Safe House Recap

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Recap by kate38

TEASER: (Grand Rapids, Michigan)

A woman is stripping wallpaper from a wall and talking on the phone to her spouse. She comments that she is feeling overwhelmed, and that the house they just bought is more of a "fixer-upper" than they'd thought. She finishes the conversation, and as she is stripping the paper, her tool scrapes through a red line that was painted on the wall underneath the paper. At that second, a child (Kat) is heard screaming from upstairs.

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The woman rushes upstairs to find Kat huddled in the center of her bed.The child insists that something bad is inside the house and that she heard footsteps. Her mother tries to convince her it was just a nightmare. They both realize the room is very cold, so the mother spreads an extra blanket onto the bed. Kat asks for a glass of water. When her mother leaves the room to go get it, the lights in the room go out and the door slams shut. Inside the room, Kat is now hiding under her bed. We hear footsteps approach the bedroom door, and it looks like someone is standing right outside the door. The door opens on its own, but there's nobody there. At that moment, a grey hand with long nails grabs Kat by the ankle.The child screams as she is dragged away by something unseen.

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EPISODE:

Dean and Sam are at a diner. They apparently have no new information on Amara or Cas, and after two weeks, Dean is discouraged. They decide to work the case Sam has found, since they don't have any new leads. In the case, a woman (Naoki Himura) says her daughter was attacked by an entity. The child is in a coma, and the only sign of trauma is a hand print on her – presumably from the attacker, but nobody besides the child and her mother were in the house. The Winchesters think it may be a poltergeist or a vengeful spirit. Sam tries to convince Dean that the case will be an easy "layup" and since they don’t have any leads to follow, they should take it.

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At the hospital, the Winchesters (as feds) interview Naoki. She says that everybody seems to think she's crazy, and nobody believes her daughter was even attacked. She tells the Winchesters what happened. When Sam asks about flickering lights or cold spots, she admits that the light was out in Kat's room and the room was very cold. She agrees to let the agents search her house. After Dean and Sam leave, we see Naoki use a blanket to cover up a hand print-shaped mark on the child's leg.

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At the house, Sam and Dean pull up in the Impala. As they approach the house, a woman who lives next door and identifies herself as the head of the neighborhood watch questions who they are. When they show badges and identify themselves, she asks why the FBI is going into the house – AGAIN. After a brief discussion, the woman says that a handful of years ago, two very rude FBI agents visited the same house. Sam and Dean surmise (privately) that the agents were Bobby and Rufus.

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FLASHBACK TO A "HANDFUL OF YEARS" EARLIER: Bobby is wearing his fed suit and is asleep behind the wheel of his car, which is parked outside the same house Sam and Dean are investigating. Rufus pulls up behind Bobby and startles him awake by slamming the car door. Rufus asks why Bobby is asleep in his car, but Bobby brushes off the question. Rufus has apparently called Bobby to ask for help with what he believes to be a ghost case. Bobby says the apocalypse is imminent, but Rufus reminds him that unless he can stop the apocalypse today, they should work this case. Rufus also says he can only do limited work because of Sabbath.

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As Bobby and Rufus approach the house, the same neighbor woman – several years younger – asks them why they are here. Bobby flashes his FBI badge and introduces them as agents, but Rufus pointedly tells the woman that their business is none of her business. The woman is indignant, but doesn't ask any more questions; and Bobby and Rufus proceed to the house and knock on the door.

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PRESENT DAY: Sam and Dean enter the house (using a spare key Naoki told them about) and begin searching for EMF. They both detect multiple readings all over the house. They also discuss the fact that Bobby and Rufus worked a case in the same house, so perhaps the house has multiple ghosts. Dean says he has a few of Bobby's journals in the car, so they should look through those and also dig through the history of the house.

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FLASHBACK: Inside the same house, Bobby and Rufus are sitting at a dining room table talking to a woman. She says her family had just moved into the house. The family had all gone to bed when the woman heard her son (Will) call out. The child had heard a strange noise that sounded like footsteps.The woman and her husband ran into the room, but by the time they got there, the child was unconscious. The woman noticed that the child's room was cold and the lights were out. She also says the child had a hand print on his ankle.

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PRESENT DAY: When the Winchesters try to check into a nearby motel, Sam learns from the manager that two other agents (Bobby and Rufus) stayed at the same motel several years ago; Sam books the same room – for luck.

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ALTERNATE between PRESENT DAY and FLASHBACK: At the motel, Bobby and Rufus (and Sam and Dean) learn that two people died in the house. One was a man who choked on a chicken bone, and the other event involves a man who shot his wife. From Bobby's journal, Dean and Sam learn that Bobby was on a "possible ghost hunt" with Rufus, but the rest of the entry was never completed. Because Dean and Sam don't know which of the two possible bodies Rufus and Bobby dug up, they realize they will have to dig up both of them.

Sam and Dean (and earlier, Bobby and Rufus) disagree about whether this is really a ghost case, or whether the monster is something else. Dean and Bobby think it's a ghost, but Sam and Rufus are not convinced. Rufus bets Bobby a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue that they're hunting a baku.

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Later that night, the story continues to alternate between Sam and Dean digging up two graves and finding them both reduced to ashes (which leads them to realize they are not hunting a ghost); and Rufus and Bobby – initially using a backhoe to dig up the graves, and then when the sun goes down and Sabbath is officially over, Bobby convinces Rufus to finish digging by hand. As Rufus is digging, he asks Bobby – again – why he was sleeping in his car. Bobby reluctantly admits that he's been up for days researching ways to stop the apocalypse. Bobby says he's worried about "his boys" (Dean and Sam), because they're right in the middle of the conflict. Rufus tells Bobby that even if they find a way to stop the apocalypse, not everyone can be saved. Rufus goes on to say that the oldest rule of hunting is that you can't save everyone.

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PRESENT DAY: Back at the house, Naoki is alone in the house when the lights all go out. Something grabs her by the leg and drags her away.

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PRESENT DAY and FLASHBACK: At the hospital the next day (present day), Naoki is in a coma. Sam and Dean are talking to a doctor (Dr. Richards). She is retired now, but worked a very similar case at the same hospital several years earlier, so she came in to see if she could help. She recalled talking to two FBI agents (Bobby and Rufus) back then. In the earlier case, the woman whose son was in a coma (Mary Henderson) had returned to the house to get her son's doll. When she didn't answer phone calls, her husband phoned the police. Mrs. Henderson was found in a coma with the same hand print mark on her leg. Dr. Richards also says that the victims' vital signs are failing, so unless they wake up soon, they may die. She also says (to Dean and Sam) that when the situation happened several years ago, mother and son both just woke up miraculously.

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PRESENT DAY: While at the hospital, Dean talks on his phone to the actual cops who brought Mary Henderson to the hospital years ago. He learns that Mary still lives in town, so Dean and Sam go to talk to her.

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At the Henderson house, Mary Henderson tells Sam and Dean that she remembers waking up in the hospital, and one of the FBI agents telling her to never touch the wallpaper in the sitting room. She also tells them that when she was in the coma, she "dreamed" that she was in her house, but it wasn't really her house; everything looked dark and faded. She also tells them that she saw her husband in her dream, but he was dead. And when she closed and opened her eyes, he was gone. She says she tried to leave the house, but couldn't, and that she saw spirits of people in the house. When she woke up, her family tried to put the experience behind them, but couldn't. They tried to sell the house, but couldn’t, so they just walked on the mortgage because they had to get away from the house.

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Later, Sam and Dean return to the house. Sam finds the wallpaper Naoki was working on and finishes tearing away enough of it to uncover a sigil drawn underneath the wallpaper. The Winchesters notice that part of the sigil has been scraped away.

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PRESENT DAY and FLASHBACK: Back at the motel, Rufus and Bobby, and Sam and Dean research their cases. They learn that they are hunting a soul eater – an undead creature that feeds on souls. The creature exists in a space that lies between our world and another. The creature moves into a house and creates a "nest"-- a place that exists outside time and space. The nest looks and feels like the house. The soul eater can snatch a person's soul from this world and drag it into the nest. Once in the nest, the nest "messes" with the victim's head, making them see people and things they love. This keeps the soul in distress, which keeps the victim's soul vulnerable. In the "real" world, the victim's body withers and dies; in the nest, the soul eater continues feeding on the souls that are trapped inside the nest when the creature moves on to another house. The trapped souls eventually wither and die, too.

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Bobby recalls that he faced a soul eater once before in Tennessee. Bobby had received a call from another hunter (Harvey) who thought he was working a poltergeist case. When Bobby arrived, he found the other hunter in a coma on the floor. Bobby said he could "feel" the evil in the house. He recalled a Celtic sigil that was supposed to trap monsters. He'd never been able to get it to work, but tried it anyway. As Bobby was painting the sigil, the evil in the house got worse; but after he'd finished, the house went back to normal. Harvey never woke up.

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Dean and Sam reason that Bobby's sigil trapped the soul eater inside the nest, but when Naoki broke the sigil, it released the creature. Sam finds a Men of Letter's sigil that is supposed to actually kill a soul eater; the sigil has to be painted in blood by someone who is actually inside the nest, at the same time that the identical sigil is painted outside the nest. Sam and Dean realize that one of them will have to allow himself to be taken by the soul eater and end up inside the nest. They play rock-paper-scissors to decide which one. In the next scene, we see that Dean apparently lost, because they are back inside the house, and Dean is saying they should never settle another thing using that game again.

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PRESENT DAY and FLASHBACK:

Inside the house, Sam finds a place on the wall to paint his sigil, and they agree that Dean should paint his on the adjacent wall in the next room. They hear creaking and footsteps upstairs, so Sam starts painting, while Dean goes upstairs to be captured by the soul eater.

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In the flashback, Rufus is painting his sigil when he and Bobby hear creaking and footsteps upstairs. Bobby goes upstairs with a shotgun to hopefully keep the soul eater away from Rufus.

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Upstairs, Dean and Bobby both get captured.

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Dean wakes up and walks into the next room looking for Sam, but he sees Sam dead on the floor. When Dean blinks his eyes, the hallucination is gone, and he realizes he's in the nest. He goes downstairs to paint his sigil.

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When Bobby wakes up, he goes downstairs to look for Rufus, but he sees Dean and Sam both lying dead in the stairwell. He is shocked, but when he blinks his eyes, they disappear. Bobby hears a voice behind him ask "Are you real?" When he turns around, he sees a young boy (Will Henderson). Will says he has not seen his mother, but he has seen "the sad people". Bobby can't see them, but behind him are two pale spirits with black decay around their mouths. In the real world (in the past) Rufus comes upstairs looking for Bobby, and finds him unconscious on the floor. He utters the "first rule" of hunting, apologizes to Bobby, and goes back downstairs to finish the sigil.

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In the present (real world), Sam has found Dean's unconscious body and is dragging him into the kitchen. He braces Dean against the refrigerator and turns his back to paint his sigil. Meanwhile, inside the nest, Dean is painting his sigil on the opposite wall. Dean hears a voice ask "What are you doing"?. He turns around and recognizes Kat. They talk briefly, and we learn that Kat can see spirits that Dean can't see. There are at least 10 souls in the room, but Dean can't see them. Soon after, we see that Dean has finished painting his sigil. He tells Kat that his brother is painting another sigil just like his, and when he's done, they'll both be free. Kat tells Dean there are more of the "sad people", and when he turns around this time, he can see that the room is full of them.

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From amidst the crowd, the soul eater rushes forward and touches Dean's chest. In the real world, Dean's unconscious body twitches, and he wakes up. Sam hears a noise behind him and turns around to see Dean standing right behind him, but his eyes are completely white. He is being possessed by the soul eater. Soul-eater-Dean tells Sam "I can't let you finish that finger painting, Boy." And he punches Sam in the face.

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In the past, Bobby (inside the nest) can now see the other souls. He is surrounded by four of them when the soul eater rushes forward and touches Bobby's chest. In the real/past world, Bobby's body twitches, and then he wakes up, but his eyes are completely white. Downstairs, Rufus is almost finished with his sigil, when he turns around and sees Bobby standing there. Rufus realizes that "Bobby" is not himself, and he picks up his shotgun. It's loaded with rock salt shells. Soul-eater-Bobby tries to talk Rufus into coming into the nest. Rufus refuses. He fires the shotgun, but misses.

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PRESENT DAY and FLASHBACK: Rufus and "not-Bobby" and Sam and "not-Dean" fight. Not-Dean tells Sam that if he'll come into the nest, they will both be safe from the Darkness forever. He says Dean wants and needs to go to the Darkness. Sam tells Dean to fight the possession, but their fight continues. In the past, Rufus knocks not-Bobby out long enough to finish his sigil. As he does so, Bobby wakes up inside the nest, and the house starts to vibrate.

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In the present, Sam temporarily knocks not-Dean out by breaking a chair over his back. It allows Sam enough time to finish his sigil. Not-Dean wakes up and walks toward Sam to attack him again, but Sam hurriedly finishes the sigil. As soon as he's done, the sigil glows orange/red and we see the soul eater expelled from Dean's body.

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In the nest, Dean's soul wakes up from the floor and stands up. He sees that the "sad people" are starting to disappear all around him. He walks out to the stairwell and sees Bobby standing on the stairs. Bobby seems to see him, too. They both look confused, but before anything else can happen, they both fade away. In the real world, Dean and Bobby both wake up to find Sam and Rufus unharmed and by their sides.

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FLASHBACK: The next day, we see Bobby hanging wallpaper to cover the sigil. It's the same wallpaper Naoki was removing years later at the start of the episode. As Bobby is working, he gets a phone call from Rufus. Rufus is at the hospital and tells Bobby that Will Henderson and his mother are both awake and happy. Rufus surmises that the trap pushed the souls out of the nest. Bobby is troubled because he saw Dean and Sam dead inside the nest. Rufus feels sad for him and tells Bobby to forget the oldest rule. When Bobby asks if Rufus is getting soft, Rufus hangs up on him.

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Later, we see Bobby leave the house and go out to his car, where he finds a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue on the front passenger seat. He laughs as he reads the note tied around the bottle:"Fine, you Ass. You win for once. Enjoy, R" [This is the same note and bottle that Jody Mills and Sam find when they're looking through some boxes of Bobby's possessions in season 7 "Time After Time".] Bobby picks up his journal and prepares to write something, when his phone rings. It's Dean telling Bobby that he has a lead on Lilith in Maine. Bobby has to rush to Maine, which explains why he never completed the entry in his journal. Bobby drives away, as the Allman Brothers' song "Midnight Rider" plays on the radio.

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PRESENT DAY: Sam is at the house, talking to Naoki (at the hospital) on the phone, telling her that the house is safe, but the kitchen may need some remodeling. Naoki says she thinks they're going to sell the house. Sam hangs up, and he and Dean prepare to leave the house. They discuss the possibility that, since the nest exists outside of space and time, maybe it's possible that Bobby and Dean were truly in the nest at the same time, and really did see each other there.They agree to return to Tennessee to make sure Bobby's original soul eater case is over with, but Dean says that this time, it's Sam's turn to go inside the nest. Once inside the car, Dean also admits that he hallucinated seeing Sam inside the nest, dead. Sam wonders why that vision might give Dean comfort. They drive away, as we listen to the same song that was playing in Bobby's car, play on the radio.