Whispers in the Dark

- Chapter Five – Echoes Knocking on Locked Doors

Cory sat down with her friends at the grille as Spencer told them how they'd found traces of the sweater with Alison's blood on it caught in one of her bracelets, and her mom was doing everything she could to have the evidence thrown out.

The past few days had been especially hard for most of the group. Hanna was still having trouble trying to cope with how Caleb had used her. Finding out that Jenna paid him to make himself 'available' to Hanna, had completely flipped her world upside down.

"Do you think somebody rubbed that sweater on your bracelet?" Cory asked her friend.

"Somebody?" Emily asked with raised brows, "Try Ian. He's been doing everything he can to make you look guilty… your parents should hire you a 24 hour bodyguard."

"What about Jenna? What if she paid Caleb to get that bracelet? Aria guessed and Cory looked over to see Hanna eating one chip after another from the appetizer of chips and dip.

When Emily pointed out that Caleb had never been in Spencer's house, Aria argued that he didn't exactly need an invitation. A seemed to be able to get into anywhere at any point.

Looking past her friends to where there was a display of mannequins set up outside for the upcoming founders festival, Spencer said, "Guys… I think somebody's watching us."

"Those are for the festival." Cory reminded her, shivering slightly at how creepy the figures were.

"If that's really what Rosewood's founding family looked liked, how'd they ever get anyone to move here?" Aria said under her breath.

"And why were they allowed to reproduce?" Spencer added on, causing Cory to laugh as she took a drink of her water and shook her head.

Her friend's continued to talk about the possibility of Caleb really being involved and working with A, while Hanna asked them not to use his name –while Cory sat in silence; stirring the ice in her water as she debated a way to even start the conversation of telling her friends that she'd been hooking up with Alison's brother.

She'd been given an ultimatum by A, either own up to that or have her confidential files from rehab forwarded to her friends.

They all knew before she moved away that she'd gotten even more out of control with her alcohol use, even binge drinking to the point that she wound up in the hospital a few times. They were also aware that she'd started spending the majority of her time high not too long before Alison died, and it had gotten even worse after she'd gone missing. But what they didn't know was that her family had moved away mainly to cover up the fact that she was getting put in rehab because she'd gotten so out of control.

Cory looked around at them and considered that them finding out about her and Jason was the lesser of two evils. They were her best friends, and she knew they wouldn't go around telling everyone or make her feel ashamed about rehab but it was embarrassing to her –that she started something she couldn't fix on her own.

When her phone went off with a text message she looked down and saw it was from A:

'Secrets might be what keeps us all close, but they can also lead to your downfall. Your choice; your stent in rehab or your stoner ex. Better talk before time runs out… tick…tock. –A'

Hanging her head she rubbed her hands over her face and looked around, wondering why it was so important to A she outted herself for something in her past she wasn't so proud of. Was there even a point to this, did A have an endgame or was it all just to make her feel humiliated?

Either way time was running out, taking a deep breath she started to get the courage to just tell them, to completely out herself before A got the chance but she didn't get to when Hanna said, "If Caleb's gonna talk to anyone, he'll talk to me."

"Will you be able to do that?" Emily softly asked.

"For Spence, yeah… I will." She said, her tone more confident than she felt.

"Thanks Han." Spencer said, sincerely and then smiled at the waitress who brought them back their receipt after taking their payment.

"You guys ready?" Aria asked as she stood up and pulled her coat on.

Everyone else followed suit except for Cory who remained in place staring down at her half empty plate of food.

"Cor?" Emily asked, noticing she wasn't following them.

"You okay?" Aria asked.

"Uh, yeah… I'm fine." Cory lied, offering a smile as she stood up and followed them out of the grille.

~(The next day)~

"Hey dad, can I ask you something?" Cory questioned as she sat down at the tall kitchen island with her bowl of cereal next to her dad who was finishing up his toast.

"Sure, I still have a few minutes before I have to head in to work." Austin nodded, taking a drink of his coffee and turning slightly to give her his full attention.

"Back before we moved here… when I started getting really bad with drinking and drugs, why did the whole family have to move instead of you just sending me off for a few months to rehab?" She questioned, watching his face closely.

"Cory…" He sighed, shaking his head. If there was anything he didn't like to talk about, it was his or his family's failures and it was abundantly clear that he considered part of her life something they needed to sweep under the rug and hide.

"No, dad… I'm serious."

"We moved for several reasons. It was hard to keep living in the same house that your little brother lost his life in… and then once your friend went missing, your mother and I decided it was just better to get out of Rosewood, get a fresh start." He explained, taking another drink of his coffee and avoiding her eyes.

"I get that, but you guys made sure that we were entirely moved out of state before you sent me to rehab. It's not like you shipped me off and then got moved and settled. You did that because you didn't want anyone to know, right?" She guessed, swallowing hard as she pushed her cereal bowl away from her suddenly not feeling the least bit hungry.

His eyes lingered on the granite countertop and he declined to answer her question.

"Dad…" she started to say, but he cut her off.

"Cory, stop it. I mean think about it, do you really want people to know that you were in a rehab treatment facility?"

She stayed quiet he nodded as he slid off the tall chair at the island and said, "Exactly."

He put his glass and plate in the sink before he paused next to her and said, "I need to get going. I have a few surgeries scheduled today, so it might be pretty late before I get home… depending on how late they run."

"It's okay, I'll probably stay with a friend tonight… Hanna and her boyfriend just broke up, so I might swing by her place with takeout to check on her." Cory answered, avoiding his eyes.

"Alright, text and let me know where you'll be tonight if you don't stay home." He instructed as he pulled his coat on and leaned down, kissing the top of her head before he left the house.

Once she was alone, Cory hung her head and rubbed her eyes. She knew deep down her dad was probably doing what he thought was best, but to her it just felt like he was ashamed of her and in all honesty she regretted a lot of things too. But not to the extent he did.

~(The next day)~

"I can't believe you actually took Hanna's advice and made a fake profile to spy on Mr. Fitz!" Cory exclaimed as she sat on Aria's bed and looked at her friend's open laptop.

"It's not really to spy…" Aria defended looking over her shoulder as she stuffed some clothes into an overnight bag for the weekend.

"Yes, it is!" Cory argued, "Why don't you just ask him about it?"

"I will… once I know the right questions to ask." Aria said, as she walked over to the bed and picked up the shirt she'd laid out earlier. Folding it up, she tucked it into the bag and then whipped her head around when her computer beeped.

"Jackie accepted your fake request." Cory filled her in and scooted over as Aria rushed to the bed and plopped down, grabbing her computer as the two friend's stared at the screen.

"You really don't think I should do this?" Aria asked, when she saw the way her friend was looking at her.

"I think that you've never even met this Jackie Molina and you're letting her come between you guys. You love him and no one should be able to make you second guess that… or doubt yourself." Cory explained how she felt as she absently played with the fringe on the side of one of her friend's decorative throw pillows.

"That's… really good advice, actually." Aria said, then looked at her as she asked, "Where is that coming from?"

"I was, uh… I was sort of with this guy for a while before I moved. And in the beginning when we were really starting to get closer… it was the most honest thing I've felt. I just, connected with him in this way that I didn't even think was possible and I was so, so happy." She admitted, a smile spreading over her lips before she could contain it.

Aria smiled with her as she asked, "So what happened?"

"Alison found out." Cory admitted, shaking her head, "And she made me feel like it was something I needed to be ashamed of, that I needed to hide because you guys wouldn't approve. I had this really honest, pure connection with someone and it was the greatest thing I'd ever felt…and Ali took that from me."

Aria opened her mouth to say something, but before she could Cory kept talking, "Looking back now, I just really feel like I would have done things differently, you know? I guess basically what I'm saying is… what you and Mr. Fitz have is real and you shouldn't let anyone take that away from you."

Taking a deep breath, Aria reached down and moved the mouse curser above the 'remove friend' option, before she made up her mind and clicked it, from there she went on to delete the entire page as she said, "You're right… I just need to talk to Ezra about this."

Beaming a proud smile, Cory nodded, "Yeah, I think that's the best option here."

"So…" Aria questioned, "Who was this guy… the one you had that amazing connection with?"

"Oh, he was just this older-" Her voice trailed off and she shook her head at herself. Lying about that time in her life had pretty much become second nature, she'd go straight to a lie or avoiding the truth instead of even thinking for a second about being honest.

"He was…uh, it was Jason." She finally admitted.

"Jason…?" Aria questioned, her voice trailing off as she waited for her to give a last name.

"Jason DiLaurentis."

"Oh my god!" Aria gasped, her eyes wide as humanly possible, "Ali's brother?"

"That's the one." Cory admitted, waiting to see her reaction. She'd been hiding it for so long that she wasn't even sure what a reasonable response to that would be.

The dead silence of the room was more unsettling than if her friend would have screamed or something.

"Say something… anything…" Cory pleaded, watching her with her own set of wide eyes.

"Wow, I'm sorry… just… wow." She finally exclaimed, before she cleared her throat and realized out loud, "And Ali knew?"

"Yeah, she found out. I thought at first she was going to be so mad she'd stop talking to me, but it wasn't like that all. Instead she made me feel like I was doing something awful, that feeling the way I did about him was wrong or something and that no one else should know… all while pretending to be such a great friend." Cory scoffed remembering back to when Alison had first found out.

"Yeah, that sounds like Ali. Not getting mad over something like that because she's actually just dying to use it against you at some point."

Cory nodded, feeling like for the first time in a really long time, she could actually breathe.

"Do the others-"

"No." Cory quickly answered, "You're the first person, I've told. I'm going to tell everyone else… but I really want them to hear it from me."

"Don't worry. I won't say anything, I promise." Aria assured her, as the girls stood up from the bed and she hugged her; both of them feeling closer than before and mutually sharing in a long needed sense of relief.

~(That night)~

Cory had been walking around the founder's festival for a while, she'd played a few games and visited the hospital staff sponsored tent where her dad was working for a while before she spotted Spencer outside of the fun house, and started towards her to see if she wanted to skip the rest of the festival and go do something else. She'd jogged after her but her friend had already gone inside and couldn't hear her name over the loud music and sound effects.

Cory paused and stared up to the large imposing prescience of a cynical clown face, who's mouth formed the entrance to the fun house.

Reaching into her pocket she looked down to her last two tickets she'd been planning on using for another chance at the bottle fishing game where you could win a pet rabbit from. But instead she forked the tickets over and walked inside, hoping she could easily locate her friend. Soon it became clear that wasn't going to happen when a few middle schoolers pushed their way past her giggling and screaming as a pair of arms cut the isle off and separated one of them from the rest of her friends.

Cory stood in place and watched as the younger students took a right hand turn and disappeared into the funhouse. She waited until the arms went out and retracted once more before walking farther in as she called out, "Spencer?"

A part of her figured yelling was pointless with both music and creepy laughter and sound effects echoing through the structure. As she watched a manic clown statue being shook and dangled from some cables over to the side a loud, almost painful blast of air sprayed from a contraption on the wall and caught her off guard as she gasped and took a few steps back when the laughter started up again.

She'd never been a fan of places like this, but now she was wondering why anyone thought this was fun.

Turing around she planned to just go out the way she came in and see if she could find Spencer but once she turned around she realized she didn't remember if she'd turned right or left and now had no idea which way to go. She'd never really had a strong sense of direction, but faced with all sorts of neon obstacles in black light and even a spinning spiral on the far wall that could make you dizzy in seconds –she realized her best bet of making it out of there would be to just continue the way she'd been going.

There had to be an exit coming up soon.

After getting disoriented again from another spinning spiral piece in the wall, she closed her eyes and turned around. Quickly regretting the decision when she saw red paint on the wall, glowing in the black light with a dripping effect like blood that spelled out: Shut up or I'll shut you up -A

"Spencer!" She shouted at the top of her lungs, her first concern no longer being lost in the funhouse but for her friend's safety.

Breaking into a directionless run and screaming out her friend's name over and over she ran until she heard someone screaming for help, somehow she managed to locate a section of the wall where one side was supposed to close before the other side opened to let you out. Only it was clear spencer was trapped in between the moving pieces of wall.

"Spencer!" She shouted as she beat on the outside of the wall and pulled with all of her might trying to get it open, but she couldn't find where it was jammed.

Her friend's screams grew louder and louder from inside the claustrophobic space and Cory wasn't even sure if Spencer knew she was there.

Turning she raced off somehow managing to find a way out of the funhouse through one of the back exits, where she literally fell down the small set of stairs and landed to the ground with a thud before screaming, "Somebody help me!"

"Hey, hey… are you okay?" A voice said as an arm slid under hers and brought her up to her feet.

"It's not me, it's my friend…" Her voice trailed off as she realized she was face to face with Ian, and to make matters worse he had a crowbar in his hand.

Swallowing hard she took a few steps backwards but her back collided with the funhouse wall and trapped her.

He looked at her for a moment before he looked down to the crowbar in his hand and asked, "What, you actually think I'm going to hit you with this?"

"I'm not a hundred percent sure that you won't." She admitted, causing him to roll his eyes.

Remembering the fact that one of her best friends was trapped inside she knew what she needed to do, swallowing hard and trying her best attempt at a friendly smile she asked, "Can I borrow that…"

"No." He gruffly answered.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not a hundred percent sure you won't hit me with it." He countered with an arched brow.

Quickly darting to side she started to run around to the front of the fun house where there were people, possibly someone who could help her to help Spencer, or at least witnesses in case Ian decided on using that crowbar against her. But he effortlessly caught up to her and grabbed her arm brining her to a stop right before she could reach the other festival patrons.

"What's going on?" He asked.

Looking down she stared at his hand on her arm as she said through gritted teeth, "Let go of me."

"Not until you tell me what's happening." He ordered.

"Like you don't know…" she breathed. It was a little to convenient that he was just outside of the very same funhouse that Spencer was trapped inside with a crowbar in his hand. She could only assume that he'd use the bar to bend something in the sliding door mechanism to trap someone.

"I really don't, so you're gonna have to fill me in." He said, his tone unforgiving as she stared the teenager down with a unrelenting grip on her arm that was starting to make her fingers tingle in numbness.

"Ian? Cory?" Spencer's mom asked as she walked up to them, looking between them with a confused expression.

"Mrs. Hastings!" Cory exclaimed, relieved to see her as Ian finally let go of her arm.

"What's going on?" She questioned looking between them.

"It's Spencer… she's trapped inside of the funhouse and I tried, but I can't get her out." She blurted out in jumbled words that barely formed a sentence.

"Oh my god…" Mrs. Hastings exclaimed, immediately worried as she looked at the teenager and asked, "You know where she's at in there?"

Cory nodded frantically.

"I'll have them clear the fun house out and get the lights on in there." She said as she turned and briskly started to walk away, until Ian said, "If Cory can show me where Spencer is, I can use this to get her out." He offered holding up the crowbar.

With wide eyes she stared at her friend's mom, silently begging for her to not send her into that funhouse alone with Ian and a crowbar.

"That's a great idea. Thank you Ian." Mrs. Hastings said sincerely.

Moments later Cory and Ian were standing just inside of the fun house, as the where still trying to get the lights on and the creepy effects to stop.

Silently she nodded for him to go on but he pointed out, "You're the one who knows where she is… you lead the way."

Every cell in her body was telling her this was a bad idea, being alone inside of a place like this with an armed Ian Thomas, who if they were right –had an affinity for hitting teenage girls in the back of the head and leaving them for dead.

But this wasn't the time to be thinking about what happened to Alison, this was time to try and get to Spencer before her friend suffered a similar fate.

As Cory led them through the halls she shakily said, "You know… everyone knows we're in here. So if something happens to me… they'll know it was you."

"You mean, if I were to hit over the head with this crowbar… the way I hit Alison with something, they'd know I was guilty right?" He asked, causing her blood to run cold in her veins as she spun and faced him.

"That's your theory, right? That I'm the one who killed Alison, that's why you and your friend's keep trying to frame me?"

Swallowing hard she turned back around trying to locate the spot where she'd heard Spencer screaming, only this time she held her silence. Ian had all but signed a confession agreeing that he was Alison's murderer and now she was having to depend on him to help her save a friend.

"This is it." She called, racing over to the section of the wall where she'd heard Spencer yelling, only now it was silent.

"I don't hear-" He started to argue, but she yelled, "She's in there!"

Ian eyed her for a few moments before he got to work on trying to break the door open, until it finally gave way and slid open to reveal a very terrified Spencer –who stared up to Ian with wide eyes at the sight of the crowbar in his hand thinking he'd came to kill her.

"Spence… thank god!" Cory yelled as she stepped between Ian and Spencer and her friend rushed out, holding onto her as tears streamed down her face.

"Shh…" Cory soothed, "You're okay, you're okay."

"Ian?" Melissa's voice rang out through the now silent funhouse as they finally got the effects and soundtrack shut off.

"Yeah, I've got her… she's fine." He yelled back, stepping to the side to give the girls more room as Spencer's sister and mother found them.

Letting go of her friend, Spencer let her mom wrap her in a tight hug and Cory stepped back, her heart still racing from fear and adrenaline, but so relieved that her friend was okay.

"It took a crowbar to get her out?" Melissa asked, leaning against her husbands side as Ian wrapped an arm around her.

"Yeah, it looks like someone jammed the tracks of the door up really bad." He nodded.

"Come on, let's get you out of here." Spencer's mom said as she kept an arm around her daughter and led her out of the funhouse, with Melissa right on their heels.

Cory looked at the small, confined space her friend had been trapped in and then to Ian who'd freed her and quietly nodded as she said, "Thanks…"

He nodded, but his icy stare gave nothing away as he watched her rush to catch up with everyone else.

~()~

It was much later that night that the girls were all at Emily's house after visiting a storage unit near Hollis College. Caleb had told Hanna that Jenna's main reason for hiring him was for finding a key she believed Alison had left with them.

They'd had no idea what it meant until Emily remembered a snow globe gift that Alison gave her once and said it was more valuable than it looked.

Inside the large storage unit the only thing they'd found was Alison's old lunchbox from when she was a child, inside it was a single flash drive. So they'd all gone back to Emily's to see what was on it.

But nothing could have prepared them for what they saw. The flash drive contained many videos, the stars of most of the videos being them, growing up through the years.

"Someone's been spying on us for years." Aria breathed, wrapping her arms around herself as she felt violated.

"And it wasn't Ali…" Spencer realized.

"She's in the videos." Cory nodded, feeling sick to her stomach from the same level of violation her friends were feeling.

"Ali's in a lot of them." Hanna pointed out as it moved onto the next video which was them all in Spencer's bedroom, trying on clothes, joking and dancing around. None of them having a clue they were being watched or recorded.

"Oh my god… that's July 4th." Emily realized on the particular video they were watching, it was them all changing and getting ready mere hours before the Jenna thing.

"She always said it was Toby peeping on us…" Hanna breathed.

"No there is no way this is Toby." Spencer was quick to defend, but didn't need to be. Her friends all knew they were wrong about their assumptions with Toby before.

"It's not… it was Ian." Cory explained, when they all looked at her she explained, "Remember how I told you guys before that I thought Ali might have had a thing for Ian? It was because she told me one time that; the guy she liked, liked to make movies. The only person I ever saw with a video camera glued to their hand was Ian and he obviously had a thing for younger girls. It has to be him."

"Okay, but why did she even have these videos?" Aria questioned, her face a little pale.

"And does he know she had them?" Emily continued.

"Maybe he did… maybe it was reason enough to want to shut her up for good. We were pretty young in some of these videos… Ian could get into a lot of trouble if Alison had turned these videos over to someone with proof he's the one who took them." Spencer explained, all of them sharing a state of shock.

"That's my house…" Cory said as it moved onto the next video.

"And there's all of us in our bikinis…" Emily added when it showed all of the girls filing out of the house ready for a day in and around the pool.

"Well, not all of us in bikinis." Hanna pointed out, looking to where she was wearing a large plain t-shirt over her swimsuit in the video, before she'd lost a lot of weight.

"That's not the point… the point is this is disgusting." Spencer reasoned, closing her eyes and sighing as it moved onto the next video which was them changing clothes and getting ready for a Friday night out at Emily's house.

"Seriously?" She breathed, looking over to her window and thinking someone would have had to be up in a tree to get that video angle on them, "There is video taken from outside of all our houses."

"Is that outside of Ali's house?" Spencer asked leaning closer to where the camera was blurry in focus on a car outside of their late friend's house.

"Yeah, I think so… wasn't that Jason's car?" Emily asked, also squinting to try and get a better look.

The camera zoomed in and you could clearly see two people in the backseat of the car, "Ooh… who's getting down and dirty with Alison's creepy older brother?" Hanna said, with a laugh.

"Oh my god!" Cory gasped, as she and Aria reached forward at the same time to slam the laptop shut so fast Emily's jaw dropped when she thought they'd broken it, but not before everyone saw who it was in the car with Jason DiLaurentis.

Cory felt her face darken as all of her friend's turned and stared at her with matching shocked expression, everyone except for Aria who was giving her a sympathetic look.

"You… and… Jason?" Hanna gasped, as Spencer realized, "That was the older guy you'd never tell us anything about…"

She swallowed hard and wasn't sure if she was going to throw up or pass out. It was bad enough being forced by A to tell her friends something, but she was working up to it. It was an entirely different thing to have all of her friends find out by seeing video footage of them together –and even more disturbing that such video existed. But possibly the scariest thought of all, was what if that wasn't the only video of them out there?

A/N- Thanks so much for reading, I really hope everyone liked the chapter.

Did you all see the new episode last night, if so what did you think? I won't spoil anything… other than I have to say I was really disappointed with the ending of the episode and what they did with Jason's character! I'd planned on getting some writing done after the ep but after I watched it, i just couldn't bring myself to write.

Thank you to xxXWolfsLullabyXxx, Heartless-Princess33, BloomingBlueMoon85, lalaa365, Guest, xxxRena, RHatch89, Momsen-xxxx, Summer, SmellYourScentForMiles, Lucie, Nicole, Lucy Greenhill, Clickforkolsdick, JL and DancingDorisDay for being so kind and showing their support by leaving a review. I appreciate it so much!