( I BELIEVE )

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND

HOUSE
[ ☾]

      A young woman, Gloria, is sitting in a dark room, watching television. It appears to be "The Drew Carey Show". She wears smudged hooker makeup and the table to her left holds several small angel statues and an ashtray filled with cigarette butts.

      "How little?" A Woman on the TV says.

      "How about 'a little eyeshadow'?" (LAUGHTRACK) "You know, all this stuff, it's just very unprofessional."

      "Don't touch the troll!" She says.

      "Is that what your mom used to say to your dates?" LAUGHTRACK

      "Put the trolls down or I'll put a staple right between your-" Gloria sighs heavily and lifts the remote control.

      As we pan over to reveal the television, she flips to a televangelist station. "Now I know it's hard. It's hard to look up when you're down. It's hard to look up and see the light. But I'm here to tell you folks, the Lord is with you." It says.

      Gloria turns off the television; the lamp to her right begins sputtering and flickering. She looks around, frowning, and stamps out her cigarette.

      The television suddenly turns on again, and Gloria gasps in shock. "You don't have to suffer, you don't have to be lost. The lord is talking to you right now; he's saying, you are my child and you have a purpose! You think God forgot about you? I tell you no! All you got to do is listen! Can't you just hear those angels singing? Isn't it beautiful? It's time. It's time to receive the message he's sending. It's time to listen to the Word of God! Do you hear the glory? I said, can you hear it? I said, can you just hear the glory?"

      The lamp is still flickering and the entire room begins to shake. Gloria clutches at the couch, looking around in panic. Behind her, a blinding light glows, and she turns to face it in horror, then awe.

      "Oh my god."

      Gloria is seated quietly on her bed in a psych ward. Her hair is straight and her face clean; she's wearing a bathrobe and reading a book held in her left hand. The door opens behind her and she turns.

      "Good morning. You're not the usual guy." She says. Pan around to reveal who she's talking to; it's Sam, in white scrubs and holding a clipboard.

      "No, uh, just filling in. So how you feeling today, Gloria?" Sam asks.

      "I've never felt better."

      "So, no disturbances lately?" He asks.

      "You mean am I stark raving cuckoo for coco puffs?" Gloria asks.

      "I didn't' say that."

      "It's all right. I know what people must think."

      "What do you think?" Sam asks.

      "I think what I saw was real."

      Sam looks around, pulls up a chair and sets the clipboard down. He leans forward, elbows on knees, and gives her an intensely earnest look. "I'd like to know what you saw." He says.

      "It was all over the news. I stabbed a man in the heart." She says.

      "Why would you do that?" Sam asks.

      "Because it was God's will."

      "Did God talk to you?" He asks.

      "No. I get the sense God's a little busy for house calls. No, he, he sent someone."

      "Someone?" Sam asks.

      "An angel. It came to me in this beautiful white light, and it filled me with this feeling. It's, it's hard to describe."

      "And this angel..." Sam starts.

      "Spoke God's Word."

      "And the Word was to kill someone?" He asks.

      "I know, it sounds strange. But what I did was very important. I helped him smite an evil man. I was chosen. For redemption." Gloria says.

      Sam shifts his weight. "This man you stabbed, did the angel give you his name?"

      "No, he just told me to wait for the sign. And the very next day I saw it, right beside the man's doorway. And I knew." Gloria says.

      "Why him?" Sam asks.

      "I just know what the angel told me: that this man was guilty to his deepest foundations. And that was good enough for me."

MOTEL ROOM
[ ☼ ]

      Dean is lying on the motel bed, which is vibrating, as he listens to music on his phone. As Sam enters, Dean doesn't notice him. "Hey." Sam smacks Dean on the boot. "Hey!"

      "Hey. Man, you gotta try this, I mean there really is magic in the Magic Fingers." Dean says.

      Sam looks around. "Where's Elena." He asks.

      "She went to get some girl stuff or so thing like that." Dean says.

      Sam watches his brother and smirks. "Dean, you're enjoying that way too much, it's kind of making me uncomfortable." Sam says.

      "What am I supposed to do? I mean, you've got me on lockdown here, I'm bored out of my skull."

      "Hey, you were the bank robber on the eleven o'clock news, not me. We can't risk you just walking into a government facility." Sam says.

      "Hmm." Dean says.

      The door unlocks as Elena walks in with five shopping bags. "Hey guys." She says.

      "Did you actually go shopping?" Sam asks.

      "I am a girl you know." Elena says and sets her bags down.

      Sam waves a dismissing hand at Dean as he turns to go into the bathroom. The bed shutters to stillness. "Aw, damnit! That was my last quarter. Hey! You got any quarters?" Dean asks Elena.

      She shakes her head. Dean pulls his headphones out and gets up, crossing the room and leaning on the doorway to the bathroom where Sam is washing his face.

      "I don't have any either." Sam says.

      "So did you get in to see that crazy hooker?" Dean asks, smirking.

      "Yeah. Gloria Sitnick. And I'm not so sure she's crazy." Sam says as Elena appears and leans against the door frame.

      "But she seriously believes she was touched by an angel?" She asks.

      "Yeah. Blinding light, feelings of spiritual ecstasy, the works. I mean, she's living in a locked ward and she's totally at peace." Sam says.

      "Oh yeah, you're right, that sounds completely sane. What about the dude she stabbed?" Dean asks.

      "Uh, Carl Gully. She said she killed him because he was evil." Sam says.

      Elena crosses her arms. "Was he?" She asks.

      "I don't know. I mean, I couldn't find any dirt on him. I mean, he didn't have a criminal record, he worked over at the campus library, had lots of friends, he was a churchgoer." Sam says.

      "Hm. So then Gloria's just your standard-issue wacko. I mean, she wouldn't be the first nutjob in history to kill in the name of religion, know what I mean?" Dean asks.

      "No, but she's the second in town to murder because an angel told them to. Little odd, don't you think?" Sam asks.

      Elena recalls. "Well, odd yes, supernatural maybe. But angels? I don't think so."

      "Why not?" Sam asks her in disbelief.

      "Because there's no such thing, Sam." Dean says and Elena nods, agreeing.

      "Guys, there's ten times as much lore about angels as there is about anything else we've ever hunted." Sam says.

      "Yeah, you know what? There's a ton of lore on unicorns too. In fact, I hear that they, they ride on silver moonbeams, and they shoot rainbows out of their ass." Dean says.

      Sam sits down, total deadpan. "Wait, there's no such thing as unicorns?"

      "That's cute. I'm just saying, man, there's just some legends that you just, you file under "bullcrap"." Sam says.

      "And you've got angels on the bullcrap list." Sam says.

      "Yep."

      "Why?"

      "Because I've never seen one." Dean says.

      "Me neither. What's to say somethings real if you can't see it?" Elena says.

      "So what?" Sam says.

      "So, I believe in what I can see." Elena says.

      "Elena! We have seen things that most people couldn't even dream about." Sam points out.

      "Exactly. With our own eyes, that's hard proof, okay? But in all this time I have never seen anything that looks like an angel." Dean says. "And don't you think that if they existed that we would have crossed paths with them? Or at least know someone that crossed paths with them? No. This is a, a demon or a spirit, you know, they find people a few fries short of a happy meal, and they trick them into killing these randoms."

      "Maybe." Sam says.

      Dean rolls his eyes. "Can we just - I'm going stir-crazy man. Hey, let's go by Gloria's apartment, huh?" He asks.

      "I was just there. Nothing. No sulfur, no EMF." Sam says.

      "You didn't see any fluffy white wing feathers?" Dean asks.

      "But Gloria did say the angel gave her a sign, right beside Carl Gully's doorway." Sam says.

      "Could be something at his house, worth checking out." Dean says.

GULLY HOUSE
[ ☼ ]

      Dean is driving as they pull up in front of Carl Gully's house. It is a moderate single-family home with steps leading up to the front door; to the left of the door is a plastic angel figure.

      Dean mounts the steps and sees it. "Oh hey, Sam. I think I found it. It's a sign from up above." He peers in the window. "Well, I think I learned a valuable lesson: Always take down your Christmas decorations after New Year's, or you might get filleted by a hooker from God. Ha."

      "I'm laughing on the inside." Sam wanders around back, through a gate, and Dean and Elena follow.

      They find a wooden storm cellar. "You know, Gloria said the guy was guilty to his deepest foundations." Sam says.

      "You think she literally meant the foundation?" Elena asks.

      At the storm cellar, Sam, Elena and Dean open the creaking door and go down the steps, shining flashlights. "Hmm." Dean says.

      Sam notices scratches on a wall near the floor; he leans over to get a closer look. "Hey." He says.

      "You got something?" Dean asks. Sam digs at the wall and pulls something out. "What is it?"

      "It's a fingernail." Sam says. Dean pulls two shovels from the wall and they begin to dig.

      Later, a deep pit has been completed to reveal a pile of skeletons. "So much for the innocent churchgoing librarian." Elena says.

      "Yeah, well, whatever spoke to Gloria about this knew what it was talking about, I'll give you that." Dean says.

      A young man, Zach, is lying on a single bed, staring at the ceiling. He drinks from a bottle of liquor; a comic book entitled "THESEUS" rests open on his chest.

      The room begins to shake violently, the lights flickering. More bottles tumble to the floor from the night stand, and the television topples with a crash.

      Zach scrambles out of bed frantically; a blinding light appears in front of him and he holds up a hand in terror; then awe washes over his features.