A/N: This is not a crossover story in the sense that Liv is teaming up with anybody. However, it's a blending of two genres: the crime story that SVU is famous for, and a ghost story. So, maybe, this really is a crossover: sort of like Olivia Benson meets Stephen King.

Olivia is in a lesbian relationship with Alex Cabot, and Elliot Stabler is in a 'ship with Casey Novak--making this an unofficial sequel to Inheritance, of sorts. I hope you enjoy it. Try not to read it just before you go to bed.....

Law & Order: SVU: Haunted

Chapter One

Olivia ran down a long, dark hallway. Out of breath, she paused to glance fearfully over her shoulder at whoever had been chasing her. Yet all she saw behind her was darkness. It was the kind of pitch-black darkness that could hide anyone, or anything.

'There's somebody out there,' Olivia realized, as she stared hard into the blackness. 'I can sense them watching me.'

She instinctively reached for the gun in her hip holster, only to find that it wasn't there, nor was her badge. Although she was dressed in jeans with a gray t-shirt, Olivia still felt naked, vulnerable. There was something dreadfully wrong with this situation; something was very off-kilter here.

She was startled when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching her from within the darkness. As hard as she tried to keep her fear in control, it was nearly impossible at this point. And so Olivia gave in to her gut reaction and ran away from the sounds of the footsteps.

Once she began to sprint, the footsteps also broke into a mad dash behind her. Her pursuer now ran after her full bore. 'This is ridiculous,' Olivia thought as she ran. She knew that by giving in to her panic, she allowed whoever was chasing her to gain the upper hand. 'I've got to regain control of this somehow.'

A doorway appeared off to her left, and Olivia ducked into it. She pressed herself up against the wall, and braced herself to attack her pursuer the moment he entered the room.

But he never entered.

Olivia stared into the black void that lay beyond the door. Not only was she unable to see anybody, but also she no longer heard the footsteps. Her unknown pursuer had vanished within the darkness. When Olivia became aware of a glowing light from behind her, she glanced over her shoulder and gasped in shock at the sight before her.

A young blond woman stood a few feet away from her. She was dressed in a similar outfit that Olivia wore: jeans with a gray t-shirt and bare feet, and she stood wither hands up. The woman, who couldn't have been any older than late teens, early twenties at the most, looked extremely agitated as she waved her hands and stared at Olivia in horror. Although she stood only a few feet away, Olivia couldn't hear a word that came out of her mouth.

"Sweetie, what is it?" Olivia said, as she ran towards the woman. "What's the mat—?"

Olivia was caught off guard when she ran into an invisible barrier that was right in front of the woman. She desperately pounded her fists against it, but it was as impenetrable as a brick wall.

"What the hell?" Olivia cried in frustration. She was baffled as to where this barrier came from. She gazed fearfully at the woman, who pressed her hand up on her side of the invisible barrier like a prisoner greeting a visitor at the jail. Olivia, who wanted nothing more than to try and help the poor woman in any way she could, settled for placing her hand up against the invisible barrier as well. "What's going on here? Can you hear me?"

The young blond woman leaned in close, and although Olivia still couldn't hear her, she could read her lips when she said, "Be careful."

"Be careful?" Olivia repeated. When the woman solemnly nodded, Olivia asked, "Be careful of what?"

The woman's eyes grew wide with horror as she stared at something over Olivia's shoulder. She let out a hysterical cry—which was completely silent—as she pointed wildly at something behind Olivia.

Olivia turned around just in time to see a shadowy shape lunge right at her. A hand grabbed her throat in a vise-like grip and hauled her up against the barrier.

Olivia started to choke helplessly as the hand tightened its grip on her throat, squeezing the life out of her as—

—Elliot grabbed her arms. "Liv, Liv! Wake up!"

Olivia was awake; she instantly realized that everything that had occurred was just a dream.

"You were having a hell of a nightmare," Elliot told her. "You ok?"

Olivia glanced around and saw that Elliot had pulled over to the side of the road. She suddenly felt very claustrophobic in the car. "Excuse me," she whispered. "I need to get out for a minute."

She removed her seat belt and opened the door. As she got out of the car she saw they were parked alongside route 80, in a rural area with rolling hills. It was chilly and damp, with most of the trees having changed to a reddish gold color; the skies were overcast with a solid sheet of iron gray. As she stared at this late October landscape, Olivia found it hard to shake the sense of dread from her dream. She felt as if she had wakened from one nightmare and stepped into another.

When Elliot slowly walked up and stood alongside of her, she asked, "Where are we?"

"Pennsylvania," Elliot replied. "We're on extradition duty, remember?"

Olivia nodded as the details came flooding back to her. The local police in Whitehope Pennsylvania, a small town nestled within the Pocono Mountain region, had captured Henry Lee Roberson, who was wanted for the vicious murders of several young women in New York City. Roberson had sexually assaulted his victims before killing them. Captain Cragen had sent them out to Pennsylvania to retrieve Roberson and bring him back to the city to finally face the music.

"You didn't answer my question, Liv," Elliot said with concern. "Are you ok?"

"Yeah, um, sorry," Olivia replied sheepishly. "My crazed antics made you pull over."

"Forget it," Elliot said with a shake of his head. "I needed to stretch my legs, anyway--been driving for about two hours, now."

"Are we almost there?"

"About another twelve miles, give or take."

Olivia glanced at her watch and saw it was a quarter past eleven. They made good time, especially coming straight out of the city when they did. Although Olivia still felt that ominous feeling of dread, she pushed it to the back of her mind. 'You got a job to do,' she told herself. 'Don't let some silly dream get in the way of everything.'

She smiled at the sight of Elliot surveying the rolling countryside with a wistful look on his face. "You planning on where to build the future house, El?" she asked with a smile.

Elliot broke into a shy grin at that. "Hey, I'm gonna have to retire someday. Might as well be out here, right? I don't know, maybe Casey and me could be working a farm."

The image of Elliot in overalls and a straw hat made Olivia burst into laughter. She laughed even harder when she imagined him singing the theme song to Green Acres.

"What?" Elliot asked in mock defensiveness. "What's so funny about that idea?"

Olivia shook her head as they walked back to the car. Casey Novak was the Special Victim's Unit's Assistant District Attorney whom Elliot had been with for the past few years now. "For one thing, you'll never drag Casey out of the city, Elliot. She's a New York City girl through and through."

"Now there's where you're wrong. Just last weekend Case and I drove out of the city to view the autumn foliage upstate."

"Oh right, she'll make trips outside the city, but to actually MOVE outside of the city? Nuh-uh! Not our Casey. Besides, just the thought of you, a Queens boy, milking cows?" She burst into giggles once more. "Sorry, but I really don't see it happening, El."

Elliot shrugged as they got back in the car. "Maybe we'd be better off retiring to the tropics, instead."

"If you do that, make sure you have a guest house," Olivia said. "Because Alex and I will be coming with you."

When she wearily rubbed her eyes, Elliot sat back in the driver's seat and said, "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine," Olivia insisted. "Really."

Yet Elliot didn't appear convinced. "That must have been one mother of a dream, because you look really rattled."

The truth of the matter was Olivia was still very rattled. She normally didn't let nightmares get to her, but this one still haunted her. The moment in her dream when she was being strangled had felt so horribly real that Olivia was extremely grateful when she woke up.

Then Olivia became unsettled when she recalled how Henry Lee Roberson killed his victims after he raped them: he strangled them with his bare hands. When that unknown woman warned her in the dream to be careful, was she referring to Roberson?

'Oh, that's ridiculous,' Olivia realized. 'That woman wasn't really warning me, anymore than I was really being strangled. It was just a frigging dream, nothing more. I read up on Roberson's past crimes on the drive out here, and when I fell asleep my subconscious simply used his method of killing people in my dream.'

She gave her partner a slight smile. "I guess I haven't been getting enough of sleep lately. That's all."

Elliot nodded in understanding. "I hear that. With our caseload, nobody in the SVU gets a decent night's sleep these days. You want to stop off for a bite to eat?"

"Not unless you want to get something."

"Nah, I'm fine," Elliot said.

"Then let's get this frigging scumbag," Olivia told him. "Maybe we can beat the traffic back to the city."

"Sounds like a plan," Elliot said, as he started up the car.

The rest of the drive was very scenic, with the mountain ranges in the distance showing a spectacular display of fall colors. When they pulled off 80 and into the deep woods on the way to Whitehope, Olivia was reminded of an autumn drive she took with Alex one time. Olivia had wanted to see the fall colors, and although Alex wasn't too keen on the idea—she had claimed to be buried under paperwork at the D.A.'s office—she finally relented and came along. While Olivia had been stunned at the colors, as she was now, Alex had shaken her head and said, "You dragged me a hundred miles from the city just to look at dying leaves?"

As she stared out the window, admiring the quaint little streets of Whitehope, Olivia broke into a grin at that memory. She hoped that she could convince Alex to take another trip to the country, because the Fall colors were gorgeous. They arrived at Whitehope Police headquarters, which was set back about a hundred feet from Main Street. It was a large building with a vast parking lot for visitors, and today many of those visitors were troopers from the Pennsylvania State Police.

"Uh-oh," Elliot said, as they pulled into the parking lot. "Something's up."

"Maybe the PSP are here for another reason," Olivia said hopefully.

"Let's hope so," Elliot said grimly. "But something might have gone wrong. Roberson's a serial killer—and that's something that these hick cops don't have much experience with, which is why they might have called in the PSP for help."

When they entered the police station, it was a beehive of activity, with State Police Troopers and Whitehope police officers all running around and either yelling at each other, or making phone calls. At the main reception desk was a young Whitehope officer who greeted them with a harried look. She appeared to be in her early twenties—barely twenty-five at the most—with flaming red hair that was pulled back into a bun behind her head and a splash of freckles across her face. She had the clearest blue eyes Olivia had ever seen on a person. 'This kid looks like she should be out working a farm,' Olivia thought, 'instead of being stuck behind a desk in a police station.'

The young police officer glanced up at them with a pleasant smile and said,

"May I help you?"

"Detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson, NYPD," Elliot told her, as they flashed their badges. "We're here for the extradition of Henry Lee Roberson."

The young woman's smile faded into a horrified look, and Olivia's stomach clenched up when she realized that the three-ring circus being performed in the stationhouse indeed had something to do with Roberson.

"Um, yes, let me get the chief for you," the young officer said as she fled the reception desk and ran towards the private office of the chief of police.

Elliot shot Olivia a wary look, and she knew exactly what he meant. This wasn't looking very good for them.

"Hey," a man called. "Hey, you two!"

Olivia turned to see a grungy old bearded man with a hangdog look seated on a bench by the wall. His left wrist was handcuffed to the arm of the bench. He looked as if he never met a bottle of booze that he didn't like. "You guys are from New York City, right?"

"Yeah," Elliot replied with a frown. "What's it to you?"

"Can ya take me back with ya?" the man asked hopefully. Every other word out of his mouth was slurred. "I could really use a change of scenery. Whitehope just doesn't fit the bill for me anymore, ya know what I'm saying?"

Olivia and Elliot briefly exchanged an exasperated expression. The drunk certainly didn't look like their man. Still, just to be sure, she asked, "Is your name Henry Lee Roberson?"

"No, it's Roy Dunhill," he replied amiably. He flashed a grin, showing several large gaps in his teeth.

"Then we're not taking you back with us," Olivia flatly said.

Roy looked momentarily depressed at that. Then he shrugged and said, "Oh well. Can't blame a guy for trying, eh?'"

When they turned away from the drunk, Olivia saw the chief of police walking towards them. The young red-haired officer followed close on his heels. The chief was a roly-poly man in his fifties with glasses and thinning gray hair. "Detectives Benson and Stabler?"

"Benson," Olivia said, pointing at herself. She gestured at Elliot and added, "Stabler."

"I'm Chief Carl Anderson," he replied with an annoyed look. Taking a deep breath, he added, "Less than forty five minutes ago, Henry Lee Roberson escaped from this facility. He's presently at large, his whereabouts unknown."

Olivia was so stunned she involuntarily flinched. She glanced at Elliot and saw he was just as shocked.

At the very least, Olivia had expected Roberson to be snatched out of their hands by the PSP because of newly discovered crimes he committed here in Pennsylvania; at the worst, she expected Roberson to have been wounded or killed during an escape attempt. But the mere thought of this monster, who brutally raped and strangled women, now stalking the formerly peaceful mountainous countryside of Whitehope was repugnant to Olivia. And yet it was now a fact: Roberson was free.

She thought back to that strange young woman's frightened face in the dream, as she silently pleaded for Olivia to be careful—just before Olivia was strangled by an unseen manic who leapt out of the shadows.

'Looks like that dream might have been a warning after all,' Olivia thought, as she felt an icy chill slide up her spine.

To Be Continued.....