The Dark Forces of the Devil's Hotel

Paper Towns

Sam was tired.

This was typically a given. The hunting life meant that they often had to interrupt  their sleep schedule to either save people from being killed or to avoid being killed themselves.

Additionally, Sam was no stranger to nightmares, and some nights he was willing to do anything to avoid them.

But today, he was more tired than usual, mostly because he was steeling himself for what they might find out about the Rose Hotel in its hometown, which they'd discovered was named Evergreen East.

Discovering there was something more to a case was like being asked to open up a can, a can that was either filled with worms or dynamite. The former was unpleasant and maybe a bit jarring the first couple of times, but ultimately manageable. The latter, as one would assume, presented the danger of getting blown to smithereens. And more often than not it turned out to be the dynamite, because that's just how it is with the supernatural world. Death in places where death should never be.

One discovery, one choice, and suddenly you could be caught up in an all-out war.

Sam was hoping to avoid that this time. It was why he was feeling a little bit hesitant, because the world seemed to enjoy dancing on the precipice of annihilation.

He was too tired to deal with it falling again.

Still, a job is a job, and if that was what was going to happen then they couldn't just let it all come crashing down.

"You okay there, Sammy?" Dean asked, his voice cutting through Sam's thoughts.

His brother was peering at him curiously from the driver's seat. Well, doing so as best as anyone driving a car could.

"Yeah, just... thinking," he answered, not wanting to elaborate.

Better change the subject, he thought.

"You think we should call Cas about this one?"

"Depends on what we find. I texted him to let him and the kid know we won't be heading back to the bunker today. They're on a milk-run ghost hunt right now anyways, so I don't think they need any backup."

Sam wondered how Cas and Jack were doing with all that. Hopefully their case turned out a little simpler than theirs was shaping up to be.

The tall trees continued to fly by on the oddly empty road, and it was then Sam noticed they hadn't seen an actual building or man-made structure of any kind in quite some time. This was to be expected, as this single road leading to the town hadn't shown up on many maps. Nevertheless, there was something menacing about the towering trees, their branches reaching upwards towards the grayed sky like desperate, skeletal fingers. The woods they made up were dark, the kind of dark that seemed to border on natural and unnatural. Like you knew there had to be more than just plants in their somewhere, and yet you feel like you'd find something much worse than a bear if you entered.

Sam pulled the map out of his pocket, wincing as he did so. He'd forgotten about the wound on his arm (again), though at least this time it was bandaged, and he wasn't getting blood everywhere. Dean had just cleaned the inside of the Impala last week and Sam didn't want to know how he'd react to blood stains on his freshened-up pride and joy.

The map, which was yellowed and dotted with rips around the edges, was odd. It was odd because it was one of the only maps that actually had the town they were looking for on it. It was odd because it appeared to be an old map, with 'old' meaning around 200-years-old. It became even odder once Sam had realized that this map was some scribbles on paper their dad must have picked up in the middle of nowhere ages ago.