Sometimes you think and wonder ‘why am I here?’
The answer is not simple, it´s not always that clear
But sometimes you wonder ‘what was that sound?’
And then, you start to look around
Then you find some weird green goo
Whatever you do, don´t look behind you.
I never thought I would ever live in Manehattan. It´s a wonderful place but there are times when I don’t feel safe walking on the street at night. Something that I foolishly did.
I was heading home after a busy day of working. I left work a bit late because there were some important clients I needed to talk to and I couldn´t miss an opportunity like that. Sadly, I wasn´t able to sell anything to them. Well that’s just part of the life of a hard working stallion like me.
It was a dark, cold, and stormy night. I regretted not bringing a coat or umbrella to work. And there was not a taxi in sight.
“Now would be a good time to be a Pegasus,” I thought.
I always wondered how it would feel like to hover above the clouds and rest on them although, I am still happy with my Unicorn body. I checked my watch for the time, it was ten past eleven. I sighed at the fact that I go to bed late and wake up early.
I was almost home, just needed to cross the street and I would be there. I quickly glanced left and right for any passing vehicles. None. I ran as fast as I could to the other side of the street and I made it. Relieved, I stuck my hoof into my pocket and removed a set of keys. Then I opened the door.
As I stepped inside my house, the feeling of belonging in a place warmed me up right away. It isn´t that much, really, but for a stallion that lives all alone I find it quite comfy. It´s a bit small but I manage just fine. Right in front of the door was a buffet table. On it were some old photos, a few lighters and cigars. There were also some crystal bowls containing glass fruits. The wall above the table had a mirror. I looked at my reflection and realized that something is amiss. My hat was gone!
“Shit! Must have fallen off while I was crossing the street.”
I decided to head back outside to look for it. It was something my mom gave me as a gift and I couldn´t just leave it there, it was one of the few things she gave me before she passed away.
I immediately spotted the hat in the middle of the street. I couldn’t pick it up with my magic since it was too stormy to concentrate. Gosh I really need to read that “Spells for stormy weathers” book. I quickly galloped to where the hat was but as I picked it up, I realized something; I forgot to look for passing vehicles before crossing the street.
Suddenly I felt something crashing into me. It wasn't painful. It just felt like a kid punching you a million times in the stomach without actually hurting you.
I thought I was dead.
My vision started to come back but was still a bit blurry. Instantly, I came to the realization that I was knocked unconscious by something, or someone. I got back up and found myself in another place. The street and roads disappeared. It was dark and cold but it was no longer stormy.
“Why am I here? Where am I” I wondered.
There was no scientific explanation to why I suddenly appeared there. The only thing I could come up with was that I was dreaming but that wasn’t the case. Every single thing I looked at was real, everything I touched…
Regaining my sight fully, I found myself in a dark room with just one piece of furniture and a bit of light on one of the corners. I saw a half open door. Still trying to comprehend why the hell I was here, I tried to delay myself from walking to the door. I needed to prepare myself for whatever the other side had to reveal.
I trotted up to the corner of the room where the shelf was. I walked up to it and saw a framed photo of three ponies. I knew for sure it was a father, mother and daughter. The filly had a light blue coat and a dark blue mane. She was about seven to nine years old and the parents were about the same age of thirty or more.
After rubbing my eyes I looked at the photo again and realized that something had changed. The parent’s faces were covered in red liquid but the filly’s face remained untouched. Then I saw the blood-like liquid from the photo drip to the floor. I took a few steps backward and confirmed what I thought; I was in a very weird place. To be honest, I was actually pretty scared.
I turned around and scanned the whole place again only to find, nothing… The room was completely empty except for that shelf.
As I pondered on my situation I realized that staying in one place would not give me any answers. I have to move on from here and walk through that door. The floor creaked with every step I made. With hesitation I opened the door slowly.
The door led to a long corridor with two light bulbs on the ceiling, flickering. On each side was a metal door. I closed the door behind me then noticed that it had no handle from this side. I guess there’s no going back to that room. I walked the long corridor, without really knowing where it would lead me. I may have been walking for just a few seconds when I saw the graffiti on the wall.
Choose carefully, looks can be deceiving
One will lead you to a world full of bleeding
Which will eventually be your end
Yet the other, your life, will extend
Choose quickly, you’re running out of time
Let’s see if you can solve this nursery rhyme.
“Choose quickly, you’re running out of time, what do you mean I'm running out of time?”
I then heard some banging; it’s coming from behind me! I thought in a flash. The sound was coming from the room I just left. I knew that there was something trying to get in the corridor from the room and it didn’t sound very happy. I even saw the door dent with every bang.
My heart was racing, I needed to choose quickly. I opened both of the doors. Each led to a corridor with different sceneries. The one on the right had skulls as candle holders, stoned walls and red liquid dripping from the ceiling. I assumed it was blood. There was no end to that corridor and it just looked like it was going towards the darkest part of the earth. The left one had clean white walls with a brown door at the end of it.
Without hesitation I quickly ran to the left one. I entered the corridor then ran to the brown door at the end of it but right before opening the door, I remembered the first line of the rhyme.
Choose carefully, looks can be deceiving
“Looks can be deceiving. Oh crap!”
I galloped as fast as I could back to where I was. I ran towards the other door. I glanced back at the corridor and saw that the walls and door were getting smashed to bits! I saw something else too but I couldn't make out what it was.
I ran towards the blood filled corridor then kept running. Looking at my watch after what felt like an eternity of running I found that it was broken. It seemed that it has stopped working right when I got knocked unconscious, at 11.15 pm.
I continued running without daring to look back but since it felt like a lost cause to keep sprinting on an empty corridor I finally looked behind me. It seemed I was in the clear. I slowed down then decided to just walk instead of run, who knows, maybe I would need the energy in the near future. But right after I was calm enough to think clearly, I noticed that the corridor was getting darker with my every step leaving me with barely enough light to see. Just the thought of walking forward into the dark corridor with likely no end to it terrified me completely. Hell, something could have just appeared right in front of me out of nowhere.
I was trembling, almost too scared to even stand up but I knew that cowering in fear wouldn’t solve anything. I began to cast an illumination spell. I gave it my full concentration but strangely, the spell didn’t work.
“What the hell?”
My magic didn’t work! I tried to cast the simplest spell that I could have thought of, levitation. I removed my watch and put it on the ground. Levitation spells barely need unicorn concentration so I was sure that if I wasn´t able to cast the spell, the problem wouldn’t be me, it would be the place. The levitation spell didn’t work. I grabbed my watch and strapped it back on to my hoof and just kept walking, more frightened than ever in my life. Not being able to do magic for unicorns is akin to having one leg missing. It’s like we are not our whole self.
I had been walking for a pretty long time when I finally saw something. I saw a door. Relieved that I wasn´t going to be trapped in that bloody corridor forever, I opened it. After stepping in the room, I heard a rumbling behind me. I looked back and saw that the door I just opened was gone. What was once a door was now a fireplace with a painting of a giant stallion above it.
I looked around the room, it was pretty big. It had a sofa, a television, a piano and some windows but they were shut with boarded wooden planks. I guessed that I was in some mansion. Or should I say, in the living room of a very big house. The lights were dim, there were candles everywhere but it was still dark enough to give me the creeps. I walked up to the television.
Maybe there is something in the television that might be helpful, that might give me a clue as to where I am. I thought.
After pressing a few buttons, I finally was able to turn it on. What I saw in the television looked like some old video tape; it was in black and white and the quality wasn´t that good. The first thing I saw was a news reporter standing in front of a huge mansion. The video looked like it was played quite recently, it didn´t start from the beginning.
“… fifteen people died. The P.O.D. suggests that we take this building down. Damage is already 45% and tourists are told to remain outside the mansion doors. Any pony who tries to sneak his way in will automatically be taken to court and subdued for questioning. Their connection will be carefully investigated.
We found blood stains around the doors and walls…”
The video ended there.
I figured that the mansion they were talking about was the place I was in since the colour of the wood looked the same. Plus the boarded windows looked like the ones in this room. I replayed the tape several times to see if I missed anything. And wow, I wished I did! At 0:34 seconds of the video, I saw a figure or silhouette in one of the windows. It was small but visible and it only appeared there for a few frames before the camera moved, removing the window from my field of view. After that, I paused the video.
I wasn’t going to take the risk of trying to smash my way out of there. I was already in a pickle and falling through floors is the last thing I wanted. I looked around for any doors. There were a few. There was one next to the TV, another one a few metres to the right of the sofa and to the left was where I entered. I walked up to the one closest to me. When you’re nervous you tend to choose the easiest way out. Just before I opened the door I heard a sound.
“What was that?”
It sounded like hoofsteps. Now most ponies wouldn’t have done what I did after but I was desperate for somepony, anypony that wasn’t a creepy ghost to help me. I decided to investigate the sound that was coming from the door next to the sofa. I opened it and slowly entered the room. It was a library. It had loads of shelves filled with close to thousands of books; it would have taken anyone a lifetime to read all of them. I walked deeper into the library. The only thing I could see were books, the smell was intoxicating. Until, on one of the empty shelves, I found something. Something I have never seen before. I found some weird green goo.
The sound of the hoofsteps was getting louder and louder. I felt that it was getting closer to me like it was looking for me but I ignored it. My concentration was on identifying this goo. It felt sticky and wet, like blood. Then I felt a presence in the room, not only in the room. I felt the presence right behind me. I slowly looked back then…I saw it… It was the creepiest thing I have ever seen in my life… Just a few metres in front of me was a filly, the same filly I saw in the picture and she was smiling at me. A huge thin grin spread across her face. And those eyes, those eyes weren´t normal. They were inside out. I felt like vomiting at the imagery that was processed through my brain. It was horrendous.
You freak out and run, quite far away
Hitting your head you blackout thinking it will be all okay
You have various nightmares, one with creepy eyes
The pony waiting for you to wake up, will be a surprise
There I was, with the definition of ‘paranormal’ standing right in front of me. It only took me a few seconds to realize that it was getting closer to me. At first it was six metres away from me and now it was five in a half. I was still paralysed.
Four…
I didn´t believe anything.
Three…
It just felt so abnormal.
Two…
It was a nightmare.
One…
I quickly turned around in panic running the opposite direction, not knowing where I was going. I didn’t care; as long as I was away from that thing it would be fine.
It would be fine…
It would be fine…
It wasn’t fine…
I spotted a door, crashed into it, breaking it. I fell down then I recovered and started sprinting again as fast as I could. I banged my hoofs on some glass vase cutting myself but I kept running into the darkness. I hit my stomach on one of the tables; I could barely breathe but still, tried to sprint as fast as I could. But while sprinting at full speed, I hit my head on a shelf. I blacked out and fell down.
I started having nightmares. I dreamed that I was told that I will never see my family again *what’s left of it* and that I am trapped in this mansion forever. I kept dreaming of being spied on by people I’d never seen before, by ghosts who haunted me forever. I could even see their eyes looking at me. And the worst thing about these nightmares was that they felt so real.
I finally woke up but my vision was blurry again. I felt something wrapped around my forehead like a bandage. I tried to see where I was with my blurry vision but it wasn’t easy. There was one thing I knew for sure, I was in a different room.
I had feeling of a déjà vu.
This room had a fireplace that was lit. The warmth of the room was undeniably comforting. It had a dining table with a few chairs and another creepy ass painting that seemed to be in every room. I tried to get up but my body felt too weak. And then I saw something in the corner of my eye. I hesitantly turned to my right while thinking that whatever it was, it was probably something that would make me faint, but instead, I saw a light grey unicorn mare with white and purple stripes on her mane and the most beautiful blue eyes standing inches away from me. I couldn't see her cutie mark.
“Are you feeling okay?” She asked me with a soft smile on her face. I still had my eyes half closed. I did just wake up from a hit on my head. I could hardly speak, was too tired or should I say, in pain to respond.
“You were lucky I had a spare bandage, you would have been a goner if I hadn't.” I was grateful of her saving me and I wanted to tell her that... I tried my best to say something nice but the only thing I could spit out from my mouth was.
“Who… are… you?”
She smiled at me. This was nice to see, it was way better than the grin I just received from that thing.
“My name is Twilight Velvet, what´s your name?” She responded.
“Night Light.”
“Night Light? That’s a really nice name”, she said
“Thanks.”
I then fell back to sleep. I felt happy, happy that somepony was watching over me, caring for me and of course saving me. Not to mention, I thought she was the most beautiful pony I had ever seen in my life.
I was forever grateful.
I had better dreams this time. I dreamed that I made it out of this horrible place. I made it out with her, Twilight Velvet. It was a dream that I wished would never end, but sadly, it did.
When I woke up I saw the mare trying to cast a spell, I couldn’t tell what the spell was but it didn’t seem to be working. But this time, I could see her cutiemark. It was three purple stars.
She was sitting down, her eyes closed and her head tilted up. She was slightly shaking too but unable to cast the spell, she sighed.
“It’s useless,” I said.
She then looked at me and I could see her tears. She tried to wipe them of but I could still see her red eyes from the crying as well as tears running down her cheeks. Ignoring that she walked up to me then said with a shaky voice.
“I… I’m just worried…” She began to sob. “We won’t make it out.”
I got up, slowly but surely, and comforted her. She then sank into my chest.
I could feel her wet tears. It felt warm.
“It’s okay. I promise we will get out.”
She looked up to me and asked, “But what if we don’t?” Her tears were coming down her sobbing face like rain drops falling from the sky. I needed to stop that.
“We will. I got an appointment at the mane stylist tomorrow and I don’t want to miss it.”
She stopped crying, looked at me, and then began to giggle.
“But Twilight Velvet-“
“Please, just call me Velvet.”
I smiled. “Ok, Velvet, do you know anything about this place, any exit?”
She wiped her tears off, this time completely and started talking animatedly.
“Yes, we are currently on the third floor, on the second floor there is an open balcony. I was going to try to make it out myself until I saw you bang your head next to a shelf for no apparent reason.”
“How long were you trapped here?”
“Three days.”
I opened my eyes fully, then my mouth dropped.
“Three days?!”
She nodded.
“Out of all the mares that I have met you are the most special.”
She blushed.
“Ok back to the point Velvet. Any obstacles or should I say, horrors awaiting us on the second floor?”
“Delicate floors, a few fillies and mouse traps.”
“How is there more than one filly?”
“Sisters.”
“Oh. Hang on, come to think of it, they are just creepy. How do we know they won’t harm us?”
“There was a ghost before them named Death Scream, nopony knows how he got here but he haunted this mansion when the sisters were just seven to ten years old. He killed the whole family who lived in the mansion one by one. The parents, uncles and other relatives occupy the first floor and basement.”
“You mean occupied.”
“No, occupy. When the ghost killed them, well, their spirits couldn’t come to rest due to dark magic possessing the very essence of Death Scream. It took control over the spirits of the family. That’s why they are trapped as heartless spirits roaming around their once happy mansion.”
“Wait,” I said shivering. “What occupies this floor?”- I looked around worried.
“Don’t worry Night Light. This floor used to be occupied by Death Scream. With his minimum number of murders he was freed and took a form of a normal pony. His current residence is unknown.”
I sighed in relief.
“Now, the reason they want to kill us,” She continued. “They want to kill as many ponies as possible to regain their life and live once more.”
“But it doesn’t explain how we got transported here.”
“Did you take that dose of Magical Protection from Dark Magic when you were a filly?” Velvet inquired.
“Well, umm, no.” I release a fake smile.
“Me neither. That vaccine was supposed to protect us from any dark essences roaming around Equestria. Sadly, my family couldn’t afford it.”
“Yeah well, my family didn’t really care.”
Velvet looked at me feeling sorry.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
I try to change the subject.
“How do you know all this stuff?”
“Did you see the library in this place? It’s huge! I figured that if I wasn’t getting out any time soon I might as well do some research plus, I love reading,” She said with a grin.
“I see.”
We talked and planned strategies for quite a while. When the time came, we got the supplies we needed such as glass vases and a small painting. The painting had a stallion’s face about the size of my head. We then headed downstairs.
Once downstairs we spotted four silhouettes. They weren’t transparent ponies like you see in the movies; they were just dark pony- shaped mists wandering around the floor.
Although it was very hard to spot them, you could hear them trotting around. The floor was barely lit. The only light illuminating the creepy yet glorious floor was the light from Luna’s moon.
We then snuck in to the room taking cover behind a couple of chairs. It felt like the second I peeked to see if the coast was clear I would get spotted by those spirits. I took the chance. I saw one of them look to about thirty degrees to where we were. I was lucky that it didn’t spot me. I then pulled my head back and threw one of the glass bottles to the other end of the room, distracting the other ghosts. I peeked once more and saw the mists head towards the sound that the bottle made. We took advantage and moved to the next cove behind a sofa. It felt more comfortable since it wasn’t cramped like that small chair was. I saw Velvet take a peek. I saw her look to the left then she ducked again.
“Night Light! The three ghosts are at the stairs, we can leave!” She whispered.
“But-“
“Come on Night Light!”- She made a run for the balcony.
“Wait!”
She managed to get out of to the balcony not long before she tripped and got dragged back in to the mansion. The fourth ghost was dragging her while looking deep into her eyes. They were like that for a few seconds. I could only imagine what Velvet was feeling. I quickly got the small painting and placed it in front of Velvet’s face. The stallion’s eyes from the painting looked right into the eyes of the ghosts. The ghost dropped Velvet and we made a run for it. I didn’t know what just happened but I could have sworn I heard the word “Daddy!” coming from the dark mist.
We ran to the balcony and jumped down to the grass below. It hurt a bit but it was way better than staying stuck inside that mansion. I never felt so happy in my entire life. After a few seconds we rolled on our backs, looked at each other and at the mansion while trying to process what had just happened then we burst into laughter.
“Oh my Celestia! Did that just happen?” Velvet asked.
“Teleported in a Celestia forsaken mansion, made an escape plan, dodged some ghosts and made it out alive? Hmmm, yes.”
We burst into laughter once more. We got on our hooves, me helping Velvet up then I asked her.
“Umm do you know where we are?”
Velvet looked into the distance, I did the same then we both spotted tall skyscrapers.
“Hey I know that building. It’s in Manehattan!” She shouted.
“Hey, we should hang out more, how about dinner tonight at my place?”
“Of course!”
And then we headed home.
“And that Twilight, is how I met your mother.”
Filly Twilight sat on the floor with her eyes and mouth wide open.
Author's Note
I hope you enjoyed the read!
See you next time!
