Dean had decided that never. ever. under any circumstance would he EVER return to motherfucking Burgess, New York.

He shook the snow out of his hair with an irritated flick as he and Sam stepped into the diner. Sam loved to snow, and even he was itching to be done with this case and get back to warmer climates. They trudged to the bar and flopped down onto two empty stools. Dean silently thanked god-or-whatever that the seats had cushions. Cold metal would have been profoundly unpleasant. At least the people who lived here had adapted to living in "Winter's Favorite Town". The nickname was proclaimed in every shop window and every inn, but it seemed as though winter itself had turned savage on the little community.

That's what had brought the brothers to the town in the first place three days ago. Three people had died in the last month from freezing to death, but it was the way they had been frozen that caught the Winchester's eyes. Each was solidified in a casual position, walking, or driving, or shoveling snow, like it had happened instantly. Sam had told Dean upon seeing the photos online that it would take the equivalent of being dunked into liquid nitrogen to do something like that to a human being. What really drove the case up their ally, though, had been the fact that it had happened in plain daylight, with dozens of witnesses that claimed the victims had just dropped dead in the middle of the street. No warning. No reasonable explanation.

Sam and Dean had pulled into the town late at night and pulled up to the first motel they could see. The Impala had been struggling through eight inches of snow for the last hour and the white stuff was still falling. The woman that handed them the room key laughed when the mentioned the near-blizzard outside.

"Oh you boys haven't even seen a thing yet! It's only November. You just wait until the season really rolls around. This is a skiff!" She grinned at them and pointed to the figurine on her desk. It was an old man dressed in blue and silver, with a little sign that read, "Winter 3 Burgess."

As soon as they'd settled into the room, Sam whipped out his laptop. Normally this was when Dean would head off to the nearest bar to scope out the town while Sam did his research thing, but the ever growing layer of snow on the ground made him think twice. He wasn't bored for long though because within minutes Sam leaned back in his chair and muttered, "well shit."

Suddenly alert, Dean asked, "What is it? Oh god please don't say demon. Or angel, actually don't say anything let me see."

Sam turned the screen towards Dean. On it was a chart of some kind.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Dean huffed after a moment.

Sam turned the computer again so that he could continue tapping away at the grungy keys.

"It's a temperature chart," he explained. "It shows the average temperatures of the town for the last 400 years. The summers aren't anything special, but the winters here. Dean the winters are really, really cold."

"That's it?" Dean asked. "Dude I could have told you that when people started getting flash frozen."

Sam shook his head. "No see it's more than that. That's just been recently, but this town, this specific location, has had abnormal winter weather for the last three hundred years. The towns around it are perfectly normal. There's nothing about this town that should make it this cold. Some 20 degrees colder than it meteorologically should be!"

"So what, some kind of pissed off god?"

"I don't think so," Sam said quietly. "Gods always take some sort of regular sacrifice, but there's no evidence of that."

Dean rolled his eyes, "except the three late popsicle people."

"No, those don't fit any pattern. That kind of thing has never happened here before. In fact, get this: even for it's weather, Burgess has one of the lowest death and disappearance rates in the country."

Frustration was already making Dean itch to do something. They rarely ran into blocks this early in cases. "You know what, man, we can do this tomorrow. It's late and I need my four hours. We'll check out the corpses in the morning."

Sam nodded and shut the laptop with a click.