CHAPTER THREE: THE RISING OF THE WITNESSES

SINGER SALVAGE YARD
SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA

ZEPPLIN idled in the yard witnessing the ghost-banishing-weapon-carrying trio make their way towards the door of Bobby Singer's house. The first unsettling thing which indicated something was wrong was that the door was not locked. Dean led, followed by Henrietta and Sam, all with their salt shotguns raised and ready.

"Bobby?" Dean called out. No answer. Henrietta noticed his fingers tightening around his shotgun. Her head was still swirling with thoughts about Kieran and Josie, but she buried it. Like everything else. Most people had drawers in their mind, some had rooms, a select few had mind palaces. Then there were those who had haunted houses. Henrietta's mind and heart, both were graveyards. HERE LIES HENRIETTA WINGRAVE AND ALL THE PEOPLE SHE EVER KNEW.

As they gravitated away from the kitchen, Dean snapped his fingers and indicated towards iron poker laying by the stairs. He crouched to check it as Henrietta gazed up the stairs over her shotgun.

"I'll go," Dean whispered, pointing up the stairs. "You two check outside."

Henrietta hesitated but complied. They knew the terrain better. She followed Sam out to the junkyard. The sun had risen high and the morning warmth was welcomed, even though it stung the cuts on her face. Looking out at the expanse of the salvage yard, they were not going to find him anytime soon. Henrietta sighed and grasped her shotgun tighter. Pointing with it towards the paths diverging, she said, "I'll go left, you go right?"

Sam, desperate to find Bobby as soon as possible, agreed without arguments. Henrietta embarked left. Wrecked cars piled the land left to right, some more destroyed than the other. It did not escape Henrietta's imagination of how similar it was to the world they lived in. Luxury cars, vintage cars, cars with custom work, cars with rust, cars with sliced tires, totaled cars. Wasn't it exactly how the world was?

"Bobby?" She called loudly and waited for a response. Nothing except Sam's voice repeating the same word from across the lot like an echo of her own. "Bobby?" she tried again. Total silence. She sighed, shaking her head, and started to move forward but paused when her exhaled breath turned to fog.

"Bobby?" she called out, quieter than before and more cautious. Her gaze lifted and caught Sam up ahead. She waved wildly to gain his attention and gestured him over. Sam hurried, gun braced to his chest. To catch him up, Henrietta exhaled, and his jaw locked seeing the breath turn visible.

"Bobby?" Sam called looking around, now frantic. Slamming his hand against the trunk of a car on the left, he scavenged for a crowbar, prying open the hatch just to find it empty. Henrietta let go of her gun, dropping it to the ground, and hooked her fingers under the car beside it. The metal groaned and her arms strained, but the trunk opened. Empty.

"We're here, Bobby?" Sam shouted.

Henrietta shook her head at Sam pointing out the obvious absence of Bobby as they worked their way up a pile of cars, looking through every inch for his friend. Sam, distressed, glanced around. He had to be here. He had to be ─

His gaze froze at a reflection and he caught Henrietta by her shoulder. "There!" he pointed already tearing across the wreckage to get to a rusty, grime-covered van that looked like it had been half passed through a metal crusher.

"Bobby! Hold on, Bobby! I'm coming! Bobby!"

Henrietta, right behind him watched as he used a crowbar to pry open the doors to the car where Bobby is being held. Two girls, twins, pushed him back with immense force and he landed on another car below, shattering the windshield. 

"Sam!" Henrietta shouted, as one of the girls jumped on him, pushing her hand towards his chest to reach for his heart. Henrietta looked down to where the crowbar had landed and picked it put, swinging it at the girl.

The girl disappeared. Sam exhaled and looked quickly towards Bobby who did the same with the other girl. With both twin ghost girls gone, Sam helped down Bobby from the junk car. Picking up their shotguns, they made their way back towards the house. 

All three of them had probably been wishing that they didn't see another ghost anytime soon. There couldn't have been any other reason why they did. It seemed with them, luck always ran bad. The boy's appearance shocked Sam more than the fact that he was here. He looked incredibly sick, his face bony and white. Under his eyes were purple-blue bruises and his slick hair hung over his head like an ink-black curtain. There was rawness in his eyes; immense pain and betrayal.

Henrietta took an infinitesimally small step back. "Let us go, Key," she whispered but her voice held little conviction and strength. Grief died it down, not fear. Sam knew the feeling too well.

"You promised you wouldn't leave," the boy's voice was as shocking as his appearance. Rocks against rocks. "You promised you'd come back." The boy crept closer to Henrietta who refused to budge, lost in pain. Sam decided that was the reason she didn't see the scissors in the boy's hand. Or maybe she had. Maybe she didn't care. Maybe she didn't really believe he would do it. You never want to believe people you love could hurt you so bad.

Still, Sam warned her, "Henry."

Henrietta hadn't seemed to listen. "I did. I came back. But you were ─ "

"Already dead?" The boy asked. "And you know what, Henry? You know what?" The unnerving smile would haunt Henrietta's dreams forever. "Nobody saved me!" He jumped at her with the scissors and Henrietta stumbled back. Sam dived quickly, tackling Henrietta to the ground and covering her head with his as Bobby swung the crowbar at the boy. The ghost disappeared.

Sam exhaled heavily, then glanced down at Henrietta beside him, her face distraught. She was half here, half living somewhere very far off in a dream. Or a nightmare. It depended on your perspective. He hauled her up and led her back towards the house.

INSIDE the house, Henrietta sat on the couch, cleaning her scraped knee and trying to build back her walls up. No more letting them down in front of strangers. She was Henrietta Wingrave, she wasn't afraid of a vengeful spirit. It didn't matter if she had known him personally. There was only one thing to do. Salt and burn. As she couldn't leave right now and Kieran and Josie were cremated, only one thing to do. Load her salt gun. Aim. Fire.

Bobby raised his hands. He had heard enough of Dean and Sam's versions of the what-you-missed story and there was one thing he still couldn't understand. Henry Wingrave. She was a popular story traded between hunters for years. The girl who stopped the apocalypse. It had been told so many times in the last five years, over and over, getting more and more absurd and impossible with each iteration that most times Henry Wingrave seemed more than human. Some sort of hero from a mythical story.

But the Henry Wingrave in those stories didn't cry. The Henry Wingrave in those stories didn't fail to notice the weapon. And she certainly didn't have time to wipe the blood around a scraped knee with water-soaked cotton! These bigger-than-life images and expectations of a hero from a folklore seemed to fizz out in face of the real thing in Bobby's eyes. She was a kid. She was just a kid.

There weren't any other stories about her, just the one. The Henry Wingrave. No one knew her. No one knew what happened after the story. No one knows what happens to the hero after the story. Where do you go and how do you live normally? Can you? He had tried to look for her once, long ago, when John Winchester was still alive. Maybe she could tell them how to kill a demon. They hadn't found her. Nobody knew her. It was as if she had never existed, only a story.

But all the stories were true.

"You're Henry Wingrave?" Bobby asked, still in disbelief. "The Henry Wingrave?"

Henrietta examined the spoiled cotton in disgust and stood up from the couch. "That's my name, yes," she nodded, her fiery hair dancing with the movement.

Sam's eyebrows knitted at the faint hint of recognition in Bobby's expression. "You know her?"

"I know of her. Exorcist. She's a bit of a legend."

Henry half chuckled as she gathered her hair and tied it back. "They're all lies," she said.

"I didn't know we had a celebrity among us?" Dean teased back to his old self again. Everything he said, even if not meant to be mean felt like a slap on a wrist to Henrietta and she didn't know why. Something of a wake-up call. Where had she known him before? An intangible time, an intangible place -- something unknown entirely? Her mind just didn't want to remember. 

"Aren't you the ones who opened the Gates of Hell?" she belittled and all three of them shifted uncomfortably. "We're all famous for something here, Dean Winchester."

Dean, gun in hand and the least moved by her words among the three of them, snipped, "And what are you famous for?"

Henrietta only smiled. "I'm a nasty piece of work."

At this, Bobby decided some backstory was essential. "She single-handedly stopped Mammon from escaping Hell," he told.

"Mammon?" Sam straightened. "The first prince of Hell?" He had a distinct memory as if he had heard this story before.

"That's the one."

He had, hadn't he? Sometime, someplace. A bubbling memory. His father's journal. Ruby's voice in his ear. The demon tied to a chair. Something unspeakable happening. The words escaped his lips involuntarily. "Henry Wingrave, the one soul Lucifer would come up here himself to collect."

Dean stared up at his brother, surprise coloring his face at the words. "What?" he said. It wasn't because he hadn't heard him the first time or that he wanted him to repeat. The surprise didn't allow for any other words to escape.

Henrietta, though, was unbothered. She'd heard it before. But she did find it odd that Sam knew this. Demons taunted and threatened her this way, few humans knew of this. "Where'd you hear that?" she asked, skeptical.

Sam seemed to blanch for an imperceptible moment, hard to catch so no one did. Because there was no reason to be suspicious. "From a demon," he said. Then he turned to Dean. "When you were in Hell."

Henrietta turned to look at Dean so quickly, he thought she might get whiplash. "You were in Hell?" she asked, but the words were whispered. There was something in her eyes too, undecipherable. Pity maybe, Dean guessed. He didn't want her pity. Yet he gave a small nod. Henry sucked her bottom lip in and her shoulders sagged as if something stuck in her. Like an understanding made her shoulders heavy. Something long lost that had been found and didn't meet the expectation or had enough beauty to justify the torturous journey she had taken to find it.

"I knew I'd heard your name somewhere," Sam said. Henrietta, still looking afflicted, looked at him slowly. "I just thought it was, you know, a lie."

"Yes, well," Henrietta put her hands on hips as a sign that she was ready for this conversation to be over, "Lucifer's not coming topside anytime soon, so as long as I don't die, I'm safe."

"What, you going to Hell or something?" Dean joked.

"Not if I can help it," Henrietta muttered and only Dean, closest to her, heard. "Okay," she said to everyone, "so what's up with these ghosts? Why are they giving us concussions?"

"They're all people we know," Sam said.

"Not just know," Dean put in. "People we couldn't save." The atmosphere heavied with seriousness. "Hey, I saw something on Meg. Did she have a tattoo when she was alive?"

Sam shook his head, not sure. "I don't think so."

"It was like a-a mark on her hand ─ almost like a brand."

"I saw a mark, too, on Henriksen. And the boy outside. Key?" He turned to Henrietta for that.

"Kieran, yeah," she said quietly and nodded, agreeing.

"What did it look like?" Bobby asked.

"Uh, paper?" Sam extended his hand and Bobby tore a page from a notebook and it to him with a pencil. "Thanks." For a moment, it was the only sound - breathing and the scratching of graphite against paper. Henrietta stole a glance towards Dean who was poking at his bruising knuckles as if it didn't hurt. She used to be like that once. She missed that Henrietta. The one who wasn't bothered by bruised knuckles or scraped knees. The one she was before she met Father Parrish or Siobhan.

Sam, finished with his drawing held it up for Dean and Henrietta to compare. Dean nodded, "That's it." A circle with a diamond shape inside with edges curved outwards. In the back of her memory, it seemed vaguely familiar.

"I may have seen this before," Bobby said as he walked over towards where books were stacked. "We got to move." 

He dumped the pile of books in Henrietta's hands. Surprised by the weight of the books, Henrietta stumbled minutely. "Whoa," she said.

"Follow me."

"Okay," Sam answered Bobby, "where are we going?"

"Someplace safe, you idiot."

MINDING the stairs was harder than Henrietta thought with a stack of books in front of her face. Also seeing as she wasn't very tall, it looked like the books had sprouted legs and were stomping down the stairs to the basement. Dean even made a joke about it and if Henrietta could kick him she would have but she was a little busy with the books. She glanced over them when Bobby opened a metal door to what looked like a bomb shelter.

Made entirely out of iron, its 'welcome home mat' was a devil's trap. Eyes stuck on her surrounding, Henrietta stepped inside in awe. Covered in pentagrams and sigils, the room seemed impossible. But here it was. She turned around in a circle at her spot and whistled lowly.

It seemed Sam and Dean were just and surprised and awestruck as her. Sam trailed his fingers against the cold metal interior in disbelief. "Bobby," he started, "is this . . ."

"Solid iron. Completely coated in salt. 100% ghost-proof."

"You built a panic room?" Henrietta asked, her tone colored with incredulity.

Bobby shrugged. "I had a weekend off."

Henrietta let out a low chuckle. "You built a panic room."

"Bobby," Dean said, grinning like a kid in a candy store.

"What?"

"You're awesome."

After the awesomeness, things got downright boring. Henrietta sat on the cot in the corner, legs folded under her, a book in her lap. She had a great big heavy book of lore opened in front of her, cheek smushed against her palm as she read. Most of it was in Latin with a few notes pressed between with English translations. Bobby had a book in front of him too, and Sam and Dean were making ammunition to fight the ghosts.

Brothers, Henry thought, the book in her lap long forgotten. Like most single children, she had always found the concept incredibly foreign. Back in her hometown, there lived twin girls in her neighborhood. They were a few years younger than her and when they would go to the park to play she would spend hours sitting on the swing and trying to find every little difference between them. It was a game she played. She played it now too, but right now she was searching for similarities. It had always unnerved her how alike siblings looked. And how connected they were.

She could never have someone who knew her like that, who she could depend on like that. She was alone. Like most alone people, it wasn't that she hated company, she just considered herself safer away from others. Maybe others were safer away from her, too. She wasn't lonely, though, just alone in a way that even pained forget-me-nots.

"See," Dean said and Henrietta blinked and looked away from the brothers. She had been staring. "This is why I can't get behind God."

This intrigued her, so she looked back at him. She had no reason to believe in God, either. Her tragedy-filled life attested to it. What bad had a four-year-old girl had done that she needed to see such a horrifying face on the bus back home? Her first monster, she would never forget that twisted, bare-boned, rotten, and fanged face. God hadn't helped that little girl then. He certainly had no reason to help any of them now.

"What are you talking about?" Sam asked his brother.

"If He doesn't exist, fine. Bad crap happens to good people. That's how it is. There's no rhyme or reason ─ just random, horrible, evil ─ I get it, okay. I can roll with that. But if He is out there, what's wrong with Him? Where the hell is He while all these decent people are getting torn to shreds? How does He live with Himself? You know, why doesn't He help?"

None of them spoke. Once, when Henrietta still believed in the idea of His existence and was sure she was the only one He had something against, she had fallen to her knees in the pews and cried. That had been the day her mother had left her with her alcoholic, delusional father. She needed a better father, she needed a better mother and she had closed her eyes and prayed for a whole other family where everything was right. Nothing had happened, of course. And God's name had felt so empty. She had decided then, that God needed to be put on trial for every pain he had ever caused her. She wanted to scream at Him; Tell me why I deserve this. Justify this to a six-year-old girl, you coward! Remember now, this was when she believed in God. Now, there was no such thing.

Bobby, when everyone else looked at him for his old-aged wisdom, said, "I ain't touching this one with a 10-foot pole." Then, "But, I found it."

"What?" Sam asked.

"The symbol you saw ─ the brand on the ghosts . . . "

Henrietta raised her eyebrows, closing the book in her lap. "Yeah?"

"Mark of the Witness."

"Witness? Witness to what?" Sam asked.

"The unnatural. None of them died what you'd call ordinary deaths. See, these ghosts ─ they were forced to rise. They woke up in agony. They were like rabid dogs. It ain't their fault. Someone rose them . . . on purpose."

Sam said, "Who?"

"Do I look like I know? But whoever it was used a spell so powerful it left a mark, a brand on their souls. Whoever did this had big plans. It's called "The Rising Of The Witnesses." It figures into an ancient prophecy."

"Wait, wait," Dean interrupted. "What ─ what book is that prophecy from?"

"Well, the widely distributed version's just for tourists, you know. But long story short ─ "

"Revelations," Henrietta said, color drained from her face. At the glances of the other three, she shrugged uncomfortably. "Sunday school," she muttered as an explanation. She really hadn't attended Sunday school but her father was enough to remind her of every sin of hers. Being born topping the list, of course.

"This is a sign, boys," Bobby said to Sam and Dean.

Both of them, equally unsettled, asked, "A sign of what?"

"The Apocalypse," Henrietta said.