A/N: This is my first attempt at a horror fic. I tried my best.
EDIT (9/7/18): This thing has been more than two months in the making. It's over 2,000 words long - the longest one-shot I've ever written. To be quite frank with you, this story actually creeps me out a lot. I have no idea where the...erm...idea came from, for starters. Secondly, there's been a lot of actual creepy shit that happened in my bedroom (pardon the language), and I have no idea if publishing this will increase said shit or not. I may very well be tempting the...ah...darker forces, which is never a smart idea, but this has been rattling around in my brain for months and I feel like the only way to get rid of it is to publish it.
Readers might find this disturbing or alarming, or maybe just flat-out creepy. You've been warned.
Into the Dark
Snap.
Mikey bolted upright in bed, grabbing the sheets in a white-knuckled grip. His eyes darted around the room, trying to peer into the shadows and make sure there was nothing there. But it was dark, of course, and hard to make anything out.
I shouldn't have watched those monster movies before bed, he thought. "The Man-Thing That Ate Manhattan" has a lot more appeal when the guys watch it with me.
The seventeen-year-old swallowed and pulled his blankets up to his chin. He wondered if it was better to stay in his lonely, dimly-lit bedroom, or if it was worth risking a trip to the safety of the sanctuary - aka, Leo's room.
Drip.
Something wet hit Mikey's cheek and he shot out of bed, scrambling for the door. He flew down the hall in record time. The door that was painted in delicate, scrawling kanji - his brother's handwriting - slammed against the wall as he shoved it open.
Leo was awake immediately, eyes wide and filled with fear. "Wha-"
Then a pair of strong green arms latched onto him and a smooth green head buried itself in his shoulder. "There's a m-monster in my room," Mikey whimpered.
A sigh. "You really need to lay off the horror flicks, buddy." The bedside lamp came on with a click. And Leo froze.
"You're bleeding?"
"What?"
The eldest reached out to touch his younger sibling's cheek, gently probing for other signs of injury. "There's blood on your cheek, Mike. What happened?"
"I..." The drip. Something falling from the ceiling. Something wet and sticky and warm. Oh-so-warm. A queasy feeling settled in the freckled turtle's stomach. Instead of answering, he grabbed Leo's hand and dragged him, quietly protesting, back to his own bedroom.
He flicked the light on and immediately turned his gaze to the ceiling, expecting to see something gruesome.
Nothing.
"I don't understand," Mikey whispered, shaking his head. "I swear that it came from-"
"AAAAHHHH!"
The bloodcurdling scream sent ice through both ninjas' veins. Raph.
They booked it across the hallway and burst into the room, only to see their hotheaded brother writhing in his bedsheets. His body was covered in a fine sheen of sweat, his skin unnaturally pale...and his eyes were open.
The same feeling of queasiness rolled through Mikey again and he hesitantly reached out to touch Raph's shoulder. The brawler jerked at the contact and tumbled onto the floor. His screaming ceased abruptly and he seemed to come to his senses.
"What...ugh...what happened? Why're you in my room?"
"You screamed," Leo told him quietly. It's a miracle nobody else heard.
"No I didn't. I don't scream."
Snap.
Their heads whipped in tandem towards the noise, which sounded as if it had come from the hallway. Leo's hand moved towards his katana - or the spot where his katana would be, if it weren't three o'clock in the morning. He cursed inwardly and grabbed a weight off of Raph's floor instead.
"Hey!" the hothead started to protest.
"Shut up. Do you want to check it out?"
"Um...no. No, I'm good."
"That's what I thought." Leo crept towards the door and reached for the handle. Before he could do anything, the door swung open. Donnie stood on the other side. And his face was contorted in that same blank, pale expression.
Mikey scrambled backwards, near-hysterical at this point. "What the shell?!"
"Don?" Leo asked slowly. "Are you okay?"
The lanky turtle said nothing, merely staring at Mikey with those dark, dead-looking eyes. Then he swayed and pitched forward. Leo dropped the weight and caught his brother all in one movement.
"Don!"
A thin sheen of sweat had broken out across the genius' skin; he was shivering in Leo's arms, though it was nearly seventy-five degrees in the Lair. A weak moan escaped his lips and he grabbed feebly at his brother's wrist.
"What happened to him?" Raph demanded, reaching over to flick on his bedroom light. But no light came on. He growled, annoyed, and flicked the switch several more times. "Come on! It was working earlier!"
"Bulb probably blew out," Leo replied distractedly. "Mike, get out your flashlight and shine it over here."
But Mikey wasn't listening. In fact, he was unmoving - probably for the first time in his entire life - over by the door. He didn't know what was going on and his hyperactive imagination wasn't helping things at all. He didn't even want to blink for fear of what he might see when he opened his eyes again.
"Mikey!"
The harsh tone that Leo used was enough to snap him out of whatever trance he was in. He scrambled over on his knees, pulling out a small flashlight as he went.
The flashlight didn't work either.
Leo growled and fumbled one-handedly in his belt for the pack of matches he kept with him. He finally located the small box and tossed it to Raph, who immediately used a matchstick to light the single emergency candle in his bedroom. The flickering light, dim as it was, did nothing to really help illumine the area around the four turtles. They could, however, make out some detail on each others' faces.
Mikey pretended that his brothers' expressions weren't contorted by the shadows the candlelight left on their skin.
"Alright, what the hell is going on?" Raph demanded. "First you two invade my bedroom, claiming that I was screaming. Then Donnie appears in the doorway with this freaky look on his face. Then the flashlight won't work. Somebody better start talking before I lose it." He trailed off, then, staring at Mikey's cheek with a mixed look of growing horror and fascination. "Dude, your cheek is, like, dripping blood."
The youngest put a hand that was definitely not shaking to his cheek, flinching when he felt the warm stickiness there. It didn't hurt. It couldn't have been his blood. Out of instinct he glanced at the ceiling, where the last drip had come from, expecting nothing to be there.
Only, this time, there was a face staring at him.
He shrieked and threw himself backwards into Raph's strong arms. The face - if you could call it that - was horrifying. Its skin was rotted and nearly bloodless, its eyes sewn shut. Long, jagged teeth dripped with blood from the folds of a too-big mouth that shaped itself into a menacing grin. Before Mikey could so much as point the face out to his two conscious brothers, it disappeared.
"What is wrong with you?" his most hotheaded sibling snapped, shoving him away. "Get off of me!"
"B-But there was a...there was a face-"
"On the ceiling?" Raph scoffed.
"I'm serious, Raph! There really was a face! It was, like, super pale and gross and its teeth were all bloody and-"
"Mikey, enough about the face. We need to find out what's wrong with Don." At Leo's suggestion, the youngest visibly deflated.
They don't believe me.
Donnie moaned again, quieter this time, and his eyes returned to their normal color. Leo picked him up gently and placed him on the bed. "Rest, little brother. I'll go get you some water. Raph, come with me. Mike, you stay here and watch him."
"But why do I have to-"
"Because I said so." There was a beat of silence, Raph silently daring his sibling to argue again, and then they were gone. Mikey was left alone with a nearly comatose Donatello and the creepiest feeling that he was being watched.
Snap.
Raph's scream came from somewhere in the darkness, Leo's own cry echoing not two seconds later. Mikey's breath jammed inside his lungs and refused to come loose. He stood stock-still for ten long seconds, one hand on his nunchucks and the other on the door handle. Feet pounded on the concrete and a bloodied blue-masked turtle appeared soon after.
Leo's cobalt eyes were wild with pain and fear. "He's gone," he said hoarsely. "Raph, he...he fell, tripped over something, and I went to grab him and he wasn't there and the lights won't turn on-"
The nineteen-year-old was nearly having a panic attack, which was definitely not a good sign, because it meant that he was well and truly freaked out.
"-and I keep hearing this awful snapping noise, like someone's neck breaking. Kraang, Mikey, what is going on?"
Only, Mikey didn't answer, because Mikey couldn't answer, because his body had somehow forgotten how to breathe. His throat worked and his eyes widened. One trembling hand lifted to point to the hallway behind his brother.
At the figure standing there.
It was the face - only this time the face had a body to go along with it, covered in half-shredded black clothing that revealed far too much decomposed flesh and white bone underneath. The creature's jaw opened and closed, almost as if it was speaking, but no sound came out. It gave the same creepy grin, lifting a too-long arm towards the ninja...and releasing the red, blood-drenched mask it had hidden in its awful, slender fingers.
Snap.
From behind them, Donnie gave a sharp cry; his brothers spun around and rushed to the bedside. The cry turned into a gurgle and then faded into silence as Leo placed a finger against his neck.
There was no pulse.
"No," he choked out. Mikey shook his head, unable to even process what was happening, and turned back around to face the doorway and the creature. But the doorway was empty. Which meant that that thing could be anywhere.
"We have to get out of here," the freckled turtle gasped, reaching for Leo's hand and tugging. "Come on. We need to move, Leo, now!"
"But Donnie, and Raph-"
"Come on!" Then they were running out of the Lair in the pitch-blackness, leaving the dead and empty behind. They darted into the tunnels. "If we could just get to the surface-"
"What is going on?" Leo begged, and Mikey could hear the anguish in his voice. "Kraang...Donnie and Raph...I don't understand."
"Just keep going. Please, Leo, we're almost there."
Snap.
The blood on Mikey's cheek stung and he scrambled for the ladder, climbing up and pounding on a manhole cover that stubbornly refused to budge. "No. Not now. Please, God, not now. I'm not even eighteen yet."
"We'll find another exit. We have to."
The sewers became so silent that you could hear a pin drop. Somewhere far away, a rat squeaked and scampered down a brick wall. There was the muted drip, drip of water a few tunnels down. And then.
A shuffling noise, like something heavy dragging over stone. Something not quite alive.
All the calm evaporated. Leo had never sounded so panicked and scared in all his life. "Mikey, he's coming! He's-"
And then whatever the leader had been about to say cut off in a horrible gurgling noise that would haunt Michelangelo to the end of his days - however long that was, at this point.
The youngest turtle clasped a hand over his mouth and his baby blues filled with tears. Leo, his big brother, his protector, his world...was gone.
That's when the fear set in. Mikey's gaze spun wildly in the suffocating darkness, seeing absolutely nothing. His grip tightened on his nunchucks and a bead of sweat dripped down his face.
He backed up slowly, one foot behind the other... right into something tall and skinny and cold.
And then a pale hand with long, clammy fingers closed around his throat.
Snap.