Not long after Dean turns sixteen, dad catches wind of a case near a beach town in Jersey, a young girl gone missing from a sleepover under suspicious circumstances. Local law enforcement seems stumped, and something about the inconsistencies in the eyewitness accounts points toward the possibility of supernatural involvement. It’s the off season, so a few week rental isn’t too hard to come by and they settle into a two bedroom and get to work.
Sam and Dean are both registered for school, though Dean cuts more often than not. Dad looks for leads during the day and makes the rounds at the local bars, hustling the locals for twenties here and there to keep food on the table, at night. One unseasonably warm weeknight he asks Dean to go down to the boardwalk, chat with the locals and see if anyone lets him coax a new detail or two about the missing girl.
He gets there around 5. The parking is free this time of year, and he gets a spot less than a block from the beach. There are benches up and down the boardwalk, some facing inland toward the shops along the way, others facing out to the sea. Dean takes little notice of them at first, looking instead for shops that are open, people to speak with. There’s a man standing near a small pier jutting out over the sand, he has a guitar and an empty popcorn bucket for tips, and he’s singing some song Dean’s heard on the radio before, Soundgarden or Oasis or one of those other whiny indie bands Sam likes to listen to. The man’s voice is nice, but too light to carry in the cold air, and Dean wonders why he’s out here at all this time of year. He tosses a five into the popcorn bucket and waits for the man to finish before interrupting to ask a few questions. The man has no helpful information but as they’re talking Dean notices a glimmer of red out of the corner of his eye.
It’s garland, he sees upon investigation, with hearts, wrapped around the back slats of a bench on the little pier. Someone decorated it for Valentine’s Day, perhaps. There’s a plaque on the bench as well, commemorating “Memories at the Shore “ for some family. After reading that one, he notices the plaques on the other benches as well. All have them, some on the front, some on the back, some look brand new and others like they’d been smoothed over by decades of sand and salt blowing over them.
Most have a name, or names, etched on them. There are about thirty on the little pier alone; Dean walks slowly down the aisles between them, noting idly how much you can learn about a place in unexpected ways. What he can tell about this seaside town, and it’s people, from these little memorials. The first names are mostly old, like Mort and Gracie and Ethel and Walter; the last names, primarily Italian and Irish and Polish sounding. He can tell it’s a more popular spot for families than singles; “Summers at the shore with the DiDomenicos”, “Fond memories, the O’Halleran clan”. Even the common colloquialisms for grandparents; “Nanna and Pa”, “Mima and PopPop”. All useful information to absorb if you want to blend in, and blending in definitely makes hunting life easier.
He can almost picture them here, on these empty benches. The Ethels and Walters and their loving, devoted families. Summer weekends spent lounging at the beach house or long afternoons on the boardwalk eating up fudge and salt-water taffy til dusk. Kids kicking sand and laughing as mom and dad smile at each other from under their umbrellas. Nanna and Pa right here holding hands, watching the sunrise or the tide or their progeny. Folks making memories so happy, so soft and pure, that they need to be memorialized, here, on these very benches, facing this very tide.
Dean closes his eyes and turns his face toward the shore. He hears little over the roar of the waves, though there are still a few locals jogging or biking up and down the boardwalk. He imagines that life clearly, dares to picture himself in it. He and Sammy as fat and suntanned children, building sandcastles with mom and dad watching over them. A Mima and PopPop to bring them lemonade and remind them to put on sunscreen. He stretches the daydream forward through time. Dean as a teenager, sneaking kisses from some blonde haired beauty under the pier, teaching Sam how to ride a bike or win the carnival games or skip waves. Dean as a dad, another beauty next to him, vague and no one in particular, just someone with kind eyes and soft hair and the light kind of laughter that rings out and carries over the waves; and their kids, a boy and a girl maybe, collecting shells. Stretching more. He’s Pa now, and his beautiful bride is Nanna. They sit, perhaps on this very bench, watching the distant ships. He holds her hand, skin as soft and thin as tissue paper, and imagines that it’s warm despite the chilly wind from the South, holds it until they both fade away, frail and content, and so very old. A bench with his name, and some cheesy saying about Making Waves or Vitamin Sea, put here by his doting, far-future grandchildren.
Is this a thing that real people have? A quiet life. A safe life.
A peaceful death. An old death.
He tries to map this skin of a future over his own, stretches and folds it to make it fit, and for a moment it’s as real to him as the salt air in his lungs. People have this, these people did, these Gracies and Walters. So could he.
When he opens his eyes, he sees her, though he doesn’t realize what he’s looking at at first. It’s darker than when he’d closed his eyes, the setting sun slipped behind a low cloud while his mind wandered, and in the incandescent light of the street lamps that flank the boardwalk, she shines. Just two legs, luminous and bare and bloated, jutting out from under a pier a bit further up the beach, with crimson-black sand fanned out beneath them.
She died here, in this place. A child, barely older than his little brother, he notes with a sickening twist in his gut. She died, and they have to catch the thing that killed her before it kills again. And after that? They have to catch the next thing. And the next. All of them.
Dean thinks often of the benches. Of Nanna and Pa. Of the quiet, simple life they get to live, and the quiet simple way they likely die. He feels silly, when he does think of them, for ever even imagining that possibility for himself. Such an indulgent, childish fantasy, something he should have had long-since outgrown by sixteen. He doesn’t picture another life for himself after that, doesn’t try to force a more palatable cover atop his own reality. He accepts that it will always end the same for him, the same harsh light, illuminating the same harsh realities, whenever he opens his eyes. From then on, he chooses to keep them open.
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