Journal of John Winchester (Supernatural)

April 16

There’s a reason why they call it Devil’s Gate.

We were supposed to turn Devil’s Gate into a devil’s trap.

But I made a mistake, and Bill died.

It’s a slot canyon, used to ood all the time (Arroyo Seco

isn’t always seco) until they put in a spillway and built the reservoir. But odd things happened there. Four kids in three

years, from 1957–1960, vanish without a trace. Other people

see things. No one will talk about it. Bill was sure that something had come up through the canyon thirty years ago, and

was about to again. Some kind of hellspawn. So we went there

to catch it in the act and take care of it. Hellspawn, that’s the

word he used. I don’t know if I believe in Hell. But I do remember the Black Shuck, and the way Mary’s spirit was transformed in Blue Earth. That came from somewhere. Was it a

demon? I don’t know if I believe in demons. I’ve seen people

who thought they were demons, and acted like demons—but

how would you know the difference between a demon and a

shape-shifter? How would you know?

I’m avoiding it. This is how Bill died.

At the mouth of the spillway we found this godawful uid

trickling straight out of the concrete. Dark brown, stinking of

sulfur. It burned your ngers to touch it. Bill drew a gure

around it, he called it a Devil’s Trap from a book called the

Key of Solomon. Psalm 90:13. He used charcoal to

draw the trap on the wall of the spillway around

the sulfur, and then I laid it out on the ground in

front of the tunnel, using salt. Kosher salt, no

added iodides. Bill said this was important.

He started watching the sky as the sun set. The

rst stars would tell him when the hellspawn was

coming through, he said. I looked up with him, but the stars

ust looked like stars to me. I have so much to learn. There

I was in Pasadena, the boys back at the roadhouse. I wasn’t

being a father. I was being a hunter. I was hunting. And while

I looked up at the sky, I made a simple mistake. I didn’t pay

attention to where my feet were, and I scuffed the salt. Just a

little. But enough that when something came out of the mouth

of the tunnel, nothing stopped it. It looked like smoke, and sounded

like a million ies. Bill looked down

from the stars just in time for it to

ow right into him. He started jerking like a condemned man in the

electric chair, and two voices were

coming out of his mouth. One was the

thing, the hellspawn. I don’t know what

language it was speaking, but its voice was horrible. It was the

sound cancer would make if it could talk. And Bill, he kept

saying over and over again, John, shoot me, shoot me, John.

So I did.

It was the worst mistake I ever made. It was careless and

stupid and it got a good man killed. A husband and father,

and a damned good hunter, and I don’t know how I’m going

to explain this to Ellen. And Jo, poor Jo. She’s four years old.

How am I going to tell her? I can’t just let Ellen do it. I’m responsible. It was over in less than a minute, Bill Harvelle dead

and me standing there with a gun in my hand listening to the

echo of the gunshots in the hills and the echo of that awful

hellspawn voice in my head.

And to the end, Bill was teaching me. With his body

dying and something inside him, he staggered over to the

sulfur-stinking wall and let the smoke back out—straight into

the Devil’s Trap on the wall. Then he took a step back, careful

not to do what I did, and then he sat down and died leaning

against the spillway wall under the Devil’s

Trap he’d drawn. He saved my life even

though I took his. It was a hunter’s

death.

I copied the Devil’s Trap, but I

didn’t need to. I couldn’t forget it if

I wanted to.