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a-mountain-ash · 6 years

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A Very Winchester Mystery

A special little ficlet for @ain-t-bovvered‘s 800 follower “Tales of the Winchesters” project! I visited the Winchester Mystery House a couple years back and couldn’t resist. Even tossed in a little personal easter egg from my time there because it was too good and I swear the ghosts played a little prank on me. Also, I’m sure the WIL CFO is perfectly decent person, but I needed someone to commit the crime :P

We know who the Winchesters are. We're not talking the originals, of course, though I suppose it's not out of the realm of possibility for them to be related. We are ghosts, after all, so the realm of possibility is quite large. We mean the new Winchesters. The brothers. The ghost slayers.

You see, the thing about this place that we inhabit is that it's very popular. Everyone comes here. Demons, ghouls, vampires, werewolves. They enjoy a little bit of whimsy as much as the next fellow. Some people even drag their own personal ghosts with them, pulled along by their attachment to some piece of jewelry or other. Those times are when we get the good gossip.

The Winchesters almost got me last week, but I got away because my daughter here was catching a flight for this vacation she's on. I guess that Dean boy doesn't do planes.

Sam and Dean smoked my aunt's bones a few year's back when she was haunting me. Now I'm a ghost, too. Irony, amiright?

'Pretty sure I'm half way to angry spirit, and I'm afraid the Winchesters are gonna nab me before my boy stands at the alter in a couple months. You guys have any tips on how to stay on the good path?' 'Sure Fred, find some good friends if you can. We have poker nights once a week to vent. Congratulations on the engagement!'

And that, my good listener, is why we are a little bit worried. To give you some background, the Winchester Mystery House is a big thing. People spend real money to come walk through Sarah's wacky rooms and miniature stairwells. Personally, at this point in our ghostly existences, we don't totally understand the appeal, but the point still stands that people are here constantly. They're always with a tour guide, but every now and again, people get away from the group and we have to set them straight. Nicely of course. We weren't lying when we told Fred to find some friends. Being together all these years has really helped us stay on the straight and narrow.

What you have to understand is that we all want to be here, and not for revenge. Absolutely none of us were trapped here and if we really wanted to, we could probably find a way to get a reaper to come take us up, though none of us knows how. Sarah Winchester was the most excellent of ladies. During our lives, she took care of us and our families well and we are simply repaying the favor in death. We keep the property safe, defending it from harm, and keeping the still hidden rooms clean until the property managers finally find them. Occasionally we play a little mischief on tourists who get off the beaten track, like that time some sisters missed a sign and found their ways into a private area and we shut the gate on them. They got out fine, but they knew what happened, and stayed on the path after that.

Anyway, it all started a few weeks ago when apparently somebody in the higher-ups of Winchester Investment LLC decided to get greedy. We don't really understand how that whole situation works because we only know what we hear or see in the newspaper, but we know enough. WIL is in charge of this whole operation and they run it for the descendants of John and Mayme Brown, the couple who bought the house after Sarah died, may she rest in peace. One night, someone tried setting the estate on fire. Nothing of this scale had ever occurred before and we may have lost our cool, just a bit. It happened again a week later. Needless to say, the Winchesters and their angel friend Castiel were all here now, and we were going to have to try really hard to get them to see what was happening here before they found a way to burn us all.

As it happened though, the Winchesters were surprisingly willing to listen to reason. It might be because we steered them into a room with only two doors, one of which lead to a 15 foot drop off and the other of which we blocked off with 20 or so ghosts strong, but you know, technicalities. They listened.

"Cas, what just happened?" Dean asked.

Oh my goodness, he was gorgeous! Those eyes. Mabel would definitely want to see him. She hadn't seen a cute tourist in weeks.

"Obviously the ghosts are preparing to kill us, Dean. I didn't think that would require an explanation."

The angel was a funny one. We've heard tell of them coming down to earth, but none have come to the house. They must think they're above fun, but we all knew this one is a little different.

"Yeah, yeah Cas. Thanks for the pep talk. I mean, how many of them are there. You can see them, right?"

"Ah, of course. There are currently 19 of them in the room. I believe there are a few more outside the door, but I don't have x-ray vision so you'll have to bear with me."

We really could have appeared to them then, but it was far too good a show to end it straight away. The tall one, Sam, looked like he'd swallowed a whole lemon while he looked between his brother and the angel. Castiel and Dean were so focused on talking about us that it was entirely impossible they'd forgotten about us. Watching them waffle and bicker before us in their FBI suits, it was hard to believe the vast quantity of stories we'd heard all the years before.

"Alright, well what are we going to do about it?" Sam finally asks practically. "We can't go shooting salt rounds inside a century old work of art and we don't have enough salt for that many ghosts at once."

At this point, we were seriously confused about how they'd acquired the reputation they had. That said, the threat of shots being fired at dear Sarah's carefully chosen wallpaper was enough to make a few of us show ourselves. When our best diplomats, Mr. Jones, Margaret, and John, materialized before them, their reactions (or lack thereof) were disappointing though not surprising. After all, with decades of ghost hunts under their belts, nothing should really shock them anymore.

"I would strongly recommend that you do not fire inside our home." Margaret spoke first, in her best friendly intimidation voice. She practiced it daily in front of Sarah's looking glass.

Despite her warning, Dean raised his gun anyway. Effie giggled invisibly at the glorious eye rolling his actions earned him from both Castiel and Sam. The older Winchester swung his gun in her direction. Admittedly, it was fairly impressive how good his aim was from sound alone. Had he fired, he would have hit her squarely in the head.

"God, Dean, what did she just say?" Sam was definitely the reasonable one of the two.

"Yeah, yeah. I heard her. Ghosts say lots of crap, though. Just being on the safe side."

"We will definitely not be allowed back inside if we damage this home, Dean. Even if they do think we're FBI."

"Ugh, fine." Dean lowered his weapon as Castiel placed a firm hand on his shoulder. "What are we supposed to do then?"

"Listen to us, you goon." Mr. Jones spoke then, finally seeing his in. He was a gruff older man, his skin tanned despite his deathly pallor from hours in the sun picking fruit in Mrs. Winchester's orchards. He had died very suddenly one day when a branch had snapped and his ladder had fallen with him at the top.

"We're listening." Sam said quickly before Dean could speak again.

"We're good spirits. None of us are vengeful. We chose to stay here after our deaths, even after Mrs. Winchester passed, in order to protect her property. This place was a good home to many of us and she cared for our families like her own. We just help maintain the property and keep the visitors safe."

"Then why the recent deaths?" Castiel asked.

"Someone is sending people to try and burn the estate to the ground. We believe it must be someone at the organization trying to collect insurance money or something." John spoke now. "One of our younger ghosts, Elmer, lost his temper the first time. The second time, it was Charlie. We aren't vengeful spirits, but protecting this place is our purpose and someone is trying to destroy it."

"You can see we're very much in possession of our faculties, even after almost a century. More for some. But this home must be protected. If it is lost, we truly will go insane." Margaret had dropped her ominous tone in favor of something friendlier.

"Won't you disappear?" Dean asked. "Isn't it the house that you're attached to?"

"No. We are connected to the entire estate, down into the soil that we tended and farmed. We cannot be burned with this house, but if the house burns we will have nothing grounding us to our purpose and then we truly will become vengeful."

"We can't have you killing people, even if they are arsonists." Castiel answered.

"Then help us!" Effie appeared suddenly. She had always gotten impatient with too much talk. "We can't have this house destroyed and you can't have us killing more people. You must be able to do something."

And they could.

With our help concealing the security cameras and silencing the alarms, they snuck back onto the property after hours. We used Castiel as a communication conduit and when we found yet another man entering the property with gasoline and matches we alerted him and they called in an anonymous tip that someone was attempting to burn the estate. Rather than kill the man, we detained him until the authorities arrived and took him away.

A week later, the CFO of WIL was brought in for questioning and one of the Mayme descendants themselves took his position. Every once in a while, when the world isn't ending, the Winchesters take a day or two to come visit us. Castiel always brings the best gossip.

#supernatural #season 10 #dean winchester #castiel #Sam Winchester #winchester mystery house #talesofthewinchesters #tales of the winchesters

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