Seriously, you guys, when did spring hellatus become a thing? Well regardless, this hellatus, hopefully the last until the season ends, is finally over and the boys are back with “Safe House”! And I don’t mean just Sam and Dean…

Episode 16 kicks off in Grand Rapids Michigan with a woman tearing down wall paper in her new fixer upper. While tearing it down she reveals a rune symbol. She stops suddenly when her daughter screams from the other room. The daughter reveals she feels something bad in the house, is cold and hears footsteps. The mom comforts the girls and leaves to get her a drink. After the mom leaves the girl gets snatched by an unseen entity.

Sam and Dean read the story the following day, revealing the girl is now is now in a coma with no other signs of trauma except a red mark of a hand print on her ankle. With no new leads at finding the Darkness, they’re on the case. They could use a win after all.

They head over to investigate the house. A neighbor reveals that “FBI” had been there many years ago to investigate the house before as well. A flashback reveals that Bobby and Rufus were those agents, during sometime during season five. Rufus points out to Bobby that with no leads on the apocalypse, they could use a win (similar to Dean and Sam’s conversation earlier in the episode). The flashback reveals the exact same thing happened to a child who had lived there that happened to the girl in present day.

Back in present day, Sam and Dean pour through Bobby’s journal and find no help. As we toggle between both investigations we find Bobby and Rufus arguing over the same thing Sam and Dean are arguing about, whether the case is a ghost or not. Both timelines begin digging for bones of two previous murders that had occurred in the house some time back. The grave digging only confirms that what Sam and Dean are dealing with today is not ghost.

In present day, the mom returns to the house and is taken by the same entity and falls into a coma as well. Sam and Dean talk to a doctor who reveals that the mother of the boy in Rufus and Bobby’s case also fell into a coma immediately after her son as well. But both came out the next day. Sam and Dean go see the mother from the previous case who reveals they never knew what happened exactly, Only that the FBI agents told them NEVER to touch the wallpaper in the sitting room. They could never shake the bad feeling in the house though and moved shortly thereafter.

Sam and Dean discover the symbol in the house and begin researching it. Back in the flashback Bobby is explaining to Rufus he believes what they’re dealing with is a soul eater. A creature who doesn’t really live in this world, but they are able to snatch a soul from this world and take it into theirs. Lore says they can’t be killed, but they can be trapped with the symbol.

Back in present day, Sam and Dean have figured it out as well, only  taking it a step further with a Men of Letter discovery that there is a way to kill the soul eater using the sigil, but it means one of them  has to actually allow himself to get snatched and taken to the nest of the soul eater, where he must paint the sigil on the parallel wall from the nest. Dean loses and has to allow himself to be snatched by the soul eater. In the flashback we see Bobby was also snatched by the soul eater.

Dean comes to in the nest, which basically feels like a dream state within an eerie parallel version of the house. The soul eater uses things and images (hallucinations) to scare and mess with it’s victims. While Dean sees a dead Sam, Bobby in the flashback sees a dead Dean. He then runs into the boy in the coma and a group of ghost like creatures, that must be the trapped souls in the nest.

Meanwhile Sam is painting the sigil on the opposite side of the wall where Dean is attempting to paint from the nest. Dean runs into the girl who is currently in the coma, as well as the trapped souls. In both the flashback and the current story, the soul eater himself takes over the body of Dean and Bobby and confronts Sam and Rufus.

Are you following the parallel storyline so far?

In present day the Dean soul eater tries to tempt Sam by telling him that by staying in his nest they can be protected from the Darkness. Sam doesn’t buy it and fights off the Dean soul eater long enough to finish the sigil. Dean is zapped back to the next where he sees that the trapped souls are disappearing, returning to wherever it is they came from. As Rufus fights off and finishes the sigil in the flashback the same thing happens with Bobby. As Bobby and Dean, in their prospective timelines watch them disappear, they briefly catch a glimpse of each other before both returning.

As both storylines wrap up, Bobby and the boys drive off to the same song, the Allman Brothers’, Midnight Rider. Perfection.