To The Beat Of The Devil's Drums [Supernatural]

Heart

Aptly, twilight is just beginning to set in as Dean passes the entrance to The Twilight Zone. The archway design is some combination of a rainbow with a UFO at one end and a bedsheet-style ghost at the other, the name of the region in a blockish sans-serif font written below. Dean only spares it a passing glance as he steps inside.

The first ride he passes is something called "Close Encounters", a horizontal spinning wheel with rocket ship shaped pods suspended from the sides. He ignores it, looking for any sign that will point him towards Haunted Halls, but soon finds himself passing the control booth for the "Flying Saucer". There's a speaker conspicuously mounted on top.

He half expects – hopes, maybe? – for it to crackle to life as he draws nearer, but the silence stretches out as he comes to stand right alongside. "Is Sam still alive?" he demands of it, but gets no answer. "Hey!" he gives the booth a kick. "You hear me? Is my brother still alive?"

Still nothing, and Dean slams his fist against it as he lets out a growl of frustration. He still has the cutlass, and his rage fuels a wild swing at the side of the booth that ends with a rattling blade and a jarring shock up his arm. She's not going to tell him. He's going to have to walk into Haunted Halls and find either Sam still clinging to life or his brother's dead body, before he knows. Or, perhaps even worse, he might not find Sam at all.

It's tempting to just scream in anger, but Dean stops himself, knowing that doing so will just push his heart rate up higher. He hasn't lost the game yet, and he has to keep playing to win.

It's another five minutes before he comes up on the path leading to Haunted Halls. The building is a faux-gothic manor, all steep slanted roofs and white walls crossed with black wooden beams. Dean has to admit, approaching it through the fog, there is definitely something otherworldly creepy about it that makes goosebumps rise on his skin. Or maybe that's just because he knows what's waiting inside.

He reaches the entrance, ascending the steps up the porch to where a pair of open double doors waits, beckoning him in. He's steeling himself to walk inside when he spots it. It would be easy to miss, the light dull, porch crowded with dead leaves in fall, but there's something that doesn't belong just to the right of the door...

Dean kneels down, reaching forward until his hand closes around metal. Then he stands up holding Sam's gun.

Sam must be here then, he thinks, at last feeling certain as he checks the magazine and the chamber. There's still ammo left.

It's hardly a great arsenal, but one sharpened prop sword and a handful of bullets in a Glock gives him a renewed confidence as he stares into the darkened space beyond the threshold. He's getting his brother back.

Dean steps forward into the dark.

It takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, but soon he's better able to make out the shapes in the entrance hall. The interior clashes with the outside: neo-classical columns have been added from floor to ceiling, offering no apparent support to the structure, but each one bears an information board and a number. There are twelve columns: one, he realises, for each hall. Dean can make out the images showing the "haunted" artefact of each: an executioner's axe, a set of surgical tools, a beaked mask, Canopic jars... Number seven displays the familiar shape of the Aztec tablet. His fingers flex on the gun.

Dean approaches board seven, maneuvering around the leftover barriers that direct the line towards the attraction proper, and leans in closer to read. He can hear Sam's voice in his head paraphrasing for him, but he's not able to picture him anymore.

"So get this: there was this Aztec High Priestess, Yolotli, who supposedly sacrificed more people than any other priest in the history of the Aztec empire. She recorded all her sacrifices on a special tablet, and after cutting out her victim's heart she'd wash the tablet with their blood. At first she was really careful about choosing her victims, and she'd hold contests to find the person with the strongest, most athletic heart that would please the gods. People even volunteered for it at first, wanting to honor the gods and ensure a good harvest, until she started to go too far. She wouldn't follow proper traditions, or she'd want to sacrifice the sick and unhealthy or just about anyone...citizens, prisoners, soldiers, women, children...it didn't matter. She'd make them play games to test their hearts, sometimes getting them killed, and then she'd just sacrifice the survivors as she pleased. The people started to think she was insane, and that she was just satisfying her own whims and not honouring the gods, but nobody questioned it until one year the harvest failed. The other priests said the gods were displeased with the hearts Yolotli had offered, and the only way to appease them was by giving them hers. Her heart was cut out using her own sacrificial knife, and her tablet was washed in her blood. Her spirit is still said to haunt them."