Chapter 10: Dead in the Water — Part 2
[Lake Manitoc — September 23, 2005, Night]
Lucas's drawing burned in Ethan's pocket as he drove through dark Wisconsin backroads. A red bicycle. An address that matched an abandoned property on the lake's north shore. A child's plea written in crayon: He's still there. He wants to come home.
Peter Sweeney had been waiting thirty-five years for someone to find him.
The truck's headlights carved through fog rolling off the lake, thick and cold and smelling of vegetation and decay. This part of Lake Manitoc hadn't been developed—no vacation homes, no fishing docks, just dense forest pressing against the water's edge.
The Spirit stirred as Ethan pulled off the road near the address Lucas had drawn.
OLD DEATH. CHILD'S RAGE. HE WAITS BENEATH THE WATER.
"I know."
YOU INTEND TO FREE HIM.
"I intend to stop him from killing anyone else."
THE SAME RESULT. DIFFERENT MOTIVATION.
The distinction mattered to Ethan, even if the Spirit didn't understand why. Peter Sweeney wasn't evil—he was a victim who'd become something terrible. The boys who killed him had grown into men who covered up their crime. The ghost's revenge was understandable, even justified by certain moral frameworks.
But innocent people were dying. Andrea Barr's husband. Others who'd had no part in Peter's death. The cycle had to end.
His phone buzzed. Dean's number.
"Where are you?"
"North shore. Lucas sent me a drawing—I think it shows where Peter Sweeney's body is."
Silence on the line. Then: "The kid sent you a drawing? How?"
"I don't know. Maybe he sensed something when we talked. Maybe traumatized kids can see things adults can't." Ethan stepped out of the truck, cold air biting at his exposed skin. "The point is, if we can find the remains and salt-and-burn them, the drownings stop."
"Sam and I are fifteen minutes out. Don't do anything stupid."
"Define stupid."
"Going into ghost-infested water alone at night."
"Then I'll wait."
He hung up before Dean could argue. The fog pressed closer, muffling sound, making the forest feel like a held breath. Somewhere beneath the lake's surface, a child's bones lay where they'd been hidden for thirty-five years.
Ethan walked to the water's edge.
The cold hit him immediately—lake water in late September, maybe fifty degrees. His Sin Sense reached out, probing the darkness, and found something waiting.
Not anger, exactly. Not hunger like the Wendigo. Something sadder. A loneliness that had curdled into rage over decades of abandonment.
Peter Sweeney wanted to come home.
Headlights appeared on the road behind him. The Impala's rumble cut through the silence, and Dean and Sam emerged with flashlights and a bag of supplies.
"You found something?" Sam asked.
"The body's in the water. Deep. Weighted down, probably." Ethan pointed toward a section of shoreline where the fog seemed thickest. "The ghost is strongest there. That's where they dumped him."
Dean was already pulling rope and a wetsuit from the trunk. "Diving gear. I keep it for cases like this."
"You're going in?"
"Someone has to. Sam does the salt-and-burn; I do the retrieval." Dean's jaw was set, but his eyes flickered toward the dark water with something that might have been fear. "Unless you've got a better idea."
Ethan considered. His Hellfire worked underwater—he'd proven that during the transformation with Lucas—but he didn't know if it could locate remains or if the ghost would attack while he was submerged.
"I'll go. I can sense where the body is, and if the ghost attacks, I can defend myself better than you can."
"You can transform underwater?"
"Did it once already. Steam instead of open flame, but the effect is similar."
Dean and Sam exchanged looks. The silent brother communication that still made Ethan feel like an outsider despite weeks of hunting together.
"Fine," Dean said finally. "But you come up the moment something goes wrong."
Ethan stripped off his jacket and boots. The water would be cold, brutal, but the Spirit's presence would keep him alive longer than any normal human could survive.
He waded in.
The lake embraced him like a frozen fist. Cold shot through his body, stealing breath, making muscles seize. He pushed forward, deeper, water rising to his chest, his shoulders, his chin.
Then he went under.
Darkness. Complete and absolute, broken only by the faint glow of his eyes—orange light filtering through murky water, casting shadows on the lake bottom fifteen feet below.
Ethan swam downward, following the pull of the Spirit's senses. The ghost's presence grew stronger with every stroke, a pressure building in his chest that had nothing to do with holding his breath.
THERE.
A shape in the sediment. Small. Child-sized. Wrapped in something that might have been canvas once, now rotted and faded.
Peter Sweeney's grave.
Ethan reached for it—
The water moved.
Not current. Not natural flow. Something grabbed his ankle and pulled, dragging him down with strength that shouldn't exist, toward the lake bottom, toward the darkness, toward the same death Peter had suffered thirty-five years ago.
The ghost manifested in front of him.
A child's face, bloated and pale, eyes that held nothing but rage and pain. Peter Sweeney looked exactly like the photographs Ethan had found in the archives—twelve years old forever, preserved in death as he'd been in life.
His mouth opened. Words formed without sound: They killed me. They left me here. Nobody came.
"I came." Ethan's voice bubbled through the water, barely audible. "I'm here now."
Too late. Too late. They all have to pay.
The grip on Ethan's ankle tightened. The ghost pulled him deeper, toward the weighted canvas, toward the bones that anchored Peter to this world.
Ethan's transformation triggered.
Steam exploded from his body. The water around him boiled, superheated by Hellfire that couldn't fully manifest but still burned with judgment's fury. His skull emerged through flesh that reformed in the same instant, wreathed in light that turned the lake bottom into a hellscape of shadow and flame.
Peter Sweeney recoiled.
For the first time in thirty-five years, the ghost felt something other than rage. He felt fear.
YOU ARE INNOCENT, the Spirit's voice thundered through Ethan's mind. YOU WERE MURDERED. YOUR KILLERS DESERVE PUNISHMENT—BUT NOT THROUGH INNOCENT BLOOD.
The ghost flickered. His grip loosened.
They never came. Nobody came.
SOMEONE CAME NOW. SOMEONE WHO CAN END THIS.
Ethan reached through the steam and grabbed the canvas-wrapped remains. Peter's ghost screamed—not in rage this time, but something else. Recognition. Release.
Home. I want to go home.
Ethan kicked toward the surface, dragging the bones with him, steam trailing in his wake. The ghost followed—not attacking now, just watching, waiting to see what would happen next.
He broke the surface gasping, flesh reforming over bone, Hellfire guttering out. The bones in his arms were impossibly light—thirty-five years of lake water had stripped away everything but the essentials.
"ETHAN!" Dean was in the shallows, reaching for him. Sam had the salt and lighter fluid ready.
They dragged the remains onto shore. Sam worked with professional efficiency—salt spread liberally, lighter fluid soaked through rotted canvas.
Peter Sweeney's ghost stood at the water's edge, watching.
"Light it," Ethan said.
The match caught. Fire spread. The ghost's form flickered, wavered, began to dissolve.
For a moment—just a moment—Peter Sweeney looked peaceful. A child finally being allowed to rest.
Then he was gone.
[Sheriff's Station — September 24, 2005, Morning]
Sheriff Jake Devins looked like a man who'd aged twenty years overnight.
They'd called him after the cremation, told him they'd found Peter Sweeney's remains and destroyed the ghost. The sheriff had driven to meet them at the station in silence, and now he sat behind his desk with the expression of someone watching their world collapse.
"You know what happened," Ethan said. It wasn't a question.
Devins nodded slowly. His hands shook as he poured himself a drink from the bottle he kept in his desk drawer.
"Summer of 1970. Me and Bill Carlton and Peter. We were kids. Stupid kids who thought we were invincible." His voice cracked. "We were playing at the lake. Daring each other to hold our breath underwater. Bill grabbed Peter, held him down. A joke. A stupid joke that went too far."
"He drowned."
"We panicked. We were twelve years old and we'd just killed our friend. Bill's dad helped us... handle it. Wrapped the body, weighted it, dumped it in the deep part of the lake." Devins's eyes were wet. "We never told anyone. Never. For thirty-five years."
Ethan's chest burned. The Urge screamed at him to make this man pay—to force him to experience every death he'd helped cause, every life cut short because he'd hidden his crime.
But something else surfaced too. The memory of Peter's ghost at the end, the peace in his eyes before he dissolved.
Home. I want to go home.
The ghost hadn't wanted revenge, not really. He'd wanted acknowledgment. Recognition that his death mattered.
"The drownings," Sam said carefully. "The ghost was killing people connected to what happened."
"Bill's family. My family." Devins stared at nothing. "Andrea's husband. Lucas's father. All because of what we did."
"It's over now," Dean said. "The ghost is gone. The killings will stop."
"Will they?" Devins looked up, and Ethan saw something in his eyes that he recognized. The weight of sin, finally too heavy to carry. "My grandson watched his father drown. My daughter lost her husband. And it's all because I was too much of a coward to tell the truth."
He stood, walked to the window overlooking the lake.
"You boys should go. There's nothing more you can do here."
Dean opened his mouth to argue, but Ethan caught his arm. "We're done."
They left the station. Outside, the morning sun painted Lake Manitoc in shades of gold and blue, peaceful and beautiful and completely indifferent to the tragedy beneath its surface.
"He's going to do something stupid," Dean said.
"Probably."
"And you're just going to let him?"
Ethan watched the sheriff through the window. Devins was still standing there, looking at the lake, his hand resting on something in his pocket.
"Some punishments aren't mine to give."
Sheriff Jake Devins walked into Lake Manitoc at 10:47 AM.
They watched from the shore—too far to intervene, close enough to see. He waded in slowly, deliberately, arms spread like a man embracing an old friend. The water rose to his waist, his chest, his shoulders.
He didn't fight. Didn't scream. Just kept walking until the lake took him.
Andrea and Lucas were there too, standing beside the Winchesters. Andrea was crying. Lucas held her hand, small face solemn.
"Why?" Andrea's voice broke. "Why would he do this?"
Ethan didn't have an answer that would comfort her. The truth—that her father had helped murder a child and hidden it for thirty-five years—would only make things worse.
"He was carrying something heavy," Ethan said finally. "Something he couldn't put down any other way."
Lucas tugged at Ethan's sleeve. First contact the boy had initiated since they'd met.
"You burned underwater." His voice was soft, wondering. "I saw it when you saved me. You were on fire, but the water didn't put it out."
Ethan crouched to Lucas's level. "Some fires burn different."
"Are you a monster?"
The question hung in the air. Ethan considered lying, considered deflection, considered all the comfortable answers that would make a traumatized child feel safer.
"Sometimes," he said instead. "But I try to be the kind that protects people instead of hurting them."
Lucas nodded solemnly, as if this made perfect sense. Then he turned back to watch the lake where his grandfather had disappeared.
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