A/N- This will take place sometime in season 2.

Chapter One

"D'n-" Sam frowned and rolled over in her sleep and started feeling for her phone. She laid her hand on the phone sitting under her pillow and realized it wasn't the one ringing. It took her sleepy mind a second to process that it was Dean's ringtone. "D'n- 's yer phone…"

She heard her brother moan from the other bed and shift to his side. Sam lifted a pillow and tossed it blindly to the other bed. There was a muffled angry groan from the other bed, and she heard Dean's hand scramble on the bedside table to find the phone. By the time he'd found it the call had gone to voicemail. "I'll check it in the morning." He dropped the phone back on the table with a thump and rolled back over to hug his pillow.

Sam didn't say anything she put her arm over eyes and allowed sleep to wash over her. They were just finished with a hunt, and for the first time in a while they had a comfortable bed to sleep in for the night. She was nearly completely asleep when the phone under her pillow buzzed. Sam rolled back onto her stomach and slipped her hand under the pillow and pulled out the phone.

"Lord help the moron calling at this hour." Sam moaned before she flipped up the phone and accepted the call. "'Ello?"

"Is this Sam Wessin?" A professional voice spoke clearly from the other line. For a second she couldn't compute gender.

"Yes, this is Sam Wessin. How can I help you?" Sam gave up on the concept of sleep and sat up again giving a loud yawn.

"I apologize for calling at such an hour but the gentleman listed you as one of his emergency contacts." The voice was defiantly a tenor male.

Sam rubbed her eyes. "Huh? Emergency contact?" She worked her sleep addled mind. Wait Emergency contact? Sam pushed herself up suddenly from the bed and sat up. "Who is this? Where are you calling from?"

She heard the other bed's coils squealed as Dean sat up. She could feel her brother's eyes land on her but she didn't turn to look at him.

"Oh, I'm sorry. My name is Nick and I'm with the Baptist Emergency Hospital and we have a patient here by the name of Robert Sounder."

Shit. Sam ran a hand through her head, and thought back to the last time she had spoken to the old man. Did he even mention what he was hunting or where? Did she even bother to ask? "Bobby? Is he okay?" Okay stupid question. Why else would they be calling?

Dean inhaled from the next bed at the mention of their Uncle's name.

"Unfortunately I cannot discuss his condition over the phone. Is there any way that you could come?"

"Of course." Sam slipped her feet off the bed and stood up anxiously. "Where is the hospital?"

The conversation lasted a few more minutes while Dean tugging on his jeans on the other side of the room and tugging on his over shirt. Sam took the pad of paper resting on the bedside table and scribbled down an address. When she finally closed the phone and turned to look at her brother she waved the paper.

"We're about four hours out."

Dean started shoving weapons back into the duffle while Sam started collecting the few belongings that had been removed from their own bags.

"Did the hospital say what happened?" Dean asked over his shoulder while he continued to pack.

"Nope the usual crap."

"Ah, if I told you I'd have to kill you guy. Classic." Dean zipped up the duffle and dropped it next to the door. "Well, we're rolling out in ten. So get dressed and plot the route, because you're playing navigator."

Sam rolled her eyes. "Yeah, whatever you say Optimus."

xxxOOOxxx

They were not too surprised when Bobby turned up missing at the hospital. In fact it calmed them greatly to know that the old man had escaped under his own steam. The poor nurse, who had allowed him to escape in the changing of the guards, was visibly troubled that the grumpy man had given her the slip.

Dean used all the charisma he had to console the poor nurse, get her number, and inform her that if he located their uncle they would call and inform the hospital. Which didn't prove to be too difficult. There were two motels in the town and one expensive hotel. They found the man's truck at the motel with the flickering sign and so many bulbs out that the actual illuminated word proved to be offensive. Inside it didn't take too much coaxing to find out that an hour earlier Bobby had rented room 223 all the way at the back of the building. So while Dean parked the car Sam walked up the steps and knocked on the door.

There was no response and Sam raised her hand to knock again and let the old man know that it was her on the other side of the door and not some spook. She didn't get the chance. There was the sound of the locks turning though and the door opened and Bobby's head was visible through the crack of the door. He cussed when he saw the girl.

"Nice to see you too Bobby." Sam rolled her eyes and waited. "You want to put the gun away and let us in?"

Bobby opened the door wider and slipped the gun he'd been concealing behind the door down. "What are you two idjits doing here?"

"Got a call from the hospital." Sam glanced back and saw Dean coming up behind. "We were concerned."

"Balls." Bobby ushered the two in and instinctively glanced around before shutting and locking the door behind him. Now in the room the siblings could tell the man was shuffling around like he was in pain, and disturbingly pale. He sat back down on the mattress and rubbed at his scruff. "I told them I was fine and that they didn't need to call anyone."

"If you didn't need to call anyone then why did you fill out our names and numbers on the emergency contact form?" Dean remembered seeing Bobby's messy sloped handwriting on the form. He'd written Dean's name first, and had enough sense to stop the I in Winchester and turn into an E for Wessin.

Bobby repeated his favored curse and absentmindedly put a hand to his side. "They had me on so much crap I probably signed over the Salvage to the Girl Scouts of America."

Sam hadn't ignored the man's movements. She knelt in front of the older man and frowned. "Joking aside, Bobby, you got stabbed." She started tugging up the older man's shirt and gave him a stern look when he refused to let it go up any further. "So help me Singer, if you don't let me look at this wound, I'm knocking you out myself and taking you heavy ass back to the ER."

The man's eyes widened at her sudden protectiveness.

"I know we call you Uncle, but you're the last father figure I've got. So if I get a call from the hospital saying to come. I'm coming. Hell, can you remember all those time that you've driven three, ten, or even twenty four hours to come help us. Well this is repayment. Now don't take this the wrong way but take your shirt off. NOW." Sam had risen up to full height and was towering over the smaller man. Her hands naturally found themselves on her hips as she eyed him like a petulant child.

It took a few stunned seconds of silence from both men, but eventually Bobby shrugged off his shirt the best he could without aggravating the stitches and allowed Sam to remove the bandage just enough to get a look. The wound itself was fairly small, only requiring a few stitches. Sam wasn't concerned with the outward injury though she was more concerned with what happened internally. A swell of bruising started from his stomach and trailed to the stitched side, but it looked like whoever jumped the man got in a few lucky punches.

"What happened?" Sam asked. Sure she'd gotten a Cliff Notes version from the hospital, but they rarely got the entire story.

Bobby cleared his throat and wiped away suspicious moisture from his eyes. "I uh- I was at a bar. Just driven in and was beginning to ask questions, when I'd finally left the bar I must have pissed off a few of the locals because they cornered me in an alley. I had the upper hand, until one of the buggers came up behind with a knife. Must have passed out because I woke up with Nurse Cratchet trying to give me a sponge bath."

"You get her number?" Dean winked from across the room. He cleared his throat and looked awkwardly at the ground when both Bobby and Sam shot him stern looks. "Just trying to lighten the mood…" Dean mumbled under his breath. He cleared his throat again and looked up after he'd composed himself. "So what were you hunting anyways?"

"Don't know." Bobby grunted as he tugged back on his shirt with Sam's help. "I suspected your friend Loki, but we killed the thing, plus it's just beyond his style."

Dean frowned. "Okay, start from the beginning."

"Man jumped out of a two story building two weeks ago and shattered his leg on the concrete. He claims that there were gnomes in his living room and that they were trying to eat him. A woman was grabbed by a strange tall, furry man in an alley and is raped. Three days later she's got a baby bump and sonograms are inconclusive as to what the baby is. Her boyfriend shot and killed her claiming there was a demon in her. When they autopsied her there was no sign of a baby." Bobby picked up the local newspaper bombarded with pen marks and notes. "A hiker is found dead on a marked trail. She'd been missing a week and the only tracks are hers expect they start and end at about a mile. According to the police she somehow walked the same trail over and over again."

Sam whistled. "That's a whole lot of strange."

"That's just the bad stuff. High school bully claims that on his walk home Chuckie, the doll, chased him home with a knife. Police chief had his truck disassembled and reassembled diagonally in his small office. Two love birds went out in the woods to- enjoy each other's company, and got chased out by a giant spider."

"Okay so whatever this is has an affinity for the weird." Sam commented quietly. "What if it is Loki, and he actually isn't dead."

Dean looked over at Sam offended. "I killed him myself. Besides, Bobby is right. The guy had style. Every trick he played had distinct ties to assholes and foolish ways for them to get their com-upens."

"I'm just saying that he was the Trickster. I say we start with patient zero, gnome man, ask around, and talk with him. And just go down the list." Sam read through the notes that had been scribbled on the newspaper next to their appropriate articles. "Maybe there is something ironic with their cases or maybe this is just something entirely new. Every culture does have their own version of a trickster."

"Fed suits?" Dean asked not even needing to verbally agree with Sam's plan.

"With the amount of weird I was just going to say journalist." Bobby grunted. "And who said I invited you two idjits to join this hunt."

"You're not pushing us away now Bobby, we're joining you on this hunt whether you like it or not." Dean gave his Uncle Bobby a smirk and patted the man on the shoulder as he headed towards the door. "I'll get us some coffee and food, and we can start asking around. Why don't you get us a room Sammy?"

xxxOOOxxx

By the afternoon Sam was certain this wasn't the Trickster up to no good. They'd started with Todd Clemmon's a cashier at the hardware store and he vividly recalled the gnomes. Except for being incredibly dull, he didn't seem the type to deserve the attack. And a good portion of the town agreed. On a more sensitive note Sandra Wilkinson was a sweet heart. She not only was a nurse at the hospital but she'd collect and donate food and clothes to the homeless shelter in the city just an hours drive away. More so she was a virgin. Apparently Sandra and her boyfriend, Jim, were waiting until marriage that was until he'd shot her. When they checked in with Jim, he claimed what Bobby had said before. They were waiting until marriage. He'd been supportive of his girlfriend when she'd been attacked and raped, but when the unholy thing started growing too rapidly in her stomach, and when they had the sonogram performed and he saw what really resided inside of her he knew he had to kill it. It had been a hard choice and it was still wearing on him as he rotted in his cell at the station. He was currently facing heavy charges.

Sam was currently leaving the scene in the woods. She'd slipped passed the yellow tape and managed a few shots, and inspected the footprints before slipping back out again. Sometimes small towns with limited police was a blessing in their job. She slipped her phone out of her pocket and dialed her brother.

Dean answered on the first ring and offered no pleasantries. "What did you find?"

Sam slipped out of the park and headed to the crosswalk. She glanced around to see if any vehicles were coming before crossing. "It's weird. There are more footsteps headed east than west. Which is impossible. If she was walking back and forth along the path-"

"There would be an equal set of prints going in both directions. So what, she teleported to the beginning over and over again?"

"I don't have any better theory's at the moment. What about you, did you check out the other cases?" Sam glanced over at the dark alley way ahead of her, she could cut through and the motel would be just a block away, or she could go all the way around the department store and. She opted for path A and started to walk through the alley.

"Yeah, our bully swears up and down that the creepy doll was after him, but neighbor says that all she saw was him screaming and running home. The police chief is furious but can't figure out how someone in an HOUR managed to break apart his car and put it back together in his tiny ass office." She heard the door to the Impala squeal. "I mean if I could do that I'd be making bank as a mechanic."

"Hear anything from Bobby?" Sam headed to end of the alley and suddenly felt her hair stand on end. She hesitated at the entrance. For some reason she felt a cold chill roll up the back of her neck. "Dean- I-"

"Bobby is currently still with the couple. He said he'll call when he's finished." Dean stated from the other line ignorant to his sister's last quiet statement.

"Dean…I- Pongo." Sam stated quietly now backing away from the mouth of the alley.

Dean chuckled from the other line. "What you finally lose your power over the English lang-" He paused. "Wait, what's wrong."

Sam blanched at the sound of a horn. A small hand held horn that she'd only noticed one horrifying thing hold. "If I had to guess, there are clowns…" Sam's breathing hitched as a painted face peered around the corner. "Okay, correction…there are clowns." She turned around and saw another poking his head around the dumpster at the other end. "Oh crap, I had to take the alley…"

"Okay, breath. They're not real…"

"They sure as hell look real." Sam's breathing got harsher. She turned to look at the first clown paled further when there was a third standing next to his friend. "There's three of them Dean. Three… Three fucking clowns…"

"Where are you? Sam calm down and breath slowly. Where are you?"

Sam skittered back as another clown rolled up on a unicycle. "Four…Now four…"

"Location Sam. I need a location."

Dean's desperate cry penetrated through the fear. Sam finally found the strength to think passed the clowns. "I- I'm a block away from the motel. Alley, near the department store… What- What do I do? What do I do Dean?"

"Run," Dean stated calmly. "Just run through them."

"Run? There are four of them and their blocking the exits! Your plan sucks." Sam was now back against the wall, literally.

"How many of these things have actually touched their victims?"

"Victims?" Sam gave a sharp cry that echoed through the alley.

"Poor word choice; just do it Sam!"

Sam gave a sharp inhale and pushed off the wall and used the force to rush forward.

A/N- Reach the end of this chapter? Well why don't you drop a review. If you don't have incentive enough, it is actually my birthday today. No, I am not ashamed to use my birthday to get more reviews. I am actually more than happy to use it. So leave any comment.

As an FYI I do not have everything written out for this story like I would want, but I do have a clear ending. So do not fear. There is an ending in sight.