A Hard Day's Nightmare Night

by Hoopy McGee

Rating: teen
Tags: Adventure, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark
Length: 11254

Nightmare Night comes to Hoofington. Plum Pudding and Cinnamon Swirl go out to celebrate, but there is something hiding in the fog...

Note: This is a sequel to School of Hard Knocks, and contains many spoilers for that story

Nightmare Night comes to Hoofington. Kids go door to door, looking for fun and candy. A fog rises, adding to the ambiance and bringing with it an otherworldly chill.

My heart is pounding, and it's not because of the sugar. What do these mists conceal in the dark, cold night?

A new adventure for Plum Pudding and Cinnamon Swirl!

Published 2014-11-06 19:50:03 UTC
Last updated 2014-11-06 19:50:03 UTC

Fillies in the mist

"I can't believe I let you talk me into this," a deceptively sweet and girlish voice growled a little ways away from me.

I started to giggle. I couldn’t help it! "Oh, come on, Cinnamon," I said. "You look adorable."

The owner of the voice, and my very best friend in the world, glared at me with his big, blue eyes before he looked away with a snort. It was kind of a mean thing to say, and I knew it, but I can't help but to push his buttons every once in a while. It stops him from taking things too seriously all the time.

Besides, he really is adorable.

"I was only supposed to wear this thing the one time," he said, looking down at his costume, which was a black body suit with dark purple legs. It also had a dark purple hood that folded down on his withers, showing off Cinnamon's short, ragged blond mane. "I never thought I'd wear it again."

I nodded as he said that. The first time he wore it, I thought it was so we could go to the park and pretend to be superheroes. But the real reason he had his mother make it for him was because it covered up his bright pink coat and blond mane. That was so he could go sneaking around at night, breaking into warehouses and so on. So, me making him wear that again was a little bit of revenge for the lie he told me back then.

Is that kind of petty? I suppose it is. Still, I can get away with it. After all, I'm just a little filly and he's not. Present appearances aside, I mean.

Hi. My name is Plum Pudding or, as I like to call myself on this particular Nightmare Night, Princess Plumerina de Puddinga the First, of Canterlot. Even though I live in Hoofington. And, yes, it's a joke name, since I'm just a regular old earth pony like Cinnamon is. Still, if I can't be a princess from Canterlot on Nightmare Night, what's the point of this holiday?

Oh, yeah. Candy. Lots and lots of candy!

"Well, be glad you can still be a super-hero," I told him. "I had a stupid growth spurt and can't even fit into my Mare-Do-Well costume anymore."

That's why I was dressed up as a princess. That's lower-case princess, I mean, not a "Princess" like Celestia or Luna. I just had a pointy hat like an upside-down sugar cone on my head and a big, poofy dress that Cinnamon's mom sewed up for me. Cinnamon’s mom can be really a nice mare, even though she's a little weird sometimes. I mean, she did keep Cinnamon Swirl locked up in her house for a while after he accidentally ran through some poison joke and got turned into a filly.

Speaking of Cinnamon Swirl, he was glaring at me for some reason. I went back over what I'd just said, trying to figure out what I'd said this time that would have upset him. Oh, yeah, "growth spurt." That would have done it. He was kind of upset that he hasn't gotten much bigger since his "accident".

I flashed him a smile and decided to tease him a little bit more. "You could probably fit in it, though," I told him. "Want me to get it for you so you can be Mare-Do-Well?"

Another angry snort, though this one came with one of those patented Cinnamon Swirl half-smiles that he gets whenever I get him with a particularly good zinger.

"Pass," he said.

I give him the grin that my mom likes to call "cheeky" and go back to getting ready. I have real princess shoes to put on and everything! Well, sort of. They're made of construction paper and glitter. I'm still missing the gauzy train-thing for my pointy hat, but my Mom will put that on for me once I finish brushing my curly purple mane.

You know, I never used to care about what my mane looked like before, but recently it's starting to bug me just how messy it can get. It’s always all tangled up, and I can't do anything with it. It's not as bad as Pinkie Pie's, a mare from Ponyville I'd met a couple weeks ago. Her mane looked like you could hide a half-dozen birds in it without ever knowing. Still, I sometimes wished I could cut my mane short like Cinnamon. I don't think my mom would like that, though.

Cinnamon never bothered to do much with his hair, which is why he was already ready. All he had to do was put on his costume, which he’d done before he even came over. I was a little jealous of that, sometimes. He didn't worry about fixing up his mane or tail, and he never had to worry about big poofy dresses.

I imagined Cinnamon in a big, poofy dress for just a second and had to bite my lip so I wouldn't giggle again. I love teasing him, and I'm pretty sure he secretly likes being teased sometimes, but there are some lines I know better than to cross.

"It's getting pretty foggy out," Cinnamon said as I stared into my mirror, trying to brush my mane into something less random.

I looked out of my bedroom window and saw that he was right. All I could see was a solid silvery-grey. That triggered a memory of something that my uncle once told me, way back when I was just a little filly a couple years ago. This was back before he went into witness protection, of course.

"My uncle Figgy used to say that a foggy night on Nightmare Night meant that the spirits of the dead would come and visit," I told Cinnamon.

Cinnamon snorted in that dismissive way he has. "I wouldn't believe your uncle if he told me the sky was blue."

“Well, since it’s night time now, you’d be right not to.”

Cinnamon rolled his eyes at me and went back to looking out the window.

Cinnamon doesn't like my uncle Figgy very much. Which makes sense, since Cinnamon used to be a police officer and my uncle was... well, a criminal, honestly. I still have a hard time believing that. Uncle Figgy just seemed like a goofball to me, always joking around and telling stories. And now, he's been moved into witness protection, and I'll probably never see him again.

Life sure gets weird, sometimes.

I eventually give up on my mane—much to Cinnamon’s badly-hidden relief—and we go downstairs. My mom was waiting for us, and she took a minute to pin the train onto my princess-hat.

Why did old-timey princesses wear those hats, anyway? They honestly seem kind of stupid. It’s hard to keep it balanced on my head, and the gauze stuff tickles my neck.

“Oh, you look so pretty!” Mom said as she pinned the train on.

I groaned and rolled my eyes while scuffling my hooves, pretending like I was all embarrassed, but really I was kind of happy she said that. Still, I have to keep up appearances! I’m going to be a big pony soon, even though I don’t have my cutie mark yet.

That’s one thing that Cinnamon has over me, even though he’s smaller than I am right now. He actually has a cutie mark. It’s a blue-grey policepony’s shield with a magnifying glass across it. I tried not to be jealous about it, but fillies without cutie marks were getting more and more rare in class, and I was feeling… well, a bit left out, honestly.

Mom finally got done getting my hat all squared away, even bringing out some hairpins to keep it firmly attached. Which was a good thing, because my neck was starting to hurt from trying to keep my head perfectly still.

She had just wrapped up when a knock came from our front door. Mom went to go answer it. As soon as she did, two familiar voices sang out, reciting a familiar little ditty.

“Nightmare night, what a fright! Give us something sweet to bite!”

“Oh, you two look great!” Mom said.

I peeked around Mom’s side and saw my friend Lilac there, along with her little sister Lemon Squeeze. Lilac was wrapped horn to hoof in bandages, which meant that she was a mummy. Lemon, on the other hoof… I had no idea what she was dressed up as. She had some sort of fluff around her neck, and some black lines drawn onto her muzzle.

I don’t like mysteries, so I flat out asked her “What the heck are you supposed to be?”

“I’m a lion!” Lemon said. Then she reared back and waved her front hooves in the air in a vaguely threatening fashion. “Rawr!”

“That’s a great lion,” Mom replied. “Very scary!”

It sure was weird to hear my own mother lie like that.

I was actually a little annoyed that Lemon was going to be going around with us. Tonight would be so much cooler if we didn’t have a little filly tagging along. Still, when you hang out with Lilac, that usually means Lemon will be along for the ride. It’s the price of friendship, I guess.

“Hmm… It’s awfully foggy out,” Mom was saying as I waved at Lilac. “I’m not sure it’s safe for you fillies without an adult.”

I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. Mom was going all super-protective on us! Every other Nightmare Night, Mom would stay home and Dad would take us out to get candy and visit the Nightmare Festival. But Dad is currently in rehabilitation in the hospital from being poisoned by a zebra.

Don’t ask. It’s a long story.

“Wait, Cinnamon is an adult!” Lilac said. “He can make sure we stay safe!”

I felt my eager smile coming back. That was such a great idea I could’ve kissed her, except for that would have been really gross.

Mom blinked, then smiled. “That’s true. Will you girls listen to everything Cinnamon says?”

“Yes, Missus Pudding,” Lilac and Lemon said at the same time I said “Yes, Mom.”

“And, Cinnamon, do you think you can keep the girls safe?”

Cinnamon puffed out his chest and straightened up to his full height. Which, sadly, still made him the second shortest pony in the room after Lemon. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Hmm… Well, I do see lots of other kids running around.” She nodded. “Okay! You can go. But stay on the lighted roads, stay with the crowds, don’t go wandering off, and stay near Cinnamon. Got it?”

We all agreed that we did. Mom opened the door to allow us out, and all three of us actual fillies cheered. Cinnamon sighed, because he’s an old grump. We marched out into the foggy night.

~~*~~

Of course Cinnamon had to start laying down the law before my house was even out of sight.

“I want all of you within my sight at all times, got it?” Cinnamon said in his I'm-A-Serious-Adult voice. “Lilac, you keep an eye on Lemon. Lemon, you stick with your sister as if you’re tied to her tail, got it?”

“Yes, Cinnamon,” we all echoed.

"Right. Let's go have fun," Cinnamon said. Then he stopped, frowning. "Uh. Where are we going, again?"

I snorted and Lilac started laughing. "We're going to the park," I said. "They have the Festival set up there."

"Makes sense." Cinnamon started walking again.

We all tagged along, the mists curling up around our hooves and making our fetlocks a little damp. And now that I was out in it, this weather actually was kind of creepy. There was mist pooling up on the ground an inch or two deep, making my construction-paper princess shoes all soggy. The air itself was hazy, with things starting to fade just a few lengths up and disappearing into formless grey by the end of the block. A solid blanket of fog was eddying around just high enough to swallow up top of the streetlights. I'd never seen weather like this, ever.

And it was cold, too. Wisps of chill air went down my neck like somepony dragging their feathers across my coat. The fog was making everything around us not only look weird, but sound weird, too. Everything was muffled. Our hoofsteps didn't echo like they should. It was like the fog wasn't letting the sounds out, forcing them to stay close to us. It made me feel like I was all crowded in.

Lucky for me, Cinnamon Swirl decided to break the weird almost-silence to give us all a history lecture. "Back in the old days, when Hoofington was just a small village, Nightmare Night was just one part of the Harvest Festival, and it lasted three days."

"Wow, Cinnamon, you remember all that? You're even older than I thought!" I grinned at him as he scowled back over his shoulder at me. Unlike kids my own age, I knew I could push Cinnamon's buttons and he wouldn't stop being my friend. It was kind of a relief, really, to actually get to be my weird little self.

"I'm not that old, kid," he said.

I frowned right back at him. "I thought I told you I didn't want to be called 'kid' any more?"

"Then stop calling me 'old'," he said with a grin.

"He's got you there," Lilac said. Lemon giggled, though I bet she didn't know why that was funny.

Cinnamon kept up his history lesson as we walked, his confident voice pushing back the weird muffled not-quite-silence the fog was causing. I was grateful for that, even though I was only listening with one ear. The sound of his voice was comforting—not that I'd ever tell him that—but the history lesson was boring. This wasn’t school!

We walked along like that for a few minutes until I suddenly almost tripped over Lemon Squeeze, who had stopped for no good reason.

"What the hay?" I said, then gave the filly my best glare. "Why'd you stop walking?"

"There's a pony in the mist," Lemon said. She pointed where she was looking, which was down a dark alley. "There, see her?"

I looked. The alley was dark, and it was spooky, but there definitely wasn't anypony in there. I started to say so, when two curls of mist eddied together and rose up, twisting oddly. And, for half a second, I thought I saw a face looking back at me. Then the mist settled down and it was gone.

I shivered and tried to convince myself it was just because of the cold. And I knew that there hadn't really been a face. It was just the mist swirling around, making it look like there was. It was one of those what-do-you-call-em's... optical illusions. But that didn't stop me from staring into the alley with my heart pounding in my chest like it was trying to make a break for it through my ribcage.

"Plum! Lemon! Don't lag behind!" Cinnamon called from a little way ahead.

If Lemon ever says that I jumped and squeaked like a scared little mouse when Cinnamon barked my name, just remember: she's a dirty little liar who can't even make a decent lion costume.

~~*~~

By the time we got to the fair, I had forgotten all about the face in the alley. And that's because the games were all set up! We each paid our bits to get in and then had to stop and stare. There were so many choices, we didn’t know where to start! Finally, we just went to the nearest booth and started from there.

Cinnamon's costume should have been an old wet blanket, because he was doing a great job of acting like one. He kept telling us to stick together, and he even scolded me once for wandering off. I couldn't help it, one of the stalls had this really cute necklace with a bird on it. I was only looking at it for a few seconds. Maybe a minute, tops!

But, in spite of Cinnamon’s insistence on sticking to the rules, we still managed to have fun. Though, I had to ditch my construction-paper princess shoes after they got soaked and started falling apart.

Lemon won a little plastic tiara in a game called ghost catcher. For that game, they blindfold you and give you a stick to knock little fabric ghosts off of the strings that held them. Lemon completely wigged out, thrashing around everywhere like a maniac, and managed to knock down seven of them. So then she was a lion with a tiara. Whatever. I wasn’t jealous because I only managed three ghosts, okay? She just looked silly.

The whole time we were running around, the mists made everything so much more spooky. It was pretty awesome! The torches burning all around us made it so we could see where we were going, but the solid wall of mist made it seem like the entire festival was its own world. It was like we were cut off from the rest of reality.

We played all sorts of carnival games, like the spider-toss and skeleton bowling, which was trying to knock down a plastic pony skeleton using a ball. We went through the "pumpkin patch", which was a bunch of pumpkins that had scary faces carved into them and lit up with firefly lanterns.

Then there was the magician on her portable stage, doing simply unbelievable tricks. I mean, I know unicorns have magic, but they don’t usually do that many tricks! And not with the sheer style that light blue mare had. Trixie, she said her name was. She finished her routine with fireworks and a bow and, though the fireworks were a little less impressive thanks to the fog, she still got a gigantic round of applause. Ponies clamored and stomped their hooves, cheered and whistled. More than a few threw bits up on the stage.

After the magician, we went to a fortune-teller, which I’d never done before. The old mare wore a bangle-covered scarf and read the lines on the frogs of our hooves. She told me in no uncertain terms that I would marry a handsome stallion when I got older, which is weird because that’s what she told Lilac, too. Lemon was told that she’d get lots of candy tonight, which made her happy.

Cinnamon waited in the doorway the whole time, with that bored-but-superior look on his face he gets sometimes when he thinks he knows something nopony else does. He flat-out refused to get his hoof read, which just goes to show you that Cinnamon can be a real party pooper sometimes.

“It’s all fake,” he said as we left. “You just spent your bits on nothing.”

“Pff, I know that,” I said, rolling my eyes. “That old fortune teller is one of the librarians from the Hoofington Public Library.”

“Then why go?” he asked.

“Because it’s fun!” I nudged him in the ribs, and he grunted and glared at me. “You need to loosen up, Cinnamon. Maybe we should go to a seance?”

He looked where I was pointing, which was another tent like the fortune-tellers. Only, this one had a unicorn out front trying to talk the crowd into going in. And it seemed to be working, too, since there were tons of ponies lined up.

“No thanks,” Cinnamon said.

I shrugged. “The line is too long anyway.”

“Definitely,” Lilac said, “And I would rather go on a hayride, anyway!”

A quick survey showed that three of us wanted to go on the hayride, and one who told us he didn’t care what we did. The line at the hayride was non-existent, and the stallion hooked up to the wagon was happy to see us and let us get on right away. Lilac and I were excited as we got up into the wagon, taking seats on the bales of straw they set up. Lemon was giggling and bouncing on her hind hooves, her front hooves propped up against the side of the wagon so she could see. Cinnamon, for his part, lay down on his back in the straw, put his hooves behind his head and took a nap. He probably thought that this was all little kids' stuff, but I was having too good of a time to care.

Our driver set out at a quick trot, and us actual girls all shrieked and giggled when the wagon lurched underneath us. It quickly got boring, though, because once we were away from the torches, the mist hid everything past twenty paces. We did pass the occasional torch that marked the route, but for the most part, it was just solid grey all around us.

We quieted down, which probably made Cinnamon happy. I was a little disappointed in the ride, honestly. I also felt bad for the ponies that had set up all the spooky decorations along the route, most of which we couldn’t even see.

I turned to talk to Lilac about something and I froze, my mouth hanging open and whatever it was I was going to say completely evaporating out of my head. That face was back, staring back out of the mist with a kindly smile on its muzzle. Only, this time it had a mane of tight curls and a neck reaching down to the shoulders. If there was any more to her, I couldn’t see it. The rest blurred away into the fog.

The mare had yellowish color to her, but it was a kind of washed-out yellow. Almost like someone had started with a nice, bright yellow and then started taking the brightness away and replacing it with light grey.

My staring got the attention of Lemon, who turned to see what I was looking at. In a tiny, disbelieving voice, the little filly said, “Grandma?”

The mare in the mist smiled a little more, and then the mists swirled once again, hiding her completely. By the time Lilac looked around, it was too late to see her. The older unicorn looked down at her wide-eyed sister and said, “It can’t be Grandma, Lemon.”

“It was too!” Lemon insisted.

“I don’t know who it was, but there was definitely somepony out there,” I said. I was shivering again, and desperately hoping Cinnamon would wake up from his nap.

Lilac shook her head. “Well, it wasn’t our grandma. She’s been dead for almost a year.”

We sat in silence for a few seconds. Then, my hoof trembling, I reached out and poked Cinnamon in the ribs.

“What?” he said, not opening his eyes.

“Did you hear what Lemon said?” I asked.

“Yeah. She thinks she saw her dead grandma.” One bright blue eye cracked open and he looked first at me, and then at the filly. “It wasn’t her,” he told her, his voice softer and more comforting than it usually was. He sat up and patted Lemon on the back. “It must have been somepony that looked like her.”

Lemon scowled down at the hay-strewn floorboards. “I know what I saw,” she muttered.

“Plum?” Cinnamon asked me, raising an eyebrow.

I shivered in the damp air. I was half-convinced—okay, maybe more than half-convinced—that I’d just seen a ghost. But I couldn’t tell Cinnamon that. He’d think I was crazy! “I saw somepony. It was a mare, a unicorn with a curly mane. She, uh… The fog hid her.”

“Did she seem dangerous?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No. She was just smiling. And not in a creepy, ‘I’m gonna get you’ way like the Mane-iac from my Power Ponies comics. Just… smiling.”

“Alright. Let me know if you see her again. Got it, everypony?”

Lilac and I nodded. Lemon was still pouting. And then the hay ride got back to the starting point and it was time to go on to the next event.

~~*~~

We ran into a little problem when we got to the haunted house.

"I don't wanna go!" Lemon wailed, crying and messing up her lion whiskers.

"Oh, come on!" I pleaded. "It will be okay. Cinnamon won't let anything happen to you."

I looked over at Cinnamon, who looked back at me with an uncomfortable look on his face. Meanwhile, Lemon had buried her face in Lilac's bandaged chest, still crying. Of all the things at the fair, the haunted house was the one I was looking forward to the most!

"I guess we should skip the haunted house," Cinnamon said, just like I knew he would.

I opened my mouth to start arguing, but Lilac spoke up first.

"I can stay out here with her, if you guys want to go through it," she said.

Cinnamon was shaking his head even before she'd finished. "No, we need to stick together."

"I promise, we'll stay right here the whole time." Lilac smiled while she patted Lemon's mane, the filly hiccuping into her older sister's chest. "Go on, we'll be okay for five minutes."

"I don't know..." Cinnamon said, looking torn.

"Please, Cinnamon?" I gave him the most desperate, pleading look I could manage. "I've been looking forward to this all year! If we can't go, I won't get to see it again for another year!"

I kept quiet while I watched the struggle on his face. Anything I said could have tipped him in the wrong direction. Finally, he sighed.

"Okay, but you two have to stay right here, and I mean it." He glared at them. "Seriously, I mean it. You wander off, and I'll drag you back to your home without going door-to-door for candy."

We all agreed again. Cinnamon finally gave in, and we went over to the haunted house. We got in line behind a mare and stallion who were obviously a couple, judging by how he had his wing over her back.

I was too excited for words, dancing in place while wishing for the line to move faster. At least it was a short line. We’d be inside in no time!

I glanced over at Cinnamon, who was looking over at the seance tent and frowning. I glanced over, myself, trying to see what it was that he was studying so hard, but I didn’t see anything too unusual. It was still really busy, and there was still that unicorn out front trying to get people to come in.

Cinnamon was being too serious, I decided, so I nudged him in the ribs.

“So, you ever been to a haunted house before?” I asked him when he looked over.

“Yeah, once,” he said. “When I was a little kid.”

He didn’t notice when his statement made the mare in front of us look back. She smiled down at Cinnamon, probably thinking about how funny it was that a little filly would be talking about being a “little kid.”

Just goes to show her, since Cinnamon was probably older than her.

“What was it like?” I asked him. When he opened his mouth to answer, I held up a hoof. “Wait! Don’t spoil it, I want it to be a surprise!”

Cinnamon offered me one of his rare smiles. “You got it, Plum.”

We were quiet for a while. Cinnamon was lost in his thoughts, and I was too busy being excited about the haunted house to talk about anything. But I wasn’t so excited that I missed it when the stallion front of us sighed loudly and looked up at the sky. Or, rather, the fog that blocked out the sky.

“I wish I knew what was going on with the weather,” the stallion said to the mare under his wing. “It was supposed to be chilly but clear all night.”

“Maybe somepony goofed up,” his marefriend said. “Or, they did it on purpose, to make it spookier!”

If that’s what happened, it worked. This was the spookiest Nightmare Night I’d ever seen!

We entered the haunted house just a couple of minutes after that. Pre-recorded groans and muffled screams filled the air. Thick cobwebs, obviously fake, were hung from every corner, loaded down with gigantic plastic spiders. The narrow hallway was built at a lopsided angle, the entire thing listing sideways and painted a greenish-grey that nopony would ever use in their own home.

It was cheesy. It was silly. And I loved every second of it! Even when we walked through a room designed to look like a graveyard and a skeleton popped out of a grave with a pre-recorded shriek. I screamed and grabbed on to Cinnamon, who just looked at the skeleton as if he were bored.

Heck, he probably was bored. I've never met a braver pony than Cinnamon Swirl. I'm not even exaggerating! I've seen him break into a warehouse in the middle of the night as if it were no big deal. I saw him face down and even fight fully grown stallions! And, if that weren’t enough, he helped rescue my mom when she got kidnapped by gangsters! And he wasn't scared once, not even when I was so frightened I could barely stand up because my knees were shaking so bad.

So, yeah. When things get a little scary, I tend to stay around Cinnamon. His bravery kind of rubs off, and I feel like I can do things I wouldn't usually be able to just because he's around.

That doesn’t stop me from grabbing him and shrieking in his ear every time something pops up in the haunted house. Or, in the case of the giant tarantula, drops down right in front of our faces. Cinnamon never even flinched! Heck, he even laughed when I jumped and screamed!

No problem. I’ll have to get him back for that later on.

We finally left the haunted house, making our way through yet another fake graveyard and around to the front of the house. There was one small problem, though. Lilac and Lemon weren’t where we’d left them.

Cinnamon, of course, was furious. He marched up to the spot last seen them, muttering a whole bunch of words my mom would be surprised and upset to find out I knew. What can I say? You learn a lot, being around a pony like Cinnamon Swirl.

“Damned kids,” he snarled, turning in a slow circle and staring into the fog. “I told them to stay put! How hard is it to—”

“They’re on that bench over there,” I said, pointing. I’d spotted them purely by accident.

Cinnamon cut himself off mid-rant. “Oh. Yeah, okay. That’s fine, I guess.”

Even as we walked up, I could tell something was wrong. Lemon wasn’t crying anymore. Instead, she sat there, leaning bonelessly against her sister and staring into space with wide eyes. Lilac didn’t look too much better. She was breathing hard and shaking, her eyes flickering around as if terrified of the mists. If I had to guess, I would say that the only thing holding her together was the fact that she was trying to be strong for her little sister.

Even Cinnamon, who is not normally the most sensitive of ponies, noticed that something was wrong. “What happened?”

Lilac looked down at Lemon, and then back up at Cinnamon. Her voice hitched a couple of times before she managed to say what was wrong.

“Grandma… she came back.”

The fog-muffled sounds of the fair seemed to fade into nothingness for a moment as that sunk in.

“You’re sure it was her?” Cinnamon asked with more sympathy than I was used to hearing from him.

“It was definitely her.” A tear fell from Lilac’s eye and she wiped it away with a hoof. “She said she had something important to tell us, and then she just… just…” Lilac swallowed heavily. “She disappeared, right in front of us.”

I felt like I’d taken a bath in ice. Sure, I’d had fun in the haunted house, but that was all fake. Ponies wearing sheets over their heads, or puppets made up to look like ghosts. It was cheesy, it was just a touch creepy, and it was all imaginary, which made it fun.

Lilac was talking about an actual ghost. A for real ghost. And, suddenly, I wasn’t having much fun at all.

~~*~~

Lilac and Lemon decided they wanted to go home. No getting candy, no offering to Nightmare Moon, just home. I wanted to try talking them into staying, since them going home meant that I would have to leave, too. But… well, they were scared. More than scared, really. And, as much as I love Nightmare Night and my silly princess costume, I wasn’t going to make them stay here with me when they were this upset. Especially since I was afraid of ghosts, now, too.

Still, I noticed Cinnamon getting his hoof stamped so he could come back into the festival, so I got mine stamped too.

We all trooped back through the fog, a sad little procession. Cinnamon brought up the rear, his ears flicking around like crazy and his head turning quickly as he tried to look in every direction at once. I could tell he was mad, though I didn’t know why. He was trying his best to hide it. I don’t think Lilac and Lemon noticed how angry he was. They were walking so close together that they were practically touching the whole time.

Lemon was a real mess. She wasn’t crying anymore, but she wasn’t saying anything, either. Her silly little tiara was on crooked, so I reached out and straightened it for her without even thinking.

“Maybe you can be a princess next year,” I told her. “You can ask Cinnamon’s mom to make a dress for you, just like mine. You would look awesome!”

She just blinked and looked up at me.

“Nah,” Cinnamon said. “She should go as a policepony next year. I think she’d make a great one.”

At least that got a little smile out of the little yellow filly. I wanted to be grumpy about that, but I was so happy to see her do something other than staring blankly ahead that I didn’t care who got her to smile.

I could understand everypony being on-edge. I was jumping at every noise, myself. And I kept looking in the alleyways, even though I was terrified I’d see some ghostly face looking back out at me.

It was a relief when we made it back to Lilac’s house. Her parents were surprised to see us, and were even more surprised to hear that they’d seen the ghostly image of their grandmother roaming around the fairgrounds.

Lilac’s dad, a pale blue unicorn named Tundra Breeze, came over to talk to us while his wife comforted Lilac and Lemon.

“Did you two see anything?” he asked us.

“No, sir,” Cinnamon replied.

“I saw somepony kind of strange,” I admitted. “But I can’t say if she was their grandma or not.”

“Describe her for me, please,” Tundra Breeze asked.

I launched into my description. “Yellow unicorn mare, pretty old and with her mane in tight grey curls… I couldn’t make out her cutie mark, though.”

Tundra Breeze got even paler. “That… It sounds like…”

“It wasn’t her,” Cinnamon said with his trademarked unshakeable confidence.

“What…” Tundra Breeze shook his head. “How can you know?”

“I’ve got a hunch. I’ll be back later tonight to let you know if it pans out.” Cinnamon looked over his shoulder and out the open front door. “For now, I’ve got to head back to the festival and investigate.”

The funny thing is, if it had been me that had said that, Tundra Breeze would have probably just rolled his eyes and patted me on the head. He would probably think I was pretending, talking big but not able to back it up. But Cinnamon pulls it off. When he talks like he’s an adult, there’s no way to just dismiss him. Lilac’s dad blinked as his face settled into the typical surprised look that adult ponies sometimes got when talking to Cinnamon when he is in “serious” mode.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Tundra Breeze finally asked. “It could be dangerous.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Cinnamon advised. “I’m going to the first police officer I find. We’ll figure this out. I’ll be back to talk to you later on tonight.”

Tundra Breeze just blinked and looked stunned as Cinnamon turned and walked away. I grinned up at him and waved before following Cinnamon out the door.

“And you’re going home,” Cinnamon said to me as soon as I caught up with him.

If he’d said it any other way, I would have been happy to go home. Instead, he made it an order. And—stupid, silly me—that just got me mad.

“The hell I am,” I shot back, my ears flattening as I got angry.

I actually managed to surprise him with that. “You shouldn’t swear,” he said, eyebrows raised.

“You swear all the damned time,” I pointed out.

He winced. “Your mother can’t hear you talking like that, or she’ll cut off my ears and sew them into a bit-bag.”

“Well, it’s a good thing she won’t be able to hear me at the festival, right?” I grinned at his scowling face. “Go ahead and run off without me. It’s not like I could just sneak out and follow you there or anything, right?”

Cinnamon’s scowl deepened as that sunk in. After all, I’d done it before. He relented by the time we got to the end of the block.

“Fine,” he said. “But you do exactly what I say.”

No need to tell me twice. “You got it, boss!” I said, giving him a salute.

He scoffed at that. We made our way through the foggy streets, and back at the Nightmare Night Festival.

~~*~~

The ponies that checked our hooves for the stamp seemed on-edge. They spent more time looking out into the fog than at the ponies they were letting in. Their heads moved in quick, bird-like jerks while their ears swiveled around constantly.

Cinnamon was the one who noticed it, of course. He pointed it out to me, after we got past the entrance.

“Whatever is happening, it’s getting worse,” he said to me.

“Okay,” I said, faking being brave as best I could. “What is it that’s happening?”

Cinnamon gave me a serious look. “You know there’s no such thing as ghosts, right?”

I didn’t actually know any such thing. “Yeah, of course not,” I said, putting as much fake confidence in my voice as I could.

“Good,” he said. “Then you know that, whatever that thing over there is, it’s definitely not a ghost.”

He nodded with his head, and I looked. And what I saw froze my blood in my veins.

The stallion was obscured by the fog, the grey mist shrouding him like a cloak. His mane had probably been a dark brown at one point, but it looked black now. His coat had that same muted grey cast to it that I’d first seen on Lilac’s grandmother, back during the hayride.

He wasn’t looking at us. He was looking, instead, at an earth pony stallion, who was staring back at the apparition with wide, shocked eyes. The younger stallion looked so much like the older one that I didn’t doubt they were related.

The ghostly stallion opened his mouth, and the voice that came out was whispering and faint. “Cartwheel,” the stallion said.

The stallion’s voice shook as he replied. “Dad?”

“Cartwheel, I need to tell you something.”

The younger stallion, Cartwheel, opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, but only strangled squeaks came out.

“Come and find me,” the ghostly stallion said. “Come quickly, there is no time. My Cartwheel. My precious son.”

The mists swirled, and the ghost was gone. Cartwheel blinked, staggered, and then looked around frantically. The last we saw of him, he was galloping off into the mist. I stared after him with my heart pounding like a drum and my coat trying to crawl off of my back.

Cinnamon gave me a gentle push on the side. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

Maybe he meant that as a comfort, but it kinda backfired. I mean, ghosts are scary enough, but something that looked like a ghost and acted like a ghost, but wasn’t a ghost? That could be anything!

“Then what was that?” I asked. My voice got a little shrill, but I didn’t really care about embarrassing myself in front of Cinnamon anymore. My legs felt like rubber, and I was having too hard of a time just standing to be worried about something as silly as pride.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” Cinnamon turned and started walking, and I hurried to keep up. “Let me know if you see a police officer.”

I nodded and kept my eyes peeled. And I noticed something as we walked around the fairgrounds; everypony was scared out of their minds. This was probably because of all the ghosts—or whatever they were— that kept popping out of the mists to talk to the festival-goers. We saw at least three more of them as we walked along.

There was a sense of tension underneath everything. There were fewer ponies around than ever, most of the booths standing empty and only a few of the games being played. The only place where there were very many ponies was at the seance tent, where the line went on for what seemed like forever, stretching across the park. The ponies in the line looked desperate, confused and determined all at once.

For the first time, we got close enough to the tent to hear what the barker out front was saying. “Nightmare Night! The night where restless spirits abound.” His horn glowed a bright yellow, and a marker held in his magic grasp descended towards a sign next to the entrance. “Seances are now one hundred bits, colts and fillies!”

The sign held a bunch of numbers, all of them crossed off except for the top one, which read “85”. The marker crossed that one off and wrote “100” above it.

All up and down the line, ponies groaned and muttered. A few left, which wasn’t surprising because one hundred bits was a crazy amount of money for something like a seance. What was surprising was how many stayed, which was most of them.

Cinnamon leaned over and whispered into my ear. “Follow the money, and you’ll often find your perp.”

“You think the seance ponies are behind it?" I whispered back.

"They're the ones profiting the most. And did you notice anything weird about their tent?"

I studied the tent, frowning as I tried to figure out what Cinnamon was talking about. "It's a lot bigger than most other tents?" I hazarded.

"Yeah. And they're only letting in groups of up to four at a time. Why do they need all the extra room?"

I wracked my brains and came up blank. "I dunno."

"Me neither," Cinnamon said. And then he grinned, sharp and white in the shadows. "Let's go find out."

It was simple enough getting around the back of the tent. The Nightmare Night Festival was set up so that most of the attractions were facing the jogging paths, and nopony seemed to be hanging around behind all the stalls and tents. Of course, that meant that it was much darker back there, with no torches or anything. Which meant that the fog was a lot closer.

The tent had a back door, a canvas flap that could be rolled up or pushed aside. It was tied shut, but the bottom had enough of a gap for a small filly to fit through. I fidgeted uncomfortably as Cinnamon wriggled under the fabric of the door. He went first, in order to make sure it was safe.

"Who the hay are you?!" a mare's voice shouted from inside the tent.

I winced. Apparently, it wasn't safe at all.

"This isn't the bathroom?" I heard Cinnamon ask innocently. "I really need to go."

"No!" came the other voice. "Get out of here!"

"Fine, fine," Cinnamon said. I heard some rustling that sounded like paper. "I'll just take this, in case they're out of paper at the outhouse."

"No, put that... you get back here!"

There was a clamor from inside the tent, the sound of one pony chasing another, smaller pony. It was heading towards the front of the tent. That's when I had a particularly wicked idea, and wriggled under the door myself. Cinnamon was providing one heck of a distraction, so I might as well use it! Even if it meant getting grass stains on my pretty princess dress. The hat got knocked off halfway through, but I just left it where it was. It was only construction paper and some old gauzy material, after all.

The back of the tent was pretty dim, with a curtain hanging through the middle of it, cutting the back half off from the front half. The only light was from a few candles set on the ground in a rough square. A closer look at the candles showed me that they were set on the corners of a large, square piece of wood with mystic-looking circle carved all over the top of it. If my comic books were right, then this was some sort of spell-circle. Unicorns used those to cast a particularly tricky magic spell.

There was an eruption of shouting at the front of the tent, and I risked a peek past the curtain. Cinnamon was standing his ground, facing off against three unicorns. One was the barker who had been luring ponies in. One of the mares, judging by her voice, was the one Cinnamon had stumbled on when he entered the tent. The third was dressed in more bangles and scarves than even the hoof-reader had been, and was probably the one doing the actual seances.

I ducked back and looked around. The circle showed there was something going on, but there wasn't much else in the back of the tent that could be evidence. Just the circle carved into the wood, candles, a cushion on the floor next to the circle, and a box with a bunch of papers in them. So, naturally, I decided to grab a few of the papers and get out the back as quickly as I could.

I got a few more grass stains as I slithered out, but I was way past caring about that. I snatched up my princess hat and jammed it awkwardly back on my head. Then I stuffed the papers—which, honestly, looked and felt like newspaper pages—down the neck of my dress. My heart hammered in my chest as I trotted around to the front of the tent while trying to act casual.

Cinnamon was still squared off against the three unicorns, but now a police officer had joined in and was trying to calm everypony down. I recognized the officer as the one who'd walked me back to Cinnamon's house after my mom was rescued from the gangsters. Pinwheel, I think his name was? I wandered a little ways away, trying not to be noticed by anypony, and pretended to be very interested in an empty booth nearby.

The argument at the front of the tent wrapped up and Cinnamon, his face churned up like a thunderstorm, stomped away. Pinwheel looked like he wanted to say something, but he just sighed and let Cinnamon go. The seance unicorns had smug little looks on their faces when went back into their tent.

"Damn it," Cinnamon said as he stomped up to me. "I almost had the evidence."

"Oh?" I asked, all innocent-like. "What evidence?"

"They had a spell-circle in there," he said, his face all grumpy. "They're casting a spell, and a big one if it's altering the local weather. And then there was a box of obituaries."

My muzzle wrinkled up. "Oba-what, now?"

"Obituaries," he repeated. "Notices in the newspaper that are printed whenever a pony dies. There was a box full of them!"

"Ah," I said faintly, my skin crawling around the newspaper pressed up against my chest. I hurried to drag it out and pass it, crumpled but safe, over to Cinnamon, whose eyes were popping out of his head at the sight of it. "I went in while you were causing a clamor."

"A clamor?" he replied, raising an eyebrow at me.

"It was today's word on my word-of-the-day calendar," I replied defensively.

He chuckled while he read the sheet of newspaper in his hoof. "Yeah. This will do it, I think."

"So, what now?" I asked.

Cinnamon’s smile flickered and faded. “I’m not sure. This isn’t going to be enough evidence for a probable cause search.” He heaved a great sigh. “We need some sort of magic expert to tell us what we might be dealing with.”

I stared into the fog for a second as I adjusted my poofy dress. My slide under the tent had made it get all bunched up under my front legs and it was getting uncomfortable.

“What about that magician?” I asked.

“Who? Oh, Trixie?” Cinnamon frowned. “I don’t know. I didn’t have that great of an impression of her when she stopped by Ponyville.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Gigantic star-bear ripped up a few houses.”

I stared at him for a few seconds. “Huh,” was all I could think of to say. Ponyville sounded weird. “Well, anyway, we need a magic expert, and she seems to be the biggest expert around.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Let’s see if we can track her down.”

I followed Cinnamon as we made our way back towards where Trixie had done her stage show. To my surprise, where the stage had been there was now a large wagon. Trixie’s cutie mark, a magic wand on a crescent-shaped field of stars, was painted on the side of the wagon.

Cinnamon didn’t even hesitate. He just marched right up and banged a hoof on the door. After some muttering and shifting around from inside the wagon, the upper half of the door opened and Trixie stuck out her silver-maned head.

“Ah,” she said. “Children. One moment.”

Her head withdrew into her wagon, emerging again a moment later with a glow around her horn. “Here you go,” she said as two large, signed photos of her smirking face were lowered towards us.

“Uh, thanks,” Cinnamon said, ignoring the picture. “That’s not why we’re here, though.”

Trixie raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Speak for yourself,” I said, having already grabbed my picture. Heck, why not? It was free, and I really liked her magic show!

Cinnamon shot me a dirty look. “No, sorry. I had a question I wanted to ask you.”

The magician snorted. “Sorry, but Trixie only performs during her show. And Trixie absolutely refuses to ‘prove’ how talented she is with magic, no matter how big of a fan you are.” She grimaced and muttered, “That never works out well.”

“We have some questions that need a magic expert,” Cinnamon said. “You were the first pony that came to mind.”

Trixie defrosted somewhat, a small smile appearing on her face. “Oh?”

“You’ve noticed the fog,” Cinnamon said. “It was supposed to be a clear night tonight, but something called up the fog. Can unicorns do that?”

Trixie placed a hoof on her chin as she considered. “Hmm. Yes. Not as easily as pegasi, of course. But there are several spells I can think of that can call up a fog this thick. It would take a strong unicorn, or at least one with a well-made circle, to keep it going this long.”

My ears perked up. “We found a circle!” I blurted.

“Did you?” Trixie asked. “An actual spell circle?”

I nodded. “It was carved onto a flat board, each side about twice as long as I am, and it had candles all around it. And some weird-looking scribbling along the edges.”

“Where was this?” Trixie asked.

Cinnamon was the one who answered. “In the medium’s tent, where they’re doing the seances.”

Trixie frowned and looked off in that direction, even though she had no chance of seeing the tent. “You don’t say…”

“There was a mare in there, staring into the circle and casting some sort of spell. Then there’s this,” Cinnamon said, producing the pages of newspaper.

Trixie’s horn glowed again as she scooped them up. She looked confused for a few seconds, and then the look on her face changed all at once.

“Obituary pages,” Trixie said, her voice changing from curious to outraged.

Cinnamon put on a grim smile. “You know what this is, don’t you.”

“I have a very good idea,” Trixie said, her voice a little louder than it was before. “I’m an expert in illusion magic, after all. None better.”

“So, you would know why people are seeing ghosts everywhere?” Cinnamon asked.

“Ghosts, hmm?” Trixie’s jaw clenched. “Yes, I believe I do.”

I noticed that Trixie wasn’t referring to herself in the third person anymore. I briefly wondered why.

“Let’s go find a police officer, then,” Cinnamon said.

“Yay!”

Trixie and Cinnamon both stared at me.

“Uh, sorry,” I said. “I was feeling a little left out.”

~~*~~

It took a little convincing, but Sergeant Pinwheel eventually came around. Trixie helped a lot with that.

“It’s called a ‘Calling’,” she told him. “By the looks of it, it’s Dreamweaver’s Magnificent Calling. Basically, they charge the fog with magical potential. Then, using the obituary pages as a focus, they get enough detail for the spell to target individual ponies who have lost loved ones. The spell centers on the victim, and their own imagination does the rest, conjuring up an image of the dearly departed.”

“Right,” Pinwheel said after our explanation. He told us to wait there, and came back half an hour later with a search warrant and half a dozen of Hoofington’s finest.

The line was still incredibly long when we approached. The uniformed officers went first, surrounding the tent on all sides before the barker had a chance to even notice them. If the ponies in the tent had called up the fog, it was working against them now.

I noticed the board had a few more numbers crossed off. It was now one hundred and fifty bits per reading, which is close to what my mom made in a week. That’s a lot of bits! The ponies stood in line with narrowed eyes and tight frowns, as if they knew that they were going to pay it, no matter how much it went up.

“What’s the meaning of this?!” the barker cried out as two officers pulled him firmly down from his little stand next to the door. “We have rights—”

“To remain silent, yes,” Sergeant Pinwheel said, then coughed and showed him the warrant. “You’re not under arrest at this time, but we do have a warrant to search your tent.”

“You can’t do that!” the barker shouted.

“Can and will,” Pinwheel said. “Just hold on, sir. If there’s nothing wrong, we’ll be out of your mane in a moment.”

The stallion started shouting about his rights, and about lost business, and lawsuits. Threats to call the papers went ignored, as did dire threats to call the mayor. Suggestions that they’d all be out of a job rolled off the policeponies’ collective backs as they searched the tent.

The bangle-bedecked medium was brought outside, grumbling more than a little herself. The mare who had been in the back room was brought out front as well, though she was looking glassy-eyed and exhausted. The three of them were guarded by three officers while the others went through the tent.

“Which one of you was the caster?” Trixie asked after a few minutes. She looked at the non-bangled mare and offered a tight smile. “I’m guessing it was you. As one professional to another, you have my respect.”

“I don’t—” the mare started saying, only to be cut off by the stallion.

“Don’t talk to her, Misty. In fact, don’t say anything.” The stallion turned to sneer at Trixie. “Mind your own business, charlatan.”

Trixie smiled, but it had an edge to it. “Charlatan? Oh, indeed. A combined casting of this magnitude is beyond me. I could definitely cast Crystal Shine’s Mystical Fog, and even Dreamweaver’s Magnificent Calling, but both of them at the same time? No. Not for this long, at least. Not without a well-inscribed circle, certainly.”

The mare, Misty, groaned when Trixie named off the spells, swaying a little on her hooves.

“I didn’t want to,” she said, her voice desperate. “They said I—”

The other mare’s back leg kicked out and caught Misty in the hock. “Quiet, you idiot!” she hissed.

Trixie’s hat rose up off of her head as her horn blazed like a nova. “Kick her again,” she said, her voice full of silky smooth menace. “Please give me an excuse.”

“Stand down, ma’am,” one of the officers said. “We’ve got this.”

Another officer pulled the bangled mare away from Misty. “You’re under arrest for battery,” he informed the mare, who just gaped at him incredulously while he began reading her rights to her.

“This sure got exciting quick,” I said quietly to Cinnamon.

“Sure did,” he said, his voice satisfied. “Pretty sure we’re about to hit the end. That mare, Misty. She’s going to spill everything.”

I felt a surge of pity for the mare. “I feel bad for her. I don’t think she really wanted to do this.”

Cinnamon looked at me for a while. Then he sighed and looked away. “One thing about this job that you learn really quick is that everypony has a reason why they do it. Sometimes, they’re damned good reasons. Some officers can’t deal with that and end up quitting.” He shot me a pained smile. “It’s not our job to sort that out. That’s up to the courts. We just stop ponies from breaking the law.”

I looked at Misty’s downcast eyes. “Yeah… I guess…”

“Besides, this stops them from hurting other ponies.” He gestured at the line that was waiting outside the tent. The ponies in it were looking confused, though some of them were starting to look extremely angry. “They’ve been taking advantage of ponies all night by showing them false images of their deceased loved ones. You saw how badly that messed up Lilac and Lemon.”

A picture of my friends’ faces flashed through my mind. Lilac with her eyes red and puffy. Lemon looking stunned and lost, her lion’s mane all flat and her tiara on crooked. I still felt an echo of sympathy for Misty, but… well, not nearly as much as I had a minute ago.

“Yeah,” I said.

Trixie spoke up, then. I jumped a little because I’d forgotten she was there. “There’s also the fact that con artists make it harder for real entertainers to be taken seriously.” She looked around with quiet satisfaction. “The fog won’t last much longer. Not without somepony maintaining it. You will get your normal weather back soon, and the so-called ‘ghosts’ will go with it.”

One of the unicorn officers chose that moment to emerge from the tent with the spell-circle floating in his magical aura. Misty gasped and started crying when she saw it.

“I’m sorry!” she cried. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t want to!”

“You mean it was all fake?!” a stallion in line said. “She was my mother, and they just…”

The stallion growled started moving towards the three con-artists, his teeth bared and his ears flat down on his head. Some of the crowd went with him, all looking just as angry. They stopped a hoof-step away by the officers, who had moved into a defensive circle around the three shysters.

“Settle down, everypony!” Sergeant Pinwheel shouted. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. For now, these three will be spending the night in jail.”

While he said that, the other officers were working on restraining the three. In minutes, they had hobbles around their front legs and restraining rings on their horns. The angry muttering from the ponies around us got louder, and I started getting scared again. Not because of the ghosts this time, but because of the ugliness I heard coming from that crowd.

Cinnamon must have heard it, too, because the next thing I knew, he was nudging me away from the action. He didn’t stop until we were nestled between two empty wooden concession stands.

“This could get bad,” he said. “Where the hell is the wagon?”

As if on cue, a police wagon with flashing lights pulled up. Without any more in the way of ceremony, the three scam artists were loaded onto a wagon. Trixie was pulled aside by one of the officers and was apparently giving out a statement.

“Of course, it was evident to Trixie that there was something magical about the fog!” Trixie was saying. “It didn’t add up. And the so-called ‘ghosts’ cinched it. Trixie knew it had to be fake!”

“She’s taking all the credit,” I muttered to Cinnamon. “We figured this out, not her!”

“I asked her to leave us out of it,” Cinnamon said. “Less hassle that way.”

I grunted angrily and scowled at him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

Light hit me and I looked up. For the first time that night, I saw a brief glimpse of the night sky, Luna’s moon hanging bright and heavy above us.

“The fog is breaking up,” I said.

“Yeah. I guess it’s finally over,” Cinnamon replied. “Anything else you want to do? Go get some candy?”

I considered it for a moment. I was tired, extremely so. For a minute, all I could think of was going home and going to bed.

And then, sanity returned.

“Are you kidding? Free candy! Let’s go!”

Chuckling and shaking his head, Cinnamon trailed along behind me.

~~*~~

Our first stop was back at Lilac’s house, to explain what happened. Her parents looked both relieved and angry. Lilac just stopped looking scared. Lemon was in bed already, but her parents said they’d explain to her what happened the first chance they got.

And then it was candy time! We stopped at door after door, for over an hour. My voice was getting hoarse from shouting the Nightmare Night rhyme over and over again, and my bag was almost too heavy to carry by the time we returned to the park.

There were still a few wisps of fog floating around, but it was mostly low to the ground. It was nowhere near as oppressive as it had been before. And, it goes without saying, not a single ghost in sight.

Nightmare Moon’s statue had been placed in its usual spot, a short distance away from the rest of the Festival grounds. Cinnamon and I both dumped out roughly half of our candy, bowed to the statue, and left.

“I wonder how Princess Luna feels about Nightmare Night?” I wondered as we walked away.

“She seemed to like it when she visited Ponyville,” Cinnamon said. “It took her a while to warm up to it, though.”

“No. Way,” I said. “There is no way Princess Luna was hanging around in Ponyville, of all places!”

“Whatever you say, Plum,” Cinnamon said with a dry chuckle. “I’ll just pretend that…”

I almost bumped into him as he stopped suddenly on the path. I looked at him, only to see that he was staring off into the distance with a shocked look on his face. I looked turned my head to look at whatever it was that had startled him like that.

It was a stallion, thick-chested and well-muscled. His coat was a chocolate brown, and his mane was a darker brown, almost black. His face wasn’t handsome, but there was a certain rugged charm to it. The big smile probably helped with that. What’s more, he was wearing a policepony uniform.

I was confused when I looked back at Cinnamon. Then, seeing the tears in his eyes, I got scared. Really scared. Cinnamon Swirl never cried!

“Dad..?” Cinnamon whispered.

My head snapped back around to look at the stallion, who drew himself up and saluted. And then a cloud crossed over the moon, dropping a dark shadow over the fairground. When it passed, the stallion was gone, but Cinnamon was still staring at the place he’d been standing.

I felt lost. Cinnamon had always been the strong one, and now I didn’t know what to do. So I just waited, pressing up against his side and feeling him shiver.

“Cinnamon,” I said softly after a minute. “It must have been the spell.”

Cinnamon blinked a few times as he turned to look at me. Then he looked back at the patch of ground where the stallion had stood.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it must have been.”

We turned and started walking back towards the fair. We walked in silence for a while. Finally, Cinnamon started laughing, though not in a fun way.

“You must think I’m an idiot,” he said. “Getting all worked up like that over an illusion.”

“No way,” I replied. “I think anypony would’ve reacted the same way.”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and wiped at his face with a foreleg. “Thanks, Plum.”

“Don’t mention it,” I said. “Hey, want to come back to my house and start sorting our haul?”

I waved my half-full Nightmare Night bag at him. He laughed again, sounding more like himself.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “I think I would like that.”

We never did talk about the stallion we’d seen. Not that night, and not any night after. I’m sure Cinnamon noticed the same thing I did. After all, he’s a trained policepony, and he’s a lot more observant than I am. That pony, the one that looked like Cinnamon’s dead father, had only been a few lengths away from us.

And there hadn’t been even a little bit of fog near him.

Maybe it was still the spell, and maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know. Heck, there’s a lot of things I don’t know. And sometimes the things I don’t know about are scarier than the ones I do, like things that hide in the fog. But then I remember the smile on that chocolate-colored stallion’s face, that look of pride and happiness, and I think that sometimes the things we don’t know are maybe kind of wonderful.

I don’t know. Maybe those are just the weird kinds of thoughts you have when you’re trying to fall asleep after the kind of Nightmare Night I just had. All I know is that, when I finally fell asleep, I didn’t dream about ghosts. I only dreamt about swimming through big piles of brightly-wrapped chocolates and caramels.

It was a very nice dream.

Author's Note

This was intended to be released in October. Obviously, I missed that deadline. Still, I'm pretty happy with this story, so I'm releasing it anyway.

Many thanks to my editing team:
Brilliantpoint
Coandco
Ekevoo