╔⊶⊶⊶⊶⊶✞⊷⊷⊷⊷⊷╗

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧

𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘺: 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘢𝘯, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘺𝘵𝘩, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘥

╚⊶⊶⊶⊶⊶✞⊷⊷⊷⊷⊷╝

"Della, wake up!" Dean shook Delaney who gasped and sat up in the back seat of the Impala. 

Delaney wiped her eyes to remove the sleep from them and pat down her wild mane of hair. "I take it I was having another nightmare?" She looked around and realized she wasn't in her old dorm room anymore and was actually in the Impala instead. 

Another nightmare of Will burning on the ceiling above her. This time he had screamed at her that it was her fault he was dead. That should have been there to save him and not with her brothers. Delaney just wanted to know when these damn things would end? It was taking a toll on both her sanity and anxiety.

"Yeah, another one," Dean replied, staring at his baby sister in concern. 

"You were screaming Will's name and saying you were sorry," Sam added, mirroring Dean's expression.

"At least I got some sleep," Delaney retorted, glancing between her two brothers.

"Sooner or later, we're gonna talk about this," Dean informed Delaney sternly who silently groaned.

Delaney glanced behind her to see where they were. "Where exactly are we?"

"Welcome to Toldeo, Ohio," Dean replied, turning back around in his seat.

Sam pulled out a newspaper where the boys had circled an article about a man named Steven Shoemaker. Delaney read over his shoulder and noticed it explained how he had a sudden death at the age of forty-six and there would be a service held for him on Wednesday.

"What do you think really happened to this guy?" Sam asked, looking over at Dean.

"That's what we're gonna find out. Now, let's go," Dean got out of the car with his two siblings following after him into the hospital Steven was being held in until the service. He lead the way through the building until they finally made it over to the morgue. Inside, it looked dark and depressing with a bald, male nurse sitting at a brown desk.

"Hi," the male nurse greeted, surprised at the sight of the three siblings.

"Hi, um, we're the med students," Dean swiftly lied, motioning between himself and his siblings.

The nurse stared at them as if they had all sprouted five heads. "Sorry?"

"Oh, Dr. Figlavitch didn't tell you?" Dean questioned, pointing over to the other desk in the room with the doctor's nameplate on it. "We talked to him on the phone. We're from Ohio State. He's supposed to show us the Shoemaker corpse. It's for our paper."

"Well, I'm sorry. He's at lunch," the nurse stated.

"Oh. Well, he said, uh - Oh, well, you know, it doesn't matter," Dean stuttered, trying to figure out how to swindle the nurse into letting them in to see the body. "You don't mind showing us the body, do you?"

The male nurse shook his head. "Sorry, I can't. Doc will be back in an hour. You can wait for him, if you want."

"An hour? Ooh. We got to be heading back to Columbus," Dean responded, glancing over to his siblings to help him out. The two younger Winchesters nodded in agreement.

"Look, dude, this paper's half our grade, so if you don't mind helping us out?" Delaney asked, flashing the male nurse the kind of look she gave her two older brothers whenever she wanted something from them. It usually worked on them, so why not a total stranger?

The male nurse looked completely unfazed by Delaney's slight lip pout and big green eyes. "Look, girl - no."

Dean chuckled humorlessly and muttered to his siblings, "I'm gonna hit him in his face, I swear."

Sam pushed his two siblings to the side and pulled his wallet out, throwing one hundred dollars onto the desk in front of the male nurse. Delaney and Dean stared at Sam in shock, not realizing he had it in him to bribe someone.

"Follow me," the male nurse said as he scooped up the cash and made his way across the room.

Dean pulled Sam back before he could walk away. "Dude, I earned that money."

"Yeah, in a poker game," Sam rebutted before turning and following after the nurse.

"Can you believe that guy?" Dean asked Delaney who merely rolled her eyes and followed after Sam.

The male nurse lead the way over to one of the metal tables in the corner. He leaned against the table as the three Winchesters made their way to him.

"Now the newspaper said his daughter found him. She said his eyes were bleeding," Sam noted.

"More than that. They were practically liquefied," the male nurse explained and pulled back the white sheet over Steven Shoemaker. He was ghost white and there were two deep holes where his eyes should be. It took everything in Delaney not to gape and gag at the sight. She was still getting used to all of this death around her and Delaney didn't even know how many deaths she had to see before it was considered normal. Was there even an amount that was considered normal?

"Any sign of a struggle, maybe somebody did it to him?" Dean suggested.

"Nope. Besides the daughter, he was all alone."

"What's the official cause of death?" Sam questioned, looking over the body.

The male nurse sighed, fiddling with the plastic gloves that covered his hands. "Doc's not sure. He's thinking massive stroke, maybe an aneurysm. Something burst up in there, that's for sure."

"What do you mean?" Delaney inquired.

"Intense cerebral bleeding," the nurse answered, looking up from the body and at the siblings in front of him. "This guy had more blood in his skull than anyone I've ever seen."

"The eyes - what would cause something like that?"

"Capillaries can burst. See a lot of of bloodshot eyes with stroke victims."

"Yeah, you ever see exploding eyeballs?" Dean challenged. 

The nurse shook his head. "That's a first for me. But, hey, I'm not the doctor."

"Think we could take a look at that police report? You know, for our paper?" Dean asked, flashing the nurse his usual charming smile. It was a smile that said "you know you want to give me what I want".

"I'm not really supposed to show you that."

Sam sighed and grabbed his wallet again to give the nurse more money.

⊶⊶⊶⊶⊶✞⊷⊷⊷⊷⊷

"Might not be one of ours. Might just be some freak medical thing," Sam stated as him, Dean and Delaney made their way down the stairs of the hospital. 

"How many times in Dad's long and varied career has it actually been a freak medical thing and not some sign of an awful supernatural death?" Dean argued.

"Uh, almost never," Sam reluctantly answered with a sigh.

Dean smirked triumphantly at his little brother. "Exactly."

Sam rolled his eyes but chose to not respond to Dean who was just being childish as usual. "Alright. Let's go talk to the daughter."

The three got into Dean's Impala and they sped off to where the service was being held. After a few minutes of driving, they arrived in front of a Victorian house, dozens of cars taking up the driveway and half of the parking spots of the block. Dean finally found a spot and the three siblings got out of the car, making their way over to the house where the front door was wide open.

Delaney followed her brothers inside and the interior of the home was just as beautiful as the outside. To the right was a table filled with flowers surrounding a picture of Steven Shoemaker, cards and other small knickknacks scattered around. She looked around the room at everyone wearing suits and black dresses/skirts. Then there was Delaney and her brothers in plain old street clothes. Her and Dean sporting a leather jacket and flannel while Sam had a black t-shirt and jeans.

"Feel like we're underdressed," Dean commented as he also looked around them. He nodded his head towards the back of the house before leading his siblings in that direction. Outside in the backyard, they found the daughter of Steven. She had short, brown hair, brown eyes and was seated with two of her friends, both of them being blondes.

"Hey, you're Donna, right?" Delaney asked and gave the girl a polite smile.

"Yeah..." Donna replied, looking between the three to see if she recognized them from anywhere.

"Hi, uh - we're really sorry," Sam stammered a bit, scratching the back of his neck.

Donna nodded in acknowledgement. "Thank you."

"I'm Sam. This is Dean and Delaney. We worked with your dad," Sam explained.

Donna looked between her two friends, obviously never hearing of them before. "You did?"

"Yeah. This whole thing - I mean, a stroke."

The girl sitting to Donna's left gave the three a look that basically told them to get lost. "I don't think she wants to talk about this right now."

"It's okay. I'm okay," Donna assured her friend.

"Were there ever any symptoms?" Dean questioned. "Dizziness, migraines?"

Donna shook her head in response.

The little girl beside Donna, who Delaney assumed was her sister because they looked similar, pulled on sleeve of Donna's black dress. "That's because it wasn't a stroke."

"Lily, don't say that," Donna reprimanded gently. "I'm sorry. She's just upset."

"No, it happened because of me," Lily argued.

Donna ran a hand over Lily's hair. "Sweetie, it didn't."

"Lily, why would you say something like that?" Delaney asked, kneeling in front of her so she was eye level to the girl.

"Right before he died, I said it."

"You said what?" Delaney whispered, not seeing how anything this little girl said could kill anyone. Lily looked like the sweetest girl ever and she doubted anything this girl said could have killed her father.

"Bloody Mary, three times in the bathroom mirror," Lily replied, eyes welling with tears as she clearly blamed herself. "She took his eyes. That's what she does."

Bloody Mary. Delaney remembered her friends doing that one night at one of their hang outs in elementary school. Nothing ever happened to them though. Bloody Mary was some stupid game that all little kids play to freak each other out. Plus, it gave people a chance to lock each other in the dark bathroom for thirty seconds.

"That's not why Dad died," Donna told Lily, rubbing her back. "This isn't your fault."

"I think your sister's right, Lily," Delaney agreed, smiling warmly at Lily. "No way it could have been Bloody Mary. She's a myth and, besides, he didn't say it, did he?"

"No I don't think so."

After talking to the girls for a few more minutes, Dean politely excused him and his siblings before they made their way into the house. Dean, Sam and Delaney made their way to the second floor bathroom where Steven had died. There was still patches of dried blood on the ground that Donna couldn't clean out.

"The Bloody Mary Legend - Dad ever find any evidence that it was a real thing?" Sam asked as he looked around the bathroom.

"Not that I know of," Dean responded.

"You guys seriously don't believe in it do you? I mean, I know we fight demons and it's probably the least weird thing ever, but it's just a myth. I played it in elementary school and I have both of my eyes in my skull still," Delaney stated, causing both of her brothers to look at her. "What? Everybody has played it at least once in their life."

Sam squatted down and ran his hand over a patch of dried blood. "Delaney has a point. Everywhere else, all over the country, kids play Bloody Mary all the time. No one has died from it as far as we know."

"Maybe everywhere else it's just a story, but here it's actually happening."

"Oh come on, this whole thing is nuts, Dean. A woman showing up in a mirror and taking your eyes. Really?" Delaney argued, crossing her arms.

"This is where the legend began right?" Sam questioned as he watched Dean take his own look around the small bathroom. "But according to the legend, the person who says -" He stopped mid-sentence shutting the mirror that Dean had opened to look at the medicine cabinet. "The person who says you know what gets it. But here -"

"Shoemaker gets it instead, yeah," Dean finishes. "Never heard anything like that before. Still the guy did die right in front of the mirror, and the daughter's right. The way the legend goes, you know who scratches your eyes out."

"It's worth checking into."

Delaney laughed and crossed her arms. "You guys really are crazy."

The sound of heels coming down the hall made the three Winchesters rush over to the bathroom door to see the blonde friend of Donna who had tried to get them to leave Donna alone stood outside with her arms crossed. She clearly did not approve of the three being there and she didn't trust them one bit.

"What are you guys doing up here?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Delaney retorted, earning herself an elbow in the ribs from Sam.

"We - We had to go to the bathroom," Dean replied.

The blonde looked skeptically between the three in front of her. "Who are you?"

"Like we said downstairs, we worked with Donna's dad," Dean explained.

"He was a day trader or something, he worked by himself," the blonde countered smugly.

"No, I know, he meant -"

"And those weird questions downstairs, what was that?" the blonde cut off Sam, crossing her arms. It was obvious she was onto the three siblings which rarely happened.

The blonde raised an eyebrow at their silence. "You got one minute to explain or I start screaming."

"Alright, alright," Sam held his hands out in surrender. "We think something happened to Donna's dad."

"Yeah, a stroke," the blonde retorted.

"That's not the sign of a typical stroke. We think it might be something else."

"Like what?"

"Honestly, we don't know yet. But we don't want it to happen to anyone else," Sam admitted sheepishly. "That's the truth."

"So, if you're gonna scream, go right ahead," Delaney sassed.

The blonde seemed to believe Sam because she didn't scream and she seemed to visibly relax. "So who are you then? Cops?"

"Something like that," Dean said.

"I'll tell you what. Here," Sam dug in his pocket for a piece of paper and pen so he could write his number onto it and handed it to the blonde. "If you think of or hear anything out of the ordinary, just give us a call."

Without waiting for a response, the blonde was left alone as the Winchesters left her standing by the bathroom.

⊶⊶⊶⊶⊶✞⊷⊷⊷⊷⊷

"Say Bloody Mary really is haunting this town. There's gonna be some sort of proof - a local woman who died nasty," Dean noted as they walked through the local library.

"Yeah, but a legend this widespread, it's hard. There's like fifty versions of who she actually is," Sam began, catching up to his brother and sister who were already half through the library. "One story says she's a witch, another says she's a mutilated bride. There's a lot more."

"What are we supposed to be looking for?" Delaney queried, deciding to just go along with her brothers. It was clear the two really believed this myth was real and she could never win an argument against them on something like this. They had been in the hunting game way  longer and they tended to know what they were talking about. Just because her experience didn't end the way Lily's did - or maybe it's Steven, if he did say it - doesn't mean her brothers can't be right. That lecture from Dean got her to shut up and just follow whatever they were doing, not like she had much choice.

"Every version has some things in common. It's always a woman named Mary, and she always dies right in front of a mirror," Sam claimed. "So we've got to search local newspapers - public records as far back as they go, see if we can find a Mary who fits the bill."

Dean slapped his hands to his sides. "Well, that sounds annoying."

"No, it won't be so bad, as long as we -" Sam froze mid-sentence when he saw all the computers were out of order. "I take it back. This will be very annoying."

⊶⊶⊶⊶⊶✞⊷⊷⊷⊷⊷

Delaney laid on the bed, getting some peaceful sleep when she felt something drip onto her forehead. She opened her eyes to see Will spread across the ceiling, his face stuck in horror. All she could hear was him screaming was "WHY DELANEY" over and over.

Delaney gasped as she shot up in bed. She ran a hand through her messy curls and looked around the room. Dean was curled up in the chair with a book in his lap, he was staring at her the way he had this morning in the car. Sam was on his stomach on the bed Delaney had been sleeping on, a book propped open in front of him. He gave her the same concerned and worried look Dean was.

"Why did you let me fall asleep?"

"Because I'm an awesome brother," Dean declared, shutting his book. "So what did you dream about?"

Delaney fell back on the bed, her hands resting on her stomach. "Puppies and bunnies, Dean."

Dean chuckled at his sister obviously trying to avoid the situation. "Yeah, sure."

Delaney turned her head so she could look at both of her brothers without having to actually sit up. "So, did you guys find anything?"

"Oh, besides a whole new level of frustration? No," Dean grumbled, rubbing his forehead.

"We've looked at everything," Sam added with a sigh. "A few local women, a Laura and a Catherine, committed suicide in front of a mirror, and a giant mirror fell on a guy named Dave. But, uh, no Mary."

"Maybe we just haven't found it yet," Delaney offered.

"I've also been searching for strange deaths in the area, you know, eyeball bleeding, that sort of thing. There's nothing. Whatever's happening here, maybe it just ain't Mary," Dean said, which earned a smirk from his sister.

Delaney leaned herself up on her elbows. "I told you this whole thing was crazy, Dee. This whole Bloody Mary thing is just a myth. If it weren't, then I'd probably be dead, like, a long time ago."

Sam's cellphone ringing cut off whatever comeback Dean had for his baby sister. Placing it to his ear, Sam greeted whoever was on the other side. After a few minutes of back and forth, Sam finally hung up and rolled off the bed.

"Who was that?" Delaney questioned.

"That was Charlie, you know the girl from yesterday, she said her friend Jill died. The same way Steven Shoemaker died."

AUTHORS NOTE

So I was going to do a few more scenes for this chapter but decided to save it for next chapter. Mainly because I currently have the flu and right now I just wanna curl under my covers and just sleep till this damn thing goes away.

ANYWAYS, I HOPE YOU GUYS ALL ENJOYED THIS. DON'T FORGET TO LEAVE A COMMENT AND VOTE SO I KNOW WHAT YOU GUYS ARE THINKING OF THIS SO FAR! I LOVE HEARING YOUR OPINIONS AND WHAT YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN.

ORIGINALLY POSTED:  FEBRUARY 19TH, 2018

EDITED ON: SEPTEMBER 4TH, 2019