Sammy is thirteen today.  He's finishing sixth grade, a year late and with all the grudges to show for it.  When Dean hit this age, I started to worry about girls, booze, drugs...all the regular stuff.  With Sammy, I don't worry about that.  What worries me is that he's got so much bottled inside him that when it comes out, he won't be able to control it.  I think that's part of why he has the dreams.  He's different, my Sammy.  I think he's a little haunted by being in the room with Mary when she was killed.  He feels like he should remember something, or be able to offer a clue.  God, it must be terrible to know you witnessed something but that you'll never be able to remember it or tell anyone about it.  I think he also wonders about Ms. Lyle.  Dean and I never told him the whole story.

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 Sam 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.

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 believe if it means I have to take on 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 wee 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.

Monday, I walked away from another job, and my younger son almost was kidnapped by some sort 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 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.

In the last week, 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 followed.  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 balls around.  That's one of the 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.