June Lake
Supernatural: The Remington Files | |
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GM | |
Lisa | |
Air Time | |
Intermittent | |
Next Episode | |
Season 4, Episode 1 | |
(November 2011) | |
Characters | |
Team Remington Scott Remington · Marcus Remington Amanda Grey A Dose of Doctors Dr. Alexander Airy · Dr. Richard Magnum The X-Files Ciaran Brennan · Jon Clarke Razik Ericson | |
Supporting Characters | |
Áine Ni Seachnasaigh Gabriel, aka Loki | |
Deceased Characters | |
Archangel Raphael | |
Episodes | |
Episode Guide · Synchronizing Serials | |
Resources | |
Contacts · Lore Index Supernatural World Dad's Journal · Agatha's Book Supernatural Ritual Compendium Roman Rite 1999 English Edition |
The fraternal twin of Linda Carson, June Carson also had big dreams as a teen, but they were to avoid living in Alaska at all costs. June took their shared childhood experiences with their parents' work for the government, native shamanism, Bureau of Indian Affairs schools, and decided to run away. Instead of wanting to achieve something for her people like her sister, June wanted to be anything but. She wanted to be "normal," like any other teenager in America, and that meant shunning a lot of her identity, though Linda didn't recognize it in her sister at the time- she too was captured by her own visions of independence, strength, and maybe a fast car to do it in.
Together, the sisters hatched a plan to go south to realize their dreams. June planned on college and hatched a plan to move to California and attend community college while she established her residency in the state so she could afford a UC education. Linda worked odd jobs and long hours during the tourist months home from school to save up for her scarf in the wind dream car.
After graduation, June decided to make her trip to sunny California. Linda would follow her down to Prince George, the largest city in Northern British Columbia to find her ride. They left shortly after graduation on a bus bound for Prince George. June helped Linda look for her dream ride there, but the choices were slim in the province's northern hub, so they hopped the daily Greyhound to Vancouver.
A week of couch surfing later, June found friendly connections and travelers bound for San Francisco and Linda found her dream car. a 1965 Plymouth Valiant Barracuda Formula S.
June wound up in San Francisco in time for the Summer of Love. Instead of turning into a hippie, June found the times more interesting to document and pursue writing. She eventually finished a degree in journalism at Berkeley and made her name submitting for the Oakland Tribune, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Chronicle. While on the job she met an architect named Castor Gray. Eventually the two would marry, and Castor would use his successes to fund a dream home for June out in the Sierra foothills, near Sonora. When the two settled in, June Gray turned equally to book writing, compiling her stories on the changing times she witnessed firsthand, and motherhood.
June and Castor had two girls, first Lily in 1984 and then Amanda six years later in 1990. The family couldn't have been more perfect until the tragic loss of Lily on a regular visit with the family in Alaska. The sudden loss, with so many unexplained factors, sent the Gray family reeling. Then, two years after when the family was just starting to breathe again, Castor and Amanda were in a car accident on a drive home. They went over the edge of a grade and only Amanda survived. She spoke of some "thing" that jumped out at the car. The authorities and the family assumed it must have been an animal like a coyote or bear that caused her father to swerve unnaturally on a road he knew so well.
Tragedy seemed to follow the Grays. Shortly after the accident, Amanda was diagnosed with juvenile leukemia, and her chances were slim. It seemed like every therapy June Gray and the doctors tried was doomed to fail. Amanda was fading, and fast. Lost in suffering, June turned to religion for solace and met a well off man at a local Seventh Day Adventist church named Victor Lake. The two hit it off well, and Victor was kind and nice enough as a surrogate father, but no one in the family knew how extreme Victor's views were. Victor convinced June that faith was the answer. Certainly poor Amanda was beyond the common treatments of medical men and a higher power would have to be called upon. June had seen Native shamans in Alaska and some "healers" of various sorts during her time documenting the counterculture's progression into the '70's, so the idea held sway on her desperate soul. Before long, the two started taking Amanda to church and to faith healers, and in the middle of her crisis, June found herself married to Victor, or rather, married to the notions of hope and security that Victor brought to their relationship. The man himself you could probably exchange for any other.
After taking Amanda from circuit to circuit, revival to revival, and prayer meeting to prayer meeting, the conversations Victor and June had with both the faithful and the healers convinced them both that the reasons Amanda did not get healed lay not with the healers or the community that rallied around the girl, but with Amanda herself. Victor and June went into overdrive trying to inspire their daughter to become more faithful, when in fact, they had just the opposite effect on her.
Things changed when Victor's family began paying visits to help nurture Amanda's spiritual growth. Usually left out of the mix was Victor's aunt Agatha, a spinster who relocated to Mendocino to be part of the counterculture movement. The family suspected her of just about anything from pot smoking to joining a commune with Starhawk to Satan worship but were really to ignorant and scared to ask what it was that she did. Still, when Agatha offered to take care of Amanda to let the stressed parents have a brief respite, the answer was a hearty and heartfelt yes. June and Victor took the chance to consult healers on the East Coast, having always feared that too much travel would be difficult for Amanda. To Amanda, the opportunity seemed like a rescue in a fairy tale, and Agatha was her fairy godmother.
Agatha took the girl under her wing and studied her. Something about her illness didn't seem right to Agatha, who actually was a practicing witch (not of the Satanic variety, thank you very much!) and she identified the problem as supernatural. Much to everyone's surprise, when Victor and June returned from the East Coast, they found their daughter rosy cheeked and healed. Moreover, she was joyful. They even consented to a medical examination to prove Amanda's miraculous healing. For them, it was vindication and a triumph of their faith. Only when letting go to the outsiders (like Agatha) could faith be tested and rewarded. But they didn't know what Agatha had been up to, or the dangers that had surrounded their family.
Still, Amanda had bonded with Agatha, and the two Adventists couldn't deny that she had looked after their daughter and was instrumental to her miracle's fruition. They consented to allow Amanda to visit her great aunt during summers, so long as she kept her summer Bible assignments and phoned home regularly. Naturally, Amanda did not share the lessons dear old Agatha was teaching her or her conversion to Wicca. And Agathat did not share with either the girl or her parents that she had ultimately summoned angelic help to cure the girl, letting Amanda believe in her hedge magic, and her parents believe in herbs and miracles. But herbs and miracles were still an uneasy thing for June Carson Lake to sleep with at night.
June still remembered what her parents would use when she was a child, and their talk of spirits and animals that changed shape. She would think of her sister, now gone, and her sister's husband, John, who not only believed in such things but studied it and kept notes on it. June would begin to realize that rejected one set of beliefs for another, and now, didn't know what to believe in. She doesn't know who to trust, either. She tried to hide her doubt. She trusts no one.
The doubt she hid well, but her voice, maybe it was argumentative. Maybe it was rough to Victor. Maybe it was something deeper, like if he had wanted a child and was upset. Whatever the matter truly was, June couldn't quite put her finger on it, but he was short with her. If she was not meek, and pleasant, and the perfect wife for his social climbing through the church, he would rail on her. Never her face, however she took to wearing long sleeves. It was so nice that they came back into fashion. She hid the bruises from her own daughter when she called out to her and the Remington boys for help, sending them a letter in secret, from a town she doesn't live in. She hoped the letter would go unnoticed in her slew of errands, and to her relief, it was. They came to the town's aid, but June hid her own plight, like a good mother.
June Lake is unmoored. It is only a matter of time before something snaps or the welling inside her forces her to run. But if then... where to?