Day 18: Dark and Stormy Night
Tags: destiel, casefic, ghosts, cursed object
Dean was driving, so Sam held the phone. “You’re on speakerphone, Cas. Say hi, Sammy.”
“Hey, Cas. What did you find?”
“I can’t be sure, but it seems that your spirit might be the ghost of Edward Bulwer-Lytton.”
Sam pulled a face and shook his head, but Dean vaguely recognized the name. “Isn’t that the guy who wrote, ‘It was a dark and stormy night?’” He watched Sam’s face change from confusion to disbelief. “Hey, I read.” To Cas, “A famous ghost, huh? Neat. So what’s Lord Purple Prose doing in Nebraska?”
“His spirit must be tied to a cursed object. Given his notoriety, it might be a pen or a writing desk, something related to the writer’s craft. Perhaps even a signet.”
“The ring!” exclaimed both brothers at once.
“There was this ring on display, just arrived from Queensland, Australia,” Sam hastened to explain, while Dean spun the car around, heading back to the museum. “The docent told us it had an ‘interesting’ history.”
“Hmm. Yes, very interesting,” Cas replied, reading snippets of a text: “The Queensland Signet ... forged in the mid-nineteenth-century ... in use for barely a decade ... lost, presumed stolen ... discovered by opal miners? Nowhere near its last known whereabouts. It has been moved a dozen times in the past fifty years, and everywhere it goes, strange deaths follow.”
“So, destroy or neutralize?”
The sound of pages turning and Cas hemming softly to himself.
“I’m looking, Dean.” Another silence, then: “We don’t have the tools we need to destroy it without obliterating the soul within. Lock it up for now, and I’ll make a note to track down the appropriate devices. I assume you have a curse box available.”
Dean scoffed. “Obviously.”
“Good. Remember not to touch it with your bare hands...”
“...and burn anything that has had contact with it.”
Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “Burn anything..? That seems excessive.”
Cas sighed, and Dean could feel the exasperated eyeroll that went with that sound. “I’ll be happy to show you all of the literature on this particular cursed object when you get back to the bunker. In the meantime, you’ll just have to trust me.”
“You got it,” Dean grinned.
“We will- thanks, Cas,” Sam replied.
“Thanks, Cas. If all goes well, we’ll be home tonight. Don’t start watching the new episode without me.”
“I won’t, Dean. Keep me apprised.”
Dean made a clicking sound with his mouth and a finger-gun gesture that Cas couldn’t see, and Sam hung up.
