Twins

This was done for the episode-themed contest at #Hasitallcentral (using Forest, Spirit, Fire/Rocksalt).
I've written a ...ahem...short version of my idea what led up to this scene. The picture is the basically the exact moment where this description breaks off:

Sam and Dean stumble upon a case in a small town in Virginia. People entering the woods have been disappearing, both at night and in bright daylight. The brothers first believe it’s a Wendigo but there are no traces to be found where the victims supposedly disappeared. Also, their research shows that the victims appear to be the direct descendants of the town’s oldest families while anyone else stayed unharmed. Dean comments that Wendigos are not so picky with their meals.

The brothers decide to do further research. Well, Sam decides while Dean is grumbling about the weather. The (not so cute) waitress at the diner informs them that she believes the perpetrator is the ghost of a lady who died under strange circumstances in the late 19th century. Several people had seen her wandering around her family manor. Sam kicks Dean’s shin when he’s about to snark back that ghosts don’t usually decide to go for a stroll into forests and Dean throws a sloppy fry back at him.

The manor turns out to be somewhat of a dead-end. The ground keeper allows them in, says it doesn’t matter because it was sold and about to be demolished. While he swears that he, too, has seen the ghost, formerly Elisabeth Byrne, there’s no EMF reading anywhere in the house, no ghosts to be seen and nothing else but a whole lot of dust that has Dean sneezing every two seconds. At least, Sam finds a painting of Elisabeth Byrne and her two twin daughters, all three with brilliant red hair. The husband, the groundkeeper says, had died early from consumption.

Research in the town’s archives (Sam does the research, Dean is still coughing up dust) turns up the diary of the mayor and judge at the time of Elisabeth’s death. He wrote about an investigation against several townsmen for killing Elisabeth after she repeatedly refused handing over her husband’s land for the sake of the town. He himself was a bystander, not willing to participate, but not helping either. He also wrote that charges were dropped because there were no witnesses other than the murderers. Dean concludes that the dooming destruction of her home may be enough to bring Elisabeth back going after the descendants of her murderers. They find out that she’s buried on the grounds of the manor and plan an easy salt’n’burn.

Before the brothers get to it, though, they hear about another attack. This time, the victim survived and was brought to the hospital. They find the severely wounded great-great-great-grandson of the mayor who watched Elisabeth die. He is awake but when Sam asks what attacked him, he turns white and averts his eyes. Girls, he says after Dean asks again, two red-headed girls, about six years old. They said he killed their mommy, he sobs, but he didn’t do anything. He never killed anyone, he swears. After that he breaks into unintelligible pleading. On the way out, Sam tells Dean that they have no idea what happened to the girls after their mother died.

The answer is in the mayor’s diary as well and it makes Dean so angry that he almost thinks the haunting is justified. Seeing her mother’s death made the girls flee into the forest. Because they were afraid of the witnesses, the people followed and caught them, and killed them as well. They returned the next day to bury the girls in the forest, the diary states, in a small box with only a crucifix on a nearby tree to give their poor souls rest. The entry ends with a description to the spot that he sometimes visited afterwards. “Wild violets grow there”, is the last sentence.

The brothers pack their bag and follow the description into the forest. They barely have to walk half an hour before they find a small clearing and a tree with a small weathered crucifix. Dean starts digging next to a tiny violet plant, while Sam checks their surroundings with the EMF. He does not want to be thrown against trees again, but so far the EMF stays silent. Dean hits something after the second delve. They find a small wooden box and when Dean opens it, the EMF starts to scream. Sam kneels down and finds two little skulls while the EMF is still going crazy. Dean picks up the shotgun loaded with rocksalt shells and his Zippo lighter, can't be safe enough. He does not want to waste time. The girls may have only attacked citizens, but they’re probably not happy about them digging up their bones either. So before those things make an appearance, he wants to torch them and be done with it. Then he sees something move in the corner of his eye.


Photoshop CS3, Wacom Bamboo Tablet
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters used in this image, Eric Kripke and Warner Bros. Television and Productions do. Reference for the forest.