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That Which Lies Hidden, a Ghost Adventures fic, chapter 18

Another long one, but you'll like where it ends up! (and hopefully, getting there will be half the fun)

Rated PG-13 for language and implied smut.

A moment to remind all readers I do not own the GAC. That's totally against the law.

And to thank xXTailo-Lives-OnXx once more for starting this big ol ball rolling.

18 My concern for Aaron lasted a few minutes, till Zak suddenly said "Ow!" and reached for his side. He shifted away from me and pulled up his t-shirt, and I gasped at the sight of three parallel scratches, long and bloody, that scored his skin. "Did I do that?" I asked guiltily.

His answering look was grim. "No, the demon did."

Nick glanced in the rear view mirror and swore. He jerked the wheel and slammed on the brakes, stopping the rental car on the shoulder of the dusty, narrow road, and twisted around in the seat to look back. "Dude! It marked you."

"We need to get the fuck out of Kansas," I said. "Wait, let me rephrase that: we need to get Zak the fuck out of Kansas."

"No!" Zak snapped and flung the car door open as though to storm off. Nick and I jumped out too, headed him off and blocked him against the side of the car so I could examine the scratches in the late afternoon sunlight. "That's what these bullies want," he argued. "They want to make you run, make you panic and screw up. I'm protected from possession. All three of us are. And we need to find out as much as we can about what Aaron did here, who, if you recall, is NOT protected. I am not running from it."

I didn't waste breath arguing; short of throwing a sack over Zak's head and bodily dragging him back to Vegas, there wasn't much chance when he got that stubborn look. And he was right; he was shielded. It was plain how Nick was torn, though; he had one friend right here and in possible danger, and another far away and in possible danger. Finally, he threw up his hands. "Okay. We stay. So let's get to work and figure out where the fuck Aaron is. For starters, before we leave Stull, let's stop off at the police station. Maybe he talked to more cops than just the one."

It was a great idea. From the local chief we learned that Aaron had not only come there and gone through the Gamble files, the same ones the Ghost Adventures crew had used in their ill-fated lockdown, but he had asked for copies of several pages, including the original drawings of the sigils of summoning, sketched by a police artist directly from the ones painted in red ink on the garret wall in 1952. When we looked at them in the file, I glanced once and had to look away; they seemed to pulse with evil. My eyes met Zak's, as wide and horrified as mine. "Do they look like snakes to you?" he whispered. "Squirming around on the page…ew."

"What the FUCK was Aaron trying to do?" Zak nearly exploded later. By the time we talked to some locals and found Aaron had actually spent several days in Stull, the afternoon was almost gone. All three of us were exhausted, and we decided to stay the night at the town's one motel, the same place Aaron had stayed. The manager even gave Zak and me the same room Aaron had used; we searched it thoroughly as soon as we got inside, but it took a few minutes before Zak spotted some telltale smudges, roughly circular, on the ceiling just inside the door. "A devil's trap," he said in disbelief. "He wiped it off before he left, but he put a fuckin' devil's trap up there. Like he expected something to come here, to come after him. What the FUCK?"

None of us had a solid theory, but we talked it over as we slumped wearily over a bag of burgers. "If Aaron took the summoning symbols to the house," Nick mused, "and then stuck around town, then yeah, it's almost like he thought whatever he was calling would take a while to get here. But that makes no sense—during the lockdown, and today, something responded within minutes."

"But at the time he was here, the demon was still in Zak's body," I pointed out. "Did he think using the sigils might pull it out?"

"Could be," Zak agreed around a mouthful of French fries. "Then when it didn't, he concluded exorcism wouldn't work? That could explain what he told Patti, because he went to Kentucky after he was here."

After we cleared supper away, Nick pulled out gear and began to review the footage he had shot at the Gamble house. To be honest, I'd barely even realized he was rolling until much later. While he put his earphones in and took a first scan through, I pulled Zak aside and got out the alcohol and cotton balls I'd borrowed at the front desk. "I'll clean 'em in the shower," he protested as I swabbed the scratches. "Ow! Fuck, that hurts worse than getting scratched did."

"Pipe down, Otis," I told him, and blew on the wounds to cool the sting of the alcohol. I also, though I did not call attention to it, breathed a little prayer over them. I hadn't been raised in an extremely religious household, but if Patti was right and our plight had attracted divine notice, I'd beg for all the help I could get to keep Zak safe.

When we rejoined Nick, he had already identified several possible EVPs we hadn't heard with our own ears in the house. The three of us gathered around the laptop. A couple sounded like nothing but static to me, but another was a startlingly clear woman's voice saying "it's here". I sat on my hands to keep them from shaking.

"I can't tell what this last one says…it's in the garret," Nick said as he cued up the last spot. He sounded reluctant, and I suspected he'd noticed my discomfort despite my efforts to hide it. On the computer screen I saw Zak and myself, heard "FOR HIM", and then something else, spoken in virtually the same voice but lower. "It's got an I sound at first. By? Sigh? Guy?"

He replayed several times while we listened intently. "High?" Zak guessed. "Or hi? The last part's got an ish, or itch…very emphatic." Nick played the clip one more time, and Zak suddenly gasped aloud. "Hi, BITCH," he said.

I was abruptly and uncomfortably aware of Zak's eyes under the bill of his black baseball cap turning toward me. "No way," I countered. "Why would a demon say that? If it's, pardon the expression, our demon, it had me around for months. Why would it even want to say anything to me now? It sure didn't show much interest then." I kept arguing, mostly so the guys wouldn't feel they had to drop their search for their missing friend out of some misguided need to protect me…because I thought Zak was fairly close on what the voice said, just not in who it was aimed at, or why.

When I wouldn't back down, Nick sighed and packed up the gear. "Maybe you're right, Claire. It could be an artifact. Or we could all just be so fuckin' tired and freaked out that we're hearing stuff that's not there. "

We said good night as he left for his room next door, but Zak followed him out and I groaned inwardly. There was gonna be one of those guy talks happening out in the parking lot, I just knew it, and when Zak came back into our room I was loaded for bear. I didn't get a chance to say a word, though. The instant the door closed behind him, he was on me, pulling me to him and kissing me ferociously. His mouth was hard and hungry, and his hands crawled under my shirt. "Zak?" I sputtered. "Zak, what—hold on, HOLD ON!" I pushed him away. "I seem to remember you promised me, on your knees, one time, you would never force yourself on me!"

"I'm not!" His fair cheeks were flushed, and he was breathing heavily.

"Then what the hell is going on with you?" I demanded.

"I…I lied a little about what I heard in that last EVP. It wasn't 'hi, bitch'. It was 'MY bitch'."

"I know."

"You know?" Now it was his turn to sputter. "Then why—Claire, there were only three people in that room, and clearly you're the only one who qualifies for that particular insult—"

"Am I? Think, Zak. When you were possessed, where were you? I mean, you perceived yourself as being where? A prison, right? I didn't want to bring it up with Nick here, because I didn't know how much you'd told him. But when guys in a prison use that term, they usually mean one thing." His eyes widened. "You asked me this once, and God, I don't want to ask it of you, but…did it ever…well, did it make you feel like it was…sexually assaulting you?"

The longest half-second of my life passed before he blinked and said, "No. It taunted me, a lot, but it never followed through. I always figured it wanted to keep something in reserve to threaten me with."

I breathed a sigh of relief. Zak's torture hadn't been physical, but it was no less real for that. As the tension that carried me lessened, I sat on the bed. "Empty threats now, where both of us are concerned."

"Not altogether," Zak paced around. "It could possess anybody—your best friend, the guy in line behind you at the store. I still think it's after you, sweetheart. Promise me you'll be careful."

"I'm not the one who got scratched," I reminded him. "Sit down, you're making me dizzy AND horny."

He halted. "My pacing makes you horny? That's good to know."

"No, you jump started that when you stuck your tongue down my throat a minute ago. What, was all that a testosterone reaction to thinking that a demon might want back in my pants? A demon that was one shitty lay, you may recall."

"Pretty much a testosterone thing," Zak admitted and finally sat down beside me. His eyes held mine, fierce, shading toward blue against the dark of his cap. "I would die or kill before I let that piece of shit get hold of you again," he said, softly and vehemently. "You're mine, dammit. Mine."

Normally I would have quibbled at being declared property; but Zak had held his emotions tightly reined in for so long. And some of you may disagree with me, that's fine, but I have to think if your man is gonna snap under a strain like that, it's best that he snap in the direction of clothes flying, legs over head, pillow biting, sheet tearing sex. So when his mouth hit mine again, hot and demanding, I went with it.

Okay, I didn't tear the sheets. They were somebody else's, after all.

+++

Saturday started off with some tension left over. The ride to Salina was quiet. I inadvertently dispelled a lot of it at the local police station, when I got an idea, and took the chief aside for a little of what Uncle Bobby often calls the hunter shuck and jive. I showed him my LVPD ID, along with a nice line of bull about how we weren't allowed to use our real badges outside town, and explained quietly that Aaron might be in danger, stalked by a lunatic obsessed with 'demons' (yes, I said it while making air quotes with my fingers) So I asked for any help he could give us in finding where Aaron had been and what he'd been doing, so we could track him down faster.

My scam bore fruit almost before Zak and Nick could stop laughing. It turned out Aaron had spent a lot of time in a lot of libraries, from Kansas to California to Oregon, and in all of them he had been researching demons. Specifically, he had requested a lot of very old material on how to kill demons. That made sense, but it brought us no closer to finding him than the messages Nick periodically left on his voice mail.

We drove back to Kansas City and caught a flight home to Vegas, where I promptly returned a message of my own. Ross had left me a voice mail on Wednesday afternoon, while we were at Bobby Mackey's, saying he'd gotten some info on Aaron, but I hadn't been able to connect with him. When I did, he said, "I got some hits on your boy from the violators' database."

"The what? You're kidding. Aaron broke some law someplace?"

"Calm down, girlfriend. Nobody caught him molesting donkeys or anything. CHP pulled him over in Cali speeding. He's on that ghost show with your Mister Hottie, right? Well, apparently the highway patrol girl recognized him and let him go with a warning." He sounded like he couldn't decide whether to be appalled or amused.

"Dismount your high horse, Ross," I teased. "If you were writing tickets and you pulled Shemar Moore over, you'd probably do the same darn thing, and do not lie to me and say you wouldn't."

"Hey, everybody's entitled to a fantasy life!" he protested. "Tristan and I have an understanding. We only have permission to cheat IF I get a chance at Shemar, or he gets a shot at this cute thing that used to be on Days of our Lives. But enough about our love lives. The other ping I got was in southern Wyoming. A state trooper found your fella in his car on the side of the road in the middle of Bumfuck Egypt and stopped to check. Told the cop he was fine, just got tired and pulled off to rest, end of story."

I got particulars on location and time. "The speeding ticket was issued on California Highway 99, between Sacramento and Stockton," I told Zak while Nick spread out the map he'd brought back from our road trip, marked with Aaron's known stops, and added this to the x's. "What could he have been doing there?"

They studied the map and debated for a while. There seemed to be no pattern, until Zak suddenly said, "Shit! Look what it's near, Nick. Remember? We drove that same route going to—"

"Preston Castle," Nick finished, and they exchanged a look of complete understanding and shock. I made a 'clue me in' noise. "It was one of our early investigations," Nick told me. "Zak channeled a ghost there; the spirit of a murdered woman spoke through him."

"And now it all makes sense." Zak shook his head. "Damn him! Preston Castle, Mackey's, the Gamble house…he's been going to places where I'd been possessed. He won't fuckin' call Nick back, so he doesn't know I'm okay. He's still trying to figure out a way to get me out."He sounded both angered and deeply moved. I knew I was.

"But Wyoming doesn't fit," Nick pointed out. "We've never even been on an investigation there. Why did he go there?"

We couldn't come up with an answer to that one, but as it happened, we didn't have to wait very long. A few days later, Nick came over to help Zak and me move some of my furniture out of my apartment into a rental truck and haul it to a storage unit (next to Nick's, which I'd started calling the Unofficial Ghost Adventures Office in Exile). As we stopped for a break, and I rescued my water bottle from Zak who was about to dump it over Nick's head, Nick's phone rang. He dodged Zak's attempt to tackle him and answered it. "Hi Roni!" Zak hollered, deciding at the same time to tackle me instead and spread his sweat all over me.

My mouth was open to shout hi to Roni too, until Nick's eyes bulged and his jaw dropped. For one instant my heart stopped, my first thought what's wrong with Annabelle?

Then Nick yelled into the phone, "AARON! Where the FUCKIN' HELL have you been, dude?"

:D (Big Grin) — Description
That Which Lies Hidden, a Ghost Adventures fic, chapter 18

Another long one, but you'll like where it ends up! (and hopefully, getting there will be half the fun)

Rated PG-13 for language and implied smut.

A moment to remind all readers I do not own the GAC. That's totally against the law.

And to thank xXTailo-Lives-OnXx once more for starting this big ol ball rolling.

18 My concern for Aaron lasted a few minutes, till Zak suddenly said "Ow!" and reached for his side. He shifted away from me and pulled up his t-shirt, and I gasped at the sight of three parallel scratches, long and bloody, that scored his skin. "Did I do that?" I asked guiltily.

His answering look was grim. "No, the demon did."

Nick glanced in the rear view mirror and swore. He jerked the wheel and slammed on the brakes, stopping the rental car on the shoulder of the dusty, narrow road, and twisted around in the seat to look back. "Dude! It marked you."

"We need to get the fuck out of Kansas," I said. "Wait, let me rephrase that: we need to get Zak the fuck out of Kansas."

"No!" Zak snapped and flung the car door open as though to storm off. Nick and I jumped out too, headed him off and blocked him against the side of the car so I could examine the scratches in the late afternoon sunlight. "That's what these bullies want," he argued. "They want to make you run, make you panic and screw up. I'm protected from possession. All three of us are. And we need to find out as much as we can about what Aaron did here, who, if you recall, is NOT protected. I am not running from it."

I didn't waste breath arguing; short of throwing a sack over Zak's head and bodily dragging him back to Vegas, there wasn't much chance when he got that stubborn look. And he was right; he was shielded. It was plain how Nick was torn, though; he had one friend right here and in possible danger, and another far away and in possible danger. Finally, he threw up his hands. "Okay. We stay. So let's get to work and figure out where the fuck Aaron is. For starters, before we leave Stull, let's stop off at the police station. Maybe he talked to more cops than just the one."

It was a great idea. From the local chief we learned that Aaron had not only come there and gone through the Gamble files, the same ones the Ghost Adventures crew had used in their ill-fated lockdown, but he had asked for copies of several pages, including the original drawings of the sigils of summoning, sketched by a police artist directly from the ones painted in red ink on the garret wall in 1952. When we looked at them in the file, I glanced once and had to look away; they seemed to pulse with evil. My eyes met Zak's, as wide and horrified as mine. "Do they look like snakes to you?" he whispered. "Squirming around on the page…ew."

"What the FUCK was Aaron trying to do?" Zak nearly exploded later. By the time we talked to some locals and found Aaron had actually spent several days in Stull, the afternoon was almost gone. All three of us were exhausted, and we decided to stay the night at the town's one motel, the same place Aaron had stayed. The manager even gave Zak and me the same room Aaron had used; we searched it thoroughly as soon as we got inside, but it took a few minutes before Zak spotted some telltale smudges, roughly circular, on the ceiling just inside the door. "A devil's trap," he said in disbelief. "He wiped it off before he left, but he put a fuckin' devil's trap up there. Like he expected something to come here, to come after him. What the FUCK?"

None of us had a solid theory, but we talked it over as we slumped wearily over a bag of burgers. "If Aaron took the summoning symbols to the house," Nick mused, "and then stuck around town, then yeah, it's almost like he thought whatever he was calling would take a while to get here. But that makes no sense—during the lockdown, and today, something responded within minutes."

"But at the time he was here, the demon was still in Zak's body," I pointed out. "Did he think using the sigils might pull it out?"

"Could be," Zak agreed around a mouthful of French fries. "Then when it didn't, he concluded exorcism wouldn't work? That could explain what he told Patti, because he went to Kentucky after he was here."

After we cleared supper away, Nick pulled out gear and began to review the footage he had shot at the Gamble house. To be honest, I'd barely even realized he was rolling until much later. While he put his earphones in and took a first scan through, I pulled Zak aside and got out the alcohol and cotton balls I'd borrowed at the front desk. "I'll clean 'em in the shower," he protested as I swabbed the scratches. "Ow! Fuck, that hurts worse than getting scratched did."

"Pipe down, Otis," I told him, and blew on the wounds to cool the sting of the alcohol. I also, though I did not call attention to it, breathed a little prayer over them. I hadn't been raised in an extremely religious household, but if Patti was right and our plight had attracted divine notice, I'd beg for all the help I could get to keep Zak safe.

When we rejoined Nick, he had already identified several possible EVPs we hadn't heard with our own ears in the house. The three of us gathered around the laptop. A couple sounded like nothing but static to me, but another was a startlingly clear woman's voice saying "it's here". I sat on my hands to keep them from shaking.

"I can't tell what this last one says…it's in the garret," Nick said as he cued up the last spot. He sounded reluctant, and I suspected he'd noticed my discomfort despite my efforts to hide it. On the computer screen I saw Zak and myself, heard "FOR HIM", and then something else, spoken in virtually the same voice but lower. "It's got an I sound at first. By? Sigh? Guy?"

He replayed several times while we listened intently. "High?" Zak guessed. "Or hi? The last part's got an ish, or itch…very emphatic." Nick played the clip one more time, and Zak suddenly gasped aloud. "Hi, BITCH," he said.

I was abruptly and uncomfortably aware of Zak's eyes under the bill of his black baseball cap turning toward me. "No way," I countered. "Why would a demon say that? If it's, pardon the expression, our demon, it had me around for months. Why would it even want to say anything to me now? It sure didn't show much interest then." I kept arguing, mostly so the guys wouldn't feel they had to drop their search for their missing friend out of some misguided need to protect me…because I thought Zak was fairly close on what the voice said, just not in who it was aimed at, or why.

When I wouldn't back down, Nick sighed and packed up the gear. "Maybe you're right, Claire. It could be an artifact. Or we could all just be so fuckin' tired and freaked out that we're hearing stuff that's not there. "

We said good night as he left for his room next door, but Zak followed him out and I groaned inwardly. There was gonna be one of those guy talks happening out in the parking lot, I just knew it, and when Zak came back into our room I was loaded for bear. I didn't get a chance to say a word, though. The instant the door closed behind him, he was on me, pulling me to him and kissing me ferociously. His mouth was hard and hungry, and his hands crawled under my shirt. "Zak?" I sputtered. "Zak, what—hold on, HOLD ON!" I pushed him away. "I seem to remember you promised me, on your knees, one time, you would never force yourself on me!"

"I'm not!" His fair cheeks were flushed, and he was breathing heavily.

"Then what the hell is going on with you?" I demanded.

"I…I lied a little about what I heard in that last EVP. It wasn't 'hi, bitch'. It was 'MY bitch'."

"I know."

"You know?" Now it was his turn to sputter. "Then why—Claire, there were only three people in that room, and clearly you're the only one who qualifies for that particular insult—"

"Am I? Think, Zak. When you were possessed, where were you? I mean, you perceived yourself as being where? A prison, right? I didn't want to bring it up with Nick here, because I didn't know how much you'd told him. But when guys in a prison use that term, they usually mean one thing." His eyes widened. "You asked me this once, and God, I don't want to ask it of you, but…did it ever…well, did it make you feel like it was…sexually assaulting you?"

The longest half-second of my life passed before he blinked and said, "No. It taunted me, a lot, but it never followed through. I always figured it wanted to keep something in reserve to threaten me with."

I breathed a sigh of relief. Zak's torture hadn't been physical, but it was no less real for that. As the tension that carried me lessened, I sat on the bed. "Empty threats now, where both of us are concerned."

"Not altogether," Zak paced around. "It could possess anybody—your best friend, the guy in line behind you at the store. I still think it's after you, sweetheart. Promise me you'll be careful."

"I'm not the one who got scratched," I reminded him. "Sit down, you're making me dizzy AND horny."

He halted. "My pacing makes you horny? That's good to know."

"No, you jump started that when you stuck your tongue down my throat a minute ago. What, was all that a testosterone reaction to thinking that a demon might want back in my pants? A demon that was one shitty lay, you may recall."

"Pretty much a testosterone thing," Zak admitted and finally sat down beside me. His eyes held mine, fierce, shading toward blue against the dark of his cap. "I would die or kill before I let that piece of shit get hold of you again," he said, softly and vehemently. "You're mine, dammit. Mine."

Normally I would have quibbled at being declared property; but Zak had held his emotions tightly reined in for so long. And some of you may disagree with me, that's fine, but I have to think if your man is gonna snap under a strain like that, it's best that he snap in the direction of clothes flying, legs over head, pillow biting, sheet tearing sex. So when his mouth hit mine again, hot and demanding, I went with it.

Okay, I didn't tear the sheets. They were somebody else's, after all.

+++

Saturday started off with some tension left over. The ride to Salina was quiet. I inadvertently dispelled a lot of it at the local police station, when I got an idea, and took the chief aside for a little of what Uncle Bobby often calls the hunter shuck and jive. I showed him my LVPD ID, along with a nice line of bull about how we weren't allowed to use our real badges outside town, and explained quietly that Aaron might be in danger, stalked by a lunatic obsessed with 'demons' (yes, I said it while making air quotes with my fingers) So I asked for any help he could give us in finding where Aaron had been and what he'd been doing, so we could track him down faster.

My scam bore fruit almost before Zak and Nick could stop laughing. It turned out Aaron had spent a lot of time in a lot of libraries, from Kansas to California to Oregon, and in all of them he had been researching demons. Specifically, he had requested a lot of very old material on how to kill demons. That made sense, but it brought us no closer to finding him than the messages Nick periodically left on his voice mail.

We drove back to Kansas City and caught a flight home to Vegas, where I promptly returned a message of my own. Ross had left me a voice mail on Wednesday afternoon, while we were at Bobby Mackey's, saying he'd gotten some info on Aaron, but I hadn't been able to connect with him. When I did, he said, "I got some hits on your boy from the violators' database."

"The what? You're kidding. Aaron broke some law someplace?"

"Calm down, girlfriend. Nobody caught him molesting donkeys or anything. CHP pulled him over in Cali speeding. He's on that ghost show with your Mister Hottie, right? Well, apparently the highway patrol girl recognized him and let him go with a warning." He sounded like he couldn't decide whether to be appalled or amused.

"Dismount your high horse, Ross," I teased. "If you were writing tickets and you pulled Shemar Moore over, you'd probably do the same darn thing, and do not lie to me and say you wouldn't."

"Hey, everybody's entitled to a fantasy life!" he protested. "Tristan and I have an understanding. We only have permission to cheat IF I get a chance at Shemar, or he gets a shot at this cute thing that used to be on Days of our Lives. But enough about our love lives. The other ping I got was in southern Wyoming. A state trooper found your fella in his car on the side of the road in the middle of Bumfuck Egypt and stopped to check. Told the cop he was fine, just got tired and pulled off to rest, end of story."

I got particulars on location and time. "The speeding ticket was issued on California Highway 99, between Sacramento and Stockton," I told Zak while Nick spread out the map he'd brought back from our road trip, marked with Aaron's known stops, and added this to the x's. "What could he have been doing there?"

They studied the map and debated for a while. There seemed to be no pattern, until Zak suddenly said, "Shit! Look what it's near, Nick. Remember? We drove that same route going to—"

"Preston Castle," Nick finished, and they exchanged a look of complete understanding and shock. I made a 'clue me in' noise. "It was one of our early investigations," Nick told me. "Zak channeled a ghost there; the spirit of a murdered woman spoke through him."

"And now it all makes sense." Zak shook his head. "Damn him! Preston Castle, Mackey's, the Gamble house…he's been going to places where I'd been possessed. He won't fuckin' call Nick back, so he doesn't know I'm okay. He's still trying to figure out a way to get me out."He sounded both angered and deeply moved. I knew I was.

"But Wyoming doesn't fit," Nick pointed out. "We've never even been on an investigation there. Why did he go there?"

We couldn't come up with an answer to that one, but as it happened, we didn't have to wait very long. A few days later, Nick came over to help Zak and me move some of my furniture out of my apartment into a rental truck and haul it to a storage unit (next to Nick's, which I'd started calling the Unofficial Ghost Adventures Office in Exile). As we stopped for a break, and I rescued my water bottle from Zak who was about to dump it over Nick's head, Nick's phone rang. He dodged Zak's attempt to tackle him and answered it. "Hi Roni!" Zak hollered, deciding at the same time to tackle me instead and spread his sweat all over me.

My mouth was open to shout hi to Roni too, until Nick's eyes bulged and his jaw dropped. For one instant my heart stopped, my first thought what's wrong with Annabelle?

Then Nick yelled into the phone, "AARON! Where the FUCKIN' HELL have you been, dude?"