New Trottland Yard Case 01 - Silver Cross and the horror of Haunchington

Silver Cross

and the horror of Haunchington

Chapter 1

The old Unicorn stallion was tired of this by now. Somepony had set off the alarm in the morgue again, and he had a pretty good hunch on who it was. It was always the same... Whenever somepony died in Haunchington, some youngsters broke in there on a dare. Some Ponies just didn't seem to respect the dead Ponies right to rest in peace.

Rain soaked his gray coat as he stumbled over the muddy paths of the graveyard. He was the caretaker here, and even though he was certain that he did his job right, his boss would blame him for this... again. The last time something like this had happened, the three colts that had broken in there had drawn a mustache on the late mayors muzzle, and put a party hat on him. His relatives had almost caused a riot during the ceremony the next morning. Dead Lantern didn't want something like that to happen ever again, which was why he dragged his old bones through the rainy night.

As the door to the morgue came into sight he raised the lantern he was levitating by his side. The padlock on the steel door had been ripped off, together with a sizable chunk of the concrete wall it had been attached to.

“Not satisfied with just breaking a window are you? C'mon out you little Parasprites so I can spank your flanks all the way to next Friday!”, Lantern shouted into the darkness of the morgue as he approached the door. He never noticed the Earthpony that was sneaking up behind him. The last thing he felt was a sharp pain in his head, as the other stallion reared up and crushed it beneath it's hooves.

Another Unicorn stallion came out of the darkness, floating a package of white cloth next to himself. He looked at the murdered caretaker and just grinned. Soon there would be many more like him. Soon the Ponies at the royal academy would eat their own words, and he would get the recognition that he deserved.

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Half an hour later the red stallion set the body he had stolen from the morgue down on a marble pedestal in the basement of his manor. The failures of his experiments lay all around the ancient room, filling it with the sweet scent of rotting flesh. He didn't care about that one bit. All that mattered now, was to get it right. This time it would work. He was sure of it!

The Unicorns horn began to glow with a sinister green light as the thunderstorm continued to rage on outside. The massive rain was slowly seeping into the ritual chamber, and the murky water already reached up to his Pastern as he let go of the magic on his horn. It enveloped the body of Sunshine Petal and slowly seeped into the dead mare. Panting hard the stallion sat down on his haunches, hoping that he had gotten it right this time.

Minutes passed, and nothing happened. Anger began to build up inside of him. Why? Why wouldn't it work? Why was death the final end? He had been so sure that he had found the right combination of spells to bring back a dead Pony, so why didn't it....

The cloth in which Sunshine had been wrapped started to move slowly. The mare didn't speak, nor did she groan as she slowly freed herself of the white linen. She slipped of the pedestal and stood on her hooves, looking around the partially flooded chamber  out of her soulless eyes. Full of joy the stallion jumped up to the pedestal, wanting to do a little victory dance, when he fainted. All the nights he had spent working instead of working, and his old age were finally catching up to him.

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Sunshine looked over to the stallion that lay unconscious on the pedestal she had awoken on. He was unimportant. Nothing more then an insect, and not worth her time. Her heart, although not beating, was burning with desire. She had to kill. She had to kill somepony, but who? Then it came to her, and the mare started to gallop out of the basement...

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Golden Saddle could feel her husband steer in bed next to her. Both of them found it hard to sleep, since tomorrow would be the funeral of their oldest daughter, Sunshine Petal. Turning over to him, she put one of her forelegs around the Pegasus stallion.

“Can't sleep either honey?”, she whispered, as not to wake up the foals next door. The blue stallion looked into his lovers puffy eyes and shook his head.

“No. I just can't stop thinking about her. I think I'll go downstairs to get a drink, maybe that will help me sleep. Want one too?”

“I don't think so. It's bad enough that we have to bury her. I don't want to do it with a hangover.”, the beige Unicorn mare replied, turning over again.

Swift Feather stood up, and trotted downstairs, taking a peek into his foals room on the way. Both of them were fast asleep, but he knew that they were missing their big sister very much.

Just as he wanted to pick up one of the bottles of booze in his mouth, the lightning outside illuminated a Pony standing in front of the back door. At first he thought it had been his imagination, or maybe it was the sleep deprivation? A combination of both? It didn't matter as he opened the door to see if he was hallucinating. He wasn't. There, drenched by the rain and muddy from her gallop through the fields, stood his daughter. Sunshine Petal looked at him out of her dead eyes, no hint of emotion on her face. Nonetheless Swift couldn't help himself. He caught his daughters neck in a tight embrace, pulling her into the kitchen in the process.

Tears were running down his cheeks as he wanted to call out for his wife to come downstairs as well, but his voice never came out. A green glow surrounded his throat as Sunshine started to choke him with her magic. He let go of her, staring at his daughter in disbelief while he stumbled backwards. A few seconds later, his world went dark.

The undead Unicorn mare let go of the stallion the moment he stopped struggling, taking one of the knifes from a drawer and floating it next to her. She completely ignored the faint rising and lowering of the Pegasus's chest as she made her way upstairs.

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A high pitched scream forced Swift Feather back to his senses. His head hurt, and he fought for every breath as he remembered what had happened. The scream came again and his blood froze in his veins as it was accompanied by a dull thud from upstairs.

“The children!”, he shouted, grabbing a hatchet from the counter and rushing upstairs. There were bloody hoof-prints coming out of his and G oldens bedroom. A quick peek revealed that someone had slit his wifes throat in her sleep. He just hoped that she hadn't suffered much as he galloped to the foals room. Daisy Schnapps, his youngest daughter, lay in the doorway. Her neck was twisted in an unnatural angle, making it quite obvious that something had broken her neck.

Further in he spotted Sunshine Petal. The yellow Unicorn mare was holding her younger brother in her telekinetic grip, while the little colt was beating his wings in a desperate attempt to fly away. Rage overtook the stallion as he charged his oldest daughter, causing her to loose focus on her magic. Rambler fell to the ground, coughing, while his father struggled with his older sister.

The young colt watched in terror, as his father brought down the hatchet he had in his mouth again and again on Sunshines head. His father didn't stop until there was barely anything left of his sisters head, and she had long stopped fighting. When Swift rolled off of his now really dead daughter, he almost fainted from physical and mental exhaustion. He had lost another child, his wife and had to put down this thing that had looked like his oldest daughter... It was just too much for him. Not even his sons cries could stop him from fainting now... The last thing he saw before he went out, was the body of his daughter going up in blue flames.

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Officer Baton Draw couldn't believe his ears. The neighbors had called him here in the middle of the night, and the scene he had found here was a horrible one. One kid with a twisted neck, their mother bleeding all over the sheets of her bed and the father laying in the kids bedroom with a bloody hatchet next to him. It didn't look good for the stallion, but the story he was trying to sell him was the worst attempt at an alibi that he had ever heard.

According to Swift Feather, his dead daughter had come home, had killed her mother and younger sister, and had then erupted in blue flames as he had stopped her with the hatchet. Baton saw a different story. The stallion had been unable to cope with his daughters accident, and had simply snapped, murdering the rest of his family except the little colt. For now, he had sent the colt away to Baltimare general hospital with an ambulance to be treated. The father would have to face interrogation from the homicidal division, but that was barely necessary. All the evidence pointed to the blue stallion as the culprit.

About an hour later, a squad from Baltimares homicidal division arrived and took Swift Feather into custody. The stallion would most likely spent the rest of his days in prison, if he wasn't just outright executed. Baton decided to go see Dead Lantern the next morning, to inform him that the family wouldn't make it to the funeral of Sunshine Petal, and that he should just bury the poor mare.

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Three murders in one night... Even one was unusual for the small sleepy town of Haunchington, but there he was, lying in his own blood. The only thing that enabled Baton Draw to identify the graveyards caretaker was his Cutiemark of an old fashioned lamp in front of a gravestone. His friends head was completely crushed, leaving only a bloody stump on his neck. Whoever had done this, must have possessed strength equal to the legendary Alicorns to cause damage like this. What worried him even more was, that the body of Sunshine Petal was nowhere to be found.

After getting back to his small office, he called a few colleagues of his in the surrounding villages. Several of them reported that there had been strange deaths in their area as well, and that the bodies had been stolen in the night before the funeral. None of them had reappeared however. Only Sunshine...

Baton shook his head. How could a dead mare stand up and murder almost her whole family? That just wasn't possible! Not even the legendary Alicorns had been able to bring back the dead! Nonetheless, he took out several scrolls from a drawer of his desk and began writing. It ended up being a ten pages long letter to the New Trottlandyard....