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™ John r’s WinJochuersntael Alex Irvine Illustrations by Dan Panosian and Alex Irvine Supernatural ™ created by Eric Kripke Contents 1983 1 1984 16 1985 21 1986 29 1987 36 1988 47 1989 55 1990 64 1991 69 1992 88 1993 98 1994 107 1995 116 1996 126 1997 135 1998 154 1999 163 2000 171 2001 182 2002 188 2003 193 2004 198 2005 206 Acknowledgments 218 Other Books by Alex Irvine Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher 1983 November 16: I went to Missouri, and learned the truth. And from her, I met Fletcher Gable, who gave me this book and said: “Write everything down.” That’s what Fletcher told me, like this new life is a school and I’ll flunk out if I don’t have good notes. Only if I flunk out of this school, I’ll be dead. And the boys will be orphans. So I’m going to go back to where this started. Two weeks ago, my wife was murdered. I watched her die, pinned to the ceiling of Sammy’s room, blood dripping onto his cradle until she burst into flames—looking at me as she died. The week before that, we were a normal family . . . eating dinner, going to Dean’s T-ball game, buying toys for baby Sammy. But in an instant, it all changed . . . When I try to think back, get it straight in my head . . . I feel like I’m going crazy. Like someone ripped both my arms off, plucked my eyes out . . . I’m wandering around, alone and lost, and I can’t do anything. Mary used to write books like this one. She said it helped her remember all the little things, about the boys, me . . . I wish I could read her journals, but like everything else, they’re gone. Burned into nothing. She always wanted me to try writing things down. Maybe she was right, maybe it will help me to remember, to understand. Fletcher seems to think so. Nothing makes any sense anymore . . . My wife is gone, 1 my sons are without their mother . . . the things I saw that night, I remember hearing Mary scream, and I ran, but then . . . everything was calm, just for a second—Sammy was fine—and I was sure I had been hearing things—too many horror movies too late at night. But then there was the blood, and when I looked up, my wife . . . Half our house is gone, even though the fire burned for only a few hours. Most of our clothes and photos are ruined, even our safe—the safe with Mary’s old diaries, the passbooks for the boys’ college accounts, what little jewelry we had . . . all gone. How could my house, my whole life, go up like that, so fast, so hot? How could my wife just burn up and disappear? I want my wife back. Oh God, I want her back. I thought at first that we would stay. Mike and Kate helped me take care of the boys at first, and Julie’s been great too, but I tried to tell them—tell Mike—what I think happened that night. He just looked at me, this look . . . like he’s sure I’m crazy. He must have told Kate something too. Out of nowhere she said the next morning, I should think about seeing a shrink. How can I talk to a stranger about this? I never saw a shrink for everything I went through in the Marines, and I got through that. My friends think I’m going insane. Who knows, maybe I am . . . The police quit on the case as soon as they couldn’t pin it on me. They don’t care that she was on the ceiling, they don’t care about the blood on her stomach or about any of the things I’ve seen since then. They want a tidy answer. Doesn’t matter to them whether it’s the right one. The last time I talked to them, a week after she died, they asked me th