Mary always had this strange obsession with salt.
When they finally got their own house the first thing she did was dig a little trench around the house's exterior contour that she filled with rock salt. When John gave her a strange look, she shrugged and said something about keeping weeds from growing too close to the house's foundation, their roots could damage the plumbing and stuff. John didn't question her further. She redid it every few weeks or months. She didn't tend to the rest of the garden, barely even cared about the grass getting taller than their knees if John couldn't bother to mow it, but the salt was like a sacred little ritual to her.
Sometimes John caught her lining up the windows or the fireplace with salt. She said it was against bad luck. She said it was so the house didn't get too humid during summer. She said it was so things didn't freeze over winter. She said it was a family tradition. She said anything, she knew John didn't really care about the answer.
He was already sure in the back of his mind that Mary wasn't entirely sane.
John thought she was strange for collecting knives.
Every time they visited a thrift shop or antique store she'd go straight to the knives, looking for anything that caught her attention, building a little collection of knives that she kept tucked in the back of her side of their closet. It was a hobby, she said. It reminded her of her family. Her dad collected knives too. They didn't always see eye to eye, but she always loved her dad's knife collection, she told John. The curves of the blades, the inscriptions carved into some of them, the materials, the way different handles fit into her hand. She was building herself a collection she could love too, hidden in a small corner of their bedroom.
When the demon came to collect his prize he had a hard time to enter the house. The salt couldn't stop him forever, it wasn't supposed to. It was an alarm. Mary could almost feel in her bones when the salt line was breached. The sense of wrongness. The TV downstairs turning into static. Footsteps carrying John's body with a weight and pace that was not John's. She ran to the closet. She knew exactly what she was looking for.
She didn't want it to end like this, but in the back of her mind she always felt this was how they would end. Her knife in John's chest, his car on the road, their kids in the backseat. Running for her life from a murder she could only take half the blame for.
The demon did something to Sam, she could see drops of blood in his face when she grabbed him from his crib. So small in her hands, yet she knows he's something bigger than she could ever imagine. She cleaned his face, shook Dean awake and told him to hold Sammy while she packed their stuff. Their clothes, her knife collection, the family pictures, all the salt bags in the pantry. John's old gun, just in case. The car keys and some snacks for the road.
Dean kept asking about his daddy, why wasn't he here, wasn't he going with them? She couldn't tell the truth, he couldn't understand. So she said daddy is feeling bad and doesn't want to see anyone for a while, he asked mommy to take Dean and Sammy on a trip for a while. How long? Who knows, he'll call when he's feeling good again. For now, we'll go far away, we'll have a road trip and visit lots of fun places and see lots of cool stuff, how does that sound?
Dean likes the sound of that.
She goes back to being Mary Campbell. If anyone asks what happened to her husband she'll just say she left him because he was an abusive piece of shit. God knows it's not entirely a lie. She visits her family, tells them what happened. She leaves out the blood. They praise her on the salt and the knives.
They welcome her back to the family, if she wants to come back. Right now she just wants to get the hell away from Kansas, actually.
She goes back and salts and burns down the house just in case.
