Werther Box
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| Name | Werther Box |
| Manufacturer | Cuthbert Sinclair |
| Powers | Powerful enchantment which causes suicide. |
| Location/Owners | St. Louis, Missouri |
| Episodes | 10.19 The Werther Project |
History
The Werther Box was an enchanted vault created by the former member of the Men of Letters, Cuthbert Sinclair. It was created to hold a special codex stolen from the Grand Coven, and ensure that it did not fall into the Coven's hands again.
Sinclair created a protective spell on the Werther Box, so that anyone who attempts to open it, without doing the proper ritual, will be struck with a spell that ultimately leads to the person killing themselves. The warding spell was so potent that it reached a theoretical rate of 98% lethality.
Carving around the Aquarian Star on the box read "To silence the box slake its thirst with the blood of our own." This meant that blood from the Men of Letters must be used to open it, however the amount it required is too much for one member to bleed. Sinclair would only reveal that the member of the Men of Letters named Martinez, who was found next to the Werther Box with slit wrists, was on the right track to stopping Werther for good, but that the rest of the Men of Letters do not have the guts to continue what Martinez started. The Werther Box was then interred at the Men of Letters chapter house in St. Louis and was to be guarded where it stood, in perpetuity.
Episodes
10.19 The Werther Project
In a nondescript home in St. Louis in 1973, a young girl by the name of Suzie is sent to the basement to do the laundry by her mother. Suzie takes a sledgehammer to the wall out of annoyance, and finds the Werther Box hidden away. When Suzie attempts to open it she is knocked by a force from the box, which release a green pillar of smoke that travels past Suzie's unconscious body upstairs. When Suzie awakens, she is disoriented and heads upstairs, looking for her family; she finds her father dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, followed by witnessing her brother hang himself in the entryway of the house. Shocked by what is going on, Suzie eventually finds her mother in the kitchen repeating the line, "Everything is going to be okay" before slicing her throat open with a butcher knife.
Forty-two years later, when Sam learns that Rowena will need a special codex that the Men of Letters confiscated when they killed the witch who created it, he begins working through the Men of Letters archives. While researching, he finds an audio reel from May 16, 1956 detailing the expulsion of Cuthbert Sinclair from the Men of Letters for creating the Werther Box to protect the codex from the Grand Coven. This information eventually leads him to Suzie's home, which was a Men of Letters chapter house. When Sam tries to enter the home by picking the lock, he is forced away at gun point by Suzie, however Dean's sudden arrival allowed Sam the opportunity to sneak into the basement, while Dean distracted Suzie upstairs. When Sam finds the box, he goes about performing the Cabirian invocation to disenchant the box, the spell does not work, and Sam ends up releasing the security measure, which affects himself, Suzie and Dean.
Suzie is beset by visions of her deceased family members, blaming her for what happened and urging her to join them. Suzie holds out for as long as she can, before ultimately turning her gun on herself. When Sam gets to her body, he is confronted by a vision of the recently dead Suzie, who blames him and Dean for getting her killed, and attempts to guilt him into committing suicide, however Sam is unfazed by her taunts, when suddenly Rowena appears and gets rid of the Suzie manifestation. The two then head to the Werther Box to break the enchantment, Sam is able to translate the Latin on the vault which read, "To silence the box slake its thirst with the blood of our own" and realizes it requires the blood of the Men of Letters to shut the enchantment down, and proceeds to bleed himself.
While Sam is attempting to shut down Werther, Dean has become immersed in his hallucination, being transported to Purgatory, where he is met by Benny, who tells Dean the best thing for him to do is to kill himself, before he kills Sam and Cas. However, due to the Mark of Cain wanting Dean to live, Dean is able to break free of the Werther's hold on him, once out of his trance like state, Dean finds Sam at the Werther Box, who is in a weakened state from the blood loss. When he tells Dean that he can't stop, because the box needs legacy blood, Dean cuts his own wrist and bleeds on the box. Having gotten enough legacy blood, the Werther is broken, revealing that Rowena had been a figment of Werther to get Sam to kill himself. With the codex aquired, Dean proceeds to destroy the Werther Box as a precaution.
