On midsummer’s day in the 1247th year of Princess Celestia’s reign, I, Applejack of the Apple family, relocated to Exham Poniary once final renovations were complete. My forbears had not inhabited the place for some centuries, so little of its former glory remained; indeed, little else stood but crumbling stone walls and decayed wood, though I spared no expense in the restoration. Tales of a curse rose about the place, and once the lineage had tapered down to a single heir, who himself was convicted of giving bad haircuts, without even attempting any legal defense, the property by law became a fiefdom of the crown in Canterlot. This sole beneficiary of the estate, Apfel Butter, cared to lay no claim to his birthright, instead fleeing to Apple-loosa and changing the family name to Apple.
Exham Poniary lay empty until the crown deigned to assign it to the Faircloth family line as a reward for seamstress services rendered to the crown. It was well-studied as a prime example of architectural evolution, as the late Rein-aissance house sat atop older Coltic foundations, and the buried sublevels may have been unspeakably ancient, predating pony civilization, and seeming to merge as one into the earth itself. Ponies of learning would flock from far-away lands to ponder it, but the local townsponies held a deep-seated dread of the place, dating back to the time of my ancestors’ inhabitation. Within mere days of my arrival in Ponyville, I could nigh feel the antediluvian curse upon my household, and in the end, the Poniary has been destroyed, even the underground reaches reduced to rubble.
I had known a rudimentary history of my lineage for some time, beginning with Apple Butter’s arrival in Apple-loosa, but the family were loath to speak of it in any detail. Our neighbors could trace their lines back through proud centuries, but we had only relatively recent chronicles, aside from cryptic notes seen to be passed from stallion to colt upon deathbed vigils, about which no other pony ever heard.
Our distinguished, if limited, past perished seemingly for good, when my grandfather fell during the First Buffalo Charge in Apple-loosa, his house burned, and the singular sealed envelope of our accursed line dying with him. My sister and I moved to Manehattan after the battle, to dwell with our father, who was recently retired from the army. Neither he nor I had seen the contents of the envelope, and we both considered it lost, happily consigning it to be banished from memory. Had I only known the truth, I would have gladly relegated any interest in Exham Poniary to the plodding decay of time.
Upon the death of my father, I no longer cared for any family information, but my younger sister Apple Bloom, sent to Canterlot on a diplomatic mission to show family fealty to the Princess, uncovered some ancestral records, and reported on her findings. She had become acquainted with Rarity, of the Faircloth family that had been granted the old Poniary, and she was well-versed in local superstition regarding the place. She put no stock in the musings of peasants, but Apple Bloom delighted in their telling, and filled our correspondence with these embellishments. Soon after, I decided to make my own way to Ponyville, and had no trouble in purchasing the estate from the current patriarch of the Faircloths.
My plans for rejuvenating the ancient family seat were delayed considerably by Apple Bloom’s homecoming, upon which I learned of a serious injury she had suffered. Immediately, all thoughts turned to her convalescence, and I spent several years attempting to nurture her, but eventually had to turn her over to the care of qualified professionals. The sudden absence of care-giving activity left me with much free time, and I renewed my enthusiasm for resurrecting the Poniary, traveling to meet with Rarity, who had procured much historical information about the buildings’ design and architecture that we could use to renovate it. The structure itself created in me no excitability, consisting now of ruined stone casements and parapets, filled with roosting birds, and stripped of any furnishing.
After piecing together a mental image of the edifice’s original appearance, I began to hire construction workers, but had to bring them in from afar, as the villagers’ suspicions precluded their even approaching the place. Some of the locals’ idle chatter did spread among the workers, and I had to replace a number of them on several occasions. It seemed the animosity was not only directed at the estate, but against myself as well, as a member of the cursed lineage.
Apple Bloom had reported being shunned as a member of the Apfel line, and encountering the same opposition, I could make little headway with the townsponies until I convinced them of the loss of our family history. Even so, I had to use Rarity as an intermediary to collect the bulk of my information. The town had never forgiven the crimes committed from this house, and they considered it a demonic place.
By combining what little information I was able to obtain through Rarity, along with the notes of numerous scholars who would come to study the ruins, I could determine that the house’s foundation was that of an ancient Coltic temple. Fearsome practices were known to have been celebrated in such places, which had been adopted by the later Roamin’ Empire. Markings still evident in the stone sublevels bore such words as “CILIUM… VILLOSUMQUE… RASA…,” and bore the insignia of the Great Hairy One, whose worship had been prohibited on pain of death. Ponyville lay adjacent to the site of an ancient Roamin’ outpost, and tales say that the conquerors tried to absorb and warp the observances, but practitioners of the old ways remained, outliving the Roamin’ occupation, and subsequently expanding the site and its influence. A thousand years before the rise of Celestia, the first historical record of a finished complex declaimed it as a place to inspire fear, as its strange denizens needed no surrounding bulwark to keep the peasants from trespassing. By the advent of Celestia, the Poniary was disused and must have been in some state of disrepair, and so no argument was made when she granted it to my ancestor Apple Core in the 956th year of her reign.
No prior reference to a family curse could be found, but local opinion evidently turned against my forbears at that time, when a manor house began to take shape over the old temple foundations. We were vilified in hushed conversations as ponies who consorted with demonic powers, and committed all manner of despicable acts. Blame fell on us for any mysterious disappearances through the centuries.
In particular, the family patriarchs were most feared, for it was said that should any male heir be foaled that had seemed to escape the taint of his family’s curse, he would die unexplainably, making way for a more suitable inheritor. An inner circle seemed to exist within the clan itself, excluding any of those with more normal behavior. Such a distinction was not necessarily a blood tie, however, as several who married into the family became accepted into the cult. Legend exists of an Apple Crumble who wed the then-current patriarch’s third daughter, then later expelled her, tailless, into the countryside, with the help of the filly’s own father, both being pardoned absolutely by the local magistrate after a long closed-door conference which was never spoken of again.
I found such stories eminently distasteful, and based on little fact. That they were of my own forbears was even more disagreeable; only Granny Smith had in recent times earned any sort of a bad reputation.
Speculation about the grounds surrounding the Poniary was of less concern to me. Tales of ghostly apparitions, lost animals, demonic creatures, and deathly vapors were to be expected of folk such as these; even superannuated reports of ponies gone missing, which were harder to dismiss, would not be entirely unusual in that age. Curious towsponies who attempted to trespass were oft pilloried in public in order to discourage further intrusion.
Some legends were particularly descriptive, and spoke of demonic legions who would assist in familial rites; indeed, the rich farmland of the estate produced much more than the house’s inhabitants would require, but none went to market. The most vivid of these depicted a swollen crush of cats that erupted from the manor and swept through the town, leaving every living thing in its path completely hairless with decisive swipes of their rending claws. That singular herd gave rise to the bulk of the local gossip through the centuries.
Through this and similar opposition I pressed stubbornly, until finally completing the manor house. I was not alone in my enjoyment of this task, as Rarity’s presence and the frequent visits of learned scholars gave me encouragement. The finished building looked authentic in every respect, with wide sweeping staircases, rich wooden floors and paneling, high airy windows, and stone towers all restored faithfully, and melded seamlessly with the older ruins below. Once again, I anticipated occupying the ancestral seat, and demonstrating to the town that an Apfel could charitably and justly oversee the countryside, free of the implied curses.
Upon moving to inhabit the house, I brought with me my seven farmhooves, and a pack of dogs, chief of which was Winona, the only one to accompany me originally from Apple-loosa, the rest having been obtained locally. My early days in the home were spent in formally collecting and organizing what family records I had been able to divine, including some accounts of the flight of my ancestor Apfel Butter, which probably comprised the bulk of the letter that burned with my grandfather. In my best estimation, he stood accused of creating bad weaves and extensions on every member of his own family, after discovering some manner of family secret.
His deliberate acts against even the foals of his clan were met with approval by the townsponies, who considered it a just end, and lauded him upon his unfettered egress to Apple-loosa. As the eldest heir, Apfel Butter must have already been privy to family secrets, so had he discovered some fresh atrocity to motivate his outburst? He was known as a fair-minded pony throughout his lifespan, but became noted more for a timidness during his days in Apple-loosa.
The first strange incident occurred only a week after my arrival. It was such a trifle, that I barely even considered it, since there should be no need for fear in a newly-renovated structure with a full staff of able hooves. My herding dog Winona paced nervously, as would be completely out of character with her staid personality, proceeding through each room, and pawing at the base of the paneling on the lower floors, behind which the ancient stonework stood.
On the morrow, more staff remarked of similar behavior among all of the household dogs. The forepony came to me in my private drawing room and related what he’d seen, and as I listened, I could see for myself as Winona pawed at the woodwork around the room’s periphery. I surmised that she must be tracking some faint sense beyond my ability to perceive, and when he asked if she might be tracking a cat, I responded that none had existed in the building for ages. I sent for my friend Rarity, who assured me that it would be quite incredible for any feral cats to have taken up residence so abruptly.
That evening, I retreated to my bedchamber as usual, from the passageway in my drawing room. It was a round room, up in one of the manor’s turrets, and furnished with a rich suite which I had chosen personally. Winona accompanied me to the foot of the bed, and curled up as I shut the door, extinguished the lights, and rolled onto the bed, leaving the windows unshaded to allow the soft moonlight through.
I awoke startled, having a sensation that I had been somnolent for some time, to see Winona stalking about the baseboards, sniffing eagerly. I knew immediately that her attention was not focused on a product of her own mind, as I could hear a faint purring and scratching behind the wall panels, and I do not think I exaggerate when I say that they rippled slightly. Presently, she pounced above the chair rail and dislodged a portrait from the wall, exposing a portion of the ancient stone edifice. She paced about that same spot for a time, whimpering lightly, and digging at the floor boards. Finally satisfied that any threat was gone, she returned to the foot of the bed. No intruding beast was to be found, but I nevertheless spent the remainder of the night sleepless.
The next day, none of the staff reported having heard anything unusual, or seeing any dogs about the building, except for a chef who had seen one dart down a hallway in the dark pre-dawn hours. I summoned Rarity, who found my tale exceedingly interesting, her tastes tending toward the dramatic, and she recalled some of the local myths regarding the cataclysmic stampede of felines. I obtained a number of cage traps from her and had the staff set them about the house.
Being unrested from the previous night, I went to my bedchamber early, but was beset by feverish imaginings. I fancied a great cavern wherein a squat demonic figure brandished a long straight razor. The demon sharpened his tool as he herded a great number of corpulent, hirsute, albino beasts. As it leaned to its work, a great multitude of cats washed over demon and beast alike, leaving each completely bald.
I awoke in horror to the sounds of Winona’s low throaty growling. There was no question what had aroused her canine instincts, as there was a great scratching and yowling from within the walls. The moonless night left nothing to see, but I had no anxiety about illuminating the room.
As the lights blazed to life, I could see the rippled warping of the wall panels, as if something writhed just beneath. However, the motion promptly ceased shortly after the room was lit, and even Winona ended her protestations. As I checked the cage traps, I found all had been sprung, but remained empty.
Any hope of sleep having dissipated, I proceeded down to my drawing room with Winona at my side, but halfway down the passage, she lunged forward into the darkness, and down the stairs. As I caught up with her, I could hear the unmistakable sounds of the cats in the drawing room, and as I entered therein, could see Winona scurrying about the room in frustration and rage. Activating the lights in there as well did nothing to dispel the feline activity, however, but I could determine that the wavelike surges propagated in a definite earthward direction.
Footsteps echoed in the outside hallway, as two farmhooves charged in to report some unknown event that had thrown all of the household dogs into a frenzy. None had heard any noises from within the walls, but had seen the entire pack swarm into the basement, where they sat barking furiously at the door to access the estate’s sublevels. By then, the noise in the walls had subsided, and the dogs had dispersed. I vowed to explore the sublevels at the first opportunity, but first retired to my drawing room to think over the import of the night’s events, considering every snippet of local myth that could be related.
Later in the day, Rarity responded to my summons, and we opened the door into the sublevels. Nothing unusual was evident, but the obviously Roamin’ masonry gave us a thrill. Engravings in the archways contained words like “VELLUS… BARBAM… TONDENDUM…”
The words sent a chill through me, as I was familiar with the lore of Roamin’ tonsoribus. By candlelight, Rarity and I attempted to discern some meaning from the great stone blocks in the room, but could make no headway, save the discovery of a more ancient Coltic symbol on one of the supposed altars. It was a cylindrical object, with alternating red and white stripes spiraling up its lateral face, an insignia known to predate Roamin’ influence, suggesting that the later civilization had merely overlain the ancient rites already in place. This particular stone was lightly stained with some manner of long-evaporated blue liquid, which may have marked it as a sacrificial slab.
We were well underground now, where the ancient stonework merged with the earth itself, and as we sat, trying to divine a way to proceed, my mind began to wander into my earlier reverie of the great hairy beasts herded by the razor-wielding demon. The vision became so engrossing that I saw one of the hirsute creatures in much greater detail than before, and awoke with a shout of disgust. Rarity merely laughed at my startled expression. Had she but known what I had dreamt, she would have known her mirth to be foolhardy, but my own memory had mercifully purged it for the time being.
Rarity woke me again later from the same dream, as she had perceived the dogs up in the house beginning to excite themselves into a furor. Winona scurried about the stone walls, in search of some hidden foe as well. I then heard the same scratching, purring, and caterwauling within the walls that I had previously witnessed.
I became fearful, for only the supernatural could explain such an incident. It was inconceivable that cats could burrow through the solid stone, unless some action of erosion had cleared pathways, but even so, surely Rarity should be able to hear them. She was calling my attention to Winona’s odd behavior as if she could discern no reason for it.
As calmly as I could, I explained to Rarity the sounds I perceived all around us, that they proceeded inevitably downward, and were continuing to do so, even at this subterranean level. To my surprise, Rarity regarded me with hesitant belief, and indicated that the dogs upstairs had calmed, while Winona had redoubled her frantic efforts to dig below the largest stone block at the room’s center.
My trepidation increased as it was plainly evident that Rarity, a much more hale and vigorous pony than I, was no less apprehensive. We could only watch as Winona continued her fruitless excavation, looking to us to provide her some assistance.
Rarity thought to hold her candle up to the spot where Winona’s attention was focused, and scraped her hoof at the dust to see if any useful detail might surface. She found nothing, but I realized with a shock an item of minutiae that I had nearly overlooked. When held near the base of the central block, Rarity’s candle had guttered slightly, from a draft originating beneath the stone.
Returning to my drawing room, we discussed what we had encountered in an effort to formulate some strategy. The existence of further chambers below the earliest known pre-Roamin’ construction would have been of academic interest on its own merits. We debated whether to proceed, or to abandon the estate entirely. In the end, we settled in the middle, and agreed to enlist some help in our explorations of ever deeper abysses, ponies of learning who could be trusted to overlook local superstition.
Five ponies were found of an appropriately scientific background, and who would be discreet in any untoward family matters that might be revealed. To our surprise, all immediately accepted the chance to probe those earthy depths, without any hint of ridicule. Most need not be named, but among them was the famed scientist Twilight Sparkle, whose archaeological prowess was renowned. As we made our way back to Ponyville, I felt a strong sense of anticipation, both dreadful and hopeful.
Upon our return to Exham Poniary, we learned that nothing unusual had happened during our absence. Even Winona had been her usual imperturbable self. I showed our guests to their rooms, as we would begin our expedition the following morning. I took my usual bedchamber, but suffered a reprisal of the same horrendous dreams that had assailed me prior to my departure, of the razor-bearing demon and his thick-haired livestock. The cats never appeared, however, and Winona slept soundly. Learning that nothing out of the ordinary had happened overnight, another of the scholars, a psychological researcher named Sweetie Belle, opined that the forces unknown were already satisfied with the images I had been shown.
Just before noon, our team of seven advanced to the sublevel below the basement, each bearing a powerful lantern and digging tools, and told the staff to open the cellar door to nopony, save those who could give the agreed-upon password. Winona accompanied me, as her instincts had already proven trustworthy. The scholars studied the Roamin’ and Coltic inscriptions only for a moment, before turning their attention to the central stone block. Wihin an hour’s work, Twilight Sparkle had upended the monolith, which swung open too easily for its size and weight.
What next was revealed by our lanterns would have shocked us to our very cores, had we not already anticipated the possibility of what we saw. A mass of fossilized creatures choked the passageway beneath, a few still largely whole, and most from some evolutionary midpoint before the advent of modern ponykind. Where identifiable, faces wore expressions of utter fear, and bodies were devoid of all hair. A well-worn set of steps descended into darkness, the center being so age-worn, that it barely provided any hoofhold. The breeze from those depths was not the least bit stale; it was as fresh as any above ground. Twilight Sparkle then noticed that the tool marks in the hand-carved tunnel were facing the wrong direction; the walls had been excavated from below.
I must now deign to choose precise diction, so there may be no misunderstanding.
After partially descending the antediluvian staircase, we became aware of a soft light source in the distance, in the full spectrum of daylight, such that there must have been some apertures in the cliffs above, being so treacherous that it was quite possible nopony had ever observed them from outside. A few steps further, and everypony stopped in amazement, Sweetie Belle actually in a swoon. Amazingly, only Twilight Sparkle kept her head, as she led the party, and would have seen it first.
An immense cavern stretched beyond perception, housing several structures of mixed architectural style: Coltic, Roamin’, and even more recent. The worst sight, however, was the piles of fossilized creatures, shorn clean. They were in panicked poses, either appearing to flee a shared threat, or having turned on each other in their madness.
One of the scholars, a hippopologist, could only identify some of the examples roughly as various forms of proto-pony, the only certain one being an Eohippus. Some, however were relatively recent, possibly just a few centuries old. Among them were also the fossils of many cats, indubitably of the swarm that had undone the Apfel clan.
Nopony held a firm grip on her sanity that afternoon, as each member of the party repeatedly made new and gruesome discoveries in the luminescent abyss. Each held herself short of imagining the horrible events that must have transpired there over the centuries, and quite possibly millennia. Upon hearing that some of the creatures had only just petrified, Sweetie Belle swooned anew.
With more of the cavern explored, we began to piece together the function of some of the structures. Stone enclosures would have held many of the large beasts, but had failed to contain them in their final panic. The purpose of the overly capacious farmland above finally became clear; the remains of ancient produce lined the large bins.
Twilight Sparkle translated the carvings on the side of the Roamin’ ruin, and it detailed the brutal grooming practices of the ancient cult. Rarity, normally a hardy soul, emerged shaken from a rather recent building, describing it as a salon, with scrawled writing on the walls in a recognizable, modern language. I could not enter, thinking only about how my ancestor Apfel Butter had taken flight and given up his home to end these horrible practices.
One building I did enter, and it revealed itself as an ancient barbershop with multiple booths, three still occupied by their final victims. I looked closely at one that had attracted my attention with a small glinting reflection. I investigated, to find a sigil ring bearing my own family crest. Twilight Sparkle had unearthed a similar boutique underneath the Roamin’ ruin, but its chairs were empty. Concurrently, the hippopologist, studying the figures near a prehistoric mound, identified them as an impossibly old evolutionary predecessor to the pony. All the while, Winona scouted throughout the grotto, seemingly without a care. I saw her curled up among the remnants of the stone beasts, and wondered what her perception of this place might be.
After having visual confirmation of the terrible sights from my dreams, the team turned for the limitless depths of the cavern beyond the structures. We could venture but little into the gaping blackness from time immemorial, deciding that some secrets should remain undiscovered for the good of all. In but the first bit of the darkened reaches, we encountered clearly the first of many pits where the furred proto-ponies fell victim to the army of cats, whose insatiable need led them onward into the cave, up to the house, and, ultimately, to rampage through the town beyond.
Those pits of fossilized, bald ponies must have ensnared their share of cats as well over the ages; there was no way to fathom their original depths. I nearly slipped into one, and stayed motionless for some time in heart-stopping fear. Rarity was the only member of our team in my view. Suddenly, from the blackness came the sound again, and Winona dashed past me into the void. I gave chase, straight into the heart of the scratching, purring noises in the distance.
My lantern having exhausted its fuel, I still ran into the inky depths. I heard echoing shouts behind me, but in front, still the ever-increasing caterwauling, rising inevitably and putridly, like the one worm-eaten fruit in the apple-bobbing tub. I brushed against something large and hairy. Surely it was one of the wretched cats, that prey on the luxuriantly-furred. Why shouldn’t the cats buzz-cut an Apple when the Apple clan had been guilty of so many atrocious permanent waves? Surely it was not Rarity’s face I dreamt on that hirsute beast! By Celestia, a Faircloth shall not hold the lands of an Apple! Sweetie Belle, dare you swoon at my family’s exploits? Cilium… barbam… Ego sum tonsor!
I am told I uttered those words when the others found me after three hours’ search, kneeling with my electric clippers over the form of Rarity, who was frozen in terror, her mane shaved completely off, and Winona tugging at my tail, attempting to disengage me. Now the authorities have destroyed Exham Poniary, and sent Winona back to the Apple-loosa farms. I’ve been confined in Canterlot, and hear hushed voices discussing my family and its history. Sweetie Belle lies raving madly in the adjacent cell, and I am not permitted to see her. Celestia is attempting to cover up recent events, and when I ask about Rarity, I am accused of horrendous coiffures, but surely I am not responsible. It was the cats, their purring, scratching, yowling interrupting my sleep, even now lurking behind these padded walls, beckoning me deep within the earth, cats that nopony else can hear, the cats in the walls.
