The Screaming Told Him Toby Was Gone
It was the screaming that told Evan the turtle was gone for good.
He’d only left Toby alone for a second — not even a full minute — and now his little sister was crying beside the storm drain, hands muddy, face red, pointing down into the dark.
“I dropped him,” she sobbed. “He slipped in. I didn’t mean to!”
Evan knelt by the open grate. The turtle had been his for two years, since Christmas. Not fast, not fun — but his. A quiet kind of friend.
The drain exhaled a sour breath: wet leaves, copper, something else. Something sweet.
“Toby!” Evan shouted into the dark. “Toby, come back!”
Silence.
Then—soft and unmistakable—came the sound of laughter. Not from his sister. Not from any kid.
High, wet, and wrong.
Evan leaned closer and whispered, “Give him back.”
The dark laughed again.
Descent: Into the Dark Below
Evan didn’t sleep that night.
He lay in bed with the covers pulled up to his chin, flashlight gripped tight in one hand, the other wrapped around Toby’s empty tank. His parents had offered him a new turtle. He didn’t want a new turtle.
In the silence, he swore he could hear the drain breathing. Sometimes it laughed.
Around 2 a.m., Evan dreamed that Toby came crawling up the steps on two legs, his shell slick and shiny with something that wasn’t water. His eyes glowed like little flashlights.
“They’re waiting for you,” the turtle said.
By morning, Evan had made up his mind.
He packed his school backpack with a flashlight, his sketchpad, and his dad’s old multitool—the one he wasn’t supposed to touch. He told his mom he was riding to the park. Instead, he biked to the edge of the woods and dropped to his knees beside the storm drain.
The grate was still loose from yesterday. He pried it open and stared down into the dark. Water trickled faintly, somewhere far below. The tunnel gaped like an open mouth.
Evan took a breath and slid in.
The air was thick and cool, damp against his skin. At first, he had to crawl on elbows and knees, belly scraping the concrete. Bits of grit and rust caught on his jeans. A flickering beam from his flashlight danced over old soda cans and candy wrappers stuck in sludge.
The tunnel stretched longer than it should have.
Eventually, it widened. The floor sloped down, gently but steadily, into something older. The walls became smoother, rounded, no longer man-made. The graffiti changed—less paint, more scratches. Symbols gouged into the concrete. Spirals. Eyes. Rows of teeth.
A broken toy train lay smashed against one wall. A small shoe rested beneath it, soaked and rotting.
Evan swallowed and kept going.
He started to hear voices—faint and echoing. Children singing.
The words were wrong, out of sync, like an old music box on bad batteries. He passed a crumbling tricycle. A wall marked with handprints in something brown and flaky.
Then the voices got louder.
He rounded a corner—and froze.
Eyes. Dozens of them. Glowing yellow in the dark.
And teeth. So many teeth.
The Children Below
They didn’t move at first.
Dozens of kids stood silently in the dark, their eyes glowing like fireflies. Their skin was pale, almost bluish, their faces smudged with dirt. Some wore what looked like old Halloween costumes — paper crowns, shredded tutus, capes made from curtain fabric. One had a pacifier around her neck, the rubber chewed to ribbons.
But it was their mouths that made Evan’s chest tighten.
Each child had a mouthful of jagged, pointed teeth — too sharp, too many. Some smiled when they saw him. Others didn’t.
Then one stepped forward. A girl, maybe twelve, barefoot and tall, with tangled hair and a look in her eyes that made Evan want to back away. A line of black stitches ran down the side of her neck like a puppet seam.
“Is it you?” she asked.
Evan didn’t answer.
She squinted at him, then turned to the others and said, “It’s him.”
As one, the group of children dropped to their knees.
“The Hollow King returns,” they whispered.
“I’m not—” Evan began, but they cut him off with a song, low and droning:
Down the hole and never seen,
Comes the King, all pale and green.
Teeth to sharpen, bones to bend,
He starts the tale and writes the end…
The girl approached again. “I’m Murmur,” she said. “You don’t remember us, but we remember you. You left, long ago. You’re back now.”
“I’ve never been here,” Evan said.
“You forgot,” she said, as if that explained everything.
They led him deeper into the tunnels — through winding corridors lit with hanging lanterns made from glass jars and dead glowsticks. They showed him their kingdom: rooms carved into stone, old blankets turned to thrones, a rusted shopping cart filled with dolls missing eyes.
He saw more of them. Children of all ages. Dozens. Maybe hundreds.
Each smiled like predators.
In a chamber lit with melted candles, they presented him with a robe stitched from bits of jackets and stuffed animals. They placed a crown on his head — made of bent silverware and bottle caps and broken toys.
“The King has returned,” Murmur said again, this time louder.
A chant began. Feet stomped. Teeth clicked.
They cheered.
And Evan, frightened and confused but also a little thrilled, let them raise his hand high.
Then Murmur pulled him aside and whispered in his ear.
“You look just like the last one.”
The Hunger at the Heart
They gave Evan a room.
It was more like a hollow dug into the tunnel wall, lined with old quilts and featherless pillows. A teddy bear missing its face sat slumped in the corner. Murmur told him the last king had stayed there, too.
Evan didn’t sleep.
The tunnels whispered. Not voices exactly, but pulses in the stone, like a heartbeat. He felt watched—even when he was alone. Especially then.
Murmur brought him a book the next morning. A leather-bound journal, stained and brittle. “The first king’s,” she said. “You should read it.”
He opened it and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Inside were drawings—mouths filled with teeth, rows and rows of eyes, people falling endlessly into pits. The pages were scrawled with one phrase again and again:
“The teeth feed lies.”
Beneath that, in shakier writing: “Don’t let it in your mouth.”
Evan snapped the book shut.
That afternoon, they led him through a part of the tunnel system he hadn’t seen before. Murmur walked in front, barefoot but unflinching on the cold stone. The rest of the Toothers trailed behind, singing their strange songs in jagged harmony.
They came to a great door — or what might once have been a door — carved into the wall. Bone fragments had been embedded into its frame. It opened on its own.
Inside was the Heart Room.
It pulsed. The walls weren’t stone anymore but something slicker, organic. They rose and fell like lungs. Light came from nowhere and everywhere, red and warm and sickly.
Evan gagged as the smell hit him: copper, wet dirt, meat left in the sun.
Then it spoke.
Not out loud. Not in any language. The words curled into his mind like tendrils.
You are not the king. But you will do.
Evan stumbled back. His legs wouldn’t obey. He felt as though the floor had become magnetized, pulling him toward the center of the room.
The walls pulsed faster.
He saw, for a second, a shape behind the membrane — vast and wrong, made of mouths, twitching limbs, things that flickered between child and beast. A scream rose up in his throat and never left.
Murmur stood beside him, unblinking.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “It’s older than all of us. It only needs a voice. That’s what kings are for.”
“I want to go home,” Evan said.
“You are home,” she whispered. “We all tried to leave once.”
She looked sad, for a moment. Then she smiled, too wide, showing all her teeth.
Evan ran.
The Escape Attempt
He didn’t know where he was going — just away. But the tunnels were different now. Turned around. Longer, darker. He passed rooms he hadn’t seen before: one filled with hanging shoes, another with open books nailed to the walls, pages fluttering though there was no wind.
He tripped, falling hard, and lay on the ground, panting. His flashlight flickered and died.
Then he saw it — scrawled on the floor in chalk:
“We’re still hungry. Still waiting. Still lying.”
Behind him, something was coming.
He got up and ran.
The tunnels stretched and split and looped, shifting behind his back like a living thing. Every corner looked the same. Every mark he made on the walls faded as soon as he moved on.
The Toothers didn’t chase him—not yet. But he heard them. Whispering. Laughing. Waiting.
He found a side chamber and ducked inside, slamming an old metal gate behind him. Pale green fungus on the ceiling cast a sickly glow across the room.
It wasn’t empty.
Slumped against the far wall was a body.
Small. Dry. Mummified. The skeleton wore scraps of a robe like Evan’s. A crown—made of broken plastic forks and glass shards—was fused into the skull.
The last king.
Evan backed away, bile rising in his throat. On the wall behind the body, carved deep into stone, were three words:
“IT’S A FEEDING.”
That’s when he heard the voice.
“You know now,” Murmur said, stepping into the doorway. “That’s good. You’re ready.”
He ran.
Back through the tunnels. Past rooms and relics and rot.
He found himself back in the Heart Room.
It was breathing faster now. Louder.
The presence inside surged forward—pressing against the walls like a balloon stretched too tight. Mouths opened. Closed. Opened again.
It was hungry.
Evan grabbed a rusted pipe from the floor and drove it into the pulsing wall.
The entire chamber shrieked.
The light dimmed. The floor cracked. Screams echoed through the tunnels—Murmur’s voice among them.
He ran uphill, the walls crumbling behind him, until he saw it—daylight.
A rusted grate.
He punched and kicked until it gave way—and then he was out, gasping, lying face-up in a cemetery as the first rays of dawn touched the grass.
Home Again… For Now
No one believed him.
His parents found him wandering near the edge of the cemetery just after sunrise, filthy, bruised, shaking. The doctors said dehydration. The police said he got lost in the storm tunnels and hit his head.
He didn’t argue.
They asked where he’d been. How he’d survived. What had happened to Toby.
He said nothing.
At night, he sat by his bedroom window and stared at the storm drain at the edge of the yard. The grate had been sealed now—bolted tight by the town.
But he could still hear it.
Sometimes laughter. Other times whispers.
Sometimes, just… breathing.
His little sister came to him a few days later, holding Toby’s empty tank in her hands.
“Can we get another one?” she asked.
Evan stared at the glass. Something moved in the reflection. A flicker of yellow light. A smile with too many teeth.
He turned away.
“He’s not gone,” Evan said softly.
She tilted her head. “Where is he?”
Evan looked out the window, toward the grate, where shadows pooled like water in the sun.
“He’s still down there,” he said. “But he’s not alone.”
🔪 Loved this story? Share the fright!
If The Teeth Beneath sent chills down your spine, don’t keep it to yourself.
Share it with fellow horror lovers and follow us for more nightmares:
Dark stories. Darker imaginations.
Join the Dark Frights community — where horror never sleeps.