Donnie had retreated to his room for some peace and quiet and had decided to read a book. Running a finger across the spines of his books until he came across Good Omens. He'd only been sat down on his bed for a few minutes when his shell cell rang, a quick glance showed him who was ringing and he immediately answered.
"Hey April."
"Donnie…" April's trembling voice answered him.
"April, is everything okay?"
"I...I don't know, I might be hearing or seeing things but...Donnie I'm so scared, can you come over?" Her voice wobbled over the phone.
"I'll be there as fast as I can." Donnie promised, already out of his room and heading out of the lair.
"Please hurry." April begged as the call ended.
April held her phone tightly in her hand and she walked over to her bedroom window to open it, giving Donnie a way inside her apartment.
As she was opening the window, she saw something to the left behind her that was reflected in the glass and what she saw made her blood run cold. Hovering only a few inches taller than her was a disembodied head...well, could it be called a disembodied head if all the organs of the body remained? Hanging from the head of what April assumed was a woman due to the long hair, were her lungs, her heart, her stomach, everything, including her intestines which touched the floor.
April took a deep breath before turning around but when she did so...it was gone, April would have thought she had imagined it like a few other things she had already seen that night...except there was a slight pink tinge on her carpet where the disembodied women had been...which had definitely not been there before.
She held her cell to her chest as she tried to calm herself. Donnie would be here soon and he would be able to help her, whether this was real or not.
She nearly leapt out of her skin when Donnie let himself in through the window. He'd made her to her apartment in record time and as soon as he was through the window she threw her arms around him, dropping her
"Oh Donnie, thank god you're here."
"April you're freezing." Donnie commented as he began to rub her arms. "And why are the lights off?"
"Power cut...I think...nothing is working." April said as she leaned into his touch, the cool skinned reptile still warmer than her.
"You said...you were seeing things?" Donnie asked as April let go of the turtle and looked up at his face. Her eyes were bloodshot and she had dark bags under her eyes like she hadn't slept in days but he'd seen her only the day before yesterday and she'd looked like her usual self.
"I keep seeing shadows moving around that look like people...and after I called you I saw...something horrific in the reflection of my window."
"What did you see?"
"A head and...some organs hanging from it." April said as she shivered and Donnie took her into his arms again.
"Which room has the most light?" Donnie asked.
"The kitchen." April replied and Donnie moved them into that room, helping her sit down at the table.
"I'm going to look around the apartment and make sure nobody's here...will you be okay on your own for a few minutes?"
"Only a few minutes?"
"I'll be as quick as I can." Donnie promised.
He left the room quickly, taking out his small flashlight from his belt so that he could shine it around the darkened corridor and into the rooms that he passed.
When Donnie's flashlight shone into Kirby's bedroom, he noticed some pink substance on the carpet, which looked like slime. He shone the light around the rest of the room, nothing out of the usual...but when the light went back to floor, the slime was gone.
Donnie shook his head, trying not to let what April had said get to him, there must be a logical explanation to what April was seeing and hearing.
Continuing through the apartment, Donnie stopped by the bathroom to shine his flashlight across the floor and walls before turning it on the ceiling to see it covered in patches of black and moving more into the room and taking a deep breath he knew it was mold.
Growing up in the sewers, he was used to the different kinds of molds that would paint the walls of their home and became an expert at cleaning it as he knew the bad effects it could have on his family's health.
He had no idea how long this mold had been here but it very much could be long exposure to it that had caused April to start seeing and hearing things that weren't there and the power cut plunging her into the dark and cold would have only made things worse for her.
April had kept her eyes on the door to the corridor where Donnie had gone, waiting for him to come back, trying to ignore the fact that she was alone again.
When April heard a creak from the other side of the room she tried to ignore it but the sound kept repeating and through pure annoyance, she turned her head. Standing across the room from her was a pale woman, her face framed with long dark hair, her eyes were sunken and her jaw broken, her tongue hanging out of her mouth and down to her chest.
Before she could react or the creature could move, she heard Donnie come back into the kitchen and pulled her eyes toward him for a second before looking back, finding the creature gone.
Donnie sat opposite her, looking at her with worried eyes, April looked more on edge than before and he regretted leaving her alone even if it was just for a few minutes.
"Did you see anything...anyone?"
"April, there's some black mold in your bathroom...quite a lot of it and sometimes mold can make people very ill, some people might even hallucinate when they've been around it for a long time." Donnie explained but paused in his explanation as he saw something on the other side of the room.
Crawling along the floor behind April, was a young woman with dark hair that covered most of her face. What Donnie could make out of the rest of her face, was covered in blood. Behind her was a trail of pinkish red blood and Donnie suddenly realised that what he had seen in Kirby's bedroom before may not have been some slime...
"Donnie?" April called to him and his eyes turned back to hers. "What is it?" She asked and turned around, but there was nothing there.
Donatello was starting to ever so slightly freak out, he'd been in the apartment for barely half an hour and apparently the mold was already making him see things, was that even possible? He swore it never happened that quickly in the sewers, yet again this was a much smaller area and more closed in...
"Donnie?" April called to him again.
"Sorry, I was just...thinking...it would best for you to…" Donnie was cut off by the sound of screaming, both Donnie and April's hands went to their ears until the screaming ceased.
"What was that?" Donnie said, his hands still covering his ear slits.
"You heard it too?"
"How could I not...what is it?"
"It sounds like a person screaming...maybe...maybe a banshee?"
"A banshee?" Donnie asked, as the scream sounded again.
"A screaming spirit." April explained, even though Donnie knew what a banshee was, he was more questioning why she thought it was that...there could be plenty of reasonable explanations for a screeching sound...at least that was what Donnie told himself.
"April...we need to clean the mold and then get out of the apartment, you can stay at the lair for a few days to let the place air out."
"Do you think that's all it is?"
"I hope so." Donnie said. "Where do you keep the cleaning products?"
With all the cleaning products April had in the apartment, she and Donnie got to work, cleaning the bathroom as quickly as they could to prevent them breathing even more of the toxic mold in.
"How did this get so bad so quickly?" April commented as they scrubbed at the mold, half of it gone already.
"You'd be surprised, one day you notice a tiny amount and the next it's everywhere." Donnie replied as they started to get close to finishing getting rid of the mold.
"I'm never going to let it get this bad again." April promised herself.
When the bathroom was clean, the two didn't bother to put the supplies away and left the apartment, heading out through April's bedroom window and down the fire escape.
As soon as they were out and into the nearest alley, April felt almost instantly calm and better, wondering if everything really had been down to the mold...what she'd seen...what she'd heard...everything was so real. Taking another deep breath, she threw herself into Donnie's arms and kissed his cheek.
"Thank you."
"Let's get back to the lair April, you'll feel better there." He said, not letting go of her.
The couple walked down the alley and to the manhole cover, both unaware of a shadowy figure watching them but as soon as they disappeared into the sewers, the shadow melted into the darkness of the alley.
"Is it really possible I could hallucinate those things without having any previous knowledge of what they were and what they looked like?" April asked as she scrolled through her phone, finding an image of one of the creatures she'd seen in her apartment.
"You might have seen something online or on TV before and not remembered…" Donnie shrugged.
"I guess so...it just seems weird." April frowned as she put her phone away and was relieved to find they were very close to the turtle's home, although that relief was short lived.
As soon as they passed the turnstiles into the lair, a horrible shrill scream sounded around them, making them tense up and cover their ears, looking at each other in shock.
"What was that?" Leo asked as he, Mikey and Raph came out of their rooms to investigate the noise, coming down to the lair's entrance to meet Donnie and April.
"You heard it too?" April asked the three brothers before turning her wide eyes back to Donnie, who was looking at her with the same worried and confused expression.
So much for it being the mold…
April turned around to look down the sewer tunnel to see a ghostly figure floating down their way and by the way the guys reacted, they saw it too. The four ninja's leapt forward, their weapons drawn as they raced towards the ghost, but their weapons went straight through it and with another scream it sent the four brothers flying backwards in different directions.
The last thing April saw before blacking out was the ghost racing towards her.
April shot upright in bed and struggled to catch her breath, placing a hand on her chest to try to will her madly beating heart to calm itself. She looked around the room frantically trying to make sense of what just happened...had it all been just a very vivid dream?
She felt around her bed for her cell and spotted it on the floor by her bedroom window. She jumped out of bed to grab it and went straight to her call log to see no outgoing call to Donnie that evening. It must have been a dream.
Under the city, Donnie too shot out of bed, his hand shot outwards, mimicking what was the last thing he had done in his...dream?
He shifted in bed, his movement knocking his copy of Good Omens onto the floor as well as his shell cell. He picked both up and quickly checked to see if April had called him that night, but there was no incoming calls from tonight...which was weird considering he was sure that Mikey had butt dialled him earlier but now that wasn't on his call log.
Slipping out of his room, Donnie checked on each of his brothers, who were all asleep in their rooms with no signs that they had been up anytime recently.
Donnie had just made it back into his room when his shell cell rang.
"April? Is everything okay?"
"Um, I'm not sure...I have a weird dream about ghosts...but it felt so real…"
"Was it about mold in your apartment?" Donnie asked and April was silent for a few moments before answering.
"That was causing me to see ghosts and then turned out it wasn't the mold?"
"Were we having the same dream?"
"I think so."
"Do you think you...psychically linked me to your dream, to help you?" Donnie asked.
"Maybe...probably...I'm not sure, just as I think I've got a hold of my powers something happens that just reminds me they're still very out of control." April sighed, making Donnie frown.
"You're doing amazing April...I have a feeling this has nothing to do with your powers."
"What do you mean?"
"Everything just seems odd...it looks like my phone was wiped to get rid of your call, it might have fooled me if Mikey hadn't butt dialled me that night, his call was also missing…"
"My cell was on the floor by the window where I dropped it when you came in…" April said, starting to feel on edge again as she looked around her room for other inconsistencies.
"Someone...or something...is trying to cover up what happened tonight." Donnie said and through the phone she could hear him walking around, most likely doing the same thing she was.
"But...why?" April asked as she made her way out of her bedroom and down the dark hall.
"I have no idea…"
April turned the light on to her bathroom so that she would look up at the ceiling to where the mold had been in her dream and although they had cleaned it in her dream, there was still mold there now.
"The mold is still here, could this have caused the dream?" April asked.
"Possibly, it would be best to clean it as soon as you can." Donnie said and waited a minute, hearing nothing on the other side. "April...April are you okay?"
There was nothing but static coming from the other end of the phone.
"April?"
The only answer he got was a scream, the same scream that had haunted them that night.