Its shorter then usual but I just needed to update. Exams are coming up so that may affect my speediness at adding new chapters. Sorry.

Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin, only my tortured OCs and this creepy storyline.

Hope you enjoy.

Screams in the Night

The stone floor was cold underneath him. His limbs ached and his head was pounding. It felt like his skull had cracked open. The world around him was fuzzy, but slowly things started to come back into focus. It was dark, only the few torches that hung from the walls lit the haunted hall. But this hallway wasn't like the one before. This one was cold and the shadows were cast on every stone wall. The doors that lined the walls were thick with small windows and bars running across them, like prison doors. Not only that but they were shaped like coffins.

He pulled himself off the ground, looking over his head for the hole he had fallen through, but it was gone. Merlin shivered in the silence of the hallway. He slowly turned to look down the abandoned passage, but he could not see the end. The cells just seemed to keep going. He walked over to the door on his right, took a deep breath, and looked through the window, but the cell was ominously empty.

Merlin felt a cold wind come running down the hallway before him, ruffling his hair. The wind made the sound of someone moaning. Merlin pressed himself up against the wall next to the cell, his heart pounding in his chest. He had never felt so scared in all of his life. Merlin wasn't sure if it was the darkness that surrounded him or the eerie silence that came from the cells that disturbed him more. If he could have his way he'd close his eyes, cover his ears and never move again, but he couldn't let himself be defeated. He had to find Arthur, wherever he was.

Arthur could be anywhere in this deformed house full of its labyrinth hallways and nightmare rooms. The Old Mother had filled it with fear long ago. Some of the nightmares were ancient and had been there for centuries, reliving the terrors over and over again, never being allowed their peace. The ones trapped inside these rooms didn't get their eternal rest. Instead they were dragged straight to hell, and there was no way out.

Merlin pulled himself off of the wall, took a deep breath and started walking forward. Either direction would have been fine, both equally as endless, but there was something about this way that pulled Merlin. It could be described as a silent voice whispering words that no one could hear. Merlin was drawn. This may have been a house of horrors but the mystery of this labyrinth picked at curiosity. In here, though, that could just get you killed.

Merlin didn't have anything to go on so he let his curiosity lead him down the shadowy corridor. All that could be heard now was the crackling of the torches, the only light amongst the dark. Merlin ran his hand along the wall next to him to keep himself steady; barely able to see where he was putting his feet. Even the dungeons of Camelot had never been this dank and dreary.

When someone says prison usually you would expect there to be prisoners as well, to fill the many empty cells. Merlin should have been glad there were no cutthroats locked away down here with him, but it was the silence. The silence cut through Merlin's brain, creating thoughts of monstrous things hiding in the shadows, whispering for him to come closer.

Then Merlin stopped. He wanted to say he had imagined the sound, just as he was imagining so many other things. He stood still in the middle of the passageway and listened, not sure if he wanted to hear the sound again. But there it was again. Merlin flinched, his eyes widening.

What he had heard, or sworn that he had heard, was the unmistakable sound of someone sighing. It was a slow breath out, expelling the air in their lungs. It wasn't a sigh that you hear when someone is bored, but more of the sigh as someone lets out their very last breath. Merlin hated to imagine that there was someone out there now lying lifeless on the floor.

Lifeless. That would be one very good word for this place. Life had never walked these halls or been accepted with open arms here. There hadn't been a time before the Old Mother had worked her demented enchantments and curses on it. It had only ever known this lifelessness. Life was something that went on out there, in the world of the ones who breathe. This house had only ever known what went on after that breath had gone.

Merlin heard the sigh again, but this time it was much closer. So close that Merlin could have sworn he felt the breath on the back of his neck. He span around but no one was there.

Merlin had never been one for ghost stories. He's seen enough that you would think nothing would freak him out anymore. When he was younger his friend, Will, used to tell ghost stories. That was before Merlin discovered that ghosts were real. But the stories had only ever been stories, and there had only been one ghost at a time. It had never been anything like this.

His mind wandered back to Jay and the feeling of her hand slipping from his. Jay had looked so real when they first met her. Maybe it was something about this place, something that brought the dead to life, in a way. But there would be no warm reunion with a lost loved one. Merlin just hoped that he wouldn't find anyone he knew locked down here. This wasn't what he had meant when he had bid them goodbye and hoped that they would rest in peace. This was far from peace. No one should be down here.

There it was again!

"Hello?" Merlin managed to get out, mustering up all the courage he had. He was Emrys, one of the most powerful men to walk the earth. So why was his heart beating so fast? It didn't make sense, but then again nothing really made sense here. Sense was for the sane, and the Old Mother was anything but.

No answer came out of the dark or a voiceless mutter of a reply. Was anyone down here, or had the Old Mother just made this part and forgotten about it? Perhaps she used to use it but had since abandoned it. No. That wasn't right. The Old Mother had opened up the floor underneath him and separated him from Arthur. There had to be a reason, but why here?

"Why would she leave me here alone?" Merlin pondered aloud.

"Because one of humanities greatest fear is to be alone." A spectral voice sighed behind him. Merlin looked around for the source, but there was no ghost to be found.

"Humanity fears many things, even each other." The disembodied voice sighed again. The voice seemed to echo off the walls. "It casts away all that it fears until it is left alone, but still trapped by fear."

"Who's there?" Merlin tried.

"No one." It sighed, seeming to move around the corridor.

"And everyone." This voice was different. It crackled and sounded like it had a glitch. "Why would she leave you here alone, you ask?"

"Who ever said you were alone?" The first voice giggled, still with a hint of a sigh.

"It isn't often that we get visitors." The second voice crackled.

"Or new cell mates." A third voice hissed and cackled. "He doesn't look like much of a threat." Thousands of voices erupted in laughter, booming around the dark, shadowy hallway.

"Where are you all?" Merlin span around, trying to see where these endless voices were coming from.

"We're right here." The first voice sighed again. "All around, and yet we are still nowhere to be found."

"What cell will he take?" A fourth voice asked excitedly, followed by its hysterical laughter.

"There's no more room in here." The third voice hissed.

"I'm sure we can find, find space, space." The second voice glitches on the last two words, saying them twice.

"It isn't up to us." The first voice released a breath of air. "The shadows will decide."

"Not the shadows!" The fourth voice shrieked. "Don't let them near us."

"He brought them here." The third voice spat. "Its his fault."

"Shush." The second voice crackled. "Silence."

"They're here." The first voice faded, and suddenly everything went quiet.

Merlin was alone in the dark again. But he wasn't really. The shadows were coming. That's what the voices had said. A shiver ran up Merlin's spine. These were the same shadows that tore Jay away, taking her to some unknown room, filled with her own kind of horror.

The temperature around him noticeably dropped. The torches on the walls flickered, dimming. A gust of wind ran down the hallway, as if it too wanted to get away from whatever it was. So Merlin ran like the wind. He didn't know where he was going. He just knew that it was away.

He would have kept on running too if the ground hadn't shaken beneath him, sending him off balance. He stumbled, and when he looked up again a shadow was blocking his path. Its darkness swirled around in an almost human shape, almost, but not quite. Then it opened its gaping crevice of a mouth and let out a blood-curdling scream. Merlin covered his ears. It was like the cries of a thousand tortured souls. The voices that had once been laughing before let out screams of agony and betrayal. It broke Merlin's heart, and he stumbled back.

Merlin stumbled back, right through one of the thick doors, now open, and into a stone cold cell. As soon as he stepped through the door all of the screams stopped. The thick wooden door slammed shut, trapping Merlin on the wrong side. He ran up to the door and peeked through the bars of the window. The hallway was empty now. He tried to open it from the inside, but it wouldn't budge.

"There's no getting out that way." A defeated voice said beside him. Merlin turned and spotted a dark form curled up in one of the corners with its knees pulled into its chest.

"Trust me. I've tried." The dark form said, looking up. There was mud and soot staining his face, but Merlin knew him. Yes, Merlin recognized the crushed looking figure crouching in the corner. But he wished that it he didn't.

"Will?"

Thanks for reading and please continue with the spectacular REVIEWS!

Please give me suggestions. I'd love to hear them and would appreciate all the advice.

The rewriting of I Will Never Forget is going well and I've started on new scenes that were never in the original. So that is going to be fun to write.

Hope you all are doing well and that you continue following because we are heading further into the labyrinth. Try not to get lost or you may never get out.

See you next time.