Chapter 13: Bloody Mary — Part 1
[Highway 70 West — October 1, 2005, Afternoon]
The call came three days after Pennsylvania.
Dean's phone buzzed in the Impala's cup holder, and he answered without taking his eyes off the road. Ethan followed in his truck, watching the black Chevrolet's taillights through a windshield that needed cleaning.
The conversation lasted four minutes. When it ended, Dean pulled over at the next rest stop.
"Toledo, Ohio," he said when they'd gathered beside the Impala. "Steven Shoemaker, forty-two years old, found dead in his bathroom. Eyes liquefied. Bled out through his tear ducts."
Sam's expression shifted. "Eyes liquefied?"
"That's what the coroner said. No wounds, no trauma, just... his eyes turned to liquid and poured down his face."
Ethan's stomach turned. He'd seen violence, had caused violence, but that description carried a particular wrongness that made his skin crawl.
"Supernatural," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Has to be. The vic's daughter was having a sleepover that night. Her friends were playing some mirror game in the bathroom. Bloody Mary."
The name hung in the air. Ethan knew it from childhood—the urban legend, the dare, the thing every kid tried at least once in a dark bathroom. Say her name three times in front of a mirror and she appears.
Except in this world, apparently, she actually did.
"Research on the drive," Sam said, already pulling out his laptop. "If there's a real Mary behind the legend, we need to find her."
They drove. Ethan followed, mind churning through what he remembered about the Bloody Mary episode from the show. A murdered woman. A mirror. Victims who died because they carried guilty secrets—deaths they felt responsible for, even indirectly.
The Spirit stirred uneasily in his chest.
JUDGMENT. THIS GHOST JUDGES.
"I noticed."
YOU CARRY JUDGMENT TOO. TWO JUDGES CANNOT OCCUPY THE SAME SPACE.
"What does that mean?"
The Spirit didn't answer. It rarely did when Ethan asked direct questions. But the unease remained, a cold knot forming in his stomach that had nothing to do with hunger.
[Toledo, Ohio — October 1, 2005, Evening]
The Shoemaker house was cordoned off with yellow tape, but the family had been allowed to return. Steven's widow answered the door with the hollow expression of someone who'd spent three days crying and had nothing left.
"Mrs. Shoemaker." Sam's voice was gentle, professional. "We're with the county. We have a few questions about the night your husband died."
She let them in. The house smelled like old flowers and grief.
The bathroom was on the second floor. The door hung open, the mirror above the sink shattered into a thousand pieces. Dark stains marked the tile floor—blood that had pooled and dried before anyone found the body.
Ethan's Sin Sense flickered the moment he crossed the threshold.
Guilt. Layers of it, old and fresh, soaked into the walls like cigarette smoke. Steven Shoemaker had been carrying something heavy when he died—and the ghost had used it to kill him.
"The girls were in the bedroom down the hall," Mrs. Shoemaker said from the doorway. She couldn't bring herself to enter. "They were playing games. Donna heard Steven scream. By the time she got here..."
"The mirror was already broken?"
"He must have hit it. When he fell."
Or when whatever killed him finished its work. Ethan crouched near the bloodstain, reaching out with his senses. The ghost's presence lingered—cold, angry, hungry for secrets.
IT FEEDS ON GUILT. IT PUNISHES THOSE WHO CARRY DEATHS.
Ethan stood abruptly. "We should talk to the girls."
Donna Shoemaker was thirteen and traumatized. She sat on her bed, staring at nothing, while her mother hovered nearby like a protective shadow.
"We just wanted to scare ourselves," Donna said quietly. "Charlie said if you say 'Bloody Mary' three times in a mirror, she appears. We thought it was stupid. We didn't think..."
"What happened after you said the words?" Sam asked.
"Nothing. We laughed about it. Went back to watching movies." Donna's voice cracked. "An hour later, Dad was screaming."
"Was your father in the bathroom when you played the game?"
"No. He was downstairs watching TV."
Ethan processed this. The ghost hadn't appeared immediately—it had waited, chosen its target, struck when the victim was alone with a mirror.
"Charlie," he said. "The friend who suggested the game. Where is she now?"
Donna's face tightened. Something flickered in her expression—guilt, directed at her friend.
"At her house. She hasn't left since... since it happened. She feels responsible."
Of course she did. And if Bloody Mary targeted people who felt guilty about deaths, Charlie had just painted a target on her own back.
[Motel Room — October 1, 2005, Night]
Sam's research painted a picture.
Mary Worthington. Nineteen years old. Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1963. Found dead in her apartment, eyes cut out with a surgical knife. The murder was never solved, but a local surgeon named Trevor Sampson had been suspected. Mary had been having an affair with him; when she threatened to tell his wife, the affair ended. Two weeks later, Mary was dead.
"Her mirror," Sam said, turning his laptop to show them. "She died in front of it. Blood on the glass. After her death, people reported seeing her face in mirrors—and then the deaths started."
"What deaths?" Dean asked.
"Three people in the year after Mary died. All found with their eyes liquefied. All had secrets—guilty secrets about deaths they'd caused or felt responsible for."
"So she's a vengeful spirit that judges." Dean shrugged. "Standard salt-and-burn. Find the mirror, destroy it, game over."
"The mirror's been sold and resold for forty years. Last known location is an antique shop here in Toledo." Sam pulled up an address. "We can hit it tomorrow."
Ethan stood by the window, staring at his reflection in the glass. The Spirit's unease had grown stronger throughout the day, a constant pressure in his chest that wouldn't release.
He had secrets. He had deaths.
His sister Katie, killed by a boyfriend Ethan should have seen through. The vampires in Nebraska, burned to ash without trial or mercy. The soldiers he'd killed overseas, enemies in a war that seemed distant now but had been real enough to haunt his dreams.
If Bloody Mary targeted people who carried guilt about deaths...
He reached up and pulled the curtain closed.
"Ethan?" Sam had noticed. Of course he had. "You okay?"
"Fine."
"You've been avoiding reflective surfaces all day."
"Have I?"
Sam's expression said he wasn't buying the deflection. Dean looked up from cleaning his gun, suddenly interested.
"This ghost judges guilty secrets," Sam said carefully. "About deaths. Is there something you need to tell us?"
Ethan turned from the window. His chest burned—not with The Urge, but with something closer to fear.
"I have guilt. Plenty of it. Deaths I couldn't prevent. Deaths I caused." He met Sam's eyes. "If this ghost can sense that, she might come for me too."
"You killed monsters. That's not the same as—"
"I killed my sister."
The words came out before he could stop them. Dean's hands went still on his gun. Sam's expression froze.
"Not directly," Ethan continued. "I was deployed overseas when her boyfriend started hitting her. She called me. I couldn't come home. I told her to leave him, to go to a shelter, to call the cops. She didn't." His voice roughened. "Three weeks later, he killed her. I was on the other side of the world, and I couldn't save her."
Silence filled the motel room. The kind of silence that came after confessions, when words felt inadequate.
"That's not your fault," Sam said quietly.
"Tell that to my conscience."
Sam's expression shifted. Something familiar flickered in his eyes—recognition, shared pain.
"I dream about Jess," he said. "My girlfriend. The demon that killed our mom came for her too. I was in the same apartment when it happened. Same building. Same room. And I couldn't save her."
Two men carrying dead women in their hearts. Ethan understood, in that moment, why the Spirit had felt kinship with Sam from the beginning.
"We'll stop this ghost," Ethan said. "Before she gets anyone else."
"And if she comes for you?"
"Then I'll deal with her the same way I deal with everything else." He touched his chest, where the Spirit coiled watchfully. "Fire tends to solve most problems."
Dean stood, holstering his cleaned gun. "Tomorrow. Antique shop. We smash the mirror, burn the remains, move on." He paused at the door. "And Ethan? Cover the mirrors in here. Better safe than bleeding out through your eyeballs."
Ethan spent the next hour taping newspaper over every reflective surface in his room. The bathroom mirror. The window glass. The cheap framed prints with their glare-catching surfaces.
When he was done, the room felt like a bunker. Sealed off. Safe.
The Spirit hummed disapprovingly.
YOU FEAR HER.
"I fear what she represents. Judgment without mercy. Punishment without understanding."
WE ARE THE SAME.
"No." Ethan's voice came out hard. "We're not. I give them a chance. I let the sheriff in Wisconsin choose his own punishment. Mary Worthington doesn't give anyone choices—she just kills."
AND WHEN THE URGE GROWS TOO STRONG? WHEN THE GUILTY STAND BEFORE US AND THE FIRE DEMANDS RELEASE?
Ethan didn't have an answer. The Spirit's question cut too close to fears he'd been suppressing since the first transformation.
He lay on the bed, staring at the newspaper-covered walls, and tried not to think about what Bloody Mary might show him if she ever got the chance.
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