"Cas? Were you here when this happened?" Dean was more confused and irritated than anything. Being that every demon in existence was out to kill them, a demon would have waited around to kill them. But this was someone sneaking into their hotel room and messing with their shit. It was new, but it was weird, and he didn't like it.

"Yes." Castiel answered simply, righting a chair and sitting down. There was a pause while the brothers waited for him to expand on this point. After several confused looks made their way around the group, they realised he wasn't going to without a prompt.

"What." Sam stated, lacking the mental fortitude needed to deal with the socially stunted angel, "What happened, Cas?"

"I heard Dean's call to meet you here. I arrived here. I was attacked."

Sam ran a hand over his face and leant heavily against the kitchen counter. Dean grabbed a chair for himself and straddled it, facing Cas, his eyes intense. "Come on, details!"

"What details would you like?"

"When did you get here? How did he attack you?" Dean ran some ideas off the top of his head.

"Was it a "he"?" Sam joined in. "What did they look like?"

"I've told you that already." There was a hint of indignance in Cas' voice as he slipped back into traumatised puppy eyes. "He was small. And angry."

"Ok, let's try something different." Dean held his hand up. The angel was tricky to talk to at the best of times, but this seemed very much like shock. "I'm going to tell a story, and you just fill in the blanks, ok? Castiel arrived at the motel room at..."

"Approximately a quarter after eight this evening."

Good, Dean thought, exchanging relieved looks with Sam. They were getting somewhere. He continued.

"And when he got here, Castiel..."

"Sat in the far corner of the room, awaiting your arrival."

"Good." A little creepy, but now was not the time to explain how sitting perfectly still in the corner of a darkened room was odd. He'd get into that when they had a weekend or so to spare. "Looking around the room, he saw..."

"Everything seemed normal. It was somewhat poorly decorated, and there was some rather pungent clothing that needed to be cleaned, but other than that, there was nothing out of the ordinary."

Scratch that, thought Dean, the next lesson would be on laundry, the one after that on hypocrisy, then he would get into the sitting-in-the-corner-of-a-dark-room thing.

"Now, Castiel sat in the corner, uninterrupted, for..."

"About an hour and fifty-two minutes."

"And then, he was attacked. The attacker looked..."

"Small. I could barely see him, but he sounded male, and adult, but was no taller than my knee."

"He attacked by..."

"He leapt onto my back and tried to strangle me using someone's belt."

"Who's belt?"

"Shut up, Sam. What happened when he tried to strangle you?"

"Well, out of shock, I may have lost control of my emotions, and sent him flying backwards where he crashed into the bookcase. I left quickly."

"Through the door, or...?"

"No, that would have taken too long."

"Right. But you didn't see the guy who attacked you properly."

"No. I've already stated that."

"Thanks, Cas." Dean leant back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. "That's a big help."

Several blocks away, Chucky clutched his chest, eyes wide, breathing ragged. He saw a movement out of the corner of his eye, pulled a knife from his overalls and plunged it into the darkness. He reached forward to retrieve it, throwing aside the rat impaled on the end. Somewhat calmer now, he looked back the way he had came.

"What the fuck..." he muttered, under his breath, "in the name of all that is holy, what the fuck was that?"

"So you think these children are innocent?" Castiel had not moved, but had used his angel-fu to un-wreck the place a bit.

"Well, we know they're not guilty of pre-meditated murder." Sam said, opening his laptop and sitting on his bed. "Something's wrong, somewhere, but we don't know what."

"And odds are that whatever wrecked up this place is connected to it." Dean sighed, grabbing a beer from the mini-fridge.

"It might not be, Dean." Sam looked up at his brother, wary. "It could just be your average, run of the mill burglary."

"Oh yeah." Dean snapped back, easing the top off the bottle. "Your average, run of the mill, three foot tall burglar."

"Well what are we dealing with that's three foot tall, Dean?" Sam pulled up a couple of websites, scowling. "A hobbit? A gnome?" He raised his eyebrows at Dean, only half-joking. "Aliens?"

"There's got to be something we're missing..." Dean sighed, sinking back into his chair. Cas stared intently into space, before suddenly looking up.

"Red hair."

"What?"

"Red hair. I just remembered he had red hair."

"You sure?" Dean leant forward.

"Yes. I remember thinking to myself that he left red hair on my coat."

Dean wasn't sure how to respond to this statement... so he didn't. Instead he turned to Sam.

"That's gotta be something, right?"

"Oh yeah, Dean." Sam snorted, already losing interest and finding an online crossword instead. "Three foot tall and red hair. Hey, maybe it's Chucky!"

Dean flinched involuntarily, before scowling at Sam, a glare as dark and turbulent as a spy-plane going through a thunderstorm.
"Yeah, or maybe it's that midget clown from the urban legends. The one that hides in your house and pretends to be a statue, and kills you while you sleep." He stood, skulking towards the bathroom. Sam had been well and truly shut up, but Dean was still unsettled. "I'm gonna take a shower."

"Excuse me." Castiel held up a hand, but Dean was already locked in the bathroom. Cas turned to Sam. "What is `Chucky`?"

"You know, Chucky." Sam stared at the blank (lack of an) expression on the angel's face for a moment, before remembering who he was talking to. "Chucky was a killer in a series of 90s slasher films. He was supposed to be a criminal who used magic to put his soul into a doll. So he became a living doll and went around killing people."

"Sounds like a fairly unorganised film." Cas was again staring into space. Sam sighed.

"Well, I can't remember the details; it's been years since I saw it. You should watch them, if you want to know what happens."

"Why did Dean react so unfavourably towards the mention of this `Chucky` character?"

Sam laughed, lowering his voice to make sure he couldn't be heard by anyone in the next room. "Dean watched the first three movies when he was thirteen because he had a crush on a girl who was a huge horror movie fan. He's been terrified of Chucky ever since."

"Really?" Castiel puzzled this information for a moment, before standing. "And why did he threaten you with a children's entertainer who suffers dwarfism?"

Sam glared at his laptop, cheeks flushed.

"I don't like clowns." He mumbled, staring very intently at his laptop. After a while, he looked up and saw Castiel, who looked as though they were both very close to figuring out the key to string theory, before popping out of the room. Sam sat for a moment, wondering where or when the Angel would next turn up, before losing interest and searching for an online word jumble. It wasn't that he didn't care about the poor kids, but he felt he was looking at it much more rationally than his brother. Even if they could find the thing that actually committed these murders, how one earth would they provide any evidence that would stand up in a court of law? He sighed, clicking half-heartedly at the game that bobbed about on his screen. He was starting to wonder whether having emotions and a conscience was really worth it after all...