Journal of John Winchester (Supernatural)

April 7

In Sioux Falls to meet Bobby, boys along since it’s not safe for them to be in Albuquerque anymore. Between the two of us, Bobby and I hashed out what’s been going on with Ms. Lyle and the others. Bobby thinks I’m a fool for not wanting to believe that demons really exist, and he’s not shy about telling me. Probably he’s right. All the signs were there with Ms. Lyle. But if you buy demons, you have to buy Hell, and if you buy Hell, you have to buy Satan, which means you have to buy God, right? I can’t sign on to one belief if it means I have to take the others. Only Bobby says that he’s never run across a demon who’s laid eyes on the Devil. Most demons apparently don’t even believe he exists. The way Bobby put it is that demons are a lot like us where belief is concerned. I don’t see it that way. If demons exist, they are nothing like us.

But I guess I think they do exist. And I think Ms. Lyle was one. I was in bed with her . . . that thing . . . and it was a demon. I let it trick me away from the mission. I let myself be led, I let myself be convinced that everything can be normal again, and it was all a tactic. She wanted something from me, and she thought she knew how to get it.

And she was almost right. I’ve been lonely since Mary . . . I wanted to be touched. Just contact. And looking back, it makes me sick.

Have been reading up on crossroads out of Bobby’s library. There’s a nearly universal folk-magic tradition that crossroads are gateways between worlds. Robert Johnson: “I went to the

crossroads trying to flag a ride.” And then he writes “Hellhound

on My Trail,” too. Wonder if he knew something . . . plenty of stories that he sold his soul to the Devil, but people have been saying that about musicians since medieval times. Another me- dieval note: criminals and suicides used to be buried at cross- roads. A sacrifice to the spirits that used those gateways?Papa Legba in voodoo magic is the loa of crossroads. You go to him if you want to talk to the iwa, the gods (going back to Yoruba traditions). He is the gatekeeper, also perhaps a psychopomp—like Eshu (sometimes called Ellegua in theYoruba Lukumi, later Exu in Brazilian folk magic). Eshu is

the patron of travelers, god of crossroads. He’s also a trickster, sometimes a cruel one. Both Eshu and Papa Legba must be the first of any spirits invoked if a magical or divination ritual is going to work. His symbol, called a veve: Veve is inscribed on the floor in some kind of powder. It can be anything from flour to gunpowder, depending on the ceremony. Hoodoo traditions prescribe certain actions at crossroads to gain gifts in music, love, or power. Or money.