The Greatest Annoyance Twilight Has Ever Faced
Twilight Sparkle versus The Haunted Mailbox
It’s funny how really bad days can sneak up on you. Sometimes you can wake up and just know that nothing is going to work out for you. But other days it seems like it’s just going to be another routinely normal day until your laboratory explodes, a dark god invades, or the quill store gives you a #3 by accident. It’s all downhill from there.
I was actually having a pretty decent day. Princess Celestia had just sent me some new spellbooks to read over. I was especially thankful for Transfers, Tricks, and Techniques to Transmute and Transmogrify Tangible Targets. Transmutation is a pretty complicated school of magic, so I was grateful for the additional study material. Then there were some rare books, like the grimoire of Midnight Sparkle. It was fascinating to read an original work written by one of my distant ancestors, especially when I believed I could improve on some of her old spells and theories. I’d had some fun showing off a few of my ancestor’s spells to some of my friends earlier.
As was typically the case, this particular descent into madness started with Pinkie Pie. I was in the process of converting one of Midnight's spells into a modern format when the library door slammed open. I jerked at the noise, my head whipping around just in time to see her running towards me. Spike, for his part, bumped his head on the bottom of a bookshelf.
Before I had time to register what was happening, Pinkie grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. “Twilight, Twilight! I need you to come with me right now!”
She started pushing me towards the front door, and it took me a few seconds to dig in my heels to slow the two of us down. “Whoa! Give me a minute, Pinkie. What’s the emergency?” Call me crazy, but I like to know what I’m getting into before leaping into the fray. Forewarned is forearmed, after all.
Spike rubbed his head where he had bumped it against the shelf. “That’s what I want to know.”
Pinkie paused, bit her lower lip and started dancing in place. “Twilight! The mailbox ate my mail!”
I took a step away from Pinkie and turned to face her properly. After taking a moment to translate what she said from Pinkie-ese into Equestrian, I said, “Well of course it 'ate' your mail, Pinkie, that's what mailboxes do.”
Pinkie shook her head vigorously. “Nonononono, it ate my mail! It went all—” She grabbed some of the sheets of paper I had been using to write notes on and shoved them into her mouth as she made a series of exaggerated eating noises.
Spike was quicker to the draw at throwing out another guess at Pinkie-ese. One can hardly blame me—she ate my homework! “So you're saying your mailbox came to life and devoured your mail?”
Pinkie swallowed and then giggled. “No, that'd be silly!” I was about to let out a relieved sigh when Pinkie said, “It's just possessed by a spooky ghost!” Ah yes, much more logical...
I gave Pinkie a flat look. “Really? Your mailbox is currently possessed by a ghost?”
“Yuh-huh!” She grabbed my forelegs hard enough to cut off blood flow. “Please, you have to help! It ate the letter Dashie sent me from the Wonderbolt Academy, and it’s being a big meanie because it’s not giving the letter to me.”
I took a nice, long, moment to think this one over. Pinkie had been a bit distressed when Rainbow Dash left for the Wonderbolt Academy. In fact, she hadn't left Sugarcube Corner's mailbox for a few days now, and it had all of us a bit worried. Pinkie was Pinkie, but it wasn’t exactly a well-adjusted behavior to open and close a mailbox for long periods of time. There were the odd eccentricities, and then there were obsessive behaviors.
It wouldn’t be completely unlike Pinkie to convince herself that the reason she hadn’t received a letter was because her mailbox was haunted. The more likely reason was that Dash had simply got caught up in whatever she was doing at the Academy. Dash could be a very focused pony, after all. Though it seemed highly unlikely that this mailbox was actually haunted, it was probably unwise to just ignore Pinkie. It would be fairly embarrassing to have to explain to Princess Celestia about how I hadn’t listened to Pinkie and had allowed a portal to the realm of the restless undead to open up and consume Ponyville.
Also, blowing Pinkie Pie off would hurt her feelings, and nopony wanted that. No, it was much better to at the very least humor her and help her out. Maybe she just needed a friend to hang out with her for a few hours to make her feel better about Dash being away.
“Okay Pinkie, I’ll help you out.” I tried to pull my legs out of Pinkie’s grasp before I lost all sensation.
“Thankyouthankyouthankyou, Twilight! I knew you would help.” She let me go and hopped her way to the door.
Spike gave me a flat look as Pinkie hopped away. “Should I get the aspirin?”
“Yes, lots of it.” I rubbed at my forehead. “I have a feeling it’s going to be one of those days.”
Pinkie Pie thrust her hoof forward when we arrived at Sugarcube Corner. “There’s that meanie mailbox!”
As far as such things go, the allegedly haunted mailbox looked to be fairly mundane. Painted in the same shade of pink as the rest of Sugarcube Corner, it sat upon a carved post, also painted pink, and possessed the little flag common on all mailboxes. Compared to most evils I had faced in my life, this was was probably the least threatening in appearance.
Deciding to approach this problem in a logical manner, I asked Pinkie, “You mind if I ask some questions?”
“Oh! Is this gonna be a pop quiz?” Pinkie asked in her typically bubbly fashion. “Because they’re a surprise, and I think that makes them way more exciting than normal old boring quizzes.”
Seeing no reason to derail the conversation, I nodded. “Sure, let’s go with that. So what exactly is wrong with the mailbox?”
“That’s easy.” Pinkie fixed the mailbox with a fierce glower. “Mattie the Meanie Mailbox is the meanest, rudest, most thoughtless mailbox ever.” She pulled the door to the mailbox open and screamed into it. “And it won’t give me Dashie’s letter!”
Spike rubbed at his chin. “Wait, you named the mailbox?”
“Of course, silly. Everything needs to have a name.” Pinkie leapt onto the mailbox and started gnawing at it. “Even a mean old mailbox!”
I suppose it wasn’t much of a surprise that Pinkie had named the mailbox. From what Dash had told me, she had given a bunch of random household objects names. Like a sack of flour named ‘Madame Le Flour’.
Spike crossed his arms and gave Pinkie a flat look. “Guess Mattie isn’t very nice.”
“Not at all.” Pinkie proceeded to go through the process of opening and closing the mailbox, looking inside with a smile of hope only to immediately turn into a frown of disappointment. “Mattie wouldn’t give me my letter no matter how nicely I asked. I said please, then pretty please, and even pretty please with a cherry on top.” I couldn’t help but notice the cherry currently perched on top of the mailbox. “If Mattie had a heart, it would be a heart of cold steel, yepperie. I even came up with a song to sing about it.”
I tried to interrupt her as she took in a long breath. “You don’t have to sing the song. Really, it will probably slow us down if—”
If you wanna post some mail,
Oh boy are you in for a fail,
It’s the phantom mailbox!
And it’s sure to make you wail!
You could give it a try,
I mean, it won’t make you cry,
Maybe just kinda annoyed,
And make you shout ‘Why?!’
Yes, the mailbox is here to stay,
So just get the heckout of its way,
It ate all of my letters!
Which is just no good, no way José!
Spike clapped at the end of the song—he always did seem to like Pinkie’s songs—and I rubbed at the side of my head as I tried to concentrate on what was important. “So why do you think this mailbox is possessed by a ghost?”
Throwing a blanket with a pair of eyeholes over herself, she stood on her hind legs and made ghost-like gestures. “Because it does spoooky things, duh.”
I pushed down my irritation at the vague answer. Patience was a virtue when dealing with Pinkie. “What type of spooky things?”
“Other than being really mean and stealing ponies’s letters? Hm...” Pinkie sat down and crossed her forelegs in a thinking pose. “I know! It opens and closes itself all the time. All while making spooky noises. Especially at night. Then it’s always getting cobwebs all over it. Oh! And it’s colder on the bottom than on the top.” She leaned towards us and whispered conspiratorially. “And sometimes it bites ponies.”
“Hm.” Spike rubbed the mailbox in an exploratory manner. “Yep, definitely colder on the bottom.” He then flicked his hand. “Also cobwebs. Ew.”
I rubbed at my base of my neck to try and relieve some of the stress I was feeling. “I don’t think cobwebs are anything to worry about. And it’s probably just colder on the bottom because it doesn’t get direct sunlight there. In fact, everything thus far can be explained by fairly mundane reasons.”
“Wait, you have to believe me! Gummy does.” Pinkie reached into her mane and pulled out her pet alligator. “He can sense spirits, you know. Gummy, what can you tell us about the mailbox?” She held Gummy up to the mailbox. There was a moment of silence before the alligator blinked. “See? He’s spooked!”
“Uh-huh...” I could feel that headache coming on. “So do you have any theories on why this mailbox is haunted? Was it planted on some sort of sacred burial ground? Did a pony die at this spot? Was the mailbox made out of iron mined out of a cursed cave, wood from a blighted treant, and constructed by a soulless factory using child labor?”
“Something like that.” Pinkie looked crestfallen as she frowned and her eyes looked like they were seeing something far off. “Let me tell you a story of when I was still a junior apprentice baker. It’s like being an apprentice baker, like I am now, but you’re still learning stuff. Well, I’m still learning stuff, but I’m not learning as much stuff, if you get what I mean. But I’m getting off track. We made a massive wedding cake, for a wedding, in case you didn’t guess. I asked Mr. and Mrs. Cake if you could make a wedding cake for something that wasn’t a wedding, but they said it’s not a wedding cake unless there’s a wedding. Exactly like with birthday cakes, which we had already talked about by then. Which also meant that this cake was super important, given you can’t have a good birthday party without birthday cake. Only more-so because weddings rank higher on the party scale than birthday parties.”
I could feel my patience starting to wane. I moved my hoof in a circling motion. “Move the story along, please.”
“Right, so we were taking the cake, but then the worst thing possible happened—at least as far as being a baker goes. There was this super big commotion going on, and what did I see? A bunny stampede! We tried to get the cake back through the door, but alas, we were too slow. The bunnies tripped us all up, and down went the cake.” Pinkie fell to the dirt by the mailbox and remorsefully pawed at the ground. “And here’s where it fell. Smashed into a million billion pieces.” Pinkie sniffled and wiped a tear out of her eye. “It was such a beautiful cake. Why oh why did something so deliciously covered in frosting have to be destroyed by something so random as a bunny stampede, Twilight? Good cake should never go to waste. And the bride and groom were crushed! Crushed! The world is such a cruel place!”
Spike crossed his arms, looking unimpressed. “And then you planted the mailbox there.”
Pinkie tapped Spike on the nose. “Bingo, bucko!”
I rubbed at my face as I digested what Pinkie had just told me. “So you’re telling me we’re dealing with the ghost of a cake?”
Pinkie shrugged. “I dunno! That’s why I got you to help with that super big and super smart brain of yours. Oh! And all that super-duper magic.”
After hearing everything Pinkie had just told me, I wasn’t exactly convinced that we were dealing with a haunted mailbox. While incidents of great misery, suffering, or death could create the energies necessary for such a haunting, somehow I doubted a dropped cake would cut it, wedding cake or no. Also it was hard for a pastry to have a ghost when it was never technically alive to start with.
“Pinkie, are you sure this mailbox is really haunted?” I placed a leg around Pinkie’s neck to give her a squeeze. “Look, I know you really want to get a letter back from Dash, but she’s probably been too busy with everything she’s doing at the Wonderbolt Academy. I’m sure she’ll remember to send you a letter sooner or later. You just need to be patient. Trust me.”
“But I’m telling the truth, Twilight! Mattie keeps showing me Dashie’s letter, only to ghost it away.” I saw her eyes widen. “Like now!” She dashed up from under my leg, and collided face first with the mailbox with a loud thwack.
I rushed to her side and helped her to her hooves. “Pinkie! Are you okay?”
Pinkie rubbed at her muzzle with a groan. “Yeah, but I almost had Dashie’s letter. I was sooo close that time.”
I frowned at that information. “You haven’t been hitting your face against the mailbox over and over again, have you?”
Pinkie puckered her lips into a pout. “No, sometimes Mattie closes its door on my hoof. Not only does it take away my letter, but it also taunts me with it. Like right now!” She waved wildly at the mailbox. “Looklookloook! Dashie’s letter is right there!” I looked, only to see a closed mailbox. “Phooey. It closed before you could see it.”
I turned away from the mailbox and back towards Pinkie with a frown. I think I was starting to see what game was going on now. More and more, this was starting to look like one of her pranks.
I gave Pinkie an amused smirk, deciding to play along for a little while longer. “So let me guess, the mailbox is open now that my back is turned?”
Pinkie nodded enthusiastically. “Uh-huh!”
Spike braced against Pinkie’s shoulder to get a better look at the mailbox. “Yep, there’s a letter in there.”
I resisted the urge to apply my hoof to my face upon seeing Spike helping Pinkie with her game. “But when I look at the mailbox—” I turned, unsurprised to see the mailbox closed “—it closes itself?”
Spike took a sharp breath. “Wow, that’s kinda creepy.” He stepped up to tap the door of the mailbox. “It moved all on its own.”
I rolled my eyes and gave Pinkie an amused smile. “Okay, Pinkie. I think you’ve—”
There was loud metallic clap and Spike made a surprised yelp. “Twilight! Help!”
I turned around to see Spike hanging from the mailbox by his tail, thrashing widly.
“Oh no! Spike!” Pinkie wedged her hooves into the gap Spike’s tail created in the mailbox’s door, trying to pull it open. “Don’t worry! I won’t let the ghostie take you!”
I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Okay, you got me. You can stop with the prank now.”
“This isn’t a prank, Twilight!” Pinkie kept pulling on the door, and the edged tone to her voice caused a pang of worry in me.
Spike kept struggling to get his tail loose. “Seriously, get me out of this thing!”
Suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore. My horn glowed, and with a quick teleportation spell, I popped Spike to my side with a burst of magic. “Spike, are you hurt?” I looked him over, trying to see if he was injured around his tail.
Spike grasped his tail to glance it over. “Nah, I’m fine. More dizzy from the blood rushing to my head than anything.” I suppose it wasn’t a huge surprise that Spike hadn’t been hurt. He may be a baby dragon, but he’s still pretty tough. Dragons weren’t considered formidable for nothing. Still, I didn’t like seeing Spike in danger.
“See!” Pinkie poked the side of the mailbox. “Told ya Mattie likes to bite ponies... And dragons now. Or maybe it always liked biting dragons but never got the opportunity until today. I don’t know—Mattie doesn’t talk much.”
Confirming that Spike seemed to be fine, I stepped between him and the mailbox. I eyed the mailbox much more cautiously than I had before. Whatever the deal was with this mailbox, it was clearly not natural if it was biting ponies and one baby dragon. “So is it always trying to bite ponies?”
“Mhm.” Pinkie narrowed her eyes at the mailbox. “Though Mattie doesn’t bite very hard. Here, let me show you!” She then reached her hoof into gaping maw of the mailbox.
“Pinkie! No!” I reached out to try and pull Pinkie’s hoof away from the mailbox, but my reactions were too slow and the mailbox shut on her hoof. I encased the door with my magic and attempted to yank it back open, but to no success.
Pinkie seemed entirely unconcerned, despite her hoof being trapped inside of the mailbox. “Don’t worry, silly, it doesn’t hurt. And I’ve gotten lots of practice getting myself out of Mattie over the last couple of days. I just need to turn my hoof just so and...” I didn’t catch exactly how she did it, but Pinkie did something that allowed her to pop her hoof out of the clutches of the mailbox. “There, free as a bird.” She showed off where she had been bitten and I didn’t see any significant marks.
“Odd.” Curious, I leaned my head closer to the mailbox, but quickly pulled my head back as it snapped at me. Even if the thing didn’t have much biting power, as Pinkie showed, I would rather not test it for myself. “So why were you so concerned about it biting Spike?”
“Because poor Spike was scared.” Pinkie picked up Spike and gave his a nuzzle. Spike gave Pinkie a flat look—no doubt over his hurt pride. “And not in the fun Nightmare Night way, either. But in the bad touch sort of way.”
“I wasn’t scared,” Spike said in that defensive tone males tend to use when their courage is questioned. “Just kinda surprised. I would have gotten out eventually, really.”
“Well, what’s most important is that you’re fine, Spike.” I gave Pinkie’s hoof another look. “Pinkie too, for that matter.” I was still having trouble adjusting to the idea Pinkie had so casually stuck her hoof into that thing. Pinkie had always been a bit nuts, but that was pushing the envelope.
In any event, there was still a mailbox to deal with. I wasn’t entirely convinced it was haunted, but there was something wrong with it. We could have just destroyed it, but if Dash had sent a letter and the mailbox had stolen it, then that course of action might destroy the letter as well. Not to mention the potential issues with destroying the vessel of a possessing spirit. The most reasonable course of action at the moment was to gather more information and figure out exactly what I was dealing with here. Once I had a better grasp of the situation, I could come up with a proper plan.
I began circling the mailbox at a safe distance. I reached out with my magical senses, seeing if I could discover anything that might give me a clue to the mailbox’s nature. I probably should have done so sooner, but the idea of a haunted mailbox is a bit ridiculous. “So Pinkie, how long has the mailbox been like this?”
Pinkie hummed as she rubbed at her chin. “It’s always been like this. Well, not always-always, like forever and ever. Just ever since we put it up a few years ago. You know, here.” She gently pawed at the ground near the mailbox. Her eyes watered a bit as she sniffled. “Where the wedding cake was dropped.”
“Riiight.” After a careful examination, I discovered that the mailbox definitely felt magical. The magic had the cold, hostile feeling typical of necromantic energies, but I didn’t have much experience with such things. I had never faced a necromancer before, and I didn’t have much cause to raise zombies or unleash other undead nightmares upon the world. Not to mention it is highly illegal to use necromancy. Most of my knowledge on necromancy was pure extraoplation from fragments still legal to read about. I knew it was possible the mailbox was possessed, likely even, but I couldn’t say for sure yet.
I attempted to scan the mailbox more deeply—only for it to quickly swivel towards me and fire a rolled-up advertisement into my face.
“Ow!” I rubbed at my stinging nose. That thing had actually launched a projectile at me!
Spike scampered up to look at my muzzle. “You okay, Twilight?”
“Yeah, nothing damaged,” I answered. “More surprised than anything. I mean really, what the hay?” I was starting to seriously consider taking a baseball bat to the stupid mailbox. This was quickly turning into more trouble than it was worth.
“Oooh, new ads!” Pinkie picked the advertisements from the ground but quickly scowled as she read through it. “Aw, this is over a week old. Most of the deals aren’t any good anymore.” She gave the mailbox a cuffing with the ads. “You could at least spit out ads for this week.” Her eyes sparkled and I saw an idea flicker in her expression. “Or maybe next week’s ad! Can you do that, Mattie? Can you be really super magical and give us ads before they get sent out through the mail?” Mattie’s reply was to bite down on Pinkie’s head. “Is that a yes or a no? We really need to work on your communication skills, Mattie. You know that?”
I rubbed at the sides of my head, a dull, painful throb starting to develop. “Spike, aspirin. Now, please. It’s one of those days.” I supposed I should have been more concerned with Pinkie’s head being in the mailbox, but it was Pinkie, and she didn’t seem particularly perturbed by her present predicament.
Spike dutifully presented a pill. “Here you go!”
I quickly downed it and asked Pinkie, “So why hasn’t anypony done anything about this mailbox yet? I mean, it must have caused trouble in the past. It’s your mailbox. You and the Cakes interact with it on a daily basis.”
Pinkie made a so-so gesture with her hoof, head still stuck in the mailbox. “Meh. Not so much.” She braced her hooves against the rail of the mailbox and popped her head out. “Mr. and Mrs. Cake told the Guard that their mailbox was acting spooky, but they said they’d get back to them someday. But I guess someday never came, because Mattie is still here.”
From the sounds of it, this haunted mailbox had been woefully neglected for a long time. I rubbed my eyes in frustration at the idea that I had walked by this mailbox who knew how many times without even suspecting something was really wrong with it.
“So does anypony know anything that might be helpful?” I asked.
“I bet Derpy over there can tell you all about it.” She pointed to a yellow maned, gray-coated mare wearing a mailpony’s hat. She had a mailbag slung across her shoulder as she approached Sugarcube Corner. “I bet a mailpony would know all sorts of things about haunted mailboxes.”
I had my doubts about that, but there were some questions I wanted to ask. Having a haunted mailbox had a lot of practical considerations for day-to-day life. “Hey, Derpy!” I called out to the mailmare. “Could I talk to you for a minute?”
She stopped short of Sugarcube Corner’s doorway. “Sure, what do you need?”
“I wanted to ask you a few questions about this mailbox.” I pointed in the direction the offending mail holder.
Derpy tipped up the side of her hat to scratch at her cranium. “Oh, you mean the haunted mailbox none of us mailponies can see?”
I quirked an eyebrow. “You can’t see it?”
“Nope.” She shook her head. “Nor can anypony else when I’m looking at it.”
“Okay, that just sounds ridiculous.” But when I looked around toward the mailbox I saw to my confusion that it wasn’t there anymore. “Huh...” I waved a hoof where the mailbox should have been and felt nothing.
“Yeah, it’s pretty freaky.” Derpy shifted her mailbag into a more comfortable spot. I opened my mouth to ask from the list of questions that was quickly forming in my mind, but Derpy stopped me with an upraised hoof. “How about I just go ahead and answer as many of your questions right off the bat so that I can get back to my mail route?” Before I could reply, she started listing off answers. “It doesn’t disappear or reappear if anypony is looking, but something always distracts you or blocks your line of sight when a mailpony starts to look at it, and will disappear at that moment. No, I can’t touch it, even if you blindfold me. Yes, I do believe that it’s there. Yes, it’s probably haunted, and we know that at the post office. And no, we don’t have any plans for dealing with it. I just deliver the mail directly to the Cakes and Pinkie, and everypony seems to be happy with that. How’s that for a start?”
“Pretty good,” I admitted. “So you’re not bothered that there’s a mailbox you can’t see and deliver mail to? And that nopony seems to be in a rush to fix it?”
Derpy shrugged. “Nah. I give the mail directly to a lot of ponies. Especially those that live at their business.” She flashed a smirk at me. “And this way I get a free muffin out of the deal.”
“Wait.” I closed my eyes as I tried to logic my way through a new issue that I just discovered. “If you and none of the other mailponies can see the mailbox, how does it even get letters in it? Like that letter from Dash that Pinkie thinks is in there, or the advertisements it just spat at me?”
Derpy raised her hooves in a shrug. “I have no idea. That’s just one of Mattie’s Mysteries. There have been days where I’ve sworn I had a whole stack of letters for the Cakes, only for the lot of them to disappear on me.”
“Why I call her Mattie the Meanie Mailbox.” Pinkie pressed her muzzle against the side of the mailbox while giving it a hateful scowl. “I know you’ve been keeping some of my family’s letters from me. You have any idea how much I like Maud’s letters? Do you?”
“But it’s pretty rare for anything important to be lost.” Derpy wiped off some of the sweat from her brow. I couldn’t exactly blame her given how heavy that mailbag looked.
I stared at the mailbox, which had reappeared again now that Derpy wasn’t looking at it, and got the distinct impression that it was giving me a baleful glare. How it did that without eyes or any kind of recognizable face, I wasn’t quite sure. “I don’t know, this just seems a bit too weird for me to believe that ponies just accept this.”
“Meh, seems pretty typical of Ponyville to me.” Spike started counting off with his talons. “Like how ponies just kinda accept living by such a dangerous place as the Everfree Forest. The fact that both Nightmare Moon and Discord invaded the town. Then there was the ursa minor, Cerberus, the parasprites, the dragon, the—”
“I get it, Spike!” I interrupted. “So ponies in Ponyville have a high tolerance for weird things.”
“Weeell.” Derpy made a circling motion with her hooves. “It’s not like you and the library are exactly normal either, Twilight.”
That caused one of my eyebrows to raise. “What do you mean? Okay, I know there’s the world saving stuff, and the fact that I’m Princess Celestia’s student, and ... okay, so maybe I’m not the poster filly for normality, but the library is just a library.”
“And a pegasus crashing hot spot,” Derpy pointed out. “Trust me, all the pegasi complain about how the library seems to just suck them in. Just about every other pegasus in town has crashed into the library at some point in their lives.”
She had a bit of a point. I couldn’t remember how many times Dash had crashed into the library. Then Derpy had smacked into it a few times as well, while delivering the mail. Then there was the incident with Fluttershy and the bees...
“Ohohoh!” Pinkie hopped up and down excitedly. “Don’t forget how many times you’ve blown up the library, Twilight.”
“Those were contained explosions,” I grumbled. “I only blew up the library’s basement ... a little bit. Those few times. Look, you learn as much from failures as successes in science, if not more.”
Spike snorted derisively. “Yeah, that’s the line she gives me whenever we have to put the basement back together.”
“Not now, Spike.” Yep, there was my patience beginning to fray. Dealing with haunted mailboxes should not be so stressful. I didn’t really have a basis to make a statement like that, but I was doing it anyways.
Derpy glanced towards the Sugarcube Corner door. “So is there anything else? Because I need to get back to my mail route.”
I waved for her to go on ahead. “Go ahead. Thanks for the help.”
“You’re welcome.” She waved as she entered the baking business. “Good luck with Mattie!”
“Thank you!” At the rate we were going, I was going to need all the luck I could get.
Spike patted my shoulder to get my attention. “So, what next?”
“Yeah, have you figured out how to get Dashie’s letter from mean old Mattie?” Pinkie asked.
I stared at the object as I tried to figure out my next move. “Not yet.” It didn’t even help that I wasn’t even sure if the mailbox even had a letter written by Dash. For all I knew, we were after one big red herring. “I want to do some experiments to figure out exactly what I’m dealing with here.” While some sort of poltergeist was one possible explanation for what was happening, it wasn’t the only one. Between a variety of spells, demons, rogue spirits, and fairies, there were any number of explanations for what I was seeing right now. Best to have a solid foundation of knowledge before moving forward so that I didn’t make a mistake.
“Yay! Experiments!” Pinkie pulled me into a bear hug that crushed my ribs. “Experimentalizing is so fun with you, Twilight! Especially when you hook me up to really zany looking helmets with all the cool lights and neato beeping noises. Or when something explodes, or you turn frogs into orange-frogs, or any of the other crazy stuff you do.”
I tried to ignore the fact that the things Pinkie mentioned had resulted in some spectacular failures. There were reasons why I buried my research of Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense under concrete in the library basement.
“Er ... right.” After struggling a bit within Pinkie’s hug, I managed to get my legs into a position where I could breathe again. “I think we’ll just try and figure out its capabilities and nature, and from there see if we can get your letter, Pinkie.”
“Sounds like a super-duper plan!” She let me go and I nearly fell to the ground. “What’s first?”
Spike held out an arm to brace himself against the mailbox. “We’re probably just going to poke and prod the dumb mailbox. Like this.” He opened the mailbox and a roaring howl of a wind screeched out of the interior—knocking him down onto his rear.
I winced at my number one assistant. “Spike, be careful!”
Spike looked up at the mailbox and grinned. “That was. So. Cool!
“I know, right?” Pinkie agreed and hopped around Spike. “Do it again! Do it again!”
“Alright!” Before I could stop him, he stood back up again, closed the door, and then opened it again. This time the mailbox flashed from the inside and a crash of thunder rolled out of it. Spike and Pinkie laughed with amusement as he opened and closed the mailbox as fast as he could. Every time it was opened, the mailbox let out a different slightly spooky sound—cats meowing, a breaking tree branch, a horrified scream.
Seeing enough of this, I grabbed Spike and yanked him from the mailbox. “Spike! Stop taunting the haunted mailbox!”
“Fiiine,” Spike grumbled and kicked at a stone.
Satisfied that Spike was going to refrain from molesting a moderately malicious mailbox, I turned to face the increasingly annoying thing. “So, first step: I’m going to try and communicate with it.”
Spike crossed his arms and shot me a sideward glance. “You think that’ll actually work?”
“Probably not,” I admitted. “But at the very least it will tell us how intelligent this thing is. Not to mention if it can understand us.” I shrugged. “Any information is relevant information at this point.”
I squared my shoulders before speaking loudly and clearly to the mailbox. “Hello, my name is Twilight Sparkle. Can you understand me?”
The mailbox trembled and a low grumble rolled out from its door. At least I had gotten that much from it. Knowing that it could probably at least acknowledge that I had spoken to it was something.
I kept my tone diplomatic, not an easy thing to do with something that had shot a rolled up advertisement at you and had repeatedly bit others. “Can you speak? Could you tell me anything about yourself?”
It shook in place, and the door opened. The voice that came out sounded dry and windy—like a fall wind blowing through the forest. “Feeed... Meee...”
“Okay!” Pinkie pulled a cupcake out of her mane and held it short of the mailbox. “What’s the magic word?”
“Feeed... Meee...” The mailbox took a bite at the cupcake but Pinkie pulled it outside of the mailbox’s reach.
Pinkie waggled a reproachful hoof in front of the mailbox. “No! Those are not the magic words. C’mon Mattie, we’ve been over this already. The magic word is pleeeease. Can you say it with me? Pleeease?”
“Feeed... Meee...”
My pink party pony friend slumped at what I was guessing was a discussion the two of them had on more than one occasion. “You could at least try for once. It’s not that hard to just ask for this cupcake. Gummy and the Cake twins know how to say the magic word. And I’d even accept a thank you, or a ‘that cupcake was so super-duper terrific I can’t help but give you Dashie’s letter!’” The mailbox extended itself beyond what its pole should have allowed to bite at the cupcake, but Pinkie proved to be more than quick enough to keep it out of Mattie’s reach. “See! This is why it’s so hard to be friends with you, Mattie. You’re always taking but never giving. And a good friend knows when to give a little.”
“Feeed... Meee...”
“Not until you say please.” Pinkie Pie roughly shoved the cupcake into her mane. She then crossed her forelegs and squared her jaw, nodding firmly to Mattie. “And that’s that.”
The mailbox’s response was to open up and bite down on Pinkie’s head.
Sighing with resignation, I teleported Pinkie out of the mailbox so that I could properly address her. “Pinkie, I know the mailbox isn’t being very nice right now, but let’s focus here. You want to get your letter, right?”
“Of course I do.” Pinkie scuffed a hoof along the ground, looking defeated. “But Mattie is being such a meanie right now. We could be such good friends, but Mattie never does anything nice like a friend should.”
I put a hoof on my friend’s shoulder. Sure, this situation was pretty absurd, but that didn’t change the fact that Pinkie’s feelings were hurt. “I know. But there’s nothing you can do if the mailbox doesn’t want to be your friend and is just—” My friendship speech was interrupted when the mailbox pelted me in the face with a letter. “Ow!” For it just being some paper, that letter had really stung. I think it might even have given me a papercut.
“I guess it’s not a fan of friendship speeches,” Spike said flatly.
Pinkie scooped up the letter in a flash. “PleasebealetterfromDashie! PleasebealetterfromDashie! PleasebealetterfromDashie!” Her eyes read over the front of the letter and her hopeful smile became a pout. “Awww! It’s just a letter from the Princess of Freeport. Oooh, a letter from the Princess of Freeport, fancy!” She smoothly opened the letter and scanned the letter inside. “Twilight! If I just give this princess some money she’ll give me oodles of money back as thanks!”
“Pinkie, no!” I snatched the letter from her and immediately set it on fire. I was not in the mood for these types of shenanigans right then. “It’s a scam to cheat you out of your money.”
“How do you know?” Pinkie watched the flames flicker as they burned the letter up. “You didn’t even read the letter.”
I tried to keep my tone calm and reasonable. Pinkie deserved that much as least. “For starters, there is no monarchy of any kind in Freeport. It’s a merchant republic. Second, I received that exact same letter last week. Third, there was an article in the newspapers that said it was a scam. Fourth, everypony’s been laughing at these letters since they first showed up. So as my friend, I’m going to ask you to trust me that I’m looking out for your best interests here.”
Pinkie’s eyes followed the last of the burning wisps of the letter floated through the air and she let out a resigned sigh. “Well you are my super-smart friend, so I trust ya, Twilight.”
“Thank you.” Having calmed myself down a bit, I spoke more gently to Pinkie. “I’m sorry if I’m being a bit short with you right now, but this mailbox is really starting to get to me.”
“Aww.” Pinkie pulled me in a gentle hug. “I’m sorry if this is making you all cranky. I just wanted to get my letter from Dashie, not cause you to have a bad time. You’re my super-amazing, smarty-pants, can-do-anything-she-puts-her-mind-to best friend. I thought if anypony could help me, it would be you.”
I squeezed Pinkie back. “It’s alright. We’ll figure something out, I promise. Given enough time and patience, I’m sure—” As was starting to become a distressing habit, the mailbox interrupted me. A torrent of foul smelling green goo blasted out of the mailbox’s opening and drenched me and Pinkie. For a minute all I could do was stare in horror at myself and the sticky green gunk that covered us.
Pinkie tried to shake some of the goop off of her, but most of it clung tenaciously to her coat. “Ew, I’m covered in icky green goo!” For reasons I’ll never fully understand, she then licked at one of her goo covered legs. She coughed and lolled out her tongue as though she were about to be sick. “And it tastes awful!”
I stared at my friend in bewilderment. “What in all of Equestria possessed you to taste it?”
“I don’t know!” Pinkie rose to her hooves with the utmost care, but still slipped on the green goo. Her legs flailed as she fell flat on her face. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I thought that it might taste better than it smells, and I could lick it off.” She spat a couple times. “I was wrong. Ptooey! Ptooey!”
I wiped at my face to try and get the worst of the gunk off, but only to sub-optimal results. “No, Pinkie, just ... no.” I tried not to think too hard about the image of Pinkie licking herself clean of this stuff.
Spike fell to his back as he laughed uproariously. “That was hilarious!”
Irritation swelled in me as my little assistant laughed at my misery. “Sure, laugh it up, Spike.” I carefully placed one hoof under another to get a steady stance. I slipped a bit but I kept myself from falling.
His laughter was cut shot when he saw the mailbox slowly turn his direction. “What—no! Not me too!” He sprung to his feet and turned to run. He barely took a step before the mailbox blasted him with the same green goo, sending him tumbling.
I know it was kind of terrible of me, but some part of me got a bit of satisfaction in Spike getting a bit of his just desserts right there. Still... “You okay there, Spike?”
Spike sat up and looked at his goo covered body. “What do you think?” he said. I had known him long enough to know that he was fine if he was using sarcasm.
I stood there wiping off the worst of the goo as I tried to think of my next move. This had been an incredibly infuriating experience for what felt like small stakes. I knew the letter from Rainbow Dash meant a lot to Pinkie, and making Pinkie happy was one of the big reasons I was going to such lengths to try and think of a way to get the letter from the nefarious mailbox, but there had to be limits. I couldn't even say with certainty there even was a letter from Dash somewhere in the metaphysical bowels of that thing. Given how mean-spirited the mailbox was, it could very well be using some sort of illusion or other trick to keep roping poor Pinkie along. All of these headaches and heartaches could be for nothing. Not to mention, based on everything I had heard and seen, this supposedly haunted mailbox had been keeping this up for some time.
There was a line between pranks and pain, and this mailbox had danced all over it.
Pinkie managed to get to her hooves again, and, using the goo as a lubricant, slid her way over to me. The two of us bumped into another and we stuck to each other. It seemed the stuff was a lubricant to everything but itself. Anyways, us sticking side-to-side to one another didn’t keep her from giving me a big grin. “So what’s next, Twilight? Gonna ask Mattie more questions? Hook her up to that cool helmet thing? Cast a super amazing spell?”
“None of those things.” It took some work with my telekinesis, but I managed to pull the two of us apart without causing either of us to fall. “I think I’m going to try an exorcism on the mailbox to fix it.”
“Oooh, how’s making the mailbox do exercise gonna help me get my letter?” Pinkie asked.
I met Pinkie’s eyes to help keep her attention while explaining what I needed to tell her. “An ex-or-cism is the practice of removing a spirit from a possessed body. After cleaning up, I’m going to get some things from the library, and we’re going to make the mailbox stop being haunted.”
“And then I’ll get my letter?” Pinkie did one of her hops, but her hooves slipped out from under her when she landed, and she ended up in a sprawl of twisted limbs. Still, she looked up at me with a hopeful grin.
I rubbed at the back of my neck as I struggled with getting through the next part. “You ... probably won’t.”
“Wha?” Pinkie’s jaw dropped as though I had just slapped her. “But why? Don’t you want to help me get Dashie’s letter?”
“Of course I do!” I said defensively. Great, now I felt like a big jerk. Telling one of your friends they can’t have something they really wanted was hard. “But I’m not sure if it’s terribly realistic right now. It’s looking like I’m going to have to do a bunch of research to figure out exactly what I’m dealing with here, and by the time I do that and come up with a solution on how to get that letter back, Rainbow Dash is probably going to be back from the Academy, thus making this entire thing pointless.”
Pinkie deflated at my logic. “Oh...”
“I’m sorry, I really am.” I put a supportive hoof on her shoulder. “But I think the best thing we can do is make that mailbox normal, and keep this type of thing from happening again.” The mailbox hacked loudly and spat a letter into my face. The letter stuck there, covering one of my eyes as it slowly slid down. “Also it would be nice if it stopped spitting things at me.”
Pinkie gripped my forelegs, and I could feel her desperation as she tightened her grip. “Are you sure there isn’t another way, Twilight? What if Dashie gets really sad that I haven’t written back to her, and thinks I don’t care about her?”
“I’m sure that, given the circumstances, she’ll understand.” I gave her a reassuring smile as I helped her back to her hooves. “I think she’ll think the story about how we beat a haunted mailbox would be really cool.”
“Yeah, maybe.” A little bit of Pinkie’s smile returned as I lead her to a spot where we wouldn’t have quite so much goo to slip on. Luckily, I was able to get the worst of it off my hooves by scraping them in the dirt.
“This will be for the best in the long term, trust me.” I kept a wary eye on the mailbox as we passed it, and I was pretty sure it was doing the same to us. “No more missing letters or packages. No more weird mysteries. Just a normal-as-can-be mailbox. Let’s just go to the library and—”
“Wait.” Spike held up a claw to make us slowly stop in our tracks. I wondered what he was up to when he shot the mailbox a determined look. “I think I might have a idea to solve this.”
Not entirely convinced by Spike’s assertion, my eyebrow quirked. “And what do you have planned?”
Radiating cool confidence as he approached the mailbox, Spike said, “Don’t worry, I got this.”
Five seconds later Spike was screaming for us to get his head out of the mailbox.
I applied my hoof to my face and cast a teleport spell to get him out of trouble. “Once again, Spike, what was your plan?” Whatever his plan was, I doubt it involved him getting himself assaulted by a postal container.
“Nevermind,” Spike huffed, and refused to look at either of us.
“Let’s just go to the library and get the things for the exorcism.” Neither of them objected.
After cleaning ourselves off with the library’s garden hose (admittedly, it was fun to spray each other with the hose, especially after the long day we had been having), we gathered the things I would need for the exorcism. With them snug within my saddlebags, it wasn’t too long before we were back at Sugarcube Corner. Shame that instead of getting right to the job at hoof, we were met with an unusual sight.
“Pinkie, is Lyra letting the mailbox bite her?” I tilted my head as I watched Lyra Heartstrings bending at the knees and then standing up again, seeming to enjoy the mailbox nibbling away at her.
Pinkie giggled. “Yeah, she’s always doing that. She’s such a silly green bean.”
Spike scratched the top of his head. “Weird.”
Deciding to get at the source of whatever is going on, I approached Lyra and asked, “Lyra, what are you doing?”
Lyra’s smile of pleasure snapped to embarrassed grin when she heard my voice. “Oh, this?” She glanced down at the mailbox firmly biting down on her barrel. “It’s biting me on the flank.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “It bit you on the flank? That’s all that’s going on?”
“It was itchy, okay?” Lyra rolled her eyes. “Nothing really digs through my coat like this thing.”
Spike gave the mailbox an examinary poke. “And you’re not bothered by it being, you know, haunted?”
Lyra shrugged. “Meh, not the weirdest thing I’ve seen. Besides, everypony knows Sugarcube’s mailbox isn’t dangerous. I mean look at it.” She moved her body around with the mailbox still firmly latched, allowing her to scratch her flank some more.
I rubbed at my forehead, regretting not having brought more aspirin with us while we had stopped by the library. “Wait, how many ponies have known this mailbox was haunted all this time?”
“Oh, probably everypony.” Lyra shuffled around and pulled herself out of the mailbox’s clutches. “Town folklore and all that.”
“I didn’t know about this,” I protested.
“Me neither.” In a thoughtless act of bravery, Spike took a couple of steps back to place me between him and the mailbox. Thanks, Spike. Not that I could blame him given how well things had gone between him and the mailbox thus far.
Not believing in things like personal space, Pinkie draped herself over my back. “Don’t ya remember that time I told you about all the cool things around Ponyville? I could have sworn I mentioned it.”
“Vaguely.” I did remember Pinkie giving me some sort of ‘Introduction to Ponyville’ spiel when I came to live here, but given it had been said in her usual nonstop, rambling manner, not much had stuck. It hadn’t helped when a lot of the information she gave me seemed completely random and not terribly relevant. I could perhaps be forgiven for missing the time she mentioned the mailbox in between telling me what Berry Punch’s favorite type of party desserts were and when it was the best time to buy party streamers. Even I could be over-saturated with information within a given period of time.
I shook my head with resignation. “So neither of you are concerned that this mailbox just up and bites ponies?”
“Not really.” Gummy leaped out of Pinkie’s mane to chew on her face. “Does that seem weird to you, Twilight?”
“Yes, yes it does,” I said firmly, trying to ignore the pet alligator. “But my sense of normalcy apparently stopped being relevant when I came to Ponyville.”
“Eh.” Lyra shrugged. “Being a Canterlot filly myself, this place grows on you after a bit, and you learn to not sweat the weird stuff.”
I put my hoof up in a surrendering gesture. “Nevermind, I have other stuff to be working on. Now, if you’ll step back and let me work...”
Pinkie gasped and held Gummy out at leglength. “Oh no! Gummy’s been possessed! And he’s saying spooky things.”
I applied my hoof into my face. Nothing was going to be simple today. Was it too much to ask to use an exorcism ritual on a possessed mailbox? “And what is he saying, Pinkie?” I could see where this was going, but decided to see it to its conclusion. I was pretty much convinced by this point the omnipotent powers of the universe were playing some cruel joke on me.
Pinkie leaned in with her ear to listen to Gummy. Always the paragon of stoicism, Gummy blinked. “He says, ‘Feeed meee.’” She then blinked and giggled. “Oh wait, I forgot. It’s his lunchtime!” Putting her hoof by her mouth, she whispered to me, “He sounds a lot like Mattie when he’s hungry.”
“If only I could drive this hoof further into my face,” I said to nopony in particular. Spike covered his mouth as he snickered at my displeasure.
Pinkie gave her pet a nuzzle. “So what’s the magic word?” Gummy blinked. “Very good! And I love you too, Gummy. If you don’t mind, Twilight, I need to give Gummy his lunch before the big exer-orcising thing.”
I glumly waved her on. “Go ahead, Pinkie. We’ll set everything up while you take care of that.”
“Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie merrily hopped into Sugarcube Corner to take care of Gummy.
With Pinkie gone, this was about as good of an opportunity as I was going to get to set up everything I needed for the exorcism. I pulled out a copy of Exciting Exodus’s Extensive & Expanded Exorcisms Encyclopedia Eighth Edition (Expanded) from my saddlebags and flipped to the section that covered how to do an exorcism ritual. “Come on, Spike. Let’s get to work. The sooner we do this, the sooner we can get rid of this stupid spirit possessing the mailbox.”
Lyra’s jaw fell in horror. “Wait! You’re going to get rid of the ghost? How’s my back gonna get scratched if you do that?”
Not willing to get into some big argument over the merits of keeping around a haunted mailbox so that Lyra could have her back scratched, I levitated a few bits out of my bitpouch and held them out for Lyra. “Just go to Quills and Sofas and buy yourself a real backscratcher. They’re near the front of the store. Stop using moderately evil mailboxes to scratch yourself, please.”
Lyra stared at me for a few seconds, looking like she was thinking about arguing, before she let out a resigned sigh. “Fine.” She took the bits in her telekinetic grip. “But this new backscratcher better be really good. Because let me tell you, I haven’t scratched myself with anything that beats that mailbox.”
Putting great effort in trying to sound cool and collected, I said, “Lyra, I gave you more bits than the backscratcher should cost. I am literally paying you to buy yourself a backscratcher. Please don’t fight with me on this. It’s been a long day thus far.”
“She’s not kidding.” Spike gave me and the mailbox a wary glance. “At this point I’m hoping this doesn't end with Twilight snapping and blowing up half of Ponyville just to get rid of that mailbox.”
“He’s not serious is he?” Lyra’s eyes flickered nervously between me and the mailbox. “I mean, there was the time the parasprites wrecked the town, and that town brawl over that doll...”
“This isn’t like either of those incidents,” I grumbled. “This is just a basic exorcism. As long as we don’t bungle it and do something like rip a hole in reality and unleash a horde of undead spirits upon the world, we’ll be fine.”
Lyra started stepping backwards and away from me. “Riiight. I think I’ll go on a picnic with Bon Bon after buying that backscratcher. Far away from town. Like, a safe distance far away.”
“Can I go with her?” Spike asked as Lyra left.
I looked over some relevant passages in my exorcism book to double check a few things before I got started. “No, Spike. I need your help with the exorcism.”
An ominous low rumble rolled out of the mailbox, and Spike’s shoulders slumped. “Right, of course you do.”
“Yep.” I pulled out a cylinder containing salt and several candles. Levitating the candles to Spike, I carefully made a circle of salt around the mailbox. “Now place the candles in perfectly symmetrical positions around the circle. Exactly like I showed you.”
“I’m on it.” Spike took the candles and got to it.
I had been giving Spike lessons on how to help me with rituals and various other types of arcane experiments and enchantments. Spike’s ability to help me with things like this exorcism were why I considered him my number one assistant. Not just anyone knew how to help set up a variety of magic circles, or which supplies are for the enchantment of objects, or how best to brew up potions. Luckily, Spike was a pretty smart cookie when he applied himself, and was always willing to give me a helping claw. Well, maybe with a bit of sarcasm and groaning to the side, but that was just Spike being Spike.
Spike sniffed at the last candle and the smell of it made him pinch his nose. “Ick, what’s even in these things, Twilight? They smell like compost.”
“They’re made from a special alchemical formula meant to help with exorcisms.” I pulled out a couple cloaks from my saddlebags. “Now put this on.” Double-checking my book, I started laying out arcane runes around the circle. The circle and runes would help me concentrate my magic while also serving to contain the mailbox.
Spike took the cloak and quirked an eyebrow at me. “Why do you even have this junk, anyways?”
I clasped on my own dark-purple cloak. “We’re about to exorcise a mailbox, and you’re wondering why I have supplies to deal with a possession?”
Spike tapped his lips. “Touché.” He put on his cloak, fidgeting with it to make sure it wouldn’t hamper the movements of his arms. “So what do you need me to do?
Feeling around in my saddlebags, I grasped the metal incense burner with my telekinesis and presented it to Spike. “When we get started, I want you to walk clockwise around the circle carrying this. It’ll be burning special incense that should give the exorcism ritual more power.”
Spike took the incense burner and gave me a frown that told me how much he liked that idea. “Let me guess, the incense stinks too?”
“Most likely.” That was a problem with a lot of ritual aids, they didn’t do much for your nose. I sprinkled some silver dust over the runes I had already laid out to add even more power to the ritual. “Now if you could keep anypony from stepping on my runes or crossing the circle, that would be great.” This is something you have to be careful with while using a ritual—any kind of disruptions to the ritual could cause Bad Things to happen. If you were lucky, you might be able to keep the ritual going with some loss of power, or maybe the ritual would just fail. But if you weren’t lucky... Best not to think too hard about it, trust me.
“That’s gonna be a bit tough,” Spike said while stepping out of the way of a group of ponies making their way into Sugarcube Corner. “This is kind of a high traffic area.”
That was a good point. As a bakery, Sugarcube Corner had a good number of ponies coming and going. Looking around, I could also see that we were starting to gather a bit of an audience. It wasn’t a dense crowd at this point, but ponies were definitely curious about what we were up to. No doubt hoping to be at ground zero of what might be the big news of the day. Things could get pretty boring on an average day in Ponyville, so an exorcism probably seemed like impromptu entertainment to them. Shame all these ponies were going to be a big distraction from the ritual.
“I think we’re going to need something to keep ponies from interfering with the ritual,” I said.
Pinkie Pie sprung out from the mailbox, and rolled along the ground to end up on her hooves before us. “I can help with that! One sec.” Without missing a beat, she ran back into Sugarcube Corner.
Spike and I gave each other confused looks. There were just so many questions Pinkie jumping out of that mailbox raised. How did she get in there? How did she fit? Was this some strange power on the mailbox’s part? Or whatever it was that Pinkie does? How did she overhear our conversation? Could she have picked up Dash’s letter from in there? Did she forget if she could?
“Twilight!” I snapped back to reality with Spike poking at my shoulder. “You still in there?”
“Err, right.” I rubbed at my face to get my head back in the game. “I was just thinking about things.”
“Eh, don’t think too hard where Pinkie’s concerned. Just remember, it’s just Pinkie being Pinkie,” he said like a motto.
“Right, don’t want another incident like the whole Pinkie Sense thing.” That decided, I took this latest example of Pinkie’s oddities, shoved it into a box, took it to the small corner of my mind that chittered madly, and buried it there along with everything else I’ve learned about Pinkie. It was for the best.
Pinkie came dashing out of the bakery balancing a dozen orange cones on her head. “Don’t worry, I got this.” She placed the cones around the area we were working in and wrapped some yellow tape around them. I’m not sure where Pinkie managed to get yellow tape that read ‘Caution: Exorcism in Progress,’ but she always seemed to be able to procure the oddest things.
Pinkie finished setting everything up before turning to give me a grin. “There we go. That look good, Twilight?”
The cones and tape weren’t going to stop anypony from stepping up if they really wanted to, but I figured ponies’ natural inclination to not cross lines they weren’t supposed to would have to do. It was probably as good as we were going to get on short notice.
“Looks good, Pinkie.” I smiled as I gave Pinkie her own cloak. “Here, put this on.”
Pinkie nuzzled the material. “Oooh, silky.” After taking a few more moments to feel the cloth, she put the cloak on. “So what’s next?”
“We’re about to get started. I just want to double-check everything to make sure it’s perfect.” I carefully re-examined my circle and runes to make sure there weren’t any imperfections. The mailbox turned with me, giving me the sense it was giving me a spiteful glare the entire time. I thought that was all it was going to do until it spat half a dozen letters into my face.
That was really annoying considering one of the letters landed on one of my runes and disrupted my carefully placed lines of salt. Deciding not to let the mailbox disrupt anymore of my work, I threw up a shield around it. It spat out another letter but it struck my shield and fell to the ground without fanfare. I repaired the damaged rune and determined that the rest of my work was to my satisfaction.
With a quick spell, I lit the candles around the circle. “Everything looks good. Spike, If you’ll light the incense and then circle the around the perimeter like I told you.”
“Can do.” Spike blew a small jet of flame to set the incense on fire. He sniffed at the incense and coughed. “Yep, that stuff smells nasty. Figures.” With a resigned sigh, he made slow circles around the mailbox.
“Pinkie, I would like you to stand opposite of me, please.” I motioned towards all the salt and silver dust lines in the dirt. “Also, be careful of the runes. Whatever you do, don’t disrupt them or break the circle.”
“Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie hopped to the opposite side of the circle. “What would happen if I did?”
“Just trust me that bad things will happen if you do,” I said. “At the very least, they’re going to protect us from the mailbox. Just stay there and we’ll be fine.”
“Can I eat popcorn while I watch?” Pinkie pulled out a bag of popcorn from her mane. “I’ve got plenty to share if you want any.”
I shook my head. “As long as you be careful that none of the kernels or the bag disrupt the runes or circle, then it’ll be alright. And I don’t want any right now. Maybe after we’re done.” I wanted to keep distractions to a minimum, anyways. I wanted this over and done with.
“Right-o-rooney then!” Pinkie shoved her muzzle into the bag to get a mouthful of popcorn.
With everything ready, I closed my eyes and began to concentrate on the ritual. I carefully and methodically put aside all distractions to my task. My frustrations from dealing with the mailbox, the growing audience that was gathering outside the cones, Spike’s soft steps as he passed by me, the fact that I may have forgotten to turn the lights off in the basement of the library, all melted away as I catalogued them one by one.
My mind now focused solely on the ritual, I poured magic forth to activate the circle and rune, and I felt them come to life. I felt satisfaction as the mailbox’s own energy collided with the magic circle and was immediately deflected. While extremely annoying, Mattie didn’t seem to have much in the way of power. At least compared to what I could bring to bear with the additional boost given to me by my aids and preparations.
The mailbox opened and let out a windy howl of rage that did little more than hurt my ears. It snapped its door at me but only succeeded in slamming against the energies of the circle. Good, it seemed I had completely neutralized it. Which meant it was time to begin the next part of the ritual: the exorcism proper.
My horn glowed brighter as I summoned forth more power to leverage against the possessed mailbox. The mailbox stood still for several moments, and I could almost feel it thinking to come up with an escape as it saw its doom approaching.
I grinned as I slowly pushed the magic I had gathered against the spirit. I felt around its ice-cold aura, and it flinched back from my touch to firm its grip on the mailbox. Its aura within my sight, I grasped the spirit with my magic and pulled—the touch causing an icy chill to shoot down my horn. Slowly, inch by inch, I could feel its metaphysical presence begin to peel off from the mailbox. It was only a matter of time until Mattie the Meanie Mailbox was no more.
Curiously, like an owl turning its head completely around, the mailbox slowly pivoted away from me and towards Pinkie. Before I could figure out what it was doing, its door opened and a bright, golden light emanated from within.
Pinkie eyes widened and she dropped her popcorn as she looked inside the mailbox.
That couldn’t be good. “Pinkie, what’s it doing?” I just needed more time to complete the ritual and so I poured on more energy to try and complete it faster, but the spirit was clinging on tenaciously to its vessel.
“It’s Dashie’s letter, Twilight.” Pinkie slowly raise a hoof to reach out for the mailbox.
It felt as though a lead weight had been dropped into my stomach when I realized what the mailbox intended to do. Technically speaking, we were at the most crucial point of the exorcism ritual. If Pinkie broke the circle now... “Pinkie, no! It’s a trick!”
Pinkie’s eyes didn’t waver from the mailbox’s interior and her hoof inched forward. “But it’s right there. Maybe Mattie realizes he’s been a real meanie and wants to be nice now?”
“I really doubt that.” I watched on as Pinkie’s hoof shook as it crept forward. That caused me to push all the harder to complete the ritual, and the icy chill being inflicted on my horn went from numbing to painful. I only needed to delay Pinkie a little longer. “Whatever you do, don’t break that circle! Don’t let it win!”
Pinkie stuck her tongue out as she thought it over. “Maybe if I’m really quick...”
Seeing the danger, Spike dropped the incense burner and grabbed onto Pinkie. “I got her!” He dug in his heels and tried to pull Pinkie back, but Spike was a fraction her size and only succeeded in slowing Pinkie down. Spike grunted as he put everything in his small frame into the effort. “Or maybe not.”
“Pinkie, no, nooo...” Just a few more seconds. I could feel Mattie’s grip loosening bit by bit. “I just need a bit longer!” I put everything into the exorcism as Pinkie’s hoof came precariously close to the edge of the circle. It was a race between the completion of the ritual and the mailbox’s ability to wear away Pinkie’s will.
We lost.
Pinkie’s hoof crossed the circle and the mailbox door slammed shut when it did. “No! Not again!” Pinkie cried out.
I felt a metaphysical snap as the circle was broken and I was hit with a magical backlash as its energies were released. My horn strained as I tried to regain control of the wild magic and ground it into the earth to dissipate it before it could cause any harm.
I was surprised by the sudden release of magical pressure. My shock turned to horror as the mailbox absorbed the energies of the ritual. It unleashed a howlish cackle as it greedily consumed the magic. I tried to stop the flow of energy, but it felt like I was attempting to keep a boulder from rolling downhill.
Pinkie and Spike hugged one another and cowered before the mailbox as it glowed with a green aura. I was about to scream for them to run when the mailbox door opened once again. Before I had time to react, Pinkie and Spike were sucked towards the opening. They tried to grasp at the ground to keep from getting pulled in, but they found no purchase and I watched on as they disappeared into its depths.
My brain worked in a fury to process what I had just seen and what to do next. Then Mattie turned on me and I found myself being sucked into the dark recesses of the mailbox.
For a moment, it felt as though I were in some sort of state of non-existence. That and of itself was a bit of a paradox given you technically can’t feel something that doesn’t exist. But there I was for an indefinite period of time, a being in a state of non-existence feeling that which didn’t exist. My life can get so weird sometimes.
Then in a flash of green light I was catapulted forward. I felt myself land on something papery and was stunned by my sudden ejection. Blinking the stars from my vision, I looked around to take stock of my situation. There were letters, letters everywhere. As far as my eyes could see, it was as though I had been cast into a sea of mail. There weren’t just letters, I noted, but also packages sprinkled amongst the letters. Looking up, all that I could see was an infinite white void. No sun, no clouds, nothing but a solid monochrome white.
I heard a groan, and Spike slowly picked himself up from a pile of letters, rubbing his head. “What happened?”
I swiveled my head to try and spot Pinkie. “I’m not quite sure. Maybe we’re in some sort of lost mail dimension, or we’re in some sort of pocket plane created by the mailbox.” I pursed my lips as I thought it over. “It’s possible that the energy the mailbox managed to syphon off from the failed ritual allowed it to bring us here—maybe even create this manifestation of where it keeps hiding away the mail it steals.”
Pinkie exploded out of her own pile of letters with a loud squeal of delight. “This is great! Now that we’re in Mattie's belly, we can get Dashie's letter and be proper ghostbusters!” She rubbed her hooves together conspiratorially. “Exactly as planned.”
My ear flicked. “Pinkie, did you just admit that right in front of me that you intentionally sabotaged my exorcism ritual?”
“Er, no?” Pinkie put on a guilty smile as Spike and I glowered at her. “I just thought it would make me seem super smart if I said I planned for a bunch of things that I couldn’t have planned for, and resulting in something I also couldn’t have ever-ever planned for.” She tapped the tips of her hooves together. “Also sorry about the whole circle thing and crossing it even though you telling me not to. But I really did think I could get it!”
Letters slipped off of me as I stood up out of the mail. Near as I could tell, I was standing on a solid layer of mail. “How about we just concentrate on getting out of here?”
“Sounds good to me,” Spike said while striding over to me. “Any idea how to get out of here?”
I considered the question, examining our situation. “I might be able to open a portal back to the material plane, but that depends on a number of factors, such as exactly where we are, if we’re at a good place to open a portal, and where opening a portal here would take us. It’s not exactly going to help us if I end up opening a portal to someplace like Griffonia or the Zebrican Empire.”
“Guess you’re right,” Spike agreed. “You got a way to figure all that out?”
“I think so.” My horn glowed as I reached out with my magical senses. “Give me some time and I’ll see what I can figure out.”
“Great! While you’re doing that, I’ll search for Dashie’s letter!” Pinkie leapt into the air and dived into the seemingly infinite mail pile. I would say her quest was likely impossible given she was trying to find a very specific needle in a pile of needles—but Pinkie Pie. Also, that comparison sounds like a great way to get tetanus.
“I’ll—wait here while you two do that.” With nothing better to do, Spike leaned up against me.
Plans set, I concentrated on determining the nature of wherever we were. I felt the magical essence of this letter-y prison and quickly determined it was a magical construct like I suspected. Artificial pocket planes were hardly an unknown phenomenon—they were a nifty way to store items that could be easily retrieved by their creators. In this case, all of that was good news. I could feel how thin the metaphysical walls were between here and the material plane. I was reasonably confident I could open a portal right back to Ponyville. At the very least, we could look through the portal I created to see if it was someplace we wanted to go. If it was someplace in Equestria then we wouldn’t be too far from a train station to ride to Ponyville. All I needed was a bit of time to open the portal and then we would be out of here.
I was in the middle of preparing an interdimensional portal spell when I was smacked in the face with a letter. “Ow!” I held a hoof up to my face to feel a painful papercut there. I was getting really sick of having letters thrown in my face.
“Um, Twilight.” Spike poked my flank and pointed urgently.
I looked and saw what he was pointing out. One of the piles of letters was coalescing into a vaguely equine form as tall as Princess Celestia. It didn’t exactly take a genius IQ to guess that I was watching the spirit possessing the mailbox taking a physical form. That was likely not good. Mattie had probably created this place, so likely the spirit would be at its most powerful here.
Mattie levitated up a dozen letters, each spinning fast enough to appear as a blur. Great, more letters, that was exactly what I needed. Creating a portal could be delicate work, which would be difficult when I had a letter monster attacking me.
The letters shot towards me, but I was ready for them. I swatted them from the air with a telekinetic blow. I followed that up with an energy blast that blew Mattie to pieces. The postal-based spirit at least temporarily disabled, I quickly levitated Spike onto my back. “Spike, make sure to hold on. Pinkie!” I cried out. “Where are you?”
“Over here!” Pinkie popped out of a pile of letters. She was holding a clump of them in her hooves as she looked at them, throwing one after another to the side after examining their addresses. “Nope. Nada. No. Wrong Dashie. Nope.”
I concentrated on the portal spell while I had some time. “We need to get out of here, Pinkie!”
Pinkie continued her frantic search of the letters. “Just give me one minute! That’s all I need!” Somehow that seemed hard to swallow given we were almost knee deep in letters clear to the horizon.
I was so wrapped up in the portal spell and calculating how long a square mile of letters would take to a single pony to search that I forgot to keep track of my surroundings.
Spike yanked on my mane and yelled. “Twilight! Watch out!”
I barely got a shield up in time to intercept a large package with “Fragile” written on it. The package slammed into my shield and I heard the sound of broken glass from inside it. Big surprise, Mattie wasn’t big on handling the mail of others with care. From behind me, Mattie had reformed itself, only twice as big as before.
Spike flashed a confident grin. “I think I got this guy’s number. One giant pile of burned letters, coming up.” He drew in a long breath in order to spew a jet of flame.
“No, wait!” Seeing a disaster coming, I telekinetically closed his mouth to prevent him from breathing fire, and flame and smoke shot out of his nostrils.
He coughed out more smoke when I let his mouth go. “Why the hay did you do that? I was going to toast that guy.”
“You were going to set this whole place on fire!” A hail of letters slammed into my shield and I had to focus to keep both the shield up and not lose the progress I had made with the portal spell. Dual-casting was difficult and required quite a bit of concentration and energy to do, but I could manage it. “That wouldn’t be good for me and Pinkie you know.”
“Oh right, sometimes I forget ponies aren’t really fireproof.” Spike flinched away from the shield when a dozen more packages crashed against it. “Can’t you just use a fire resistance spell on yourself?”
“Smoke inhalation,” I said simply. I felt my horn strain as I poured more magic into keeping up the two spells going.
“You really need to pick up a spell to deal with that too,” Spike said calmly.
Irritation worked its way into my tone when I said, “Learning spells takes time.” While I was fighting to keep from dying from a thousand papercuts, Spike didn’t seem all that bothered as he stoically watched on. Then again, there probably wasn’t much Mattie could do to Spike. There wasn’t much chance of a bunch of letters getting through his scales, and even stacking a bunch of packages on him was likely just going to annoy him. Given I had shot down his idea to just set everything on fire and he was sitting on my back, there wasn’t much for him to do other than comment on the battle taking place, which was kind of annoying given all the balls I was juggling at the moment.
A pillar of letters geysered out of the ground and then turned to come down right on our heads. Rather than risk my shield being broken by the column of mail, I teleported to the side and well clear of Mattie. Seeing an opportunity to go on the offense, I charged up and shot another blast of energy at the mailbox spirit. It attempted to block my blast by raising up a wall of mail, but my energy blast punched right through it to blow Mattie to pieces once again.
I felt myself weaken and it was as though lead weights had been dropped on my back after the latest round of spellcasting. The failed exorcism ritual had taken a good chunk of my magical reserves, and I had since been tossing around spells to defend us and escape from this place. Doing things like keeping up a shield spell while it was getting pounded on wasn’t exactly easy. I could probably have concentrated on attacking Mattie, but the safer bet seemed to run away. It wasn’t exactly glorious, but Mattie seemed a hay of a lot less dangerous on the material plane than this pocket plane.
Deciding to stick with my plan to get out of there, I took the breathing room I had gained by blasting Mattie to pour magic into completing the portal spell. It wasn’t pretty or energy-efficient to just supercharge a spell to rush it towards completion, but every second counted right then. The spell was completed and I jabbed my horn into the metaphysical borders of reality. A prick of light appeared in the air where my horn had struck, and I grunted as I forced the small hole wider and wider until it was large enough for two ponies to comfortably step through at the same time. The portal started the process of slowly shrinking again when I stopped putting magic into the portal spell, but we had plenty of time to hop in if we left without delay.
Spike leaned forward to look into the portal. “Hey! It’s Sugarcube Corner! Great job, Twilight!” It was indeed Ponyville right on the other side of the gate, and I recognized many of the ponies who looked back at us. Good to know we weren’t going to have to trek from one end of Equestria to the other.
Before I could reply, the ground started moving out from under me. I had to scramble to keep my hooves under me and not get carried away by the current of mail. As I fought to stay near the portal, I saw a growing shadow fall over me. I glanced behind me and saw the now house-sized Mattie looming over us.
Spike did a long monotonous whistle. “Wow. That’s a lotta mail.”
“Yes, Spike, yes it is. Thank you for that brilliant observation,” I said sarcastically. “Pinkie, we need to go—now!”
“Just one more minute!” I heard Pinkie cry from above us. I looked and saw Pinkie perched on the forehead of Mattie, going from one letter to the next in her quest to find her letter. “Oooh! A letter from Maud! So Mattie has been stealing Maud’s letters—I knew it!”
“No!” I stomped a hoof. “No more delays. I’ve been keeping track, and you said you needed a minute three minutes and twenty-seven seconds ago! We’re leaving!” I felt the seconds tick right on by as Mattie continued to grow and the portal slowly closed behind me.
Pinkie’s search became more frantic as her hooves moved in a blur. “I’m sure Dashie’s letter is here, I know it! I just need more time!”
Don’t we all, Pinkie.
I made the judgement call as Mattie raised a hoof to crush me and Spike. My horn shone as I concentrated and drew upon the magic I had left in my magic pool. I cast a teleportation spell and Pinkie popped back into existence by the portal.
Pinkie moved to jump back into the piles of mail. “No! My le—” I tackled her through the portal and the three of us tumbled through the opening in space and time as what passed for Mattie’s hoof came down on us. We hit the dirt of the Ponyville streets in a rolling ball of bodies and limbs. A split second later, a wave of letters came crashing through the portal to push us along further.
It took a few moments for my vision to stop swimming. I felt like I could sleep for a week after everything I had gone through, but still, I pushed myself up to my hooves so I could take stock of the situation. The portal was now only big enough for a grown mare to walk through comfortably and it continued to shrink.
“So it looks like that’s over.” I immediately regretted saying that when the pile of letters moved and piled around the edges of the portal, slowing and then halting the closing of the rip in reality. “Oh no you don’t! Spike, sic’em!”
Spike crossed his arms. “What am I, your dog?”
I had no patience for Spike’s sass as I threw my forehooves up into the air with a groan. “Just set it all on fire already!”
“You can be so bossy sometimes, Twilight.” But he did as I asked and breathed a gout of fire around the edge of the portal. The letters quickly burned up in the small inferno and the portal quickly finished the process of closing, thankfully ending our dealing with the lost mail dimension.
Pinkie held out a hoof where the portal had disappeared. “No, Dashie’s letter. I saw it. I know I did...”
I placed a hoof on Pinkie’s shoulder to comfort her. “I’m sorry, Pinkie. But that letter is a lost cause. It just isn’t worth getting hurt over.” I gave the mailbox the most hateful stare I could give it. A small trail of smoke was coming through a crack in the mailbox’s door. Maybe an effect of Spike’s dragonfire? “I know it hurts, but there comes a time when you need to cut your losses, and this is one of those times.”
Pinkie looked at me with a pitiful frown. “I know.” I could feel it when something broke in Pinkie. Maybe her heart? I felt like such a jerk. “So what now?” she asked, sounding completely defeated.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it from here.” I gave her a final pat on the shoulder. “Spike, can you pull the backup exorcism kit from my saddlebags?” I never took my eyes away from the mailbox.
Spike dusted off himself off from tumbling through the dirt. “Sure, one sec. And really, a backup exorcism kit? How paranoid are you?”
I tilted my head side to side to crack my neck. “We’re using it, aren’t we?”
“Point.” Spike pulled a long bag out of the my saddlebags. Thank you, magically enchanted saddlebag. You let me be more prepared than I otherwise would be. “So what’s the plan now that the exorcism’s a bust?” he asked while padding over to me with the backup exorcism kit.
“Oh, it’s quite simple, Spike.” I slowly unzipped the bag and slid out a baseball bat. “I’m going to kill that mailbox with extreme prejudice.”
And over the next several hours, I did. I hit that mailbox with the baseball bat until I just about collapsed from exhaustion, screaming in rage the entire time. I then set it on fire, had Spike set it on fire again, followed up with every type of elemental magic I knew, and then blew it up. That done, I then meticulously gathered the remains of the mailbox, did a purification ritual on those remains and the spot the mailbox had been planted, buried the ashes in concrete in the library basement, and then placed protective wards over the drying concrete.
I sent a letter to Princess Celestia asking if I could use the Elements of Harmony to really make sure the job was done. But the princess wrote back to me that I had gone well past the line of overkill by that point, and that I should probably lie down. In all fairness to Her Highness, she had no idea what I was dealing with.
Still, the job was done. By the time I was done, I was utterly exhausted. It wasn’t often I threw around that much magic or strained myself physically. I barely remember dragging myself and Spike up to the bedroom. Spike was pretty tuckered out by that point too and didn’t protest when I placed him in his basket to sleep. I was asleep the moment I hit my bed and didn’t wake up until well into late morning the next day.
I still felt worn out when I woke up, but there were things to do, as there always were. I prodded Spike up and the two of us got cleaned up to head out for the day.
Spike yawned as he came down the stairs after finishing his shower. “So what’s the plan? We going someplace to get breakfast?” Spike looked at the clock and saw that it was almost noon. “Or maybe lunch now.”
I put aside the book I had been reading while waiting on Spike. “Pretty much. I was hoping to treat Pinkie to a meal after everything that happened yesterday.” I sighed and rubbed wearily at an eye as I remembered the stupid haunted mailbox. “She was pretty crushed when she didn’t get Rainbow Dash’s letter. So I’d like to pay for a meal and spend some time with her. Maybe help her write a letter to send to Dash.”
Not to mention it would feel good to be proactive about the whole mail situation between Pinkie and Dash. I never did confirm if Mattie the Meanie Mailbox even had a letter from Dash. But if worst came to worst, I’m sure Dash would understand if one of her letters wasn’t received. Letters got lost in the mail all the time, even without supernatural intervention.
“Sounds like a plan.” Spike climbed up onto my back and smiled. “So let’s go already, I’m hungry.”
A little while later we arrived at Sugarcube Corner. That’s when I saw it.
“No, nooo, nonononono, it can’t be.” I rubbed at my eyes to make sure something wasn’t playing tricks on them After blinking a few times, I saw the exact same sight I had seen a second ago. It was the exact same looking mailbox on a pink post from before. It was as though I had gone back in time to a couple of days ago as I watched Pinkie open and close the mailbox, over and over again.
Spike narrowed his eyes as he stared at the same sight I did. “Whoa, isn’t that—”
“No! It can’t be!” I felt my nerves fray. “We destroyed that mailbox. There’s a perfectly rational explanation for this. The Cake’s must have gotten a mailbox from the same place they got the last one, and set it up this morning. Yes, that makes perfect sense. Much more logical than Mattie somehow managing to avoid all my attempts to to destroy it, probably by anchoring itself to its demesne, and rebuilding itself on the same spot.”
Spike shuffled on my back. “Um, maybe we should do another exorcism against just to be sure?”
“Nononono!” I shook my head. “Then we’d be repeating ourselves. And only madponies do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.” I levitated Spike from my back so that I could bring him face to face with me. “And I’m not insane!”
He smiled nervously—one would almost think he was scared of me—but that would be silly. “If you say so, Twilight.”
“Hey, Twilight!” Pinkie had hopped over to us while I’d been calmly and rationally explaining to Spike why there was absolutely no need to repeat the events of yesterday—because it was only logical not to do so, ever.
My ear twitched. “Hiii, Pinkie.”
Pinkie smiled as though nothing was wrong, which was good, because absolutely nothing was wrong. “So are you here to help me wait for Dashie’s letter?”
I screamed and ran.
Author's Note
Hope you all enjoyed this crazy little tale I put together. It was a lot of fun to write, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I'm even considering doing a sequel to this someday down the line if enough people end up liking it.
I would like to thank my editors Chengar Qordath, Comma-Kazie, and JakeTheGinger for all their help. And also to my prereaders Luminary, Swiftestshadow, Infinion, Pegasusnumber 5, Multae Kappae, Cryosite, Hopeless Appraisal, 621Chopsuey, Nekonyancer, Web of Hope, Rodinga, Llyander, ZaneSkelton, and Malefic Scholar who put a ton of effort into reading over this chapter and making sure it's presentable.
