Applejack bolted up like a shot in the pitch of the night. The blankets were sultry from sweat and they clung like a leech’s maw to her body as she shifted breathlessly to peer with unseeing eyes into the darkness of her bedroom. Jerking in their sockets, her eyes sought for anything: a motion, an object, anything that could answer the question rolling through her mind--what was that?
From the depths of sleep something had yanked her back to consciousness and stifled the beating of her heart which lay between quivering, oxygen starved lungs. She dared not breathe as her ears tilted, straining for the source of her sudden awakening. Moments passed like hours and slowly her breathing hissed in the silence. The room gradually took a hazy monochromatic color as her eyes adjusted to the slight light dripping through the curtains.
It must have been a dream-- just a nightmare that she couldn’t remember. Some locked away horror brought on from something she ate too close to bedtime and she eased down into her pillows again. She adjusted the sweaty blankets which lay cold against her and was thankful that she could not remember whatever had given her such a fright.
It felt as though her eyes carried sand within their lower lids as the blackness of sleep crept across her senses, numbing them from the world.
First her senses of smell and taste ceased to take in the musk of the excess sweat. Then her sense of touch dulled to the wet blankets. Her sight, already hindered behind the thick lids, accepted the oppressive dark. Nearly removed from realm of reality, her ears pitched in a final effort to register her surroundings. Gingerly her ears recoiled and settled to rest as the veil of sleep hung about her like a curse.
“Help!”
The voice was thick with accent, labored, liquidy like a pneumonia sputter, and distant. It was nearly imperceivable and was a pinprick to the nearly extinguished pony.
“Applejack! Anyone! Please help me!”
The mare’s ears jerked and her senses blared, taking in everything at once while her heart pounded rapidly in her breast. Fully awake, Applejack leapt from her bed and staggered on her hooves. From what direction had the voice called? Whose was it? She couldn’t be certain but she knew it had come from outside so she cantered down the stairs quickly and erupted from the front door of her home, senses alive and pinging in all directions for the strangely familiar voice.
“I’m drowning! Plea…” The voice was cut by a sickening gurgle and sputter. A deep wheezing gasp signified the owner had taken a large amount of water into their airway. From the river came the suddenly deafening river and Applejack galloped away from her home under the curtain of night and into the nearby forest.
Trees seemed to appear out of nowhere as if they were suddenly sprouting before her and she struggled not to crash into them. An unsettling chill slithered like wet tongues across her body from the unseen fog enveloping her. She was guided more by knowledge of her property than her still adjusting vision despite a half moon ghostly glowing above. It seemed as though the forest resisted the light and dismissed rationality. Had this always been the case, Applejack questioned herself. Was the forest always this dark at night?
Pushing away such thoughts, the pony rushed deeper into the woods and toward the frenzied rush of the river. Now, she thought she could hear a frenzied splashing amidst the white noise of a flowing river and hoped not to hear them quieten suddenly.
Her legs ached and her heart winced in fear between rapid hammerings and the distance to the river seemed unnaturally far. She had been to it many times in her life and knew every twist and turn it took. It also seemed strange that it was running so hard to drown out all other natural night time sounds. She had rarely seen the river violent enough to mute the cicadas, crickets, and other animals of the nocturnal world. She reprimanded herself for puzzling over such things when somepony was in danger.
“He...lp! I can’t… breathe! I’m being … pulled… under! HEEEELLL…” The voice called again and Applejack almost recognized it this time. It was tinted with a familiar twang that most ponies of this area did not have but, as if stricken from her memories, it just could not be placed.
“I’m coming! Keep your head up! I’m coming!” she called through fear laden and physically exerted lungs. The voice had been close and she expected to burst into view of the owner at any moment struggling against the rapid current. She didn’t have time to question why the sound never seemed to come from another direction but always in this singular spot.
Again, it seemed the forest had grown larger than she could recall and she feared her aching muscles, blistering lungs, or thrumming heart may abandon her cause before she could help the pony in duress. She could feel saliva on her cheeks from gasping for air open-mouthed and the chill of the night was more like streamers of ice. Still running almost blind under the canopy of the forest, her sweat-coated body shivered from cold and an almost luminescent fog filtered into her sight as she broke the treeline and onto the pebbled shore of the river.
She stood fervently trying to catch her breath through cold-inflamed lungs, eyes scouring wildly at the oddly calm body of water lazily flowing before her.
“What in tarnation?” Applejack’s mind could not comprehend what was happening. The rushing noise of the river was replaced by the mundane sound of the night-time forest. How could this be when she had heard the thunderous roar just moments before? Still her eyes tore across the river’s black-glass surface and she could find nothing.
She stood, shivering from the biting cold of the night on her sweat drenched body. She confusingly stepped into the water despite the gelid torment it splayed across her flesh. She waded out to her knees in the river and looked up and down it’s body in search of anything that could have called out to her.
“Down here,” it said from seemingly within her own head and her heart seized for a moment as she looked dumbly down into the oil-black water. The abyss mirror gazed back at her with only slender glittering of the moon’s light caught in mere particles of time back at her. She was still gasping for breath and the water was calm enough that the force of her breath sent tiny, oily ripples through the almost perfect black pane.
The moon suddenly illuminated the water enough that Applejack stood peering into her own reflection. Uncertainty filled the mare and she wondered if she could be locked in another nightmare, another dream that her mind would hide from her upon waking. She could see the curve of her neck, the orange of her coat, and the straw-blonde of her mane reflected on the surface.
The green of her eyes caught her attention. Somehow they seemed off, more pastel and less bright. It was, she shuddered to think, as if they were dead. She frowned in confusion and closed her eyes tightly, feeling the warm salty water of her tear ducts rinsing the emerald orbs. She opened them again to find the reflection had changed remarkably.
The reflection now stood imperfect, scowling back into her with a twisted grin. Pallid, sickly flesh hung in strands from her face and revealed desiccated strips of rotting muscle or brown-stained bone. The dead eyes almost glowed their sickly frosted green and they lay unblinking in black, sopping sockets.
The reflection grinned a ghastly, desecrated smile and chunks of it’s face began to break off and rise up towards Applejack. The mirror of water rippled as the hunks of decrepit meat broke the plane and obscured the reflection.
Applejack screamed and tried to turn to escape the icy grasp of the water, the cold tongues which previously danced upon her hide froze her in place it seemed and she could not jerk her body free. Again she screamed as terror rent her mind and body.
“You are so sweet. Thank you for saving me.” The voice was garbled and sputtered sickeningly. It sounded as though it’s lungs were filled completely with the black water and it ended with a despicable, gurgling laugh.
Applejack began to sink, being swallowed by the water which she knew should only be knee-deep. She yanked at her legs as the water licked at the edge of her belly. The mare pulled hard, every muscle straining for purchase of freedom but her legs simply could not become unstuck.
One of her legs separated from its socket as she struggled and she howled in pain despite the freezing water swelling to overtake her shoulders. The babbling laughter was wet and thick in her ears and, as the water began to devour her chin, she could see the dead eyes reflecting inches away.
Her frightened cries became muffled as the water took her into its bowels and suddenly ceased altogether as it filled her lungs and stole what little oxygen remained.
The last thing she heard as her vision dimmed was the laughter humbling and chuckling like a babbling brook.
Author's Note
Simple. Quick. I don't know if I'll follw up with other stories but I needed to write something.
