NINETEEN

Julia and Dean sat in silence on the train. She had grabbed a newspaper that had been left on the seat and behaved as though she was engrossed in its contents. Dean watched her with curiosity out of the corner of his eye. Here was a woman who was just as comfortable holding a gun in people’s faces and just as good at getting information out of them as he was. Dean shuddered a bit—She’s just like me, but hotter.

Not being someone to let a tender moment go undisturbed, Dean leaned over her shoulder.

“What you reading?”

“The Times. Do you mind?” Julia turned the page and tried to ignore him.

He scooted closer, and she moved away.

“Aw, come on, don’t be like that,” Dean whispered. “I’m reading too.”

Julia peeled off a page of the paper and passed it to him.

“You gave me the comics.”

Julia’s small heart-shaped face beamed.

“Kids like the comics.”

Some twenty minutes later, the conductor announced that they were pulling into Grand Central Terminal.

Dean and Julia alighted from the train and quickly found Sam and Walter waiting for them underneath the large concourse sign. They all eyed each other suspiciously.

“So, now what?” Sam asked.

“We know he’s getting on a train,” Dean said, “we just don’t know which one.” Hundreds of people were rushing to make afternoon trains back to the suburbs, clogging the station’s hallways. There were dozens of possible destinations, and none of them seemed more likely than any other.

“Okay, well let’s just think a moment,” Julia said as she studied the departure board. “James is after the scrolls, right? But why?”

“Your dad and I were asking ourselves that,” Sam said, and Julia shot a look at her father. “James isn’t possessed by a typical demon,” Sam continued, “but something more like a guard dog.”

“Okay, but the question is why?” Walter said.

“Someone put the guard-dog demon in with the scrolls. I saw a symbol on one of the jars, something we see quite often.” Sam meant the Devil’s Trap he had seen on the inside of the lid on one of the jars. “The symbol traps a demon inside it, and we can only assume that James accidentally released the demon and it possessed him. And it seems that it will go to every length to protect the scroll.”

“Dad, did you know this?” Julia looked at her father with a glint of anger in her eyes. “Did you know they were cursed?”

“I didn’t know for sure,” Walter admitted.

Julia turned away from her father, clearly miffed that he hadn’t told her about the hidden danger.

“Was there anyone at the auction that you recognized, Julia?” Sam asked, trying to anticipate where James could be going.

“Well, there was one guy, but everything was moving so quickly.”

“Who?” Walter asked.

Julia searched in her purse and pulled out a billfold.

“The guy in the piano bar.”

Dean stared at her incredulously. “The guy whose wallet you lifted was at the auction? Why didn’t you tell us before now?”

Julia shrugged. “I lift a lot of wallets.”

Dean took the wallet. Inside was a California license.

“Eli Thurman, Berkeley address.”

“Wait, Eli the red-head?” Sam asked. “He disappeared right after the case fell. Slipped out while the cops were going after you guys.”

“That’s as good a guess as we can make,” Dean said. “We in agreement?”

Walter nodded, then, after a pause, Julia agreed.

“Good,” Dean said. “’Cause if we weren’t, I was going to ditch your asses. Let’s find that train.”

The four stepped up to the ticket counter and asked which train was leaving for California. The ticket clerk looked over his schedule.

“Not to California direct. Goes to Albany, Detroit, then Chicago. Then there is a Chicago-San Fran, the Overland Route.”

“Good enough. Four tickets, please.” Sam gestured for Julia to pay.

“I don’t have enough money for that,” Julia whispered.

“One hundred dollars and two cents,” the ticket guy said as he eyed the strange quartet. “You’ll have to re-ticket in Chicago.”

Dean drew his face close to Julia’s.

“Between all of those wallets, you don’t have a hundred bucks?”

“My father and I live off of these!” Julia hissed. When Dean didn’t relent, she stuffed her hand into her purse. “Fine. Give me a second.”

Instead of cash, she pulled out a locker key. She walked over to a bank of steel lockers running alongside one of the station walls. Popping open a locker, Julia took out a large leather suitcase. She popped the clasps on the case and took a pair of socks from inside. She then returned to the group carrying the case. She pulled out a wad of cash from the socks and handed it to her father.

“That’s living in style,” Dean whispered to Sam.

“Two tickets in a sleeper car,” Walter said to the clerk. He took some of the bills and shoved them over the ticket counter, then looked at Dean and Sam. “You boys find your own way.”

The brothers were speechless. These dicks don’t understand who they’re dealing with, Dean thought. Walter took the tickets and led Julia away by the arm. Dean and Sam managed to lock step with them.

“You like jumping on moving trains,” Walter growled. “Here’s another opportunity.”

On the train platform, Julia pointed out Eli Thurman’s red hair. He was holding a large leather suitcase, which was wide enough to house at least four of the jars. James the security guard wasn’t far behind—he was skulking around a steel pillar, keeping out of sight of Eli.

He looked as if he’d been dragged through Hell and back. I know how that is, buddy, Dean thought.

The plan was that Walter and Julia would check into their sleeper car and keep an eye on Eli. Sam and Dean were instructed to jump down to the other side of the tracks and, once the train pulled out, they could run alongside and jump on board, ticket free. The only thing they had to do was keep moving if they saw a ticket guy, because he would ask for their names and car number.

When the porters weren’t looking, Sam and Dean walked to the end of the train and dropped down from the platform onto the rails. The platform was about chin high, giving them lots of cover to sneak around to the other side of the caboose.

“Not quite first class accommodations,” Dean said as he moved along the other side of the train, trying to pick a good area where they would have enough time to run and enough train to catch once it started to pull out.

“What do you think they make of us?” Sam asked as he and Dean walked through the filthy underbelly of the tracks.

“I don’t know. You’re the one that made friends with Wally the Wonder Professor.”

“He’s a scholar, Dean. He understands the Bible, he can read Aramaic or whatever those scrolls are written in. Once we get that scroll he’s going to be useful.”

“Have you thought that these are regular people— well, sort of? They don’t handle the idea of possession, Satan and Armageddon well. You didn’t tell them about Armageddon did you?” Dean turned around, his eyes boring into his brother.

Sam moved past him, clipping him with the duffle bag.

“No, I didn’t Dean. Jeez.” Sam kept walking into the tunnel. Dean sighed, and followed him into the darkness.

Even though Leanne Keeny was almost a full head taller, she still struggled to follow Rose McGraw’s quick step to the penthouse. Rose’s large bottom swung from side to side, a movement that would have made any sailor think of home. Leanne on the other hand was lithe and leggy, a farm girl who had escaped to the big city. Getting a maid position at the Waldorf was a big thing, and her first real job besides castrating horses on her parents’ farm.

Leanne tried to concentrate as Rose explained that the Waldorf Astoria expects every employee to respect each guest’s privacy. Rose leaned closer, her onion breath making Leanne cringe. Rose said conspiratorially that once Joe DiMaggio was here with another woman, not Marilyn, but Leanne didn’t hear it from her. Rose wiggled her red eyebrows to further emphasize how confidential that information was.

At the penthouse door, Rose dug into her apron pocket and pulled out the maid’s skeleton key. She knocked, and then slipped the key into the latch.

The place was a mess, the shootout at the auction the day before had left everything in a shambles. Tufts of fluff dotted all the silk couches, there was blood on the Oriental rug and strange scratches on the floor, furniture was turned over—it was a war zone. Rose clucked her tongue, she needed to go get Maintenance. She told Leanne to get started cleaning up the pieces of glass. She would be back in a couple of minutes.

Leanne looked around the room. Then she pulled a waste bin from the maid’s cart, and got down on her hands and knees with a dustpan and brush. As she swept up the shards of glass, she noticed they weren’t actually glass but clay. Leanne pushed them into the basket. As she shifted her weight, she noticed in the other room that a jar had rolled underneath the bed, half obscured by the ruffled bedspread.

Leanne pulled the jar from its hiding place and carried it into the main room. She peaked outside to make sure Rose wasn’t coming down the hallway, then set the jar on the table. It was tall and oblong, and the same dusty color as all the pieces that littered the floor. Leanne thought that surely the owner would be happy that one of the jars wasn’t broken.

Then curiosity got the better of her. She dug her nails into the seam of the jar. At first, the lid wouldn’t give, it was stuck by some sort of tar-like substance. Finally, it twisted a bit and Leanne managed to separate it from the jar. Beneath it was a horsehair stopper formed with more tar. Leanne looked around for something to pry the stopper off. She spotted a letter opener on the floor and shoved that between the seal and the lip. A whooshing sound escaped from the jar.

Leanne was knocked to the floor, her legs splayed akimbo, as a dark, thick smoke poured out of the jar, taking shape on the floor. It grew larger and broader, almost to full human size. Leanne tried to pull herself up, but the black smoke enveloped her ankles—it felt like her legs were caught in two tons of wet cement.

The last thing Leanne remembered was the acrid smoke shooting up into her mouth and forcing itself down her throat.

Ten minutes later, when Rose returned to the room with Sal the maintenance guy, Leanne was nowhere to be found.

“Children these days. You just can’t trust them. Leaving the job on the first day. My stars,” Rose sighed.

Sal nodded his head in agreement and they went about their business cleaning up the Presidential Suite.

At first Anthony didn’t notice the leggy blonde girl as she rushed into the Roman Art wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The museum got hundreds of visitors a day, and he thought she was just in a rush to meet up with the group of elementary school children who were wandering around on a class field trip. It wasn’t until he heard the sound of glass breaking that he decided to step into the hall and take a look around.

The girl stood in the middle of the hall. At her feet lay the remains of a glass case that housed several Roman jars from about 70 AD, if Anthony recalled correctly. As he watched, she pushed another glass case over and grabbed the pottery jars one by one, smashing them to the ground.

A column of smoke began to rise from each of the smashed jars. Anthony’s first thought was to find a fire extinguisher, but then the woman moved to another case and did the same thing.

“Hey lady, you can’t do that!” Anthony labored toward her, reaching for his gun. “Stop it or I’ll shoot.”

The woman didn’t seem to hear him. She turned on her heel and pulled at a long case displaying a half-dozen small silver boxes. The case toppled and broke. Puffs of smoke rose from the boxes.

Anthony aimed his pistol at her. “I mean it ma’am. Don’t touch another case!”

The woman turned toward him. Her eyes were pure black.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” Anthony exclaimed fearfully as he instinctively squeezed the trigger. The shot hit her in the shoulder. Children screamed and ran out of the room. But the bullet hole didn’t even slow her down. She pulled over another case, and more smoke filled the air. Columns of greasy vapor drifted down the hall where the cases had been smashed, seeming to rise and move with a will of their own.

Anthony stepped closer. A pillar of smoke billowed up in front of him. That was the last thing he remembered.

* * *

Dean noticed the train moved faster than he thought it would.

“Come on, Sam,” Dean shouted as he pulled himself onto one of the ladders that hung from the side of the cars. He held out his hand to his brother. Sam pursed his lips as he huffed alongside the tracks. He took off the duffle bag and threw it at Dean.

“Come on, tough guy. You’re running like a seventy year old.”

Sam kicked his ass into high gear and thrust his hand toward Dean. His brother pulled him onto the steel grating between the two cars. Safely on the platform, Sam doubled over, trying to catch his breath.

“It’s hard to run in these pants,” he gasped.

“Sure it is Sammy.” Dean brushed the tunnel soot off Sam’s shoulders. “Let’s find Dad and Sis.”

Mary Anne Struthers couldn’t believe her eyes. She was sitting on her fire escape facing north, with the Hudson River and New Jersey to her right, trying to get cool in the midday heat. That was when she saw a group of people on the overpass of the tunnel above the train tracks. About twenty of them were standing there, some even looked like children. As the 4:40 train left Grand Central Station headed toward Albany, every single one of the people stepped off the bridge and disappeared below. Mary Anne wiped her brow, thinking she must have imagined it or it was some kind of mirage. But as the train pulled further north she saw the same people swarm down its sides and into the caboose. Strange, she thought. Then she shrugged.

She felt for the bottle of cold beer by her foot and continued to watch the world go by.