The two turtles coughed as the dust from the collapsed tower swirled around them. Leo's flashlight beam pierced the darkness, but mostly caught particles in the air rather than lighting the area. "Raph! You all right?"

After another brief coughing fit, his brother answered from across the gaping hole in the landing. "Yeah. Fine. You?" His beam of light joined his brother's.

"Good. Can you see a way across this?"

Both lights focused on the pit and its edges, an easy forty feet apart. This was no rooftop-to-rooftop jump, with limited visibility and unstable landing ground to boot.

"Nope… So much for not getting separated," Raph called back. "How far down, you think?"

Leo's beam landed on the FLIR camera on its tottery tripod, right on the edge of the gap, just as it lost the fight with gravity. He tried to keep his light on it as it went over and plummeted down into the gloom. After several seconds, a shattering crash carried up to them from below.

"Oh," Raph said casually. "'Bout that far."

"Do you have your grappling hook?" Leo yelled across the breach.

An irritated snort was the start of his answer. "No! Donnie was loading me down with all this ghost gear, and I didn't think I'd need it inside a building, Mister Perfection!"

Leo sighed and shook his head. "Damn. I didn't bring mine either."

"What? Splinter Junior forgot some of his gear?"

"Not 'forgot'… I left mine home for the same reasons you did." He shone his light up to the balcony above him, ignoring the shadows that moved out of its way. "Looks like the third floor is set back a little further, and the balcony and rooms there are mostly intact. If one of us can find a way up there, we can make our way across to the other. Check in the rooms on that side, see if you can find any way up."

"Right," Raph said, sounding unsure. "Leo… What about the ghosts?"

"Just tell them you don't believe in them."

The red-banded turtle let out a less-than-confident half-laugh. "Great…"

x-x-x-x-x

Leo was just as loath to leave his brother, but he knew that just staring at each other across the gap wasn't going to get them anywhere, so he headed for the large room at the end of the hall on his side. The parted curtains let in some weak light from outside, and, as he got further into the room, he was surprised to see the outline of a person standing near the corner, facing away from him. She looked much more solid than a ghost, he thought, but then, so had the thing in the bathroom. But her clothes were modern, jeans and a cap-sleeved blouse, with a spread of short, wavy blonde hair around her head. She held an electromagnetic field detector in her hand, similar to their own but with an extra antenna, its lights flickering slightly.

"Oh, hello," he greeted. "Are you ghost-hunting here too?"

"Yegh," she said, and he wondered if she had a speech impediment. She began turning to face him, awkward and slowly.

He cast his light a bit to the side, so he wouldn't blind her with it, but enough to see her. "I know I may not look normal, but you don't need to be af—"

He froze. She didn't have a nose, just a wide open sinus cavity. Her lips and part of her jaw and chin were gone. Something was wrong about her eyes—they lacked the roundness and shine of a whole eye, like olives that had been sliced in half. Above them, the frontal part of her brain was exposed. The overall impression was that something had sheared her face off.

"Ge' ou'!" she said with a desperate tone, and Leo could see the back half of her tongue working in what remained of her mouth. "Oo ha''a ge' ou'! Huwwy!"

Before Leo could summon up the courage to respond, her skin and clothing fell away like dried pieces of parchment, leaving bare musculatstructure, which then also fell off the bone in chunks, and the bones themselves dropped to the floor in a pile a dust, all of which disappeared completely the instant her skull hit the lavish carpet below. Her EMF flickered a few times, then went dead, but remained where it was on the floor. Motion caught his eye: a ceiling-to-floor curtain, flapping in the breeze of a window, a rust-stained smear down the middle of a broken pane of glass wedged in the frame at an angle.

He stood aghast for a long moment, brain trying to register what had just happened, but she wasn't wrong… they had to get out, and the sooner, the better.

Clearly, the windows were a poor option unless you wanted a little off the top, or getting along with half a face. He glanced around for any way out, anything he could use… The room contained a dresser, a vanity with a bowl and pitcher on it, a chaise lounge, a large canopy bed with bedside tables… Leo paused, eyes focusing on the pewter candelabra atop one of the bedside chests. He seized it, and started bending the arms down as best as he could. "Sorry, ghosts… Hope you don't mind me borrowing this…"

After that, he drew his katana and made several slashes through one of the curtains. Taking some precious time to carefully knot and braid the strips, he ended up with a decent length of curtain rope, which he knotted over the candelabra's base for a reasonable facsimile of a grapnel. He gave it a little test swing before moving out into the hall and hooking it over the upper balcony.

"Guess it's time for me to move up in the world, ey?" he quipped to no one in particular.

"Boo," said a ghost next to him.

Leo blinked for a moment, then started climbing regardless. "Crummy ghosts, think they're so funny…" he muttered.

x-x-x-x-x

The pair of shadow legs was back as Raph traversed the hall, but always darted through the wall the moment he tried to catch sight of it. "Quit followin' me!" he snapped at it, though that didn't seem to deter it.

He figured if there was anything to find, it would be in the large room at the end, so that was his destination.

Upon examination, the large, windowless room appeared to be a secondary library and office space, with a large, heavy, hardwood desk near one of the bookcases and a couple of chairs set out of the way. Raph stepped in and searched all the way to the back, in case there was a door linking to perhaps a more intact hall or stairway out. His search was interrupted by the door slamming hard behind him. He spun and trained his light on it, but there was nothing to see. Deciding there was nothing worthwhile here anyway, he started tromping back over to exit, but his flashlight dimmed and flickered, then went out completely.

"Aw, are you kidding me?!" He shook the flashlight and pounded on it a few times, to no avail. What was it that Mikey had been going on about with battery drain? With a growl, he felt his way to the door, and grasped the handle. It didn't budge, so the irritated turtle twisted and shook the handle and pounded and rammed his shoulder against the stubborn door, but it didn't budge. By the time he gave up fighting with it, he was breathing hard… not from the effort, but from the steadily encroaching thoughts of being locked in the dark with things that that possibly wished to harm him.

He reached for the spare box of batteries Mikey had slipped into his belt, dumping the dead double-A's on the floor, and fiddled with the spares, trying to figure out which direction they were supposed to go while in pitch blackness.

Something behind him thunked to the floor.

"Leo?" Maybe his brother had found a way in, though if he had, he'd given no indication of his presence, and it wasn't like the leader to joke around the way Mikey would. God, he wished it was Leo…

Near his ear-slit, a high-pitched voice, like a child's, whispered, "He's not here."

He had his sai in his hands in an instant, swiping and stabbing at empty air. "Who's in here?!" he demanded, getting a creepy giggle in response from another corner of the room. Thoroughly on edge, he dropped to the area rug, feeling for the batteries he'd flung away in favor of his weapons. He jammed batteries pell-mell into the slots, trying one combination and then the next, unable to tell the dead ones from the new ones at this point, and just hoping against hope for the light to work.

He clicked the button.

An exclamation of joy left him as the light went on, pointed at the ceiling. In relief, he brought the beam down toward the door. For a second, it passed across a horribly shrunken white face, skin pulled tight against the bone, black circles lining sunken eyes under wisps of dark hair, and Raph let out a cry of terror as he shone the light around everywhere, trying to locate it again, but to no avail. Moments later, the door swung open.

"Raph?"

The hothead's face lit up. "LEO!" He threw himself out of the black room at his brother. "Am I glad to see you!" He cleared his throat and stopped clinging to the leader's shell, reining himself in. "Not that I was scared, 'r anything…"

"Of course not. Don't want to tarnish your tough guy image," Leonardo smirked.

"Shut up…"

"C'mon," he said, by way of dropping the subject. "I think I found a way down." Raph scrunched an eye in curiosity as his brother climbed a very ugly rope. attached to a candlestick hooked around the upper balcony. It seemed counterintuitive to be going up to get down, but Fearless had never steered them wrong, so he ran with it.

Buuuut he had to question his brother again as Leonardo seemed to lead them to a closet. He swung the door open, making a ta-da! motion at the box inside with two ropes running through it. It endured Raph's scathing glare for a time.

"I give up. What is it?"

"Dumbwaiter."

"Jackass."

Leo rolled his eyes. "It wasn't an insult… It's called a dumbwaiter. It's like an old-timey elevator. Servants would use them to move items from floor to floor without having to take the stairs. One servant on the ground floor could send items in it to someone else up at the top."

"Huh," said Raph. "You're still a jackass, though."

The blue-banded turtle sighed heavily. "Of course." He held on to the ropes and shimmied his way inside. "I already checked, and it's still in working order… goes all the way down. It's a tight fit with our shells, not really made for people… and we'll have to go one at a time, but unless I miss my guess, this probably lets out in back of the ballroom."

"Then it's a straight-shot out. Unless the door's blocked, or the ceiling caved in."

"Not gonna know unless we try," the eldest decreed, and began descending. "I'll send it back as soon as I'm down."

"Right. I'll just…" He shone his light around, only catching the motion of those disembodied shadow legs wandering around after him again. "Stop it!" he snarled, and they zipped away at an inhuman pace.

x-x-x-x-x

Raphael unfolded himself from the dumbwaiter at the ground floor, in what appeared to be an extensive linen closet, and stood next to his brother, who probably should have been looking more smug about his transportation solution. He paused, listening. "Music?"

"Could just be residual… just some piece of the past that repeats itself," Leo assured in a whisper, but the ghostly strains of an echoey Chopin waltz nevertheless sent shivers up both of their shells.

Leo slowly, and as silently as he could, pulled the double doors open just a crack, and they both peered through. The music ceased and near on two hundred eye sockets, some still occupied, some empty, all turned their way. Unlike Leonardo's friend from upstairs, these wraiths were decked in long Victorian dresses and suits with tailcoats and ruffled cravats… Some of the spirits seemed like fully-intact people, others sported tears in their clothing which showed patches of rotting flesh or empty ribcage. Some were nothing more than skeletons with clothing draped over them. Leo shoved the doors shut again, and just stood there for a moment in shock. An instant later, the shock turned to strategizing. The turtle rested one arm on the other, a hand gripping his chin. Raph recognized it as a mannerism his brother had picked up from Splinter. If mutant turtles had hair, he was sure Leo would have his groomed into a long, thin beard like their father's, and he would be stroking it as he contemplated their course of action.

"What's the plan, Fearless? Do we head back up, find some other way down?"

The leader's eyes passed over the tidy stacks of folded napkins, doilies, placemats, tablecloths, and…

"No," he said with a grin, pulling a sheet from a shelf and unfolding it as he drew one katana. "When in Rome…"

x-x-x-x-x

When the door opened again, it was to two "ghosts" joining the rest, though not dressed as elegantly as the other guests. The two white-sheeted Halloween spooks bowed to each other. One hissed at the other, "You were supposed to curtsey!", and the other replied, "I told you, I ain't doin' that!" Despite their bickering, they then joined "hands" and began dancing through the rest of the crowd as the music went on, and received a much warmer reception.

A lady spirit, upon seeing them, began giggling, bringing a hand up to cover her mouth. A skeleton in a waistcoat let its jaw drop wide as it guffawed at them. Another woman began wildly tittering at them, and spread out a feathered fan to cover her mouth and, thankfully, the missing part of her cheek.

"They're laughing at us," Raph ground out through his teeth.

"Would you rather have them laughing at us or lunging at us?" Leo countered. "Just keep up the Turtle Trot until we get to the other side!"

Their ghost pretense seemed to hold up fairly well, despite Leo's low complaint of, "Ow! That was my foot, Raph!"

"Sorry! Not like I can see where I'm putting my feet in this thing!"

"You're a ninja! You shouldn't have to see your feet to know where they are!"

"It's not like I can see yours either, you know! You couldda made these eye-holes bigger!"

"Shhhh!"

They had taken a spinning path around the dance floor, merging with the movements of the other dancers, past the bony band, finally nearing the double doors they'd originally come in through earlier in the evening. The halved plastic skeleton was a sight for sore eyes, but it took that second of inattention for a misplaced foot to pull a sheet wrong, and suddenly Raph was fully exposed. Shrieks and shouts of dismay went up from the crowd, and the skeletal cellist's bow struck a sour note and screeched off the strings, but Leo threw off his sheet and the two turtles dove for the door. It only took two shoves to force it open enough for them to squeeze their shells through.

They skirted the debris from the collapsed tower and staircase, sprinting into the Ouija board entry, though the spirits from the ball didn't seem to be in pursuit. Both seemed to agree without a word spoken that the sooner they got out the front door, the better. Nevertheless, something caught Leo's eye over his shoulder, and his step faltered. Raph bumped into him, the impact spinning him 180 degrees around, so that he spotted what Leo was seeing too.

"Holy shell… what the hell is that?!"

Above the second floor balcony, or where it had previously been, hung a vast, spinning black hole, edged in an odd, barely visible, purplish green light. The middle swirled and made a sound similar to a whirlpool in a drain. Misty, wispy figures spiraled through it, though rather than being sucked in, they seemed to be spat out of the vortex, deposited in the house.

"Do not say you want to fight that thing, or fix it or whatever, Fearless."

"Oh, shell no! Let's get the hell out of here!"

The two of them dashed to the door. Leo grabbed the handle, which he twisted, then shook and rattled… It had opened so easily before…

"Not again…" Raph breathed, and Leo could hear the fear lacing it.

"Windows!" Leo shouted over the suction noise of the portal, though he shuddered at the thought of the girl he had encountered upstairs and her pane-ful fate. Raph ran to the one on the left, Leo to the right, and both ended up shocked, though not totally surprised, when Raph's sai deflected off the thin glass and Leo's katana didn't leave so much as a scratch on either the glass or wood.

Giving up on the window idea, the leader passed his light over their immediate surroundings. "Didn't Mikey say something about the Ouija board?"

"Uh, yeah. He said don't mess with it."

"And just in case, always say 'Goodbye'!" He directed his light over the letters scorched into the floor, and stooped to roll the area rug out of the way. Raph joined him, trying not to look at the ghostly portal, to cover twice as much ground.

"Where's the 'Goodbye'?!" he cried out when they'd run their flashlights over the whole thing.

"I don't know!" He glanced around frantically. "Isn't it usually at the bottom?"

The pair trained their lights beneath the array of letters, and over the large doormat. On a closer look, they could see the curve of a G on one side, and the upper and lower feet of an E on the other. Leo yanked it out of the way and they both jumped on the 'Goodbye'. The door latch popped open, and the door swung an inch before scooting to a hard stop against its now-tilted jamb.

"The tower must have knocked the whole house off its foundation…"

"So, whaddya think? Is it Ninja Time?"

Leo just smirked.

x-x-x-x-x

From the outside, it looked like the door simply exploded into oaken splinters, fanning out in all directions, away from two giant turtle shells. The shells grew legs and arms and heads as the two mutants' feet hit the ground, bee-lining for the Shellraiser.

"Bros!" Mikey called, his arms wide to welcome them. They charged right past him.

"What—" Donnie started as his elder brothers piled into the subway car. "Are you guys all right? When the cupola collapsed, we tried to come in after you, but it's like the building wouldn't let us in!" The comm in his hand gave a burst of static, followed by a beep. "Oh, now you work…" he snarled at it, then looked up at the two turtles throwing themselves into their seats. "Hey, where's all the gear?!"

"Who cares? Just GO!"

Leo gave a bare nod at his hot-tempered and thoroughly freaked out brother's demand and stomped the gas pedal, throwing Don and Mike into their chairs. Burning rubber off the tires as he peeled out, they hurtled back toward the Lair at easily twice the speed limit.

Mikey, though still sulking about not being greeted by his brothers, suddenly sat up in realization. "Don! What time is it?"

The purple-banded turtle glanced up at the Shellraiser's instruments. "It's…" He sighed. "3:05."

"Aw, man!" Mikey groaned, throwing himself back in his seat and crossing his arms. "You guys won the bet."

Raph turned to pin him with a look, and Mikey cowered with a slight "Eep!" Raph's eye twitched a bit, then a crazed smile took his features and he started weakly giggling in hysteria. "The bet! Isn't that great, Leo? We won the bet!"

Leo seemed to catch some of Raph's contagion and started laughing in the same weird way. "Yeah… great! Oh, god…"

Mikey cast a confused glance at his older brothers, then looked to Don, jerking a thumb toward the two. The genius merely shook his head.

x-x-x-x-x

"So you really saw some ghosts?"

"Yeah, Mike… Lots of ghosts."

"What were they like? Were they scary?" Mikey prodded.

"I don't wanna talk about it! Leave me alone!" Raphael exploded at him.

Mikey backed off a bit, but persisted. "What happened to you guys? You look awful…"

"A lot, Mikey… We'll talk about it later, but give us some time, would you, please?"

The youngest walked off in a cloud of disappointment as Leo continued his conversation with—or rather berating from—Don. "Seriously, you didn't bring back any of it?!" he huffed, then reached for Leo's Go-pro helmet. "At least there's still these."

Leo blinked. "Honestly, I forgot I even had it on…"

"I'll have to look over the footage and see what you caught."

Honestly, at this point, Leo never wanted to see any of it again, but Don was welcome to the trauma of watching it himself. "Get some sleep first, Don. It's been a long night."

"Sure, Leo.

The leader declared the day off so they could all get some decent sleep, though both he and Raph were so amped up after their experiences, they both found their way to the couch. Meditating and weight training, at this point, would do them no good to still their racing hearts, so they ended up marathonning nice, calming rom-coms the whole day, utterly unaware of their brothers' activity around them.

With nearly the full day spent, Leo finally retired to his room, skipping his usual meditation, because quite frankly, he didn't want to reflect on what had happened, just sink into a warm, peaceful sleep for a while. As he was preparing to bed down though, there came a quiet knock at his door, and Raph stepped in, looking uncharacteristically meek.

"Um… this may sound dumb, Fearless, but… could I sleep with you tonight?"

Without a word, Leo lifted the blankets, and his younger brother immediately dashed in, snuggling close against him.

"Don't tell the guys about this," the hothead commanded.

"Okay," he agreed, blowing out the bedside candles. Raph stopped him.

"Couldja leave one burning?"

"Okay," he said again, voice full of comfort.

Just as he was about to drift off, another soft knock sounded, and at his call to come in, Don stepped in, dragging a stiff, shuddering Michelangelo clinging to his right side.

"Leo, could we sleep with you tonight?"

He sighed. "I'm gonna need a bigger bed… What's wrong, Donnie?"

At those words, Raph also sat up in concern. "What's up with Mikey?"

"He's been watching your footage. It's got him a little spooked."

"Ghosts… so many ghosts… Ghosts everywhere, and you couldn't see them!" the little turtle mumbled, sounding on the verge of tears.

"You look a little wigged too. Maybe you shouldn't have been watching that before bed…"

"I didn't," he stated. "I'm not even sure I want to at this point. I went back to the Carleton mansion today to see if I could recover any of your gear…"

"What?! Don, you didn't go in—"

"…and it's gone."

Raph's brow furrowed. "What, somebody went in there and stole the stuff we left?"

"No, I mean the mansion. It's gone. Even the lot it was on… the buildings on either side are almost flush against each other… like it was never even there."

They all just stood motionless for a time, letting the ramifications sink in.

"We could've—" Raph started, but Leo shushed him.

"You guys move my mattress to the floor, and maybe try to pry Mikey off Don; I'll go get Donnie's mattress and bedding."

Moments later, they were all snuggled together in a warm pile, clinging to one another until the shivers stopped and the candle burnt out.