‘Supernatural’: Oldest rule in hunting

THEN: Sigh. I miss Bobby. I miss Rufus.

NOW

Grand Rapids, MI. Naoki Himura is attacking the wallpaper in her newly purchased fixer upper like she has a grudge against it. She peels back a section, revealing a painted red mark on the wall underneath. The scraper breaks the mark’s line. Upstairs, her daughter screams.

Naoki throws open her daughter’s bedroom door. Kat is sitting in a terrified huddle in the middle of her bed. She says something bad is in the house. She heard footsteps. ” … Why did we have to move here?” Naoki puts an extra blanket over Kat to fight the chill in the room. She says the furnace will be fixed tomorrow. They just have to be patient.

Kat curls up under the covers while her mother goes downstairs to get her a glass of water. The lights in the room fritz off. The bedroom door swings shut. There are footsteps and the shadow of feet under the door. Kat watches from under her bed. The door creaks open. There’s no one there.

Grey hands reach out to grab Kat by the ankles and drag her away.

Sam joins Dean at the diner counter. He says there’s nothing on Amara and nothing on Cas. Dean sips his coffee and stews. Sam tells him to buck up little camper. They’re going to win this, remember? Keep grinding? Dean says that was before two weeks of squat. An inspirational speech from a tarnished hero can only carry him so far. Sam presents the Grand Rapids case, arguing that they can’t just sit and wait for leads. It would be nice to have a win, and a haunted house seems like a layup.

Oh, Sam. When is it ever that easy?

They interview Naoki at the hospital. Kat is in a coma. Sam asks about the night of the attack, but Naoki says no one believes there was an attack. “Even the Internet thinks I’m crazy.” With the boys’ gentle encouragement, she tells them about the footsteps and cold and Kat’s feeling that something bad was in the house.

Naoki gives them the green light to check out the house and sits by Kat’s bedside. She tucks the blanket around Kat’s leg. There’s a dark purple bruise above the girl’s ankle where the gray hands grabbed her.

Sam and Dean are stopped halfway up the front walk by Neighbor Lady. “Why do the FBI keep coming back to that house?” She says two agents came to the house a handful of years earlier. The memory of their interaction still rankles. “They were two of the rudest people I’d ever met.”

A HANDFUL OF YEARS AGO

Bobby is parked in front of the house, asleep in the front seat. Rufus quietly opens and then slams the driver side door. Bobby jerks awake and comes up with a revolver pointed at his partner’s face. “The Apocalypse is on the horizon, and you want to hunt a damn ghost.” Rufus is like, darn right ghost. They’ve still got a job to do, “unless you found a way to stop the end of the world during your little siesta.” He thought a win would be nice. Also, he needs Bobby to do all the heavy lifting while he watches. “It’s Shabbat.”

Neighbor Lady challenges them as they walk towards the house. Bobby flashes his badge. Special Agents Riggs and Murtaugh. Official business. Nothing to see here. Please disperse. Neighbor Lady presses. She’s the head of the neighborhood watch, and she would officially like to know what this business is about.

“It’s officially none of your damn business, ma’am.”

Bobby asks Rufus if he was ever nice.

“1985. Worst year of my life.”

A train horn sounds in the distance as they knock on the door. In the present day, Sam and Dean let themselves in with the hide-a-key. They break out the EMF meters and scan the house. Sam is skeptical that they’re walking in Rufus and Bobby’s footsteps. He says the world is small, but not that small. It gets smaller still when they check into the motel and the manager tells Sam two FBI agents stayed there years ago. He gets the same room, “for luck.”

Bobby walks into the motel room. He apologizes for disturbing his holiness’s reading time. “Do not religiously persecute me, Bobby.” Rufus asks again why he was sleeping in his car. Bobby ignores the question and says the police don’t have anything on the current victim, Will Henderson, but he was able to get a copy of the realtor’s report on the house. Rufus asks who died.

Sam says there were two deaths at the house. The first was accidental – death by chicken bone. The second was a murder. Man shot his wife.  Dean hands one of Bobby’s journals to Sam. Sam reads the brief entry aloud. “Grand Rapids, MI. Possible ghost hunt with jackass.”

Dean theorizes that one ghost broke bad back when, and the other has been marinating until now. But with no way of knowing which they were hunting, Chicken Bone or Asshat, the boys might have to dig up two graves. Dean sighs and sips his beer, already exhausted at the thought. Sam still has doubts. The answers seem to easy. Dean says easy like Sunday morning works for him. And Sam said it himself – this case is supposed to be a layup.