Part 9

Static hissed from the old radio. Raphael turned the dial across the spectrum, catching only broken snatches of songs, crackling voices that disintegrated with each gust. Finally he settled on the only steady sound, a low news report that faded in and out as the snow audibly tapped against the windows. He set the radio back on the mantle where he'd found it. No wonder it was the only entertainment in the house. No other signals could possibly carry in the harsh winter.

still on...out for...teenage son...four year old daught'...authorities fear the worst...Paris accords—

They burned through several logs, heating the living room past a comfortable temperature trying to warm themselves. Michelangelo closed off the side room and the closet, then discovered why the stairs had their own door. With the second floor closed off, they didn't waste any wood trying to heat the whole house. They'd found an old ax in the kitchen, nestled conveniently between the water heater and the stove, ready for adding another tree to the woodpile. But next to the fireplace, they still had a sizable pile of logs ready to go, and after the room was warm again, they eyed the kitchen door and stopped throwing logs on.

No one wanted to go outside to chop more.

In the kitchen, Michelangelo washed his hands with what felt like ice water, then ripped open a spice packet to pour into four different bowls. As he tapped the last bits out, he coughed and winced. The packet went into the trash and he washed his hands again. They couldn't all afford to be sick.

"Now I'm really glad you guys got so many soup packets," he said over his shoulder. "But I kinda wish you'd gotten more salt."

Seated in front of the fire, Donatello balanced his laptop on his knees. "Next time you go shopping. I was just trying to get us enough meds."

"Which means you let the health nut do the food shopping." Michelangelo tsk'ed and gathered the kettle as it started to whistle, tipping hot water into the bowls. "You're lucky he couldn't find any tofu or seaweed."

Lounging on the sofa, Leonardo refused to comment, especially since there hadn't been any tofu or seaweed. He looked up occasionally from his book to glance out the window. The curtains were thick enough to block out the light, and he only pushed aside a small corner to keep an eye on the expanse of snow, looking for deer tracks.

The sun had dropped behind the trees, leaving a gray twilight that turned increasingly black. The outside light by the kitchen door was on, although Leonardo had argued against it. It gave the monsters in the forest something to focus on, a precise spot they could break through. Maybe the monsters didn't understand doors. The light was nothing but a weakness.

His brothers had counter argued that the monsters already knew that at least three delicious turtles were living here, and the monsters clearly lived in the forest anyway. They already knew how to move through the dark. At least the light let them see if the monsters had ventured out of the forest into the clearing behind the house.

And it was a light against the dark. He'd given up arguing when the sun set.

"Probably can't go back to the shop for awhile anyway," Donatello said after a moment. "I don't care how much cash Leo has tucked away in his shell, that shop owner must think he's nuts with all his stuff vanishing and a thousand bucks left behind."

"He got a fifty dollar bonus," Leonardo muttered, letting the curtain fall back. "Considering how dusty some of those cans were, I'd be surprised if he noticed how much we took."

Resting against the hearth, Raphael shrugged and reached his arms out, trembling as he stretched out to the fullest. Every joint ached, and he grimaced as he tried to rub the pain out of them. He could feel his fingers and toes again, but they still tingled as the frozen numbness wore off. Combined with being cooped up and under constant watch, his mood was just as cold.

"Probably just helped fuel his hick meth habit," Raphael muttered.

Struck silent, Leonardo and Donatello both slowly turned to look at their brother. From the kitchen, Michelangelo leaned into view with wide eyes.

"Dude," Michelangelo said. "Harsh."

Raphael blinked and pointed at the radio. "Don't gimme that. It was on NPR, meth in the rural towns."

"Wait, you're really listening to that?" Leonardo asked, lowering his book. "Half the time, it's just static."

"Ain't nothing else." Raphael shrugged. "And it's the only station coming in."

"Tell me you'll change it if it starts up with folk music," Leonardo said.

"And just listen to the fire and you turning pages?" Raphael snorted. "Life can't be all koto drums and shamisens."

Leonardo muttered something about western music and went back to reading.

"Okay," Michelangelo said, bringing in a tray that he set down on the futons. "Dinner is ready."

Raphael and Donatello glanced aside, the short distance between them and the futons suddenly feeling distant. Pitiless, Michelangelo sat crosslegged and picked up his own dish, blowing to cool it and then drinking slowly. His eyes shut and his head tilted in such satisfaction that his brothers sighed loudly.

"Heartless bastard," Raphael said, leaning forward in the chair. He eased to the edge of his seat, then lowered himself to the floor and went to his hands and knees, crawling to the bowls.

"S'your own fault you're that sore," Michelangelo said. "If you were up and moving, you'd feel better by now."

Donatello shot him a look as he set his laptop on the floor and scooted away from the fireplace, coming beside Raphael so that they sat shoulder to shoulder, leaning on each other for support.

"We are almost literally thawing, you brat," he said, cupping his hands around a soup bowl and holding it close, breathing the warm steam. "Oh man...that feels so good."

"Feels better inside," Michelangelo said. "Don't let it get cold. We don't have a microwave to heat it up again."

"That's what stove tops are for," Donatello murmured, but he began drinking from the edge of the bowl, wincing as it burned going down. "But okay, yeah, that's pretty hot."

"...yeah, not bad," Raphael said, grumbling as he ate. He gave Michelangelo a nod, though, for the double portion.

"No problem," Michelangelo said. "It was just boiling some water. Leo, you gonna come get yours?"

Leonardo didn't answer. He'd sat straight, studying the diary more intently. Frowning, he flipped back a page, then another.

"Uh," Michelangelo said. "Earth to Leo, chick diaries ain't that interesting."

"I'm not..." Leonardo huffed, annoyed as the page began to crack under his fingers. "Dammit. This thing is just too old."

"It's breaking apart?" Donatello asked.

"Not that," Leonardo said. "I mean, you're right. It is, but that's not—it's the handwriting. The ink. It's getting so blurry that I'm not sure what I'm reading, but..."

He brought his feet up, curling in the chair and pulling the blanket up.

"January 12," he read. "Terrible commotion last night. Animals in the barn horribly frightened. Edward told me to stay inside as he and Marley and Jacob investigate. Aunt Dorothy in terrible fright. Sat with her until dawn. Edward believes deer ran through the clearing past the road and knocked their antlers against the barn. Tracks everywhere in the snow."

"January 15, bark stripped off the trees. Marley says the local deer are starving. Has taken to wearing rifle at all times. Edward and Jacob, the same."

"Rifles," Raphael scoffed. "For starving deer?"

"January 18. Have moved upstairs. Edwards insists. Not allowed out of the house. No one will tell me what happened last night. Horrid rest cure. Feel terrible useless."

"January 20. Jacob lies to me. That was not a wolf. I was not sleeping. That was no dream."

"January 22. I saw it. Not it—not it—but I saw the cow. Half the cow. Poor Betsy. Her lowing woke me and then she shrieked and. Great streaks of blood on the snow. The barn door banging in the wind."

Leonardo paused, compulsively checking the window again. Smooth snow. No tracks.

The radio hissed static at an uncomfortable volume. Donatello reached out and turned it completely off, musing on the question that raised.

"Did it figure out the latch on the barn door?" he whispered. "That's really not much of a leap. Not much farther to working the kitchen door."

"The barn door isn't like the kitchen door," Michelangelo said, also whispering. "That one's round. And locked better."

"Barn door ain't got glass in it," Raphael pointed out. "Or the big front windows."

"What else does it say?" Donatello asked.

"That's as far as I got," Leonardo said, keeping his place in the book while flipping forward. "I didn't—"

He stopped.

His brothers sat straighter, glancing at each other, then at the eldest. Leonardo studied the page intently, his gaze sweeping over details in each corner. As the silence stretched, Raphael huffed.

"Quit stalling," he grumbled. "What is it?"

Leonardo turned the book so they could see. In her diary, June Mayfield had also drawn the creature.

Her sketch was as haphazard as Leonardo's, the arms and legs similarly blurry with indistinct hands and hooves. But the head was clear, a long triangle with sharp teeth at the tip, and two dark sockets for eyes that stared directly out of the page. From the top of its head, tall horns branched out wildly like a broken halo, and above that, long spikes came out of its back, fading into a blur.

Michelangelo grabbed his brother's sketch from the floor and held it up beside.

"She missed the ribs," he said uselessly, "but the face is clearer."

"'I saw it'," Leonardo said, reading again. "It saw me. It looked up at the window. It knows I'm here. It wouldn't come in the light—Edward has a lamp at nearly every window. The lamp here is two windows over, though, and. We saw each other."

Leonardo swallowed once, cursing himself for their own close call and his own mistake.

"I guess the light was a good idea," he mumbled.

Despite the wind blowing against the walls and the constant puffs of snowflakes hitting the glass, Raphael quirked a smile.

"Don't take it too hard," he said. "It's a ninja like you. It don't like the light, neither."

Leonardo couldn't stop his small smile, but that faded as he turned the page. And turned another page quickly. And another.

"What...?" He shook his head once. "It just stopped."

"What do you mean 'it just stopped'?" Michelangelo asked.

After looking at the last pages, blank but unlined and clearly not for writing, Leonardo closed the book and tossed it to his little brother.

"I don't know," he said. "There's stuff after it, but it's just like what was at the beginning. Almanac dates and bible verses. Nothing that she wrote."

"What?" Michelangelo flipped through the pages, tilting the book so Raphael and Donatello could see. "Okay, did she die? 'Cause that's totally what would've happened in a horror flick."

"Give it here," Donatello said. He cradled the open book, finally seeing the numerous sketches June Mayfield had drawn in the diary, filling pages with flowers, scenes of her cousins at work, the cows in the field and the snow in the windowpane. He turned each page until he reached the end. "No, I don't think she stopped. See, at the back, down at the bottom—'Montgomery set, series Celestial'. It's like a set of journals. She probably just switched to the next one."

All of them looked at Leonardo, who groaned and put his head in his hands.

"God...dammit."

"What?" Michelangelo asked, a growing panic as he looked from his brother to the fireplace. "Oh geez, we didn't use them for kindling, did we?"

Raphael frowned. "Don't tell me they're in the barn."

"No no," Leonardo sighed. "Nothing like that. It's just...I really didn't want to go back in the attic."

Donatello frowned. "Don't worry. You won't."

Stung at his brother's tone, Leonardo lifted his head with a frown to match. "Uh, if you want the next journal, yeah, I will—"

"What?" Donatello asked. "Go to the second floor that we've stopped heating? And climb up into the attic that's got like no insulation? It's so drafty I wouldn't be surprised if there's snow blowing in."

"Less than five minutes," Leonardo said, "and I wouldn't be out in the elements. Don't get so dramatic—"

"Oh, I am not the drama queen in this family," Donatello said.

Michelangelo considered that. "Did you mean Leo or Raph?"

"Can it, twerp," Raphael said with a smack to the back of his brother's head.

"I'll go up there," Donatello said, already gathering his legs underneath himself, "get all the books, and bring them down here where we can sort them out."

"Don—" Leonardo tried.

"You're still shaky from the cold," Donatello said.

"So are you."

"Yeah, but I still won't succumb as quickly as you would up there."

Michelangelo and Raphael both winced. This was bordering on the thing that was not to be discussed, only alluded to. As much as their big brother could piss them off, some things were simply not thrown in his face.

Leonardo took a long breath, letting it out slowly. Calm again, he answered in a flat voice.

"You won't fit."

Donatello blinked. "What?"

"You..." Leonardo huffed and leaned back in the chair, glaring at the ceiling so he didn't have to look at them. "You've grown since the last time we were here. You won't fit through the entrance, let alone the crawlspace."

"I..." Donatello paused. He hadn't been up in the attic for years. None of the wiring that still worked ran through there. "Seriously?"

"Seriously." Leonardo wouldn't look at any of them. "It's not super tight, but...turtle shells just don't bend like that."

Not that their shells weren't more flexible than a regular turtle's, but he made a squeezing motion with his hands. Their shells simply couldn't give and take like human flesh. Donatello wouldn't be forcing himself up.

"What about me?" Michelangelo asked.

"You're heftier than all of us combined," Raphael said.

"I'm serious," Michelangelo said, smacking his shoulder. "I'm, like, narrower. Flatter. And my shell does too bend like that. Well, maybe not a lot, but I'll bet I fit."

They all looked to Leonardo again, and at his tired sigh, they knew he wouldn't argue.

Which was how Michelangelo ended up forcing the widest part of his shell through the attic trap door, turning diagonal to give himself a few more precious inches. Beneath him, Donatello pushed on his rump, muttering comments about his calorie intake that Michelangelo refused to hear, grimacing as he felt pressed so tight that he'd pop...

...and then a great groan of relief as he was finally through. Donatello said something about widening the space by pulling out some of the supports, but he didn't stick around to listen.

No wonder Leonardo hadn't wanted to come up here. The flashlight gave him a dim circle smaller than his hand. The attic was pitch black, and he almost turned off the light, less afraid of the dark than of something skittering in front of him like a horror movie. Snow struck the roof and the wind cut through the thin gaps and breaks in the brick and wood slats, slicing across him with frozen spray that cold that it stole his breath.

"All the way in the back," Leonardo had said. "There were a couple stacks."

"Of course it's all the way in the back," Michelangelo grumbled. "Of course it is."

If the wood up here had even been varnished or painted, years had worn away the finish so that he crept over rough splinters and paint chips. His head bumped a hanging chain, but when he pulled it, there was no light. Hadn't Donatello said something about the wiring being rotted up here? He didn't remember.

A handful of boxes lay scattered around him. Despite the chill creeping up on him, he opened each one, wiping off the cardboard as it crumbled under his fingertips. Mostly he found junk, old plates, tarnished silverware, a figurine so grimy he couldn't see what it was.

He found the books and, grimacing at the damp that had set into them and the slime of mold at the bottom, he shoved all of them into the plastic grocery bag Donatello had saved. A couple of pages stuck to the wood, and he tore those free, not caring if he destroyed something in going too fast. His hands were already shaking.

Anything else, he wondered and swept the flashlight around one more time. 'Cause I'm sure as hell not coming back up here again.

His light stopped at two trunks in the corner.

Oh please let there be treasure inside, he thought. Please, please, please, that'd make all this climbing totally worth it.

With visions of old comics, baseball cards and vintage toys, he crept closer and tried the first. The lock cracked in half and fell at his touch, and when he looked inside...his shoulders dropped. Fine dust and chunks of rock, and a few bullets. He closed the lid and checked the next one.

And froze, a shriek dying in his throat.

A human skull stared up at him with black, empty sockets, resting on a pile of bones.

TBC...