November 8: 1

[Timestamp: November 8 12:25 AM]

The crashing of shattering glass echoes through the room.

“What the hell!?” Swift snatches up the camera and searches for the broken glass. One of the shatter-proof portholes on the door seems to have exploded inwards.

“How did that happen?” Rivet asks sleepily.

The three stallions gather around the glass to inspect, when suddenly another window is heard shattering. It’s found to be the other porthole in the door. The three of them stumble back from the doors.

Static floods the audio followed by a loud bang, like a breaker being thrown. The sudden sound causes the ponies to stumble further. Along with the static, a slight squealing can be heard in the distance.

“Get away…” The same angry female voice from the foal’s room hisses from nowhere.

“Swift?” Rivet turns to the camera.

Swift does not reply.

“Get away from…”

“Are you hearing…” Rivet stops, obviously getting a nod in reply from one or both of his friends.

“Get away from the…”

“What’s it say-”

“Get away from the door!” The voice screams loudly. “Patients are not allowed to leave!”

The doors shake violently, spraying shards of glass around the room.

All three stallions charge away from the door, Clyde slams through the door leading to the waiting room. As the doors to the waiting room close, the glass explodes and the locks can be heard turning. Rivet screeches to a halt on the tile floor, reeling to look at the doors.

“Did those just lock!?” Rivet asks, running back to the doors. He tugs on the handle, but to no avail.

“Damn!” Clyde stomps his hooves in frustration.

“What do we do?” Swift asks, panic gripping his words.

“Is there anything we can do?” Rivet kicks to door one last time.

Swift aims the lens at the other two.“We could…”

“What?”

“Well, we could try to…” Swift searches for the words, “stop them.”

“Stop them?” Clyde cocks an eyebrow. “What do you think we are?”

“Well it’s better than just sitting here, scared of anything that creaks.”

As if on cue, a loud bang echoes through the room, causing them all to jump. Rivet clenches his teeth, staring down at the floor beneath his hooves. After a moment, he raises his head.

“How?”

[Timestamp: November 8, 12:34 AM]

A hoof is rifling through a kitchen drawer. There are random odds and ends filling it, but the hoof grabs nothing.

“Anything?” Swift asks.

“Why are we looking for salt?” Clyde shoots back, closing the drawer he’s looking through.

“It keeps ghosts away, supposedly.” Swift replies.

Rivet closes another drawer. “No. Apparently, they decided that getting the salt out of here was more important than getting bodies out of the basement, and the files out of the cabinets!”

“Calm down. It’s probably just a coincidence, this place must have been dumped in a hurry. Maybe it lost funding, and they never got around to emptying it out.”

“Well, if there’s no salt, what are we gonna do?” Clyde asks.

Rivet fishes out the journal and a flashlight from his saddlebag. “I’m going to find out what happened to this place.”

“Oh yeah! A good story from the crazy Doctor’s journal will calm us down.” Clyde states with heavy sarcasm.

“It’s better than nothing…” Swift grumbles. “We might learn something helpful. Flip to the last page.”

“Will do.” Rivet flips through the journal, coming to the last page with writing on it, still several pages from the end of the book. “Let’s see…”

“November 14,
Well damn it all. I suppose it was only a matter of time, though. The backers finally cut funding to the hospital after the last incident. How could this happen? It just doesn’t make any sense. I’ve failed my patients, my staff, my family, and myself. But, if there is any goodness left in this world, I just hope my patient is in a better place. She’s been through so much. If there is an afterlife, I hope she’s been saved a penthouse apartment, because after all she’s been through, she has certainly deserved it.
Doctor Chlorohoof, MD, Ex-Chief of Medicine.”

Silence falls.

“Go back.” Swift commands, breaking the silence between them. “What’s the incident he’s talking about?”

“Lemme check…” Rivet flips back a few pages.

“November 6,
Why her? Why did she have to do it? Neither of them deserved what happened. I suppose explanation is necessary.
The head Nurse of Night Watch has been-Had been abusing her powers over the last several months. She took patients down for unnecessary EST treatments. I don’t know why she did it. But the logs don’t lie. The number of treatments is sickening. It may be the best treatment we have, but her use of it was maniacal. I suppose it is rude to speak ill of the dead, but it is the truth.”

“Dead?” Swift asks, “How?”

“Let me finish… Wait.” Rivet shifts a page, and as he does, a piece of paper falls out onto the floor.

“Hm?” Clyde picks up the slip and holds it to his face, using a flashlight to illuminate it. “It’s from the local paper. Murder Suicide at Trotsburg’s-Crazy Kills Nurse Before Herself. Earlier this week, there was a break out at Trotsburg’s Hospital. The patient in question dragged her nurse down to the Electric Shock Therapy room in the second basement. Forcing her into the shackles, she is believed to have forced her nurse to endure several sessions of shocks before the nurse succumbed. It would have been a painful way to die. After murdering the nurse, the patient feared the police and threw herself from her second story room window. She died instantly when her head hit the ground.”

“That’s awful.” Rivet shakes his head.

“That’s not true!” Swift states. “I saw her. She was scared of the police, yeah. But she… She couldn’t have killed her.”

“What makes you so sure?” Rivet turns to him. “She was crazy. She was probably hopped up on all sorts of drugs, what was stopping her?”

“That nurse terrifies her,” Swift argues, “she can hardly talk about her, and she’s the only thing keeping her in check. How could she kill her?”

“People do strange things when they’re scared.” Clyde replies.

“What makes you want to take this mare’s side, anyway?” Rivet asks.

“I don’t know. The way the Doctor keeps talking about her. It just makes me so mad that a nurse, someone who’s supposed to look out for ponies like her, was torturing them. What for?”

[Timestamp: November 8, 12:54 AM]

“Are you sure about this?” Rivet is the one behind the camera now. Swift stands in front of the chest in the foal’s room, with Clyde holding a flashlight in his teeth.

“Well, I want to know the truth. This is the only way.” Swift nods.

The shot moves from the stallions, to the door, and back to the stallions. “What about that voice?”

“I think that’s the nurse.”

“The one who got electrocuted?”

Swift nods. “With the information from the journal, and the from what the…” Swift almost has to force the word out, “the ghost said… I’d say it’s more than likely.”

“I wish this wasn’t happening,” Rivet sighs.

“What do you have to do?” Clyde asks through his teeth and the flashlight.

“She seems to come when I hold onto this picture.” Swift notes.

“What picture?” Rivet asks.

“The one of her dream family.” Swift sifts through the pictures, stopping to look up at the camera. “Ready?”

“Sure.” Clyde nods.

“As I’ll ever be…” Rivet agrees.

The screaming sound of static and the familiar chattering sound blow madly through the room as Swift reaches for the desired picture. Rivet and Clyde stumble from the sounds, but Swift seems to be putting all his might into keeping a steady composure. Rivet scans the room shakily as the sound dies away.

“A-angel?”

“What-” Rivet catches himself as the camera falls on the apparition of the mare with the straight mane.

“Angel... You came back.”

“Y-yes.” Swift still stammers. “I… C-came back.”

“We have to hurry and leave!” The mare urges. “That monster could be back anytime now!”

“We have to know,” Swift takes deep breaths, “what happened to the… Monster?”

“What do you mean? She could be coming right now! Nothing can stop her!”

“You don’t… Remember?”

“Angel! She’s coming! We have to leave!”

A loud bang can be heard in the halls, like a steel door slamming shut.

“She’s…” The mare stops, her eyes wide and staring at the door.

“Swift. We should get out of here.” Clyde hisses.

“Right.” Swift comes away from the mare, and the three of them head towards the door.

The mare screams, “Angel! Please! She’ll get you!”

Rivet gulps, “What do we do?”

“I don’t know…” Swift mutters.

“Get the hell back to your rooms!” The angry feminine voice from before shouts.

“Give me the camera.” Swift takes the camera from Rivet and begins scanning the room.

In the far corner of the room, a dark area that has the appearance of water starts to run down the wall into the space where wall meets floor. It runs out of some unseen hole in pulses, like an open wound bleeding out onto the floor. It spreads up the wall, until it is the height of a stallion. Suddenly, the pulsing stops, and a pair of glowing orbs appear in the shadow. The come to rest at head level, gaining the look of angry eyes staring out of the wall. The wall begins to bulge, almost like it is collapsing in on itself, but the wall does not buckle.

Suddenly, what looks like a hoof comes out of the bulge, black like the stain on the wall. It points at the three stallions.

“All of you!” A distorted female voice screams, “Now!”

“Run!” The mare with the straight mane shouts frantically. “Run! And take my foals with you! They need to be safe!”

A hideous, blood curdling chuckle echoes out from the shadow on the wall. “Oh. You’re still seeing those foals? I suppose there’s no other option, then. Hehehe... Let’s go back to the halo, shall we?”

“Angel! Run!”

“I’ll deal with you three after!” The same chuckle echoes through the room as the blackness sinks back into the wall, with the mare being sucked in after it, fading like sand through the cracks until the room is left in still, calm, silence.

“She…” Swift whispers, “Didn’t remember… How can you forget how you died?”

“Maybe she didn’t.” Rivet coughs, his voice cracking with every word. “Maybe she remembers how she died, but not how the nurse died. Why would you be scared of something you killed?”

“Unless she didn’t kill her.” Swift argues.

“We have to be sure. Maybe that’s our only chance of getting out of here.”

[Timestamp: November 8, 1:08 AM]

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

The sound of hooves rolling down metal stairs is all that let’s the viewer know that the camera is rolling when the screen is black.

Click. Clack.

Only the sound of hooves, and the breathing of three stallions.

Click. Tap. Tap. Tap.

As the sound changes, it seems they have reached the bottom of the stairwell. The camera is jostled, and a faint click can be heard just before the image of a metal door bathed in the eerie green light comes into view. The door has a placard on it which read, “Basement 2”. One stallion moves to it and shoves his way through the door, turning back to fix his mane after it falls into his eyes.

In silence, the three of them head down the hall until Clyde asks them to stop. A faint weeping is all that makes any noise in the otherwise dead hall.

“What is that?” Rivet whispers, as if speaking louder than the crying would cause whatever was crying to come after them.

“That,” Clyde whispers in response, “is the Dressmaker.”

Rivet coughs and nods.

“We have something else we need to do right now.” Swift reminds them before urging them down the hall.

The stop at a door when Rivet pulls out the map and keys from his saddlebag. He selects the key and sticks it in the lock, turning it slowly.

The lock clicks and Rivet pushes inward. Stepping through, they find themselves in one of the Electric Shock Therapy rooms. The control booth in the corner of the room has a glass screen separating the viewing doctor or nurse from the patient. The table in the centre of the room has cracked leather clamps for four hooves, the neck, and the waist. At one end is the headpiece, with wires connecting it to a large generator located on the wall opposite of the control booth, but with wires leading back to the booth.

Rivet pulls the journal out of his bag and starts going through it, pulling out the newspaper article as well. Clyde stands close to the door, moving a small metal tool box next in front of the door to hold it open. Swift begins looking around the room.

“Riv, is this the right room?” Swift asks.

Rivet closes the journal. “I think so. If the article and journal, as well as the logs are correct.”

“So, what are we doing down here?” Clyde peers out the door like a lookout.

Swift can be heard tugging a paper out from under his wing. “I want to know if she really killed her.”

“You brought the picture?” Rivet turns his head from facing the glass to look over at Swift.

Suddenly, the glass of the booth explodes outwards, causing Rivet to scream and fall to the floor. He skids on the tiles for a moment before coming to rest just before the table. As he raises himself from the floor, only the left side of his head is seen in the shot.

“Rivet!” Clyde runs from the door over to his friend.

“Are you okay?” Swift asks frantically.

“Oh-” Rivet begins to hyperventilate. “My-my-oh no-please!” He raises a for leg to cover his right eye, then pulls it away after a moment. A small amount of blood is on his hoof as he inspects it with his left eye. “Clyde-Swift-My eye!”

Clyde grabs the sides of Rivet’s head with his hooves and looks him over. “You’re cut bad. We need to get him to a doctor.”

“Am I gonna…” Rivet’s voice is shaking. “Am I gonna live?”

“Yes you are,” Swift states, sitting next to Rivet, “You’re gonna be just fine.”

“The bleeding is manageable.” Clyde nods. “But we need to get him to a doctor for his eye. Rivet. Can you see me?”

“Yes, of course.” Rivet starts taking deep breaths.

Clyde puts a hoof over Rivet’s left eye. “How about now?”

“I…” Rivet stammers. “I’m not sure. It’s all… Blurry and… Blood.”

“Who has the first-aid kit?” Swift asks.

“I do.” Rivet points to his bag.

Swift quickly fishes the box out and pulls out a bandage. “Clyde, is there any glass in his eye?”

“Not that I can see. It looks like it just cut across.”

“Then help me tie this around his head.”

As the two of them work together to tie the bandage on, neither of them notice a shadow creeping down the wall. It runs across the mortared seems in between the brickwork on the wall, like a maze. When it hits the ground, it forms a puddle, a stream, and three more puddles. All four are roughly the size of a ball each.

“Is it tight?” Swift asks.

Rivet groans, “very.” He looks down to his shaking hoof, still with his own blood on it. He takes a deep breath, lets it out quickly and shakes his head, putting his hoof back down.

“Good.” Clyde nods. “Now, let’s get you up and to the ground floor. That’s enough.”

“We have to find out!” Rivet shook his head. “I am not leaving until we find out what happened here. There’s nothing we can do anyway.”

“Let’s at least move away from the explosive equipment.” Clyde reasons.

“He’s right,” Swift says, “we don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Rivet nods and follows Clyde to the door, sitting next to it. A hiss like compressed gas leak startles the three stallions, as Swift turns the camera. Apparently he sees the shadows on the floor, or rather, the four bulging masses on the concrete floor. The have the colour of tar, and they bubble and grow.

Swift hold out the picture. “Hello?”

The four masses explode like grenades, spraying the black substance like smoke around the room. Rivet and Clyde shout in surprise, but it is unclear what is happening to them. The steel door is heard slamming hard. The smoke begins to clear, and a metal object is seen sailing towards the camera. Without a chance to shout in surprise, Swift falls to the ground, the camera toppling away from him. As it lands, it shows Swift’s unconscious face on the ground.

The camera is jostled.