Part One: Are You Going to Eat that Pickle?

Dean Winchester scuffed the toe of one boot into the dusty berm as he leaned against the front fender of his car, idly swatting flies away from his face. Sweat beaded his forehead and slowly soaked into the cotton t-shirt he wore. He wasn't bothering to disguise his irritation at having to be out in broad daylight during the hottest part of a sweltering summer day.

Sam didn't look up from the cantankerous EMF meter he held in one hand as he addressed his long-suffering older brother.

"You're going to turn into a vampire."

"Blasphemy!"

"At the very least," Sam amended, finally switching off the EMF and turning back toward the car. "A mushroom."

Dean grunted. "I don't do summer." He scratched at his neck where a droplet of sweat had broken loose to run down his back. "Damn bugs. Tell me you got somethin', 'cause I don't give up my sweat for bupkus." A lecherous grin crossed his face as he apparently thought about something he'd gladly sweat for, something involving someone of the female persuasion.

"You're a cad."

"What? I didn't say anything!"

"No, but you were thinking it."

Sam ran an arm across his forehead and blinked the sweat out of his eyes. A glance down the road before them revealed shimmering waves of heat rising up off the pavement. To one side of the narrow road was the broad expanse of a cornfield, on the other was a thick tangle of trees and underbrush. In another few hours the sun would shift and the trees would cast shade across the road - but that was in another few hours. They didn't plan on staying that long.

He missed the full effect of Dean's startled, and somewhat worried expression, only glimpsing the tail end of it as Dean hastily made it go away. Sam wasn't sure he found his brother's concern touching, or unnerving, or possibly even irritating.

"Don't worry," he added. "It doesn't take a mind reader to know what you're thinking."

Dean snorted. "Right now I'm thinkin' I should take that as an insult." The grin reappeared as he shifted things away from the dark aspect of Sam's iffy clairvoyance. "You need to confess, smart-ass college boy, you bought those S.A.T. scores didnja?"

"Yeah, from a shady character in a dark alley." Tossing the EMF meter in through the car window, Sam rounded the Impala's long nose to sit on the hood. "I hate to break it to you, but you gave up your sweat for bupkus. I got nuthin'."

"That doesn't always mean anything. It is broad daylight." Dean squinted up into the hazy sun. "And I do mean daylight." He stood up straight and thumped a hand on the hood of the car, which had gone up several degrees in temperature just in the short time the vehicle had been parked there beside the road. "Come on, let's find a hotel, an air conditioner, and a cold beer, not necessarily in that order."

"Or," Sam said, following Dean's example. He slid into the Impala's passenger's seat and pulled the door shut behind him. "It could mean that all these people have died in perfectly ordinary traffic accidents."

"A hotel, an air conditioner, a cold beer and police records," Dean mumbled, turning the key and bringing the Chevy rumbling to life. "Dad had it marked, Sam."

"Dad's hunches aren't always right, Dean. Can you say, Pa Bender?"

"Okay, so that's an exception. It may not have been anything supernatural, but there was something fishy going on there." As he pulled out onto the road, Dean made a face and rubbed his shoulder. "Rotten fish. Bastard left a scar."

"Could have been worse."

"Yeah, I could'a wound up in a half a dozen freezer bags just waitin' to be turned into sausage."

Sam chuckled, but only briefly, finding the scenery much too sobering. Along each side of the road there were signs of old memorials; bunches of sun bleached silk flowers, tattered ribbons, rain sodden stuffed animals and scraps of paper from which words had long faded. Dozens of people over a span of many years had died along this two mile stretch of road in rural Indiana.

He had come across a small "filler" story in an Indianapolis newspaper entitled "The Legend of Deadman's Curve." There were countless "haunted highway" stories circulating around the country, but this one had caught Sam's attention. The reporter had charted the deaths, and both the number and their regularity were startling. He suspected they were dealing with a spirit, perhaps yet another variation on the Lady in White. That John Winchester had included the location on his watch list hadn't been surprising.

"The road doesn't even curve, Sam," Dean said. The Impala sped past the mile marker indicating the far edge of the "dead zone" and Dean pressed down harder on the gas. The big car only had 460 air conditioning and damn if it wasn't an oven inside even with all the windows open. "People around here are either really shitty drivers, or there is something weird going on, and I have to say, I'm standin' in the something weird camp."

"Yeah, well we'll check it out." Sam pulled out his t-shirt, sniffed, and made a face. "Hotel, a/c, beer, police records and a shower."

"I heard that."

---

Sam had a love-hate relationship with being left alone. On the plus side was the fact that after several months of sharing close quarters with his brother, having a little private time was a blessing. Dean had an irritating habit of filling silences when some silences didn't ask to be filled. If he wasn't blasting the Impala's stereo, he was singing. If he wasn't prodding Sam into a conversation he was prodding Sam into a disagreement. Dean abhorred a vacuum. The only time Sam seemed to be able to escape was when either of them were sleeping and when one considered that his sleep sometimes brought with it disturbing images, even that wasn't much of a respite.

The drawback to being left alone was that Dean wasn't there to fill the silences, leaving Sam's always busy mind seeking other ways to occupy itself. More often than not it strayed to thoughts of Jessica, the all too brief time he'd spent with her leading a normal life, and the burning desire to make someone, something, pay for fucking it all up. The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

Ultimately anger became fear. There were nights when Sam drifted off to sleep thanking God he hadn't gone completely off his rocker that day, and praying he wouldn't the next day, or the next. The run in with Max Miller hadn't helped. Max and that whole nasty situation led Sam to appreciate (somewhat) having Dean in his face 24/7. With Dean around it was unlikely Sam would swap pre-law for telekinetic axe wielding homicide as a course of study. Sam just wished he had his brother's confidence.

Right now Sam was alone, but he wasn't thinking - at least not about things that would ultimately lead him into dangerous territory. Instead he was poking around the Internet trying to find references to roadway hauntings and any mention of Chesterville, Indiana's Dead Man's Curve. Or, as Dean had observed, Dead Man's Straightaway. He wasn't finding much. Stories of road and railway hauntings were as thick as fleas on a hound and besides the story Sam had read to begin with, Chesterville was off the map.

He'd been at it for over an hour and was about to throw in the towel. A rattle at the door gave him an even better excuse and he closed the laptop just as Dean burst into the room carrying with him a waft of superheated air, a sheaf of paper, and a Subway bag. The first thing he did was toss the bag to Sam and crank up the air conditioner. It groaned ominously in protest. Sam hoped it didn't conk out in the middle of the night.

Dean tossed the papers onto the table and removed the laptop before sitting down across from Sam and delving into the bag of sandwiches. Sam rose to get something for them to drink. There were two beers chilling in the ice bucket.

"What did you find?" Sam rescued the papers from becoming soaked by the condensation dripping from his brother's beer bottle. He leafed through them with one hand, eyes scanning their contents, as he blindly unwrapped his sandwich with the other.

"Accident reports," Dean mumbled around a mouthful of hoagie. He licked mayonnaise of the end of his finger before pointing for emphasis. "All the way back to the fifties."

Sam peered out from under his bangs and grinned. "What was her name?"

The sour expression Dean affected was comical. That alone made Sam chuckle. What came next made him choke on his sandwich.

"His name was David. Sam, stop laughing right now or I'll kick your ass."

"Oh...man!" Sam put down both the reports and his lunch, leaning back in his chair clutching his stomach. "Why didn't you call me? I needed a laugh..."

"Yeah, and have him get turned off by my boyfriend showing up? Don't be stupid."

Dean's outrage made Sam laugh even harder. The very idea of his womanizing brother flirting around with a guy to get information was patently hysterical, and somewhat of a karmic coup. Served him right.

"Make a date?" Sam squeaked.

"No," Dean said sullenly. "But I let him pinch my ass and call me sweetie."

Gasping for breath, Sam burst into a fresh round of laughter. "Oh. My. God," he choked. "You're killing me."

"I will kill you if you don't stop." There was a pause. "Are you gonna eat that pickle?"

Sam lost the ability to speak. He shook his head, pounding on the edge of the table, and caught sight of the giveaway smile. Dean was playing around with him. It was all bullshit.

But still funny, and Sam needed funny. He gave a few last chuckles and wiped his eyes.

"Seriously," Dean said, reaching over to snag the pickle in question. The pickle wasn't the only thing he was going to be serious about either. "Nine times out of ten roads are haunted by the spirits of the people who have died on, or near them. Check out the first report. Nobody died."

Sam leafed back a few pages to the earliest date recorded on the lists. "Nobody died, but they were already referring to the place as Dead Man's Curve."

"Right. So what does that tell you?"

"Not too much, but it's obvious someone died on the road before they started recording police reports." Skimming the rest of the pages, Sam noted something else. "As cars got faster, the fatalities increased. Logic dictates that prior to this first report there were fewer fatalities, and less likely it becomes that our ghost originally died in a car crash."

"Score one for Mr. Spock."

"So..." Sam chewed slowly, thinking. "We need more information. If anything, just to rule out a simple case of mass crappy driving or some weird scientific anomaly."

Dean scowled. "An anowhat?"

Sam ignored him. "We should see if we can't find reports of sightings - apparitions, mysterious lights or fog. It may not be the road itself, but the land beneath it."

"Indian burial ground, forgotten cemetery, yadda, yadda, yadda." Dean took a long pull from his beer before pointing it at Sam. "You. Geek-boy. Library. Fetch."

His final punctuation was a belch and a grin.

Sam rolled his eyes. Even Henry Higgins himself couldn't reform Dean Winchester.