Mommy said stay put. Don't move. Don't come out. Wait for mommy and mommy will be back soon. Everything is alright. Be quiet now. It's okay darling. That is what mommy said. Then mommy left me, all alone in here, by myself, in the dark. I hate the dark. I hate my closet. Every time my clothes brush against my face I whimper, which is breaking the fifth rule mommy said. I'm making too much noise, trying to cover my cries with my hands over my mouth. And it's hard to breathe. I hear the sounds of screaming and running and begging and I try to be quiet, I try so hard. I shriek when the sound of the screaming and begging ends. I never liked this house, because the floors make a loud noise when you step on them. And after the screaming voice stops, the sound starts to become louder and louder, the creaking making my knees shake, so I quickly tuck them close to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. I want to be small, so small, so if the footsteps are not my mommy's I can disappear. My door creaks open.

24 Hours Earlier

"Hey check this out," Sam throws the newspaper on the table where Dean has his feet resting. "Kids are going missing. Typically I'd wrap this up as the usual creeper. But," he holds up a finger to emphasize the turning point, "I dug a little deeper and guess what I found." Sam didn't wait for Dean to guess. "Half of these kids were in a fire when they were six months old. Living with one surviving parent, tell me that doesn't sound familiar."

Dean was already sliding on his navy jacket and picking his feet from the table. "Where to?" He pulls out his keys from his pocket, dangling them around his finger.

"Aspen, Colorado. It's a couple hours drive from here." "

I got the bags, go make sure the arsenal is packed," Dean headed off to his room to get the duffle bag he had already packed under his bed, then grabbing Sam's bag from under Sam's bed, hey, old habits die hard. Dean already felt the stress of this case weighing on him, there was nothing he hated more than when kids are hurt by some freak monster.

"Mrs. Greely, I'm agent Tyler this is my partner Scully, mind if we ask you a few questions about your son's disappearance?" Sam held out his badge and asked the woman in her bathrobe and messy hair politely. She was hesitant but opened the screen door to allow them through.

"Like I already told the other agents, I was sleeping, I didn't even notice Danny was gone until I had to get him up for school," she spoke as she led them to the living room. "What kind of mother does that," she muttered to herself and gave a quiet hiccuping sob. Sam and Dean-or Tyler and Scully, took their seats on the couch, the despaired mother sat across from them.

"Ma'am, was there anything… out of the ordinary going on around the house before your son was kidnapped?" Dean is sitting on the edge of the couch, unable to get comfortable.

The women flinches at this question, quickly hiding her perplexed look. "What do you mean by that?"

"Lights flickering? Cold spots? Bad smells in the house? I realize its strange but we have to cover the basics," Dean pleads with his eyes. "Um…" her tired grey eyes flashed to the ceiling briefly then went back to Dean's.

"Not that I recall. Cold spots no, smell, lights flickering no, but a few days before a man approached my son, he seemed weird. I completely forgot about him until a few days ago, the police don't think it's likely."

"Please," Sam asked.

Mrs. Greely shook her head, pulling the memory from the cloud of emotions. "He was… average looking, there wasn't much to him. Blonde hair, blue eyes, he didn't seem threatening-I just can't help thinking that he followed us from the park! You think? The cops don't think so. He just asked how old Danny was, said he was real cute. God I should have double checked the locks," the woman began to get teary eyed.

"Mrs. Greely what can you tell us about the fire in your previous house," Sam asked slowly, letting the words sink in to the emotional woman.

Her sadness pulled into a scowl. "I don't see what that has to do with Danny being kidnapped."

Dean shook his head, "just going over the basic questions ma'am. We are going to do whatever we can, but we need all the facts."

Mrs. Greely looked down at the coffee table as she spoke. "My husband, Stan had been saying someone was in the nursery, he was sort of a paranoid man, it was the middle of the night so I told him just go check. The baby monitor wasn't going off. I didn't think anything of it, but a few minutes passed and he wasn't back, I started to smell smoke. I got Danny out just in time… but Stan...God-Stan was gone. The fire department said the only thing that made sense was that Stan spontaneously combusted, he was the source of fire." Her eyes flickered between Sam and Dean, "I remarried when Danny was three."

"Thank you for your time ma'am, I promise if anything, and I mean anything new comes up you will be the first to know," Dean smiled reassuringly to the woman, who allowed a small smile then sniffled.

"So what," Sam says when they cross Mrs. Greely's yard to get to the Impala, "demon?"

"Nah. Something doesn't add up. No Sulfur or flicking lights, I checked the E.M.F when I walked in, nothing. We killed yellow-eyes and last I checked Lucifer is roasting marshmallows in the cage and if angry spirit isn't picking off rugrats I don't know what is. I'm telling you something, I think something real bad is happening here. And I tell you another thing, when we catch the sonofabitch, I'll gonna kill him five times over." Sam nodded in agreement, getting into the passenger seat.

Dean and Sam sat in yet another mourning parent's living room, the third in four hours. No E.M.F as Dean checked the for the fourth time, running out of excuses to wander the house. No Sulfur or flickering light, ruled out demons. "Was there ever a fire in your house? Maybe strange things happening that made you decide to move?" Sam, still portraying himself as agent Tyler.

"What does this have to do with Suzie?" The father snapped, arms around his wife, who sat sipping tea silently, every once in a while letting out a tired sigh.

"Protocol questions sir," Sam reassured, eyes flickering to Dean's uneasily. Though Dean was somewhere else, focused on the older boy on the steps, staring guiltily at the floor.

"Yeah so we moved when Suzie was sixth months old, so what, Charles was freaked out. Having bad nightmares, not getting enough sleep, scared out his mind-this has nothing to do with Suzie being kidnapped. It all stopped when we moved, now she's been…." He couldn't say kidnapped one more time, he leaned into his wife. "Excuse me," he got up and the wife followed, giving Dean enough time to get up and talk to the kid, who had some things to say about the ordeal.

Dean didn't say anything, the kid spilled as soon as he walked up. "My sister was taken by the man. The same man who came into her room when she was a baby. My parents don't believe me. You don't believe me either. Nobody believes me." His wide eyes fixed on the floor again.

"Woah. Hold on now, I never said I didn't believe you. Tell me what you saw."

He was reluctant. "Man came in, leaned over her crib. There was a big light, bright. He put it inside her. He left before mom and dad got there, they told me it was a dream. I heard him come in last week. I knew it was him, he was back. But he took Suzie and was gone." The kid sniffled.

"Hey, look at me." The boy listened. "We are going to find your little sister and bring her back. I promise." The boy, Charles, nodded solemnly.

"Okay I have a list of all the kids that live in the general area from ages five to eight and Dean… there's a lot. But-"

"Let me guess, there's only one family who moved due to fire." Dean impatiently tapped his hands on a table. His sleeves were rolled up on his white buttoned shirt, loosely tucked.

"Exactly. Conveniently for us. A little girl and a mother out on Addison Street."

"Let's go check on the munchkin," Dean agreed, following Sam from their sleazy motel room.

Right Friggin' Now

The door was locked. It didn't surprise the brothers, it was only...wow, midnight, time really does fly. Dean frantically picked the lock, feeling edgy about the whole thing. Two steps in and the pool of blood reached their feet, their guns were out and cocked before another second tick. Sam and Dean had to step over the woman's dead body to run up the stairs.

I'm not getting paid enough for this, thought the demon in the little girl's room. His mouth watered at the sound of her whimpers in the closet. But I can't kill her. He rolled his eyes irritatedly, slowly walking towards the closet. His hand was on the knob when Dean and Sam shouted curse words and attacked.

"You sonofabitch!" Dean jumped over the bed with his demon blade in hand, lunging for the demon, who conveniently threw his head up and ejected itself in a pillar of black smoke. The meat suit collapsed on the floor with a thud. "Damnit!" Dean huffed, glaring at the floor then kicking the bed.

"Dean," Sam called sternly over his brother's small angry tantrum. Dean looked up expectantly. "Do you hear that?" Dean cocked his head to the side, listening to the deathly quiet house. Small sobs came from the closet. They sprang towards the closet door, sliding it open.

A little girl with her knees tucked in to her chest, arms thrown around her legs. Her face was gently nuzzled into her knees, eyes swollen with tears, body in trembles. The girl's light brown hair was matted around her roundish face. Dean bends eye level to the child, concerned, with the previous anger drained from his body. "Where's…" she began to shake harder, barely audible. Her bottom lip trembled. Golf ball sized tears fell from her light blue eyes. "Where is mmm-my mommy?" She didn't look directly at Dean, but past him on the man on the floor, or rather the meat suit.

Dean followed her eyes to the trickle of blood seeping from between the man's lips. "Hey," he said a little more sternly than he would have wished. "Don't look at him. He's gone, he isn't gonna hurt you."

"That's not the monster," her small face pulled into a concentrated scowl, her gaze still on the man. "Where's my momma," she asked more demanding this time, yet sniffling and wiping falling tears from red cheeks.

"She isn't here," Sam spoke soothingly, frowning at the child and standing with his hands at his sides behind Dean. The little girl glared at Sam, hearing the lie in his voice, then looked back at the man concentratedly.

"I want my mommy," she finally looked away from the small pool that was coming from the man and looked at Dean pleadingly, which tugged on his heart strings more than he'd care to admit. "Is she downstairs?" Her eyes were large, looking questionably at Dean. "Momma!"

"Okay, okay, calm down," Dean told the girl as the water works were coming again. "We'll take you to her okay. Calm down. It's okay." He immediately regretted telling the girl to take her to her very much dead mother.

"Dean," Sam warned in a whisper, panic in his voice. "We can't take her downstairs."

"What do we tell her," Dean whispered back as if the little girl didn't have ears. She sprang up and ran past the perplexed Winchesters and the monster, running through the hallway. She was one the steps when they finally reached her, but it was too late, the blood had reached the edge of the last step.

"Mommy," she whimpered, Dean gently touched her shoulder as too sooth the child. "The monster did this," she muttered quietly. "Did you kill the monster," she looked up at Dean and Sam, eyes glossy.

"The monster is upstairs," Sam told the girl, who easily noticed yet another lie.

"No. That wasn't the monster."

"What mean? Was there another person here?" Dean started to get jumpy and put his other hand inside his jacket close to the gun.

The little girl sighed frustratedly, crossing her arms. "No the monster had a scary face. The man upstairs had a scary face and now he doesn't. He isn't the monster anymore."

"You saw the de-" Sam corrected himself quickly. "Monster's face?" When the little girl nodded he exchanged a 'dude, what the hell' look with Dean.

"Okay we'll get this all sorted out but right now, we gotta get you out of here. What's your name sweetheart?" Dean bent eye level with the kid.

"Aleanah," she answered in a mutter.

"Aleanah, we're going to bring you somewhere safe okay? You gotta be strong and you're gonna have to work with us." Dean looked up at Sam for any objections. He didn't know what else to do besides take the kid somewhere safe and away from here. Sam just stared concerningly at Aleanah, he couldn't bare that this was happening all over again. "Right," Dean turned again towards the kid dressed in Finding Nemo pajamas with tear streaked cheeks and a running nose. "Do you need anything before we go?"

She nodded, bottom lip puckering still. She led them back to her bedroom where the meat suit laid on the floor. Aleanah reached under her covers and pulled out a rugged looking teddy bear with an eye missing and an ear slightly torn, it looked like it had never been washed before. She sophisticated the bear in her arms. Her eyes landed again on the man and Dean had to coax her out of the bedroom.

Sam led the way downstairs, stepping over the ever spreading pool of blood. Dean held on of the girl's tiny hand in his large, scarred hand. Aleanah scrambled free once reaching downstairs, crawling towards the body. She ever so carefully brushed her mother's hair back, softly kissing her forehead. Aleanah whispered something in her ear, then stood up, grabbing Dean's hand again, and followed them to the Impala.

Aleanah climbed into the backseat when Dean opened the door for her. She buckled herself and her bear in, promptly staring out the window as her house disappeared behind them. They put Aspen, Colorado in the rearview mirror.