressed, momentarily shutting his eyes. He was so goddamn tired. “This is important.”

“There was someone in the road…”

“You saw them?” John asked, his heart sinking; he’d seen the figure too. He’d hoped it had been a dream, a memory from some other time dredged up because of the crash, but Dean’s words confirmed that was not the case.

“No… I didn’t, but Sammy… he shouted…” Dean hesitated for a brief moment. John could practically feel the fear rolling off the kid in waves and wished he could say or do something to curtail it. “Dad what is it? Is Sam-? Please, just tell me.”

“Your brother… He’s… he’s gone, Dean,” John said numbly.

“What the hell do you mean he’s gone?” The emotion was so raw that John’s throat constricted as he attempted to hold his own feelings at bay.

“I mean he’s not there, Dean. He’s vanished…Sam’s… gone, and he’s in real trouble.”

Earlier

The storm was building momentum, the rain hammering violently against the windshield, tear trails smearing down the glass. The road itself had disappeared into the darkness, lost in the murky charcoal horizon, a black ribbon winding through the countryside. Harsh white beams of light illuminated the gnarled trees that lined either side of the winding asphalt, and farmhouses were sporadically nestled amongst the rolling hills. The rest of civilization had been left firmly behind.

Sam Winchester slid a side-long glance at his sandy-haired brother in the front seat before returning his gaze to the road. Dean was carefully tracing paths across a large road map that practically engulfed the passenger side, his green eyes split between the folded-out paper and the road itself.

“We’re lost, aren’t we?” Sam asked finally, unable to hold his tongue any longer.

Dean twisted to glance over his shoulder, his expression offended. “We’re not lost,” Dean assured him.

“Dean, we’ve been driving down this stinking road for the last hour and haven’t seen any sign of this town you said we’d be hitting twenty-minutes ago.”

“Yeah,” Dean muttered sourly, “well we still ain’t lost… I just don’t know exactly where we are right now.”

“Dude, that’s kinda the definition of lost,” Sam said with a snort, shifting his gaze out of the side window at the dark shapes whizzing past the car.

Nightfall had crept in, shrouding the fields in murky darkness that even the Impala was battling to push through. Sam pressed his fingers into his gritty eyes, barely managing to stifle the yawn that sat on his lips. He was tired. Sam wanted nothing more than to crawl into bed and sleep for the next twelve hours but they hadn’t seen a house, let alone a motel, for miles. Sighing deeply, Sam let his head drop back against the bench seat and closed his eyes.

“This road must be on the damn map somewhere,” Sam heard John say in a low throaty growl. Even with his eyes closed, Sam could tell his father was quickly reaching the end of his tether. Six hours on the road had pushed all three of them to the proverbial edge, but John was about ready to leap onto the rocks below.

“I’m telling you, Dad,” Dean said, “this road we’re on – it don’t exist on this map or the other two maps we’ve got in the glove box.”

Sam opened his eyes in time to see the hint of frustration splay across his father’s face. John sighed deeply, muttering something about backwater towns under his breath.

“There’s got to be a way to get back to the Interstate,” John snapped irritably.

“You seen a frigging turn off in the last hour?” Dean demanded, his attention diverted between the road and trying to figure out where the hell they were on the map. “Just keep going,” Dean said wearily, “we’re bound to reach a road marker at some point.”

Sam nestled back into the seat, pulling the threadbare blanket over his legs. He was exhausted and it was taking more effort than he wanted to expend to keep his eyes open. However, every time he closed his eyes or moved, a sharp pain shot through his wrist. It was making sleeping difficult.

“How’s your arm?” Dean asked. Sam frowned. Sometimes he wondered if his brother could actually crawl into his head and pick his thoughts out.

“It’s fine, Dean,” Sam assured him with a frustrated sigh, picking absently at the tube bandaging covering his left arm and hand. “Stop fussing.”

Sam wasn’t exactly a stranger to injuries – he’d had his fair share over the years and patched up more than he could remember on his father and brother – however, for some reason, the sprain he had suffered yesterday was causing a disturbing amount of apprehension from his family. Sam didn’t really understand it. He suspected a lot of it was because of how he hurt it. From the age of nine, Sam had been taught how to protect himself from the supernatural. He hadn’t expected danger to come from such a normal source. He’d seen the car a fraction of a second too late. It was ironic as hell that his father spent all his time protecting him from monsters and yet it was something as mundane as a car that had put Sam in a hospital waiting room this time. The incident had definitely pushed Dean and his father into some kind of panic mode and Sam felt smothered by their apprehension.

“You got smushed by a car, Sam,” Dean said with a grunt. “How exactly is anything about that fine?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “It barely touched me.”

Which was true enough. Sam had come away with nothing more than a sprained wrist and a smattering of cuts and bruises to his legs and face. It had been enough to knock him off his feet but it could have been a whole lot worse, and Sam had the feeling his father and brother were more shaken by this than by any other injury he’d received to date. He figured it was definitely something to do with the fact the accident had been so… normal. John had never prepared for the normal stuff. Monsters, demons and spirits? Sure. Something as humdrum as being hit by a car? Nope.

“Besides,” Sam continued sleepily, burrowing deeper under the blanket, “I thought you said the girls dig scars.”

“Scars, yes. Eating all your meals through a straw… not so much,” Dean said.

Sam snorted. “Dude, you never use silverware.”

“Who are you, Martha Stewart?” Dean demanded with a shake of his head. “Jesus, Sammy, didn’t you pay attention when you learned to cross the road? Left, right, then look left again. Avoiding big-assed SUVs is also a good tip, dude,” Dean teased, but Sam didn’t fail to notice it lacked the usual bravado. In fact, it seemed a little half-hearted.

“That’s enough, Dean.” John finally intervened. Dean’s humour – however forced - evidently wasn’t doing anything for John’s frayed nerves. He wasn’t in the mood to joke about any of this shit.

Silence fell over the car, the rain the only sound, the wipers flicking frantically back and forth to clear the water from the windshield. Sam sighed and let out a long breath, his gaze wandering to look out the window.

Sam barely glimpsed the figure illuminated in the headlights. A watery apparition in the centre of the road, shrouded in dark clothing, arm outstretched, thumb held out. The Impala was hurtling towards the person, John seemingly unaware that there was anyone in the road. Sam’s heart jumped into his mouth, his stomach filled with ice as time slowed to a crawl. They were going to hit the hitchhiker. Sam’s mouth went suddenly dry.

“Dad! Look out!” Sam managed to scream finally, but his voice was lost in the deafening screech of the brakes and John’s cursing.

The Impala didn’t come to a stop when the brakes were applied, however. The rainfall had created a layer of water across the road’s surface. The wheels locked and the car skidded across the watery road surface, the back end fishtailing as John struggled to bring the vehicle under control. The tires squealed agonisingly as the brakes locked and the car slid sideways with the momentum of a runaway train.

The shallow ditch at the side of the road should have slowed down the vehicle, should have allowed the car to find traction, but it didn’t. Mud and dirt were churned up as the car dove over the edge of road and hurtled down a steep incline, crashing through the undergrowth. John struggled with the wheel, struggled to bring the speeding car under control. It was too late for that. A row of fat tree trunks loomed closer. Sam barely had time to take a breath, let alone shout a second warning as it impacted with a deafening crunch of metal and wood.

Sam’s entire body jolted, his head hitting the side window with sickening force. His vision fractured suddenly and then everything went black.

Sam’s first waking thoughts were far from pleasant. The scene when he opened his eyes was like a nightmare. Steam was hissing from underneath the crumpled hood, the engine spluttering like a smoker with a forty-a-day-habit. Cracking his eyes open fully, he was suddenly hit with a wave of dizziness that nearly dragged him back into the muddy waters of unconsciousness. Clawing his way back was like swimming in sand, and it was a few minutes before Sam even dared to open his eyes again.

His father was slumped in the driver’s seat, his head tipped back, blood trailing down the side of his face. He was deathly still; his normally commanding eyes hidden behind heavy lids.

“D-dad?” Sam’s voice cracked, his throat raw.

He coughed weakly, the muscles in his chest tightening like elastic bands. His sprained wrist was throbbing. Cradling the tender limb to his torso, Sam fumbled with his free hand for the blanket, trying to extricate himself from the material, his attention split between his task and his father. Sam noticed the slight rise and fall of John’s chest and let out a relieved exhalation. At least he was breathing.

His brother was curled against the passenger side door, his head at an unnatural angle. The window had caved in; glass flakes dusted the right shoulder of Dean’s dark shirt, jagged shards still protruding from the frame itself. Sam couldn’t see how badly injured his brother was from this angle, but he was definitely unconscious and that scared Sam. He wasn’t sure what the hell to do.

“Dean?” Sam tried tentatively. “Dad?”

No answer.

The silence was horrendous. Sam wanted them to speak, to answer him, but he was met with unearthly stillness. That made Sam’s fear ratchet another three notches higher.

“C’mon… wake up,” he whimpered, desperation and fear lacing his tone. He didn’t care that he sounded like a pathetic kid, he felt pathetic. His need for his brother and father to wake up overrode all the crap he’d had drilled into him since birth about ‘the Winchester way’. There was no way in hell that Sam could suck up this situation and deal with it. He was frigging terrified.

Sam moved forward to check on his family, immediately regretting the movement. The pain in his side felt akin to having a spear driven between his ribs. He couldn’t help the gasp of pain or the tears that brimmed in his eyes. It hurt so badly that he nearly threw up.

Dammit. He sucked air through barely parted lips until the pain had abated to a bearable level and let his head fall onto his chest, too-long bangs dripping into his eyes. His entire torso felt like it had been crushed and his brain felt loose within his skull. Trying to draw in air was like inhaling fire and Sam resorted to shallow breaths, his bruised lungs protesting even that slight movement.

“I need a ride.”

The unfamiliar rasping voice brought Sam’s head up. His body fought against the movement, but the adrenaline pumping through his veins overrode it, instinct taking precedent.

Sat in the seat next to him was a dark-haired man. He was dripping with blood from head to foot, his clothes saturated with crimson. His shady eyes were glazed and yet hard with anger, and all that anger was directed at Sam.

Sam gulped, swallowing spasmodically as the man tilted his head to one side and considered Sam carefully.

“You killed me,” he hissed, blood pooling at the corners of his mouth.

Sam recognised the man. He’d only seen him for a moment, but he was certain it was the hitchhiker; the hitchhiker Sam had screamed at John to avoid. Sam let his gaze slide over the dark-haired stranger, his stomach twisting as he noticed the gaping wound in his stomach; a wound that wasn’t bleeding at all. Sam frowned, his eyes rising to the stormy eyes.

The man shimmered, rippling like white voile caught in a breeze, then he winked out of existence completely. Sam’s heart staggered over a couple of beats as he twisted his head around the all too small space in the wrecked car. What the…? Where the hell did it go?

The spirit reappeared just as abruptly as he had disappeared. This time he was more stained and a thick, jagged cut across his throat was spurting blood frantically.

“Murderer!” The hitchhiker gurgled, blood trickling from his mouth.

Sam didn’t have a chance to respond, or react. The hitchhiker moved swiftly. Sam was forced onto his back across the bench seat, the ghost straddling him. He dug his hands into Sam’s sides, watery fingers burning as they met Sam’s warm skin. The pain was instantaneous and electric.

“Dean! H-help…! Oh… God,” Sam gasped the words, his eyes squeezing tightly shut. He’d never felt anything like it. He could barely breathe, could barely even think. He could taste iron in his mouth and could do nothing to stop himself from choking on the blood that was pooling in the back of his throat.

Panic overrode any survival instincts as Sam attempted to drag oxygen into his deprived lungs. Bloodied spots spilled over his eyes and the edges began to fade completely. It felt like the spirit was trying to pull his insides out.

His arm slid onto the floor of the car, his body going numb as unconsciousness loomed over him.

And then the pressure eased.

Sam took a tremulous, gasping breath, his entire body twitching as he gulped in as much air as he could. The hitchhiking spirit was gone, but Sam’s sides felt bruised to hell. His sprained wrist curled around his abdomen, he used his uninjured one to lever himself up. His only thought was the trunk… he had to reach the trunk and arm up before it came back, he had to protect his injured father and brother. There were weapons in the damn trunk, rock salt, holy water – an arsenal any soldier could be proud of. John might have been a former Marine, but the man still thought like one.

He managed to manoeuvre his sluggish body enough to push the back door open. His descent out of the Impala was a little less graceful. Collapsing face-first onto the soaked grass with a grunt, his unresponsive limbs did little to stop the fall and the wave of agony that shot up his already injured arm and exploded in the base of his skull nearly plunged him into darkness once again.

This time Sam could do nothing to stop the bile from rising in his throat. Vomiting was painful as hell on his tender abdomen and chest muscles. Every spasm of his stomach felt like he’d been smacked with a sledge hammer, but Sam could do nothing but endure it. His forehead was practically touching the rain-soaked ground, his elbows all that were keeping him upright. His sweatshirt was already sodden, his hair plastered to the side of his face. Whether from the rain or his own sticky perspiration, Sam didn’t know.

Lungs heaving, Sam coughed weakly before dragging the back of his hand over his mouth and grimacing at the stench permeating the air.

Carefully pushing himself onto his knees, his feet tucked underneath him, Sam pushed up the hem of his hooded sweatshirt. Even in the feeble light he could make out mottled bruising spanning his entire torso. He winced. Sam wasn’t sure how much of it had been caused by the crash, and how much was the spirit. Not that it mattered; the end result was the same.

He’d barely raised his head when the hitchhiker reappeared once more at the front of the car. Dragging a hand across his dripping face, Sam let out a shaky breath, his gaze shifting between the ghost and the car. His father and brother still hadn’t stirred.

C’mon, Dad, now would be a great time to wake up and fight Casper, the pissed-off super-spirit, Sam thought desperately, please…

It was a childish want. There was no way in hell his dad was going to wake up now and save the day. Sam wasn’t that goddamn lucky. He was on his own with this, and he was going to have to save himself and his family.

With that thought in mind, Sam tore his gaze from the hitchhiker and staggered to his feet, ignoring the pain in his wrist as he pushed his abused body off the ground. The trunk was his destination. He didn’t even make two steps.

Sam’s legs were swept from underneath him suddenly. He flew through the air like a rag doll. When he came down, it was hard. The air left his lungs forcefully and for a moment he actually couldn’t breathe at all. Sam coughed, rolling onto his back and pushing his hands into the mud.

“I need a ride,” it hissed.

Sam wasn’t sure what the hell this ghost’s issues were, and frankly he didn’t care; he just had to live long enough to survive this shit. Ignoring all the aches and pains, all the bruises, Sam somehow found the strength to move. Crawling in the dirt using his elbows to lever himself onto the balls of his feet, Sam attempted to put as much distance between himself and the hitchhiker as he could. He had almost reached the incline back up to the road when he felt chilled fingers brush down his spine. The ghost helped him the rest of the way up the hill.

The fourteen-year old boy folded like wet cardboard, hitting the asphalt heavily. Pain reverberated up his elbows and through his hip, and he couldn’t help the groan of pain that escaped his lips. Winded and aching, Sam kicked his legs out and tried to crawl away from the hitchhiker on his stomach but icy fingers circled his ankles.

Knives pierced through the material of his jeans, and into the skin – at least that was how it felt. Sam kicked desperately and pathetically, trying to unseat the man’s hold. It didn’t work, Sam couldn’t free himself. His stomach twisted inside out and his heart was beating so frantically that Sam couldn’t drag air into his lungs quickly enough to feed the pumping muscle.

The hitchhiker started to drag him across the road by his leg. Sam’s fingers clawed desperately at the asphalt, frantically searching, reaching out for something, anything, to latch onto. He never found it. The spirit continued to pull Sam like he was nothing. His hooded sweatshirt rode up his back, the gravelled ground scraping the skin raw. He had no idea where the hell this thing was taking him, or what the hell he intended to do to him. He knew he should be fighting back more, that he should be doing anything to stop this from happening, but that was easier said than done. Sam was struggling to make his overwrought brain think of escape plans but his abused body was tired and energy-depleted.

“Yer killed me,” the hitchhiking ghost snarled even as he continued to drag Sam’s limp body. “Killed me good, boy. No one gets the best of Jed Ellis, no one,” he muttered to himself, his grip tightening beyond painful levels. “Make yer pay, make yer pay, yer little shit.”

Rain spattered against Sam’s cheeks, his eyes shuttering frantically to avoid the liquid debris.

“I-I didn’t kill anyone,” Sam tried but Jed wasn’t listening. The insane muttering continued relentlessly, the spirit’s anger growing with each moment that passed.

Sam’s desperation was mounting as he was pulled further from the Impala, further from safety, further from his injured family. Sam struggled against his hold but the spirit was surprisingly strong. The grip was iron-clad and he was only making himself exhausted, his limbs leaded.

And then they halted, the hitchhiker disappearing into thin air so suddenly that Sam wondered if he had imagined the whole thing. If it wasn’t for the pain in his legs and side, he might have thought so.

Frowning deeply, Sam’s frantic gaze darted around the darkened road, squinting to see through the trees that lined the asphalt and swallowed the sky underneath their leafy canopy. The ghost was gone.

One arm curled around his side, Sam rolled off his back on to his stomach and somehow managed to push himself onto shaky elbows, his head practically grazing the waterlogged ground as he coughed weakly. He wasn’t surprised to taste blood in his mouth, nor was he surprised to see in on the ground in front of him. His entire body hurt.

He needed to get back to his father and brother, he needed to get them help. Sam had no idea what kind of spirit he was dealing with, but he wasn’t exactly friendly, and for Sam that was incentive enough to avoid it. He knew how to deal with ghosts, he knew about salting the bones, but he’d never been thrown into the deep end like this. Hunts were usually planned to the nth degree. Every scenario was taken into consideration; every problem was discussed in depth. Sam usually went into a hunt sure of his role, sure of the plan. There was no plan here. There were no scenarios, there was nothing but hopeless uncertainty. Sam desperately wanted the back-up of Dad and Dean, wanted them to appear and make this right but, apart from his own wheezing breath, the air was still. There was no sign of his family, no sign they were going to appear any time soon and that scared Sam.

The hitchhiker suddenly reappeared and was on him in seconds. This time Sam didn’t have a chance to lash out. Fists and kicks rained down on him, smashing into his abdomen, chest and any exposed flesh Jed Ellis could find. It went on for what seemed like hours, the pain unbearable. Sam tried to curl up his body, tried to protect the tender areas but the spirit seemed to slide past all the defences he put up.

“Thought you could outsmart me, Jenkins?” The hitchhiking spirit of Jed Ellis snarled as he fisted his icy cold fingers into Sam’s sweatshirt, pulling him close to his watery face. Sam didn’t resist. He couldn’t have fought the ghost even if he’d wanted to.

Instead, he squeezed his eyes shut, breathing through the nausea that had settled in his throat. He ducked his head away from the man, pleading with his somersaulting stomach to hold still but it didn’t seem to want to listen.

Sam could barely make sense of what was going on and, before he could react, his hands were being tied together. He had no idea where Jed Ellis’s ghost had got the rope from, but he pulled the ends so tightly that Sam was sure his bones crunched under the pressure. The skin was already starting to graze.

Ellis grabbed him savagely by the arm, his cold touch burning the skin, his sprained wrist throbbing. Sam whimpered at the brutality, trying to remove the cruel grip to little avail.

“Please,” Sam begged, the pain too much to bear. “Oh god, please, stop.”

The spirit ignored Sam’s plaintive pleading and grabbed him by the leg once more and continued dragging him towards the trees, further away from the road and the Impala.

Sam tried to fight him, he really did, but his head was swimming and his torso hurt so badly. He was dizzy as hell and he was sure he could feel more blood trailing down his face. His chest ached and every breath felt like an ice-pick sliding between his ribs.

“Time ter go, Jenkins,” Jed Ellis growled as he grabbed Sam’s leg again and started to drag him towards the tree line.

“Not… Jenkins,” Sam muttered thickly, his eyes at half-mast. He was struggling to stay awake. “Name’s Sam.

The storm was raging now, rain coming down heavily. Lightning cracked across the sky illuminating the countryside for a moment, then followed by the angry growl of thunder. Droplets tapped against his skin, his hair plastered to his face but he was so tired and hurt so badly that he couldn’t find the strength to fight Ellis. Instead, he could do nothing but watch as the Impala headlights got further and further away as the hitchhiker dragged him deeper into the trees that lined the road.

To be continued...