Excerpts from John Winchester's Journal: Part 1
Below are specific excerpts from the John Winchester's Journal. These sections specifically pertain to the familial situations, including birthdays and main events, although some world events are mentioned as well. The full version, which includes more information concerning John's history, and all the monster lore it holds in canon, can be read here but I strongly suggest buying it as well.
1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994
1983
Nov. 16
I went to Missouri, and learned the truth.
Dean still hardly talks. I try to make small talk, or ask him if he wants to throw the baseball around. Anything to make him feel like a normal kid again. He never budges from my side--or from his brother. Every morning when I wake up, Dean is inside the crib, arms wrapped around baby Sam. Like he's trying to protect him from whatever is out there in the night.
Nov. 20
I killed a man in cold blood tonight.
No, I killed a shape-shifting monster tonight to protect all of the people who don't know things like that exist. But it would have looked like a man to any of those people. And Dean saw it happen.
And then tonight, Dean walked out of the roadhouse right when I put the final bullet into the shape-shifter's head. And he said, Why'd you kill him, Dad?
How am I supposed to answer that? Because he wasn't a man, he was a monster who looked like a man? My boy walked out the door and saw me shoot someone in the head. Maybe I'm the monster who looks like a man.
Nov. 21
Here's what I wish I could say to Dean--Your brother's too young to understand any of this, but you're beginning to. And that scares me. Since your mother died, I've seen unspeakable things, and now you've seen them and that's my fault. I feel the darkness of the road I'm traveling on now. It's not a place for you. One day you'll see--I had to leave you today... but when I'm done, I promise you: the day will come when I never have to leave you again. Until then, I can only pray that you're strong enough to look after Sam. One of us has to be.
Dec. 11
Sammy has finally started sleeping through the night, and now that Dean shares a bed with him, he's out like a light too.
Dec. 25
Mary will never see Dean hit a home tun. She'll never see Sammy walk, or hear him say his first words. She won't take Dean to his first day at school, or stay up all night with me worrying the first night he takes the car out. It's not right that she's not here, and that's all I could think about today. I'm so angry I can barely see straight--I want my wife back.
The police have officially declared our case closed. What a Christmas present, huh?
Dec. 29
Dean hasn't been the same since he saw me kill that shape-shifter. I don't know how to talk to him about it. He's not even five years old. Most kids his age don't even have a clear idea what death is, and he's seen it up close and personal. What do I say to him? How old does he have to be before I tell him the truth?
1984
Jan. 24
Dean turns five today. I was thinking about where we're going to be in the fall, because he should start school. Then I realized that I can't leave him in a school. Anything could happen.Maybe a place that has half-day kindergarten. Maybe that I could do. I know I should. I know he should be able to run around with other kids, who don't know how to field-strip the Browning. Well, Dean doesn't either, yet. But he's learning.He's got a talent for guns. I can see it already. And he'll need it.
May 2
Sammy is a year old. We spent his birthday in the mountains, because I had to meet a guy named Daniel Elkins. The hunter culture is weird about how it breaks in new blood. Everyone you meet says you should go meet someone else, and learn some-thing else, and every time you meet someone else they take you out to hunt their favorite kind of monster. This guy Elkins lives in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere in Colorado, and according to him, he's the greatest vampire hunter alive.
May 17
This would have been our sixth anniversary. Six is iron. Sammy took his first steps yesterday. He walked toward Dean, then fell flat on his face and started crying. Life is tough, kid. Do I sound like a proud dad? I am.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for a year. I'm never going to be over it,and I wouldn't want to be. But I've spent the last year getting better at revenge.
1985
Jan. 1
New Year's Day. Mary, I promised last year that I would avenge you. I promise again. I'll promise it every year until it happens. I'll never forget.
Jan. 24
Dean's sixth birthday. It's been more than a year since he saw me kill a shape-shifter. He doesn't ask about it anymore. And he stopped asking when he's going to go to school. I tried to do it last fall, but I couldn't. I just couldn't risk it. Maybe this year, now that he's a little older, now that he knows a little more about things. I've been teaching him. Not the worst stuff, but enough so he knows that there are things that go bump in the night.
May 2
Sammy is two today. Two years in a row we've spent his birth-day in Colorado, where I had to stop by Daniel's.
May 17
This would have been our seventh anniversary. Wool and copper.
Sept. 7
Today was Dean's first day of school. I put him straight intofirst grade. He's almost seven, and I just told the school that he'd been in kindergarten back in Kansas. They didn't press too hard when I told them that the kids had lost their mother,and we'd been moving around. I think we'll stay here for awhile. Or try, anyway. I felt normal again while I was taking Dean to school. He asked on the way in whether kids in school learned the same stuff he'd been learning. I had to tell him that maybe it wasn't a good idea for him to talk about Dad's job on the playground.
He came home on top of the world, and he brought me worksheets with the names of the different parts of a fish, different numbers of apples and oranges added together... this is what it should be like. Why can't it?
Sammy wants to be in school too. I can't even imagine staying in one place for long enough that he'll start here. Three years seems like forever.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for two years. I've been on the road for three days, cleaning up a haunted building in San Francisco.Already these are starting to seem like an everyday chore tome. You get the story, you find the remains, you burn them and salt them. End of story. These were two girls, and the whole ride back to the roadhouse I was thinking that I'll never have girls. Dean saw something on my face, or maybe it was just that he knew what day it is. When I got here, he came up to me and asked if I'd had a tough hunt. I couldn't talk for a minute.
Nov. 14
Took Dean shooting. If he's big enough to try to comfort me, he's big enough to start learning the tools of the trade. I only let him fire the .22, but he is a dead eye marksman. My drill sergeant would have taken him over me in a second. Times like this, I sure am proud of my boy. I have a feeling it'll be different with Sammy. Maybe he's just too young to show it, but I don't think he's got the same kind of killer instinct.
1986
Jan. 1
Happy New Year. This year, Mary, I will find out what killed you.
Jan. 24
For his seventh birthday, I took Dean shooting again. He wanted to fire one of the big guns-that's what he called them. I let him shoot the Browning, but I steadied his hands. Sammy wanted me to help him make Dean a card. It was like a normal day, like we were a normal family with a mom who was off shopping or at work or something. Instead of dead. That illusion never lasts. I can't afford to let it.
May 2
Tahlequah, OK. Sammy is three years old today. We celebrated with an ice-cream cake. He was still wearing most of it when he fell asleep. Dean's sleeping too, the two of them in the bed.The room only has one bed. I'll sleep on the floor, if I sleep at all. Some nights it's enough to watch them sleep, and know that if they start to have a nightmare I'll be right there to stop it.
May 17
This would have been our eighth anniversary. Eight is bronze.
Sept. 5
Dean started second grade. I watch him like a hawk. He makes me swear that I'll take good care of Sammy before he'll go to school. God, I love that kid. I have the days with Sammy while Dean is learning whatever kids learn in second grade. Sammy's a very different kid. He hasn't taken to the idea of hunting bad guys, and he's still too young to really under-stand what it means to avenge his mother. To him, her death just means she's not here, and he doesn't remember her. For him, Mary is a word. A mother, to him, is something he never had-but he's still supposed to be sad that she died. I don't think he gets it. How could he, really?
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for three years. She doesn't know that Sammy has learned the alphabet, and likes to catch bugs. She doesn't know that Dean watches his little brother like a hawk every minute, with an expression on his face that says he's willing to die to keep Sammy safe. She doesn't know how it tears me up inside to see that expression, and to know that it's there because I have drilled it into Dean that Sammy is his responsibility. He's eight years old, and I've told him his brother's life is in his hands. Mary, I didn't have any right to do that. But what else could I do?
1987
Jan. 1
Another New Year. Another promise. I will find it, Mary. And kill it.
Jan. 24
Dean turns eight today. Second grade is treating him well. I hope we can stay. He's at school, and they're going to have a little party for him. Then when he gets home, we're going to do the family thing. We're going to Chuck E. Cheese's, and we'll eat pizza and play video games until the kids go nuts.
May 2
Sammy is four today. And sure enough, we're in Colorado. That's three out of four birthdays we've been visiting Daniel.The mountains are a good place to spend early May. Maybe we should make a tradition of it-but I have a feeling that we're not in any place to start traditions. I had to pull Dean out of school when I got a note from Ellen that someone passing through the roadhouse had just exorcised a demon that knew where we were.
I think hunters call something a demon when they don't know what it is. The word is easy to throw around. But what-ever it was, if the Winchesters were on its mind, it's the enemy.So we're moving for two reasons. One, the enemy knows where we are. Two, I'm going to go after him where he is... as soon as I figure that out. So we're in Colorado, on our way to Texas. Dean understands.
Sammy gets Daniel's books down from the shelves and pretends to read them. He can pick out some words, but what he's really after is the pictures. Like any kid his age.
May 17
This would have been our ninth anniversary. Pottery. How is six years iron and nine pottery? I wonder if we would have had more children. Mary talked about a girl sometimes. I would have liked having a daughter.
It's summer, we're on the move. Already I'm trying tofigure out what to do about school in the fall. I'm starting to figure out that you can move a kid from school to school every month, and the schools deal with it because they have to. A part of me wonders how the kid deals with it.
But sons have to be soldiers. And soldiers adapt.
July 13
From the mouths of babes... we were in Portland, Maine, because I'd heard of a Miqmaq shaman named David Fowler who lived there. I told him some of my story, and he agreed to raise a manitou and let me ask it some questions. We went down into the basement of his house and he started getting the divination ready. I'm the only white man who's ever seen it, he said, and he was only doing it for me as a favor to the other hunters he knew. He burned sacred tobacco, and some other herbs I didn't recognize. The room got more smoky than it seems like it should have. The manitou appeared, and I got right to the point. I asked it who or what killed Mary. And then things went wrong.
I still don't know whether Fowler made a mistake, or whether a different spirit rode up into our world along with the manitou. But whatever happened, it turned into something physical and real. Like a bear, kind of. And before I could stop it, it killed Fowler. It almost killed me too, but I fought it. I don't know if I would have won, because the spirit let go of its form, animated Fowler's body, and went out through the basement window. I got the hell out of there and picked up the boys. We were almost to the New Hampshire state line and I'd told Dean a little about what had happened, because I was so frustrated and ashamed that I had to talk to someone. Sammy was asleep the whole time.
Then Dean asked me one of those killer questions that little kids come up with. “Dad,” he says. “Won't the manitou go after other people now?”
That's a hard thing to face. Not that he asked the question,or that he was right, but that he had a better sense of right and wrong than I did. We were back at Fowler's house an hour later, and that night I tracked him down and killed him. He was prowling around the edges of a Cub Scout camp out in a place called Bradbury Mountain. God knows what would have happened if Dean hadn't spoken up.
I came this close to going completely off the rails. I almost let this quest overwhelm what I know is right, and a bunch of kids almost died because of it. A hunter never passes up a hunt, and a hunter never bails out on a hunt. That will never happen again. Never. I will not fail Mary's memory, and I will not fail the boys.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for four years. Dean asked me today what she looked like. He never talks about her on any other day but this one. I couldn't even show him a picture, so I told him what you tell a boy who asks about his dead mother. I told him that she was beautiful and kind and she loved him and Sammy more than anything in the world.
1988
Jan. 24
Dean turns nine today. We're on the move, so he might notfinish third grade. He calls himself the New Kid all the time.He's been in three schools already this year. Who knows how many more?
May 2
Sammy is five today. Thank God. He almost didn't make it.
I could blame Dean, but it's my fault. There's enough blame to go around. I missed the kill, and I left Dean watching Sam, and he couldn't pull the trigger when he needed to. I haven't taught him well enough. If he is weak like that again,my boys will die... but what kind of father am I to put a nine-year-old boy in a situation where he might have to kill to protect his brother?
I'm the kind of father I have to be. I'm the kind of father who teaches his boys that no man or monster can kill their mother and get away with it. I'm the kind of father who shows them that when it comes to family, you go to the ends of the earth to put things right.
May 17
This would have been our tenth anniversary. Tin.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for five years. We were married for five years. I feel like I'm serving a sentence sometimes, and the only way to get out of this prison is to find whoever or whatever took her away from me.
Dec. 5
Dean's teacher called to tell me that he got a subscription to the Weekly World News, and had it delivered to school. How is he paying for it? I could ask him, but he's already too sharp to give me a straight answer. And I could force him to, but there's no point. If that makes him feel more at home in his world...
1989
Jan. 24
Dean turns ten today. Reagan out of office. A crazy hunter told me a couple of years ago that Reagan was an avatar of the Antichrist because each of his names has six letters: Ronald Wilson Reagan. Reagan also lived at 666 St. Cloud Road.
May 2
Sammy is six years old today. He'll start kindergarten in the fall. Wherever we are. He's such a different kid than Dean.Quiet, watchful. He's learned that there are things to fear in the world, but where Dean wants to fight them, you get the sense that Sammy watches, learns. He's figuring something out. But when Sammy does ask a question, it's a good one.
May 17
This would have been our eleventh anniversary. Steel.
July 4
This is how you spend your holiday weekends when you're a hunter.
I got Sammy and Dean into a day camp not too far from Blue Earth, so I could consult with Pastor Jim about a few things while the boys got to be regular kids for a while. Should have known that not even summer camp could be normal for the Winchesters. On the fifth day of the camp, Dean was canoeing through an easy rapids on the Blue Earth River. Things went bad. Dean swore to me when he came back that he'd seen something-only he said “someone”-capsize the canoe. I didn't think about it too much... until the next week, when another canoe went over and the counselor paddling it died. I spent a couple of days looking into it, and ran across a Cree legend about humanoid tricksters called mannegishi. They live in river rapids and like to tip canoes, but they usually don't get malevolent unless the locals do something to make them angry. So what was it?
Turns out the camp is expanding, and part of the work involved blasting some riverside rock formations that used to have pictographs showing the Cree's reverence for the little bastards. The mannegishi didn't like having those gone, and started to take it out on the campers.
I'd have killed every one of them for coming after Dean, but the truth is they had a right to be mad. So I kept my head and got Jim to put me in touch with a Cree medicine man who lived over in South Dakota. I complained about the distance, and Jim told me to shut up and be happy I didn't have to go to Montana or Saskatchewan, where most of the Cree live now. The medicine man called himself Joey Tall Pine, which I figure is a moniker he took on for the tourists, but after the last six years, I'm the last guy in the world who gets to complain about someone using an alias. I gave him a ride back to Blue Earth and we went down to the rapids that night (now two days ago). He talked things over with the mannegishi, and they struck a bargain. They'd stop going after kids at the camp if Joey redid some of the pictographs somewhere and guaranteed that they wouldn't be destroyed. Jim stepped in and said, hey, I don't have nearly enough aquatic tricksters in the creek behind my house. Presto-mannegishi in Jim's creek, and Joey Tall Pine got to exercise his pictographic talent.
Part of me still wants to kill them, because of what happened to Dean, but when I take a minute to cool off I realize that it's the camp's fault. Some day camp, wrecking pictographs so they can expand their boat launch. The boys are going some place else next week, for as long as we can stay.
Anyway, it's over now. Fireworks going off, I've got a couple of beers in me, the boys are asleep in a tent out in Jim's backyard. For the moment, the battle pauses. Mary, I can'tfight every minute.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for six years. Today I overheard the boys talking about her, about her death. Sammy's old enough now to be asking hard questions, and I think that's making Dean think about some things that he'd put away until now. He's a tough little kid, Dean. Like me. But he's also like me in the way he holds things in. Now his little brother is asking him things and he's got to figure out a way to protect Sammy while Sammy's questions put him through the emotional wringer all over again. And what do I do? They were talking to each other.If I butt in, they'll clam up. They've got the kid bond, the kind that keeps adults out. They'd tell me what I wanted to hear, but the truth is I can't get at the real way they feel about their mother, because I can't let them get at my feelings. It kills me every day. There's no way to tell them that. We have to go on and find whatever killed their mother, my wife. Mary. For the boys' sake, I'm going to try to stay in one place for longer. Keep the hunting trips to a few hours' drive. At least until I have a firmer lead on what killed Mary. Then all bets are off.
1990
Jan. 24
Dean turns eleven today. He asked for his own gun, and I got him one. A Seecamp LWS .32 automatic, the smallest gun I could find that offered any kind of stopping power. Dean and I poured silver slugs for it ourselves, and we loaded it with alternating silver and Winchester hollow-points. He's got it in his pocket now.
May 2
Sammy is seven today. I think we're going to get him through the first grade this year. He's a smart little kid, but we've moved around so much that he's a little behind in school. And I haven't been doing the stuff I need to do with him on that front. I need to be better about reading to him-stuff other than field manuals and weird newspaper headlines. He's okay at math, and he knows some scientific stuff, because he's seen people doing some weird experiments at the roadhouse and Pastor Jim's, but he needs your basic little kid school stuff. I'd ask Dean to do it, but there's only so much you can pile on a kid. Having Sammy's life in his hands is enough for Dean; he can't be responsible for home-schooling Sammy too. God. This is one more time I'm reminded how much we need Mary.
May 17
This would have been our twelfth anniversary. Silk.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for seven years.
Dec. 25
Battled a nasty little bugger today. Kicked the beast back to wherever it came from. But as I looked into that stinking mouth, I wondered for the hundredth time: when's my time gonna come? And if something happens to me, who'll take care of the boys? Dean tries to be the big man a lot, but he's not even twelve. And Sam's just seven. Just trying to do this without you is hard enough, Mary... Mary...
Mary...
1991
Jan. 24
Dean turns twelve today. School has started again, but we're going to move on. Next week, the Winchesters are going to be residents of Albuquerque. Dean's going to be a normal sixth grader for at least the next couple of months. He even talked about wanting to play baseball this spring, but I'm not sure he's serious. I think he's taking his cues from me, talking about everyday stuff when I try to keep us in one place. Then when we're on the road again, all he can talk about is hunting.
March 17
In the last wee, Sammy has played a sunbeam in the school play and I killed a demon inhabiting the body of an old woman. It knew something about the succubi, I think. We're being fol-lowed. Or are we? Am I getting paranoid? I have every reason to be, but it's something I have to guard against. The boys are doing well. Sammy's talking about doing a science project to enter in the fair next month. He's really taken to his teacher,Ms. Lyle, and she's encouraging him. Smart kid, Sammy. It was warm today, and the boys kicked a soccer ball around.That's one of the nice things about Albuquerque. I picked up a job working construction. Feels good to be punching a clock again, actually. The regular rhythm of it. Part of me needs that.I thought about going back to turning wrenches, but it didn't feel right. I think a lot of things died in Lawrence, and that dream was one of them.
April 1
Monday, I walked away from another job, and my younger son almost was kidnapped by some kind of demon. Sammy qualified for the New Mexico Science Fair, and his teacher, Ms. Lyle, said she'd take him. Only she started to take him somewhere else. I don't know where, but I caught up to her at a crossroads.She would have killed me, and taken Sammy, but Dean came through. I don't have any words for how proud I am of him. His brother's under some kind of spell, there's a giant monster made out of train parts coming after me, and he has the presence of mind to find this journal and read the exorcism out of it. I almost lost both of my boys today. Ms. Lyle, or the thing calling itself Ms. Lyle, wanted Sammy for something. It reminds me of the variant stories about succubi lamiae taking children, or killing children. And if I'm honest with myself, I have to take that train of thought all the way: the stories also say that succubi come to claim the children that have been fathered by incubi, which is ridiculous.
I still don't know what Ms. Lyle wanted. She just said Sam was special.
We're on the road again. How am I going to explain to Sammy that we're not going back to school? How am I going to explain Ms. Lyle?To top it all off, I had to give Sammy a sharp lecture on not talking to strangers. While I was on the phone with Bobby,he just got out of the car and went up to a black Seville. I read him the riot act-Dean too, since he let it happen and it's his job to watch Sammy. All Sammy would say about it was that the guy wanted to know where we were going.
April 7
In Sioux Falls to meet Bobby, boys along since it's not safe for them to be in Albuquerque anymore.
April 18
Went to see Silas last night. He's an old friend of Bobby's,some kind of soothsayer who sells tires. I went to his place and his daughter told me he's been in a coma... since last November 2, the seventh anniversary of Mary's death. When I went to see him at the hospital, he snapped out of it long enough to tell me a couple of things I didn't want to hear.
One, he thinks that Sammy's special somehow.
Two, Dean and I need to be ready “for what's to come.”
Then he was gone again, out cold. What the hell does it mean? Why Sammy? What does he have to do with any of this? And what is coming? Silas either couldn't say anything else, or wouldn't. He said I brought him out of his coma, and then he was gone back into it.
Tomorrow I'm going to leave Sammy with Bobby so I can take Dean deer hunting. It's out of season, but the Dakotas are lousy with deer and Dean needs to pull a trigger to sharpen him up. Also I need to think about Sammy. Why was Ms. Lyle so interested in him?
April 19
The hunting trip was nearly a disaster. Dean missed his shot.I sent him after the buck, a beautiful twelve-pointer, and he dropped the gun when he tripped on the trail. Then out of no-where comes Sammy, who picks up the gun and lays that big boy out. A seven-year-old... well, almost eight.
Then he tells me that he thought the deer had taken Dean's gun, and that Sammy had to protect him.
It's moments like those that kill me. I taught him that,Dean too. I taught them that everything should be seen as a threat. And now Sammy sees a deer and thinks it's trying to hurt his brother.
God.
Things got worse from there because Sammy told me he'd gotten up, wanting to come after me and Dean, and found the man in the black Seville outside Bobby's house. He rode in the Seville to the trail head, and found us from there. I don't even know how to get my head around that. I feel like I should punish him somehow, but the truth is I should be punishing myself.
We get home, and Bobby tells me to go see Silas again. I didn't want to do it, but when I got to his house, there he was,awake and standing in his front door like he'd never been sick in his life. I don't know how to explain it. He said again that Sammy was special, and he wanted some time to talk to Sam and understand what was happening. So Dean and I left for an hour, and on the way back I saw the Seville.
When we got to Silas' place, there was Sammy, sitting on the porch. He said he and Silas talked for a while. I went inside, left Dean out with his brother to catch up. Inside . . .I've never seen anything like it. Or if I have, it was after an artillery strike in 'Nam. Silas was just in pieces, little bits of him stuck to the walls and the floor. Scrawled in blood on the kitchen cabinets, the words KILL HIM.
Now I've got to find the son of a bitch that killed Silas, too.
April 20
Been on the run, running harder even than usual. The driver of the Seville called himself Anderson, said he was a hunter . . . and he was hunting Sam. He said Sam had killed Silas, but there's no way that can be true. No little boy could have done what I saw in there. But Anderson wouldn't listen, and now in the last twenty-four hours I've committed kidnapping, grand theft auto (well, semi), and murder. That's five hunters I've killed, if you count H-but who really knows what he was? And I don't know that Anderson was what he said he was, either. He passed up two chances to take Sammy out. I didn't give him a third.And I didn't give any of three Dowry brothers a chance at all.
It was Dean who killed Anderson. My oldest son is blooded. All I ever write about is death. Because all I ever see is death, and you know what? I did that to myself. It's got to end, but it can't end until I settle what happened to Mary.
May 2
Sammy is eight years old today. Happy birthday, kiddo. No matter what the demons and soothsayers and lunatic albinos say, you're special to me just because you're my son. And I'm never going to let anything happen to you.
Ms. Lyle was after Sammy because he has something she wants. She said he was special. So did Silas. What's different about him? He's just a boy. My boy.
May 17
This would have been our thirteenth anniversary. Lace. Eleven is steel, twelve and thirteen are silk and lace? Feels like it should be the other way around, that steel should come later.Or maybe once you've proven you've got the steel to keep a marriage going, then you get to enjoy the silk and lace.
I'll never know.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for eight years. I've been learning about reapers.
Dec. 25
Sometimes I think Sammy's been reading this journal.
But he's not going to read it tonight, because here we are,Christmas night, and there's two hundred miles of scrub prairie and desert between me and them. No Christmas tree, no carrots and milk for Santa and the reindeer. A couple of days ago I handed them presents, and they gave me a set of night-vision goggles that Dean must have pinched from a gun show we passed through in Amarillo a couple of months ago. They're growing up without me. And they're both starting to act out a little, because we're apart so much. Sam gets resentful and has some trouble handling his temper. Dean tries to fix everything and keep us together as a team. Neither of them should have to do those things.
After this year ... the succubi and Ms. Lyle (Lilith?), Silas... this has been a rough one. They came after my boys. We made it, but they're going to keep coming. This enemy doesn't quit until they're dead, and I don't even know who's sending them. How do I fight them?
And how do I avoid this question: Would the boys be better off somewhere else, with someone else, living normal lives?
No. I'm their father. They belong with me.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
1992
Jan. 24
Dean turns thirteen today. For his birthday we went out to dinner at a greasy spoon called Mama Janer's, in Flint, Michigan.
March 30
I thought the lesson was learned back in Wisconsin, but the same thing almost happened again. I left the boys next at the beach in Two Lakes State Park and went looking for a skin-walker, and then it was Ichi all over again. Only this time the skinwalker took on the appearance of a park ranger it had killed, and nearly got the boys to come with it because they trusted the uniform. I still can't completely trust them on a hunt. I took it down, and lit into the two of them. Especially Dean. I have to be hard on him because one of these days I'm not going to be around, and he's the one who's going to have to look out for his brother. He's a badass, though. I thought I was tough when I was thirteen, but Dean would have kicked my ass six ways to Sunday.
May 2
Sammy is nine years old today. Last year on his birthday we were getting the hell out of Albuquerque. This year I nearly lost the boys because of the skinwalker. They're both learning, but they've got a lot still to learn.
May 17
This would have been our fourteenth anniversary. Ivory.
June 21
Last night, Sammy woke up in the middle of the night telling me he was afraid of the thing in the closet. I went and looked.There was nothing in the closet, but I've seen too much not to believe that there could be. So I handed Sammy the .45 and told him the next time he saw the thing in the closet, he knew what to do. I don't think I'll win any awards from parenting organizations, but five nights running now Sammy has slept without nightmares. Sometimes a .45 under your pillow is all you need.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for nine years. Nine years I've been on this quest, and I've accumulated so much stuff I needed to rent a storage space for it.
1993
Jan. 24
Dean turns fourteen today. He took off to the movies with a girlfriend. I think her name is Katie. Quite the lady killer, that kid. Like I was at his age. Hell-raising, foul-mouthed, full of piss and vinegar. Silas had it right: he's like me. If I'm not careful with him, by the time he's twenty he'll have left a trail of kids and arrest warrants all over the country.
May 2
Sammy is ten years old today. It was a lousy day, for him and me. He's on a soccer team, and he's pretty good, and today was a game day. But it's only a game, and on Saturdays we always do some kind of shooting now that they're both big enough. Today it was bowhunting. Nothing's in season, so we were just going target shooting, but it's important. They need to know everything, every way to kill the enemy that's out there. For Christ's sake, there are demons after Sammy. He needs to know how to fight them, and Dean needs to know how to protect him. Sammy's a kid, though, and he wants to play soccer. He's even more stubborn than I am when he really decides to dig in his heels. But I'm their father, and we went out with the bows. I can't blame him for wanting a normal life, but I wouldn't be much of a dad if I didn't prepare them for the world they're living in. Doing what's right for your kids doesn't always mean doing what they want. Especially in my case.
May 17
This would have been our fifteenth anniversary. Crystal. Crystal balls, divination, prisms... I want to talk to her so bad.Mary, why don't I dream about you anymore?
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for ten years. Ten years. Been thinking about urban legends all year, and about how what happened a tour house ten years ago might already be an urban legend in Lawrence, to go with Stull Church and the Eldridge Hotel.
Dec. 25
Christmas in Joplin, Missouri. The boys got me a book that they must have stolen from a shop while I was rooting around in the esoteric shelves. Some other version of me, out there ina world where schoolteachers don't turn into demons, might have been able to raise the boys without turning them into thieves. But for us, it's a necessary evil. I try to discourage them from taking things we don't need. Anyway, it's an old book on theosophy. All the hunters I know are convinced that Blavatsky was a fraud, but I'll take a look at it. You never know where you're going to find a clue.
1994
Jan. 24
Dean turns fifteen today. A week ago he helped me take out a spirit haunting a grocery owned by an Indian family in Erie, Pennsylvania.
May 2
Sammy is eleven years old today. When Dean turned eleven, he wanted a gun of his own. Sammy asked me for a computer. That right there tells you all you need to know about the differences between them. I got him his computer, too. A Macintosh Performa. It's in the trunk right now, but every time we spend a night under a roof he's going to want it plugged in, I can tell. He was telling me about the Internet today. I'm not sure I understand what he's talking about, but according to Sammy, everything you could ever want to know is on the Internet somewhere, and if you have a computer you can find it. Looks like Team Winchester just took a big leap ahead when it comes to gathering information. Every army needs intelligence. We subscribed to Prodigy, which, according to Sammy, is the best way to get to the World Wide Web. I used one of the credit cards Bobby helped me get.
May 17
This would have been our sixteenth anniversary. No traditional gift, or substance. Except in England, it's tungsten. Tungsten?How is that romantic?
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for eleven years.
Part 2: 1995 - 2005
1983 | 1984 | 1985 | 1986 | 1987 | 1988 | 1989 | 1990 | 1991 | 1992 | 1993 | 1994
1983
Nov. 16
I went to Missouri, and learned the truth.
Dean still hardly talks. I try to make small talk, or ask him if he wants to throw the baseball around. Anything to make him feel like a normal kid again. He never budges from my side--or from his brother. Every morning when I wake up, Dean is inside the crib, arms wrapped around baby Sam. Like he's trying to protect him from whatever is out there in the night.
Nov. 20
I killed a man in cold blood tonight.
No, I killed a shape-shifting monster tonight to protect all of the people who don't know things like that exist. But it would have looked like a man to any of those people. And Dean saw it happen.
And then tonight, Dean walked out of the roadhouse right when I put the final bullet into the shape-shifter's head. And he said, Why'd you kill him, Dad?
How am I supposed to answer that? Because he wasn't a man, he was a monster who looked like a man? My boy walked out the door and saw me shoot someone in the head. Maybe I'm the monster who looks like a man.
Nov. 21
Here's what I wish I could say to Dean--Your brother's too young to understand any of this, but you're beginning to. And that scares me. Since your mother died, I've seen unspeakable things, and now you've seen them and that's my fault. I feel the darkness of the road I'm traveling on now. It's not a place for you. One day you'll see--I had to leave you today... but when I'm done, I promise you: the day will come when I never have to leave you again. Until then, I can only pray that you're strong enough to look after Sam. One of us has to be.
Dec. 11
Sammy has finally started sleeping through the night, and now that Dean shares a bed with him, he's out like a light too.
Dec. 25
Mary will never see Dean hit a home tun. She'll never see Sammy walk, or hear him say his first words. She won't take Dean to his first day at school, or stay up all night with me worrying the first night he takes the car out. It's not right that she's not here, and that's all I could think about today. I'm so angry I can barely see straight--I want my wife back.
The police have officially declared our case closed. What a Christmas present, huh?
Dec. 29
Dean hasn't been the same since he saw me kill that shape-shifter. I don't know how to talk to him about it. He's not even five years old. Most kids his age don't even have a clear idea what death is, and he's seen it up close and personal. What do I say to him? How old does he have to be before I tell him the truth?
1984
Jan. 24
Dean turns five today. I was thinking about where we're going to be in the fall, because he should start school. Then I realized that I can't leave him in a school. Anything could happen.Maybe a place that has half-day kindergarten. Maybe that I could do. I know I should. I know he should be able to run around with other kids, who don't know how to field-strip the Browning. Well, Dean doesn't either, yet. But he's learning.He's got a talent for guns. I can see it already. And he'll need it.
May 2
Sammy is a year old. We spent his birthday in the mountains, because I had to meet a guy named Daniel Elkins. The hunter culture is weird about how it breaks in new blood. Everyone you meet says you should go meet someone else, and learn some-thing else, and every time you meet someone else they take you out to hunt their favorite kind of monster. This guy Elkins lives in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere in Colorado, and according to him, he's the greatest vampire hunter alive.
May 17
This would have been our sixth anniversary. Six is iron. Sammy took his first steps yesterday. He walked toward Dean, then fell flat on his face and started crying. Life is tough, kid. Do I sound like a proud dad? I am.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for a year. I'm never going to be over it,and I wouldn't want to be. But I've spent the last year getting better at revenge.
1985
Jan. 1
New Year's Day. Mary, I promised last year that I would avenge you. I promise again. I'll promise it every year until it happens. I'll never forget.
Jan. 24
Dean's sixth birthday. It's been more than a year since he saw me kill a shape-shifter. He doesn't ask about it anymore. And he stopped asking when he's going to go to school. I tried to do it last fall, but I couldn't. I just couldn't risk it. Maybe this year, now that he's a little older, now that he knows a little more about things. I've been teaching him. Not the worst stuff, but enough so he knows that there are things that go bump in the night.
May 2
Sammy is two today. Two years in a row we've spent his birth-day in Colorado, where I had to stop by Daniel's.
May 17
This would have been our seventh anniversary. Wool and copper.
Sept. 7
Today was Dean's first day of school. I put him straight intofirst grade. He's almost seven, and I just told the school that he'd been in kindergarten back in Kansas. They didn't press too hard when I told them that the kids had lost their mother,and we'd been moving around. I think we'll stay here for awhile. Or try, anyway. I felt normal again while I was taking Dean to school. He asked on the way in whether kids in school learned the same stuff he'd been learning. I had to tell him that maybe it wasn't a good idea for him to talk about Dad's job on the playground.
He came home on top of the world, and he brought me worksheets with the names of the different parts of a fish, different numbers of apples and oranges added together... this is what it should be like. Why can't it?
Sammy wants to be in school too. I can't even imagine staying in one place for long enough that he'll start here. Three years seems like forever.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for two years. I've been on the road for three days, cleaning up a haunted building in San Francisco.Already these are starting to seem like an everyday chore tome. You get the story, you find the remains, you burn them and salt them. End of story. These were two girls, and the whole ride back to the roadhouse I was thinking that I'll never have girls. Dean saw something on my face, or maybe it was just that he knew what day it is. When I got here, he came up to me and asked if I'd had a tough hunt. I couldn't talk for a minute.
Nov. 14
Took Dean shooting. If he's big enough to try to comfort me, he's big enough to start learning the tools of the trade. I only let him fire the .22, but he is a dead eye marksman. My drill sergeant would have taken him over me in a second. Times like this, I sure am proud of my boy. I have a feeling it'll be different with Sammy. Maybe he's just too young to show it, but I don't think he's got the same kind of killer instinct.
1986
Jan. 1
Happy New Year. This year, Mary, I will find out what killed you.
Jan. 24
For his seventh birthday, I took Dean shooting again. He wanted to fire one of the big guns-that's what he called them. I let him shoot the Browning, but I steadied his hands. Sammy wanted me to help him make Dean a card. It was like a normal day, like we were a normal family with a mom who was off shopping or at work or something. Instead of dead. That illusion never lasts. I can't afford to let it.
May 2
Tahlequah, OK. Sammy is three years old today. We celebrated with an ice-cream cake. He was still wearing most of it when he fell asleep. Dean's sleeping too, the two of them in the bed.The room only has one bed. I'll sleep on the floor, if I sleep at all. Some nights it's enough to watch them sleep, and know that if they start to have a nightmare I'll be right there to stop it.
May 17
This would have been our eighth anniversary. Eight is bronze.
Sept. 5
Dean started second grade. I watch him like a hawk. He makes me swear that I'll take good care of Sammy before he'll go to school. God, I love that kid. I have the days with Sammy while Dean is learning whatever kids learn in second grade. Sammy's a very different kid. He hasn't taken to the idea of hunting bad guys, and he's still too young to really under-stand what it means to avenge his mother. To him, her death just means she's not here, and he doesn't remember her. For him, Mary is a word. A mother, to him, is something he never had-but he's still supposed to be sad that she died. I don't think he gets it. How could he, really?
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for three years. She doesn't know that Sammy has learned the alphabet, and likes to catch bugs. She doesn't know that Dean watches his little brother like a hawk every minute, with an expression on his face that says he's willing to die to keep Sammy safe. She doesn't know how it tears me up inside to see that expression, and to know that it's there because I have drilled it into Dean that Sammy is his responsibility. He's eight years old, and I've told him his brother's life is in his hands. Mary, I didn't have any right to do that. But what else could I do?
1987
Jan. 1
Another New Year. Another promise. I will find it, Mary. And kill it.
Jan. 24
Dean turns eight today. Second grade is treating him well. I hope we can stay. He's at school, and they're going to have a little party for him. Then when he gets home, we're going to do the family thing. We're going to Chuck E. Cheese's, and we'll eat pizza and play video games until the kids go nuts.
May 2
Sammy is four today. And sure enough, we're in Colorado. That's three out of four birthdays we've been visiting Daniel.The mountains are a good place to spend early May. Maybe we should make a tradition of it-but I have a feeling that we're not in any place to start traditions. I had to pull Dean out of school when I got a note from Ellen that someone passing through the roadhouse had just exorcised a demon that knew where we were.
I think hunters call something a demon when they don't know what it is. The word is easy to throw around. But what-ever it was, if the Winchesters were on its mind, it's the enemy.So we're moving for two reasons. One, the enemy knows where we are. Two, I'm going to go after him where he is... as soon as I figure that out. So we're in Colorado, on our way to Texas. Dean understands.
Sammy gets Daniel's books down from the shelves and pretends to read them. He can pick out some words, but what he's really after is the pictures. Like any kid his age.
May 17
This would have been our ninth anniversary. Pottery. How is six years iron and nine pottery? I wonder if we would have had more children. Mary talked about a girl sometimes. I would have liked having a daughter.
It's summer, we're on the move. Already I'm trying tofigure out what to do about school in the fall. I'm starting to figure out that you can move a kid from school to school every month, and the schools deal with it because they have to. A part of me wonders how the kid deals with it.
But sons have to be soldiers. And soldiers adapt.
July 13
From the mouths of babes... we were in Portland, Maine, because I'd heard of a Miqmaq shaman named David Fowler who lived there. I told him some of my story, and he agreed to raise a manitou and let me ask it some questions. We went down into the basement of his house and he started getting the divination ready. I'm the only white man who's ever seen it, he said, and he was only doing it for me as a favor to the other hunters he knew. He burned sacred tobacco, and some other herbs I didn't recognize. The room got more smoky than it seems like it should have. The manitou appeared, and I got right to the point. I asked it who or what killed Mary. And then things went wrong.
I still don't know whether Fowler made a mistake, or whether a different spirit rode up into our world along with the manitou. But whatever happened, it turned into something physical and real. Like a bear, kind of. And before I could stop it, it killed Fowler. It almost killed me too, but I fought it. I don't know if I would have won, because the spirit let go of its form, animated Fowler's body, and went out through the basement window. I got the hell out of there and picked up the boys. We were almost to the New Hampshire state line and I'd told Dean a little about what had happened, because I was so frustrated and ashamed that I had to talk to someone. Sammy was asleep the whole time.
Then Dean asked me one of those killer questions that little kids come up with. “Dad,” he says. “Won't the manitou go after other people now?”
That's a hard thing to face. Not that he asked the question,or that he was right, but that he had a better sense of right and wrong than I did. We were back at Fowler's house an hour later, and that night I tracked him down and killed him. He was prowling around the edges of a Cub Scout camp out in a place called Bradbury Mountain. God knows what would have happened if Dean hadn't spoken up.
I came this close to going completely off the rails. I almost let this quest overwhelm what I know is right, and a bunch of kids almost died because of it. A hunter never passes up a hunt, and a hunter never bails out on a hunt. That will never happen again. Never. I will not fail Mary's memory, and I will not fail the boys.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for four years. Dean asked me today what she looked like. He never talks about her on any other day but this one. I couldn't even show him a picture, so I told him what you tell a boy who asks about his dead mother. I told him that she was beautiful and kind and she loved him and Sammy more than anything in the world.
1988
Jan. 24
Dean turns nine today. We're on the move, so he might notfinish third grade. He calls himself the New Kid all the time.He's been in three schools already this year. Who knows how many more?
May 2
Sammy is five today. Thank God. He almost didn't make it.
I could blame Dean, but it's my fault. There's enough blame to go around. I missed the kill, and I left Dean watching Sam, and he couldn't pull the trigger when he needed to. I haven't taught him well enough. If he is weak like that again,my boys will die... but what kind of father am I to put a nine-year-old boy in a situation where he might have to kill to protect his brother?
I'm the kind of father I have to be. I'm the kind of father who teaches his boys that no man or monster can kill their mother and get away with it. I'm the kind of father who shows them that when it comes to family, you go to the ends of the earth to put things right.
May 17
This would have been our tenth anniversary. Tin.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for five years. We were married for five years. I feel like I'm serving a sentence sometimes, and the only way to get out of this prison is to find whoever or whatever took her away from me.
Dec. 5
Dean's teacher called to tell me that he got a subscription to the Weekly World News, and had it delivered to school. How is he paying for it? I could ask him, but he's already too sharp to give me a straight answer. And I could force him to, but there's no point. If that makes him feel more at home in his world...
1989
Jan. 24
Dean turns ten today. Reagan out of office. A crazy hunter told me a couple of years ago that Reagan was an avatar of the Antichrist because each of his names has six letters: Ronald Wilson Reagan. Reagan also lived at 666 St. Cloud Road.
May 2
Sammy is six years old today. He'll start kindergarten in the fall. Wherever we are. He's such a different kid than Dean.Quiet, watchful. He's learned that there are things to fear in the world, but where Dean wants to fight them, you get the sense that Sammy watches, learns. He's figuring something out. But when Sammy does ask a question, it's a good one.
May 17
This would have been our eleventh anniversary. Steel.
July 4
This is how you spend your holiday weekends when you're a hunter.
I got Sammy and Dean into a day camp not too far from Blue Earth, so I could consult with Pastor Jim about a few things while the boys got to be regular kids for a while. Should have known that not even summer camp could be normal for the Winchesters. On the fifth day of the camp, Dean was canoeing through an easy rapids on the Blue Earth River. Things went bad. Dean swore to me when he came back that he'd seen something-only he said “someone”-capsize the canoe. I didn't think about it too much... until the next week, when another canoe went over and the counselor paddling it died. I spent a couple of days looking into it, and ran across a Cree legend about humanoid tricksters called mannegishi. They live in river rapids and like to tip canoes, but they usually don't get malevolent unless the locals do something to make them angry. So what was it?
Turns out the camp is expanding, and part of the work involved blasting some riverside rock formations that used to have pictographs showing the Cree's reverence for the little bastards. The mannegishi didn't like having those gone, and started to take it out on the campers.
I'd have killed every one of them for coming after Dean, but the truth is they had a right to be mad. So I kept my head and got Jim to put me in touch with a Cree medicine man who lived over in South Dakota. I complained about the distance, and Jim told me to shut up and be happy I didn't have to go to Montana or Saskatchewan, where most of the Cree live now. The medicine man called himself Joey Tall Pine, which I figure is a moniker he took on for the tourists, but after the last six years, I'm the last guy in the world who gets to complain about someone using an alias. I gave him a ride back to Blue Earth and we went down to the rapids that night (now two days ago). He talked things over with the mannegishi, and they struck a bargain. They'd stop going after kids at the camp if Joey redid some of the pictographs somewhere and guaranteed that they wouldn't be destroyed. Jim stepped in and said, hey, I don't have nearly enough aquatic tricksters in the creek behind my house. Presto-mannegishi in Jim's creek, and Joey Tall Pine got to exercise his pictographic talent.
Part of me still wants to kill them, because of what happened to Dean, but when I take a minute to cool off I realize that it's the camp's fault. Some day camp, wrecking pictographs so they can expand their boat launch. The boys are going some place else next week, for as long as we can stay.
Anyway, it's over now. Fireworks going off, I've got a couple of beers in me, the boys are asleep in a tent out in Jim's backyard. For the moment, the battle pauses. Mary, I can'tfight every minute.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for six years. Today I overheard the boys talking about her, about her death. Sammy's old enough now to be asking hard questions, and I think that's making Dean think about some things that he'd put away until now. He's a tough little kid, Dean. Like me. But he's also like me in the way he holds things in. Now his little brother is asking him things and he's got to figure out a way to protect Sammy while Sammy's questions put him through the emotional wringer all over again. And what do I do? They were talking to each other.If I butt in, they'll clam up. They've got the kid bond, the kind that keeps adults out. They'd tell me what I wanted to hear, but the truth is I can't get at the real way they feel about their mother, because I can't let them get at my feelings. It kills me every day. There's no way to tell them that. We have to go on and find whatever killed their mother, my wife. Mary. For the boys' sake, I'm going to try to stay in one place for longer. Keep the hunting trips to a few hours' drive. At least until I have a firmer lead on what killed Mary. Then all bets are off.
1990
Jan. 24
Dean turns eleven today. He asked for his own gun, and I got him one. A Seecamp LWS .32 automatic, the smallest gun I could find that offered any kind of stopping power. Dean and I poured silver slugs for it ourselves, and we loaded it with alternating silver and Winchester hollow-points. He's got it in his pocket now.
May 2
Sammy is seven today. I think we're going to get him through the first grade this year. He's a smart little kid, but we've moved around so much that he's a little behind in school. And I haven't been doing the stuff I need to do with him on that front. I need to be better about reading to him-stuff other than field manuals and weird newspaper headlines. He's okay at math, and he knows some scientific stuff, because he's seen people doing some weird experiments at the roadhouse and Pastor Jim's, but he needs your basic little kid school stuff. I'd ask Dean to do it, but there's only so much you can pile on a kid. Having Sammy's life in his hands is enough for Dean; he can't be responsible for home-schooling Sammy too. God. This is one more time I'm reminded how much we need Mary.
May 17
This would have been our twelfth anniversary. Silk.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for seven years.
Dec. 25
Battled a nasty little bugger today. Kicked the beast back to wherever it came from. But as I looked into that stinking mouth, I wondered for the hundredth time: when's my time gonna come? And if something happens to me, who'll take care of the boys? Dean tries to be the big man a lot, but he's not even twelve. And Sam's just seven. Just trying to do this without you is hard enough, Mary... Mary...
Mary...
1991
Jan. 24
Dean turns twelve today. School has started again, but we're going to move on. Next week, the Winchesters are going to be residents of Albuquerque. Dean's going to be a normal sixth grader for at least the next couple of months. He even talked about wanting to play baseball this spring, but I'm not sure he's serious. I think he's taking his cues from me, talking about everyday stuff when I try to keep us in one place. Then when we're on the road again, all he can talk about is hunting.
March 17
In the last wee, Sammy has played a sunbeam in the school play and I killed a demon inhabiting the body of an old woman. It knew something about the succubi, I think. We're being fol-lowed. Or are we? Am I getting paranoid? I have every reason to be, but it's something I have to guard against. The boys are doing well. Sammy's talking about doing a science project to enter in the fair next month. He's really taken to his teacher,Ms. Lyle, and she's encouraging him. Smart kid, Sammy. It was warm today, and the boys kicked a soccer ball around.That's one of the nice things about Albuquerque. I picked up a job working construction. Feels good to be punching a clock again, actually. The regular rhythm of it. Part of me needs that.I thought about going back to turning wrenches, but it didn't feel right. I think a lot of things died in Lawrence, and that dream was one of them.
April 1
Monday, I walked away from another job, and my younger son almost was kidnapped by some kind of demon. Sammy qualified for the New Mexico Science Fair, and his teacher, Ms. Lyle, said she'd take him. Only she started to take him somewhere else. I don't know where, but I caught up to her at a crossroads.She would have killed me, and taken Sammy, but Dean came through. I don't have any words for how proud I am of him. His brother's under some kind of spell, there's a giant monster made out of train parts coming after me, and he has the presence of mind to find this journal and read the exorcism out of it. I almost lost both of my boys today. Ms. Lyle, or the thing calling itself Ms. Lyle, wanted Sammy for something. It reminds me of the variant stories about succubi lamiae taking children, or killing children. And if I'm honest with myself, I have to take that train of thought all the way: the stories also say that succubi come to claim the children that have been fathered by incubi, which is ridiculous.
I still don't know what Ms. Lyle wanted. She just said Sam was special.
We're on the road again. How am I going to explain to Sammy that we're not going back to school? How am I going to explain Ms. Lyle?To top it all off, I had to give Sammy a sharp lecture on not talking to strangers. While I was on the phone with Bobby,he just got out of the car and went up to a black Seville. I read him the riot act-Dean too, since he let it happen and it's his job to watch Sammy. All Sammy would say about it was that the guy wanted to know where we were going.
April 7
In Sioux Falls to meet Bobby, boys along since it's not safe for them to be in Albuquerque anymore.
April 18
Went to see Silas last night. He's an old friend of Bobby's,some kind of soothsayer who sells tires. I went to his place and his daughter told me he's been in a coma... since last November 2, the seventh anniversary of Mary's death. When I went to see him at the hospital, he snapped out of it long enough to tell me a couple of things I didn't want to hear.
One, he thinks that Sammy's special somehow.
Two, Dean and I need to be ready “for what's to come.”
Then he was gone again, out cold. What the hell does it mean? Why Sammy? What does he have to do with any of this? And what is coming? Silas either couldn't say anything else, or wouldn't. He said I brought him out of his coma, and then he was gone back into it.
Tomorrow I'm going to leave Sammy with Bobby so I can take Dean deer hunting. It's out of season, but the Dakotas are lousy with deer and Dean needs to pull a trigger to sharpen him up. Also I need to think about Sammy. Why was Ms. Lyle so interested in him?
April 19
The hunting trip was nearly a disaster. Dean missed his shot.I sent him after the buck, a beautiful twelve-pointer, and he dropped the gun when he tripped on the trail. Then out of no-where comes Sammy, who picks up the gun and lays that big boy out. A seven-year-old... well, almost eight.
Then he tells me that he thought the deer had taken Dean's gun, and that Sammy had to protect him.
It's moments like those that kill me. I taught him that,Dean too. I taught them that everything should be seen as a threat. And now Sammy sees a deer and thinks it's trying to hurt his brother.
God.
Things got worse from there because Sammy told me he'd gotten up, wanting to come after me and Dean, and found the man in the black Seville outside Bobby's house. He rode in the Seville to the trail head, and found us from there. I don't even know how to get my head around that. I feel like I should punish him somehow, but the truth is I should be punishing myself.
We get home, and Bobby tells me to go see Silas again. I didn't want to do it, but when I got to his house, there he was,awake and standing in his front door like he'd never been sick in his life. I don't know how to explain it. He said again that Sammy was special, and he wanted some time to talk to Sam and understand what was happening. So Dean and I left for an hour, and on the way back I saw the Seville.
When we got to Silas' place, there was Sammy, sitting on the porch. He said he and Silas talked for a while. I went inside, left Dean out with his brother to catch up. Inside . . .I've never seen anything like it. Or if I have, it was after an artillery strike in 'Nam. Silas was just in pieces, little bits of him stuck to the walls and the floor. Scrawled in blood on the kitchen cabinets, the words KILL HIM.
Now I've got to find the son of a bitch that killed Silas, too.
April 20
Been on the run, running harder even than usual. The driver of the Seville called himself Anderson, said he was a hunter . . . and he was hunting Sam. He said Sam had killed Silas, but there's no way that can be true. No little boy could have done what I saw in there. But Anderson wouldn't listen, and now in the last twenty-four hours I've committed kidnapping, grand theft auto (well, semi), and murder. That's five hunters I've killed, if you count H-but who really knows what he was? And I don't know that Anderson was what he said he was, either. He passed up two chances to take Sammy out. I didn't give him a third.And I didn't give any of three Dowry brothers a chance at all.
It was Dean who killed Anderson. My oldest son is blooded. All I ever write about is death. Because all I ever see is death, and you know what? I did that to myself. It's got to end, but it can't end until I settle what happened to Mary.
May 2
Sammy is eight years old today. Happy birthday, kiddo. No matter what the demons and soothsayers and lunatic albinos say, you're special to me just because you're my son. And I'm never going to let anything happen to you.
Ms. Lyle was after Sammy because he has something she wants. She said he was special. So did Silas. What's different about him? He's just a boy. My boy.
May 17
This would have been our thirteenth anniversary. Lace. Eleven is steel, twelve and thirteen are silk and lace? Feels like it should be the other way around, that steel should come later.Or maybe once you've proven you've got the steel to keep a marriage going, then you get to enjoy the silk and lace.
I'll never know.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for eight years. I've been learning about reapers.
Dec. 25
Sometimes I think Sammy's been reading this journal.
But he's not going to read it tonight, because here we are,Christmas night, and there's two hundred miles of scrub prairie and desert between me and them. No Christmas tree, no carrots and milk for Santa and the reindeer. A couple of days ago I handed them presents, and they gave me a set of night-vision goggles that Dean must have pinched from a gun show we passed through in Amarillo a couple of months ago. They're growing up without me. And they're both starting to act out a little, because we're apart so much. Sam gets resentful and has some trouble handling his temper. Dean tries to fix everything and keep us together as a team. Neither of them should have to do those things.
After this year ... the succubi and Ms. Lyle (Lilith?), Silas... this has been a rough one. They came after my boys. We made it, but they're going to keep coming. This enemy doesn't quit until they're dead, and I don't even know who's sending them. How do I fight them?
And how do I avoid this question: Would the boys be better off somewhere else, with someone else, living normal lives?
No. I'm their father. They belong with me.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
1992
Jan. 24
Dean turns thirteen today. For his birthday we went out to dinner at a greasy spoon called Mama Janer's, in Flint, Michigan.
March 30
I thought the lesson was learned back in Wisconsin, but the same thing almost happened again. I left the boys next at the beach in Two Lakes State Park and went looking for a skin-walker, and then it was Ichi all over again. Only this time the skinwalker took on the appearance of a park ranger it had killed, and nearly got the boys to come with it because they trusted the uniform. I still can't completely trust them on a hunt. I took it down, and lit into the two of them. Especially Dean. I have to be hard on him because one of these days I'm not going to be around, and he's the one who's going to have to look out for his brother. He's a badass, though. I thought I was tough when I was thirteen, but Dean would have kicked my ass six ways to Sunday.
May 2
Sammy is nine years old today. Last year on his birthday we were getting the hell out of Albuquerque. This year I nearly lost the boys because of the skinwalker. They're both learning, but they've got a lot still to learn.
May 17
This would have been our fourteenth anniversary. Ivory.
June 21
Last night, Sammy woke up in the middle of the night telling me he was afraid of the thing in the closet. I went and looked.There was nothing in the closet, but I've seen too much not to believe that there could be. So I handed Sammy the .45 and told him the next time he saw the thing in the closet, he knew what to do. I don't think I'll win any awards from parenting organizations, but five nights running now Sammy has slept without nightmares. Sometimes a .45 under your pillow is all you need.
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for nine years. Nine years I've been on this quest, and I've accumulated so much stuff I needed to rent a storage space for it.
1993
Jan. 24
Dean turns fourteen today. He took off to the movies with a girlfriend. I think her name is Katie. Quite the lady killer, that kid. Like I was at his age. Hell-raising, foul-mouthed, full of piss and vinegar. Silas had it right: he's like me. If I'm not careful with him, by the time he's twenty he'll have left a trail of kids and arrest warrants all over the country.
May 2
Sammy is ten years old today. It was a lousy day, for him and me. He's on a soccer team, and he's pretty good, and today was a game day. But it's only a game, and on Saturdays we always do some kind of shooting now that they're both big enough. Today it was bowhunting. Nothing's in season, so we were just going target shooting, but it's important. They need to know everything, every way to kill the enemy that's out there. For Christ's sake, there are demons after Sammy. He needs to know how to fight them, and Dean needs to know how to protect him. Sammy's a kid, though, and he wants to play soccer. He's even more stubborn than I am when he really decides to dig in his heels. But I'm their father, and we went out with the bows. I can't blame him for wanting a normal life, but I wouldn't be much of a dad if I didn't prepare them for the world they're living in. Doing what's right for your kids doesn't always mean doing what they want. Especially in my case.
May 17
This would have been our fifteenth anniversary. Crystal. Crystal balls, divination, prisms... I want to talk to her so bad.Mary, why don't I dream about you anymore?
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for ten years. Ten years. Been thinking about urban legends all year, and about how what happened a tour house ten years ago might already be an urban legend in Lawrence, to go with Stull Church and the Eldridge Hotel.
Dec. 25
Christmas in Joplin, Missouri. The boys got me a book that they must have stolen from a shop while I was rooting around in the esoteric shelves. Some other version of me, out there ina world where schoolteachers don't turn into demons, might have been able to raise the boys without turning them into thieves. But for us, it's a necessary evil. I try to discourage them from taking things we don't need. Anyway, it's an old book on theosophy. All the hunters I know are convinced that Blavatsky was a fraud, but I'll take a look at it. You never know where you're going to find a clue.
1994
Jan. 24
Dean turns fifteen today. A week ago he helped me take out a spirit haunting a grocery owned by an Indian family in Erie, Pennsylvania.
May 2
Sammy is eleven years old today. When Dean turned eleven, he wanted a gun of his own. Sammy asked me for a computer. That right there tells you all you need to know about the differences between them. I got him his computer, too. A Macintosh Performa. It's in the trunk right now, but every time we spend a night under a roof he's going to want it plugged in, I can tell. He was telling me about the Internet today. I'm not sure I understand what he's talking about, but according to Sammy, everything you could ever want to know is on the Internet somewhere, and if you have a computer you can find it. Looks like Team Winchester just took a big leap ahead when it comes to gathering information. Every army needs intelligence. We subscribed to Prodigy, which, according to Sammy, is the best way to get to the World Wide Web. I used one of the credit cards Bobby helped me get.
May 17
This would have been our sixteenth anniversary. No traditional gift, or substance. Except in England, it's tungsten. Tungsten?How is that romantic?
Nov. 2
Mary has been dead for eleven years.
Part 2: 1995 - 2005