They drove past city limits a good half hour ago.
This far into the country there's no light pollution to sponge away any of the dark, and when the headlights go out, it's like pitch outside the windows.
Casey tucks the keys into his pocket, and twists to reach over the middle console and rummage in the back seat. Raph stares at him.
They're in the middle of nowhere, for no immediately apparent reason, parked on a gravel road outside some derelict Colonial-style house that's probably been empty for years, and Casey still hasn't said why.
And now he has a baseball bat.
"Found the sucker," he says with vicious triumph, then digs a flashlight of the glove compartment. "Alright, let's do this."
"Case, what the hell," Raph barks, nonetheless piling out of the station wagon with him. Neither of them have anywhere to be in the morning so he's not as pissed as he could be, but Raph has never done well with secrets or surprises. "What are we doin' out here?"
But Casey is already striding away, with purpose, up the drive toward the creepy house looming at them from the dark.
Raph allows himself a moment of wordless frustration, and another to desperately miss Donatello and the way he could talk sense into Casey better than any of the rest of them could, then follows.
Casey is very obviously casing the place, prowling up and down the front and peering into the dirty first story windows. What business he thinks he has here is still a mystery, and Raph isn't amused.
"Are you seriously going to break in?" he says dryly. "This is private property, even if it's probably condemned. We could get arrested for this."
"Like I give a shit," Casey says, oddly sharp, and busts out the little window pane in the front door. The noise is remarkably loud in the quiet of the country night, and Raph cusses under his breath and doubles his pace to join his boyfriend by the door.
"What the fuck, Jones? I was kidding!"
Casey ignores him, reaching through the broken pane and grappling for the knob on the opposite side of the door. It finally gives with a grating turn, and the door sighs open on tired hinges.
"Couldn't get hold of Mike today," he says, shouldering his way inside. He turns the flashlight on and sweeps the beam through the foyer. There's an inch of dust on every surface, and generous curtains of thick cobweb that makes Raph's skin crawl. "And that'd be fine, I guess, but Leo and Woods can't get hold of him, either."
It feels like Raph has swallowed ice. It isn't like Mikey to go radio silent. Raph looks around at the dusty picture frames and covered furniture with a sense of creeping understanding.
It does seem like the kind of place Mikey would haunt, with his gadgets and nonsense expertise and his brother's glasses perched on the end of his nose, looking for ghosts.
It was kind of charming when he was little – the quirky baby brother, talking to people who weren't there. Mikey always had a weird way of finding trouble, of coming home with scrapes and bruises no one could account for. It got less cute as he got older, and traded bruises for sprains.
And when Don died, it got bad, and never really got right again.
"But why do you think he's here?" Raph mutters, following the path of the flashlight as they head down the hall into the kitchen.
"'Cause someone texted me this address from Don's phone," Casey says shortly, and suddenly, his dogged fixation to get here makes a whole lot of sense. "Didn't answer when I shot a reply back, askin' who the fuck this was and why the fuck they had this phone. So I figured, might as well show up. Could be that Mike needs me, or – "
"Could be that someone needs their teeth kicked in." Raph's hands are curled into fists that hurt at the idea of some bastard sending texts in Don's name, taking advantage of misguided Mikey, hurting April. "Got it."
But a sharp crack and a cry have them hurtling through the opposite kitchen door a moment later. Casey throws open a heavy door to what might have been a drawing room or a sitting room or some rich person shit, and Raph shoves past him a moment later, his heart a painful lump in his throat, because that's Mikey.
Mikey, curled into a pathetic ball in some filthy house on a moth-eaten rug, and he flinches from Raph's hands when Raph tries to tug him up, wide eyes searching blindly for a familiar face.
"Fuck, fuck, Mikey, it's me," he says, panicked. "Case, get over here with the light. Kid, look at me."
Casey was only a step or two behind him in the first place, and kneels with a soft curse. This time, when Raph reaches for him, Mikey leans into his hands with a breath of relief that works its way out of him like a sob.
His dusky face is ashen under that impossible mop of curls, and he's bruised from his temple to his jawline, and he's trembling as if from cold. Raph hugs him, hard, and keeps him there for a long minute.
"No one could find you," Casey says sharply, without preamble, "not even Leo. Mike, what the hell are you doing out here?"
"Dunno," comes the hoarse reply, and Raph tightens his grip on the kid reflexively, because nothing and no one should ever make Mikey this scared. "I dunno, I – last I remember, I was at home, getting ready for – "
He flounders, and Casey prompts him, a little more gently, "Woods says you were supposed to be at his house yesterday, for movie night. You never showed."
"Y- yesterday?" Mikey's face goes pale. "What – time is it?"
"It's like two in the morning," Raph says incredulously. "You're sayin' you don't remember comin' out here?"
"No! Did you see my Jeep outside? Did I drive?"
Casey and Raph share a quick look. There's no way they could have missed his Jeep on the lonely stretch of country road, and short of taking one hell of an expensive cab ride out here for grins and giggles, there's no other way he could have come, save walking.
Raph's thoughts take a nervous turn. He can't help thinking what hallucinations and blackouts and talking to things that aren't there might mean.
Casey, on the other hand, is thinking along different lines. His grip on the iron bat tightening, he says, "Do you think it's – something?"
Mikey flicks a startled look at him. His eyes don't dart back to Raph's face, but only by what looks like sheer willpower. Raph has no clue what the hell is going on here, and a whole host of fresh worries to lose sleep over, but for now he stands and brings Mikey up with him, keeping an arm around the smaller man's shoulders.
"Home," he says decisively, with a narrow glare at Casey. "We can talk about whatever the hell your 'something' is later."
Casey's flashlight goes out. Mikey jumps when the room is plunged into darkness, and Raph grits his teeth – it's been years but maybe he'll always get angryfor this kid's sake, maybe he'll always get defensive when Mikey gets scared, even if it's over something senseless, like a light bulb burning out.
"Just the light, kid, it's okay," he mutters, gruff, but even Casey is pressing in a little closer, and the atmosphere is thick with tension.
"Oh," Mikey says suddenly, softly, "oh, no."
Casey lifts the bat, absurdly, like there's something in the darkness to fight. The room is much colder than it was when they arrived and it's becoming something of a struggle to breathe, as though the air is thinning. The back of Raph's neck prickles and he has to stomp down the urge to look over his shoulder. He wouldn't be able to see anything anyway, not without a light.
"Let's go," he says firmly. "We can find our way out."
The door slams shut so forcefully that the room shakes beneath their feet.
Dread drips into Raph's heart like melting ice, and Mikey says in a very small voice, "I don't think it wants you to leave."