21. Thinman (Part 1)

We find out that Casey's photo was posted after her time of death, leaving us with another puzzle. Another puzzle that had to be put on the backburner this morning when Dean got a call.

The call brings us back to the diner, which has transformed into a crime scene. Sure enough, the damn Ghostfacers van is here before my brothers and me. This time, I take lead into the diner. The coroners haven't taken the body yet. The body is the boss of the diner, Trey.

"Agents," says the deputy as we arrive, "thanks for coming."

I look angrily at the Ghostfacers, who have camera equipment out. "What are these two crapshoots doing here?"

"I figured it wouldn't hurt to go a little 'Medium,' you know? Uh...two counties over, folks were combing the place for a poor little dead boy back in August. The cops let a psychic do her thing. Shish, bang, boom—found a body a day later."

"Uh-huh," I say distantly. "Excuse me." Dean follows me as I approach the Ghostfacers. I whack them both upside the head. They both squeak—which I find amusing—and look like I've scared the color out of their faces. "I thought we told you to scram?"

"Oh, well, what are you gonna do?" Harry asks boldly. "You gonna out me, 'agents'?"

My eyes widen, and I look at Dean. "Can I kick his ass, please?"

"Not in public," Dean tells me. He looks at the boys. "Okay, look, playing paparazzi at a crime scene—who does that help but yourselves?"

"The bloggers, Dean, the believers—everyone who needs just a little proof to know that Thinman is out there."

"Wait," I cut in, eyeing Harry, "so, you're saying there's a lot of folks online that are pretty die-hard about this thing?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Oh, yeah," Ed echoes. "Uh-huh."

"You throw the right Tibetan symbol into the mix, you dumbasses ever think the Thinman comes to life as a Tulpa?" Dean snaps.

"Because thousands of people can agree that Thinman is any one thing? The lore changes blog to blog. He's not a Tulpa."

"Okay, all right. All right. Right here, right now, cut the crap. Do either of you actually know what Thinman is?"

"No. We just play Supernaturalists on TV," Ed deadpans.

"We have no idea what we're doing...Of course we do!" Harry chimes in.

"Thinman is part man, part tree."

"Some people believe that he emerged from a nightmare of an autistic boy."

I really don't appreciate this attitude right now. These two boneheads aren't taking this seriously. People are dead because of this Thinman thing!

Dean rolls his eyes. "All right, so you have no idea," he says.

"Fellas," says the deputy, "you'll want to see this."

Dean, Harry, Ed, and I congregate over to Sam, who's been viewing the security footage while Dean and I have been harassing the Ghostfacers.

"All right, check it out," Sam tells us.

We watch on tape as Thinman stabs Trey.

"Whoa" is the collective response from the Ghostfacers.

"All right, so, how did he jump from the parking lot to the diner?" says Dean. "The doors were locked?"

"The footage shows Trey locked them ten minutes before," reports the deputy.

"Locked, not locked, it doesn't matter," says Harry. "Everyone knows Thinman can teleport."

"I didn't even get a blip on my EMF," says Ed.

"So, maybe it's not a ghost," I say.

"You Feds believers now?" the deputy asks me.

"Okay, uh...We're gonna go," says Ed. "Uh, good work, deputy, agents. Let's go. Let's go, man." Harry and Ed run off as though Dean and I are about to pursue them. If they ticked me off any further, I would have.

* * *

"Okay," say Sam, as we're discussing Thinman over dinner back at the motel room. "Just grasping at straws here, but when I think 'teleport,' I think 'Crossroads Demon.'"

"Mm," says Dean. "Demon that likes to stab and watch Youtube. Why not?"

"Oh, by the way, speaking of which, the video of, uh, Trey getting knifed is already online. It has, like, two-thousand views. It's like somebody wants people to see Thinman in action."

"It's 'cause people will watch," I say grimly. "'Cause people are sick."

"And when did 'viral' go from that baby chimp falling out of a tree to killer 'Candid Camera'?"

"You know what video would have gone viral, if we still had it?" asks Dean. For once, he's relaxed. There's something of a smile on his face. "When you were five and got dressed up as Batman and you jumped off the shed 'cause you thought you could fly."

I giggle. Even I remember that.

Sam grins. "After you jumped first."

"Hey, I was nine," Dean defends himself, "and I was dressed up like Superman, okay? Everybody knows that Batman can't fly."

"Well, I didn't know that. I broke my arm."

Dean laughs. "I know you did. I was just glad Jo didn't follow the example."

"Hey, I knew then that Wonder Woman couldn't fly, hence her Invisible Plane or Jet or whatever," I say.

"Man, I drove you to the E.R. on my handlebars and drove Jo-Jo crazy by leaving her behind. Hm, good times."

I tilt my head. "You haven't called me that in a long time, Dean. Usually Sammy beats you to the punch." The nickname brings some nostalgia back to me. There's an underlying feeling of pain, though. Those memories were mostly bad, but there were some silver linings. Granted, Sam breaking his arm wasn't his finest hour, but it reminded me of a time where the Winchester siblings acted like normal children.

I jump at hearing a pounding on the door. I look at my brothers before I go for the door. I stumble back as Ed comes barging in. Harry isn't with him.

"Come on in," I deadpan, shutting the motel door.

"I got to tell you guys something important, and then the case is yours," Ed rasps. He starts mumbling nonsense which none of us can really hear.

I snap my fingers in front of Ed's face. "Hey, slow down." I guide him to sit on the bed. "Deep breath. Tell us what's going on."

"All right, either you bleed Ghostfacers red or you don't. If Spruce wanted to start a startup and Maggie's heart was in the roller derby, who am I to stop them? But Harry—I-I couldn't let him give in to his girl. I mean, she—she called the Ghostfacers stupid. Stupid! Can you—can you believe that? You know, I-I don't care how much money her daddy's hedge fund has. I just couldn't watch Harry become a corporate stooge."

"Okay, this all sounds like sad times at Bitchmont High," Dean says, clearly annoyed. "What does this have to do with the case?"

"Harry was gonna leave, so I needed to give him a reason to stay. I-I made up Thinman."

"You...?" I look at Ed in frustrated shock.

"So you're saying that this crap is actually crap?" Dean says.

"One old photo of a butler, a lot of Photoshop later, and I posted on one of those horror forums under 'anonymous,'" Ed goes on. "And it blew up. Yeah. I only faked one case for us, and then we're packing up to go home when somebody posted a sighting of Thinman, so...we went after it, and that's how the Thinman become a crowdsourced legend. Look, we were at the front of it. It felt like something. It—it was so awesome to have a following, and Harry—he was just—he was so into it."

"Ed, you have to tell him," I say.

"You don't get it. We were the Thinman guys. Without the Thinman, we're just...guys—just—we're just puffs."

I'm not about to ask Ed what he means by that. God only knows where Harry is right now.

"If I tell Harry, he's gonna leave the Ghostfacers."

"Listen, if you don't tell him, he's gonna leave anyway," says Sam. "Trust me here. Secrets ruin relationships."

I look at my little brother. Really, Sam? A low dig now of all times?

"Okay, well, I'll just tell him when the time is right."

"Time's right now, chief," Dean tells Ed.

"Well, he's—he's not here. Uh, he's—he's out in the woods, uh, searching for Thinman."

I smack my forehead. "Okay, because Thinman, or whatever the hell this thing is, has killed two people, and now Harry is in the woods alone."

"Well, it's actually more like 'wood,' um, 'cause I dropped him off by some trees behind a grocery store. Guys, come on. He's gonna be fine. Guys?"

My brothers and I are already out the door, getting into the Impala. Ed jumps in to join the search for his Ghostfacers partner.

The drive to the wood near the grocery store doesn't take long. Dean takes us into the parking lot, and we nearly hit a stumbling figure. Dean parks the Impala, and the minute we realize we've found Harry, we all jump out. Harry's going down, like he's about to faint. Sam and I help catch him before he can hit the pavement.

"Get him in the back," Dean tells us.

With Sam's help, and help from Ed, we get Harry into the back of the Impala.

"Is he dead?" Ed panics.

I put two fingers on Harry's neck. "No, he's still alive. Just passed out." My eyes downcast to red on Harry's clothes. "Shit. Thinman—or whatever the hell it is—it got him. He needs to get this patched before the bleeding kills him."

"You and Sam stay with them, I'm gonna go into the woods," Dean tells me.

"Dean!" But my older brother's long gone. I grimace.

Sam's in the car's trunk while Ed and I remain with Harry. Once my brother comes back with the supplies, I move out of the way. Sam is the one to play doctor and tend to Harry's wound. My little brother, always helping people. If Sam had really thought about it, he could easily make out well as a doctor.

Harry comes to, looking groggy when initially waking.

"Too tight?" Sam asks Harry.

"Nope. No, I'm good. I'm good."

"Yeah?"

"I'm good. All right. I think I'm just gonna have to staple it when we get back to the motel." Harry turns to Ed. "We were right, Ed! Thinman's real."

"Yeah." Ed says this quietly.

I turn to see Dean coming back from the woods in one piece.

"Some fresh tire tracks back over there," he says, catching his breath. "I took some photos."

"What for?" asks Harry.

"Because that car might belong to whoever knifed you."

"Well, whoever cut me was Thinman, and Thinman doesn't drive. It was Thinman, jackass! I mean, I shouldn't have to connect the dots for you guys. I figured, you know, you're all intelligent, m-maybe."

I look pointedly at Ed, nodding towards Harry. It's time he knew. It'll hurt him, but the truth needs to come out.

"Uh, Harry," Ed says quietly.

"What?"

* * *

We bring the Ghostfacers back to their motel room. I practically have to shove Ed inside so he can tell Harry the truth. Sam, Dean, and I remain outside, waiting. This will definitely put something between the Ghostfacers. It'll most likely end them too. But that wouldn't be such a bad thing.

After a while, Ed comes out. Sam and I meet him.

"How did it go?" I ask timidly.

"It, um, went, uh..." Ed walks off in silence. I look at Sam worriedly.

I open the door and see Harry pouting in a chair in the room.

"Hey," I say softly. "You okay?"

"I just got punched right in the feels."

"Okay..." I push my hair away. I'm not sure what to say to that.

"None of it was real," Harry goes on. "Ed was just pretending, and now he wants me to pretend, like this is just something I could get past."

"I know what you mean," Sam tells him. "Look, there are things you can forgive, and there are things you can't."

"So, which one is this?"

"That's something you got to figure out for yourself."

A knock on the door, and it opens, letting Dean in.

"Hey," he says. "Uh...I got a bead on those tire treads, if you want to..."

Sam and I step out into the hall with Dean, away from Harry.

"What's up?" asks Sam.

"So, the tires were only made for one kind of car. It's a nineteen-eight-nine Geo Metro. Town this small—there's only one registered here. Deputy says it belongs to a guy named Roger who works night security down at the mill on the north side of town."

"So, this thing teleported, but it has a job and car," I say slowly. "What are we dealing with?"

"Let's go find out."