These woods are lonely, dark and deep...
“Do we hafta come all the way out here?”
Little hooves stumbled over dirt and fallen leaves in sets of four. This path seemed rarely used, and Apple Bloom got the idea that it was that way for a good reason. She looked around. At her sides, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle walked with her. To her right, Scootaloo had her wings half-opened; maybe she did it to make herself look bigger, or maybe it was in case she decided to run away from something. To her left, Sweetie Belle wore a conflicted look on her face. It was odd; both stony and quavering. Apple Bloom guessed she was trying to hide her fear. As for Apple Bloom herself, she made no pretense – there were many places she would rather be than walking through the Whitetail Woods on Nightmare Night. She admitted it. She was scared, and she told herself there was no shame in showing it.
Even though it wasn't the Everfree Forest, these Woods were still dark and deep. The striped birch trees were scar tissue in the moonlight, and the leaves overhead and underhoof snapped in subtle agony. At the edge of hearing, Apple Bloom could make out the churret churret of crickets. At the edge of sight, there was darkness.
She couldn't remember what Pinkie Pie had said to get her and her friends out here, but it must have been very convincing.
“Come on, girls, it's only a little further. Your sisters are already there waiting for you!” Pinkie giggled, entirely dissonant with her surroundings. Her costume looked like she had collided with a toy store and come out more puzzle than mare. Most of her body was plastered with carefully arranged interlocking pieces, including the right side of her head and most of her left shoulder and barrel, but the colors were completely random and didn't make any sort of picture. What few patches of her coat weren't covered were painted a gleaming white, which might have helped show the way if she would just stay still. Her mane and tail, though, seemed to be fully enclosed in form-fitting jigsaw molds. As she hopped along the path ahead of Apple Bloom, pieces fell off here and there, but she never seemed to lose any.
“Pinkie Pie, you've been saying that for twenty minutes!” Scootaloo complained, a nervous edge in her voice. She was dressed as a sailor, or a Royal Navy guard, which Apple Bloom thought was a safe choice. The outfit didn't look very clean or tailored. Maybe she was a zombie sailor.
“Because it's truuu~uuue!” Pinkie said in a sing-song. It turned into a wicked howl as it echoed in the trees. Apple Bloom stumbled and her bandanna fell over her eyes. She readjusted it, regaining her balance only when she saw something to orient herself with – a flicker of orange light ahead of them.
Sweetie Belle saw it too. “If dat id?” she said, speaking around her mouthpiece. Apple Bloom couldn't tell what Sweetie was supposed to be at all. She was wearing a black jumpsuit with a hood that covered her mane, and her tail was dyed gold, just as her hooves and ribs were painted gold to accentuate their boniness. While she was wearing red contacts, she also had several fake red googly eyes scattered on her face. And the oddest thing was the golden ridged ring extending from a bit she held between her teeth. Was it a gear? But that didn't make sense. Mostly she resembled some kind of spider. Regardless, Apple Bloom admired her commitment to the look.
“Yep! That's it!” Pinkie said, not looking back. The Crusaders hastened to reach the light as soon as they knew it was there. Twigs and leaves snapped under their little hooves as they raced. All at once, they burst into the clearing. A campfire burned in the middle of a ring of fallen logs. But... there was nopony there.
The three little ponies looked around in confusion. Apple Bloom spoke up. “Pinkie, are you sure this is–”
She didn't get the chance to finish before a pony-shaped cloud of hot steam with dark, empty eyes leapt out at them and yelled “BWARGH!” The Crusaders screamed in response, jumping towards each other to huddle in fright.
The yell turned into a high-pitched laugh as the steam cleared to reveal a certain pegasus. Apparently dressed as a volcano, or a lava flow, she had jets of steam that erupted every so often from her shoulders, where her wings would normally be. The Crusaders recognized her and stood back up. Pinkie entered the clearing behind them.
“Very funny, Rainbow Dash,” Scootaloo said grimly, putting her hat back on. Then, more earnestly, she added, “It's great to see you!”
“Where if eferypoby?” Sweetie Belle asked. Rainbow continued laughing.
Another voice came to the group through the clearing. “We're all right here, don't worry.” Out from the edges, Twilight came into view. Her shadow was cast long against the tree trunks. She was joined by three other costumed ponies.
“Dangit, Rainbow, Ah told you not to do that,” Applejack scolded.
The pegasus caught her breath for a moment. “I... I-I... I'm not Rainbow, I'm Lavana, the volcano goddess!” And she started laughing again, falling on her back. “You should have seen their faces!”
Applejack sighed and stepped around Rainbow. “Sorry about her, she let all th' hot air go to her head.” She gave Apple Bloom a quick hug, their train conductor and train bandit costumes a perfect complement, then stepped back to give Twilight the floor. The alicorn closed her eyes.
“Welcome to our Nightmare Night story circle!” she let forth in a booming voice. Her words caused the leaves to rustle vigorously and the crickets to go silent. Even the fire's roar was dulled. After a moment, Twilight opened her eyes and saw her friends variously stunned and startled. She grinned sheepishly. “Oh, sorry everypony, I was just practicing the, uh, Royal... Canterlot... voice...” her apology trailed off. Her appearance was rather plain compared to Dash's – mane in a bun, white coat, black gloves, lab goggles... Apple Bloom figured she was a chemist. Out of curiosity, she looked at the other two mares in the clearing. Fluttershy was a pink flamingo, that was obvious enough, although all four of her legs had bird feet. Rarity, she guessed, was a casino showpony from Las Pegasus. She wore an elegant black dress with card suit symbols on it, dice earrings and a little top hat. Appropriately, and just for looks, Rarity fanned herself with a spread of playing cards. All diamonds.
“Please darlings, sit down! Your costumes are lovely, by the by.” Rarity said. “A sailor, a bandit, and a...” she paused as she got to her own sister. “Skeleton?” she guessed, then cleared her throat. “...Well, are we ready to begin?” She looked to Twilight, who looked to Applejack, who smacked Rainbow Dash to make her stand up.
Dash rubbed her temple. “R-right, we're ready.” Extending her wings through the steam geysers in her lava-red costume, she flew over the fire and alit on a log that lay there. The others gathered. Pinkie ushered the Crusaders gently towards their own seats around the fire pit. Each faced opposite her sister. Faces were cast in orange and yellow and the woods cloistered them all.
“Hey girls, are you excited?” A voice said from the very center of the fire. Sweetie Belle and Fluttershy both shrieked. “Sheesh, I guess so.”
“Fpike? If dat you id dere?”
Spike's voice came out over the crackle, and while the fire was hard to look at, Apple Bloom thought she saw something moving. “Yeah, it's me. Thought it would add to the mood if I sat here.” He paused. “I'm okay, in case you were wondering. It's real toasty.”
“So what's going on here, Rainbow?” Scootaloo asked. She sat closest to the clearing's entrance. “Why are we here instead of getting candy? It's Nightmare Night!” Her face flickered between angry and something close to itchy.
“It may be Nightmare Night, squirt, but Nightmare Night isn't just about candy.”
Pinkie gasped in genuine horror, a few puzzle pieces shooting off into the woods.
Dash sighed. “Okay, yes, it's mostly about candy. But it's also about telling stories around a fire. Scary stories!”
“We thought you'd like to join us this year, since you're all a bit older and more mature,” Rarity added.
Apple Bloom smiled at the thought that she was considered mature. “Sounds good to me!”
At that, the fire briefly flared up and out with harsh greenish flickers, and then died down until it only threw its glow upon those nearest to it, and then only on the undersides of their faces. The ponies around the circle went silent, and smiles were replaced by gentle apprehension. In the heart of the fire, Spike was just barely visible in silhouette. Rainbow Dash spoke softly.
“Have any of you ever heard the tale of the peppermint ape?”
Of course, nopony answered, for nopony had heard the tale before. Apple Bloom looked around, to Scootaloo on her left, to Pinkie on her right, but the darkness was encroaching. Only glints of firelight in wary eyes told her that the others were doing the same thing.
“Very few ponies have ever heard of the peppermint ape,” Rainbow continued, “and that's for a very simple reason.”
“W-what's that?” Scootaloo said quietly.
“It's because most ponies who find out about it are never heard from again.” She waited a moment. “...Oh, a few of them are still seen now and then. They wander aimlessly like lost foals, never finding their way home, never knowing where they are. And it's because of the peppermint ape.”
Fluttershy shivered and looked past her neighbor to see Pinkie slack-jawed and wide-eyed in the middle of eating a candy bar.
“The few who survive an encounter, the few who stay sane, say that the peppermint ape is an awe-striking sight to behold. Majestic yet terrible, ancient and wild, it strikes fear into the hearts of any who gaze upon it. A mere glimpse is enough to drive a mare mad.”
The fire roared up, and the molten red hues in Dash's mask made her look all the more sinister.
“They say it stands 13... 15... no... 18 hoofs high. Its body is misshapen – it's clearly not a pony, but it's not quite like anything else. Its forelegs are long and thin, and its hind legs are longer still. It only stands on its hind legs, which are covered with a strange, unnatural fur. And its hind hooves, well...” Rainbow petered out.
There was silence.
“What about its hooves, Dashie?” Pinkie said, briefly looking across the circle at Sweetie Belle.
In a low voice, “...Its hooves are wrapped in the skin of ponies it catches.”
Ponies gasped; among them Fluttershy, Twilight, and Scootaloo. Apple Bloom felt her heart drop into her stomach, and when Dash continued, it only seemed to drop further.
“But that's not the worst part.”
Applejack swallowed. “It's not?”
“No. See, it doesn't have just hooves. Its forelegs, so weird and long, they end in spider-like claws. And it uses its claws... it uses them...” She paused. “Oh, I'm getting ahead of myself,” she said, grinning wickedly. The tension around the fire was audible, amplified through the crackling blaze.
“Er... Rainbow Dash, why do they call it the 'peppermint ape?'”said Rarity, who was fanning herself rather quickly.
Dash nodded. “A very good question. They call it the peppermint ape because of the way its body looks.”
“And, er... how's that?”
“Like a peppermint candy, its flesh is coated with bands of red and white. The white, well, they say that's just its bald skin... but the red... the red is muscle, where the skin has been seared and stripped away. Where its blood leaks out with every breath of its lungs and every beat of its icy black heart.”
Apple Bloom looked around again. Her sister looked queasy, and Fluttershy had retreated into her mane. Twilight, well, she seemed to be in pain, but it could have been an evil sort of satisfaction. The filly didn't know what to make of it.
“The ponies who survive it, you could call them lucky. But they have to live with the knowledge, for as long as they live, of what the peppermint ape looks like. How it smells like a rotting corpse, and rusted horseshoes in vinegar, and the musk of a musk ox all at once.
“They say that the peppermint ape is interested in ponies. 'It's just curious,' they say, trying to forgive it. But they know that even though they've escaped, they had to abandon their friends. They know that the peppermint ape is not just interested in ponies – it's hungry for them.
“On cold nights in the forest, when the wind is still and everything in nature is hidden, that's when you know it's coming. It walks through the forest on its long, long legs, tall enough to see over the trees, and thin enough to hide behind them. And when it sees you with its beady eyes, its beady black eyes without a hint of love in them, you know that you're doomed. If you manage to see it before it sees you, there's only one thing to do.”
The fire crackled. Dash smiled and leaned forward. The other ponies leaned forward too, hoping to hear her and dreading what she might say.
“Run.”
The fire roared up again, green flakes intertwined with golden, and everypony startled backwards. Dash went on even as they gathered themselves, hooves clutching to chests.
“You can try to outrun it, anyways. Running is the only thing you can do, the only thing you can think to do. If you run, you think to yourself, maybe you can escape with your life. But any noise you make will only attract its sensitive ears, and any flash of color through the brush will only draw its eye. And so it begins to walk after you.
“Yes, that's right. It only walks. Almost leisurely, if you could call it that. It only needs to walk, because its legs are so long, and its stride is so wide, that it can just walk after you and catch you. Soon you'll be exhausted. But it just keeps walking. Just when you think you've lost it... there it is again, coming towards you. Sometimes it carries an entire tree branch with it, and you might see that first as it follows you. So you start to run again.
“You hope that you can get away. But you know you won't be able to run forever. As soon as you've stopped to catch your breath, it comes walking after you. And this goes on. They say the chase continues until you've run yourself ragged and you can't take another step. Collapsed on the ground, there you wait.”
Silence again.
“Waid foh whuf?” Sweetie Belle asked eloquently.
“The ponies who have escaped say that the peppermint ape approaches the fallen pony and picks it up. After that, they don't know for sure. Some say it hits the pony with the tree branch. Some say it puts the pony in a sack made from skins and carries it off. Some even say it eats the pony right then and there. But the only way anypony knows that this happens at all is by traveling in the woods at night with a friend who was slower than they were. When you're with a friend, you don't need to outrun the peppermint ape. You just need to outrun your friend.”
The fire shot up tall and simmered.
“Would you do it?” Dash asked menacingly, leaning to face Applejack at her right, then Fluttershy at her left. “Would you leave a friend behind to escape a fate worse than death?”
Nopony answered, but they all knew what they would have said.
“The peppermint ape doesn't care what you would do. One way or another, if it sees you, it catches you. No matter what you try, no matter how fast you run, no matter how you pace yourself, it will catch you. It moves through the forest so swiftly and silently that you might not even notice... if it... touched... your shoulder...”
Everypony screamed. Apple Bloom screamed in unison with their chorus as she felt a sickeningly spider-like claw graze her left shoulder. It was smooth, yet gnarled; as bald as bone and as cold as ice. As she turned to her left, she saw Sweetie Belle screaming, which made a jet of blue lightning burst out of her mouthpiece. In the split second between the sight of this and remembering that a monster's claw was trailing down her back, she wondered anew what in Equestria Sweetie could be dressed as.
As soon as it had come, it was gone. Everypony was left checking behind themselves. Out of the corner of her eye, Apple Bloom noticed Twilight discretely turning off her horn's aura.
“The peppermint ape, to this day, has never been found. Oh, it definitely exists... but nopony has ever found where it lives. And that's mostly because nopony ever goes looking for it. It would surely be the dream of a madmare to seek out such a horrible predator on purpose. But rumors abound all over Equestria about which forest it makes its home in. Some say Hollow Shades. Others say the Everfree Forest. I've heard one half-crazed stallion claiming it lived in the Hayseed Swamp. But me, I don't buy into those.”
She leaned close to the fire once more.
“I prefer to believe it lives right here, in the Whitetail Woods.”
She paused for a second, chewing her lip almost casually.
“Have you noticed how cold it's gotten tonight? How the wind has died down?”
The ponies waited, their fur prickling and their ears twitching as they sought these sensations.
She whispered. “It's nights like tonight that the peppermint ape loves.”
Then, from out of the darkness behind Applejack, a thin arm silently reached towards the fire. Its length was striped with bands of hairless skin and skinless flesh, and its starfish complement of claws flexed as it came closer. Apple Bloom was the first to notice it, followed by Pinkie and the rest of the group in turn. For a second or two, which dragged on for minutes, all in the world was dead, and only the strange, horrible claws on the end of the strange, horrible arm existed in the eyes of each pony. Reflected back against their pupils was the distorted colorless visage of a thing that should never be.
With a flare from the fire, the sound and color rushed back into the world. Screams ricocheted around the forest catastrophically, no end to their volume and no beginning to their sense. Ponies scrambled off their wooden seats in no particular direction beyond away. Fluttershy had gone catatonic, as she did, and her eyes stared blankly into the fire where she lay having fallen forward. Twilight took a defensive stance, her head lowered and horn lit up. Crusaders rushed to their sisters, siblings seeking aid. But a panicked Scootaloo found none, as Rainbow Dash was laughing so hard that she could barely breathe.
Nopony noticed as the arm receded into the darkness, while the silence returned and worn out ponies lay haggard on the clearing floor. Pinkie, sweating bullets and panting heavily on her back, was surrounded by a pond of puzzle pieces. Her costume still looked no worse for the wear.
Gradually, they came to their senses, collected their thoughts and stood again, weary as the waves.
“And that's the story of the peppermint ape!” Rainbow Dash cried triumphantly, one hoof up in the air, in between quakes of laughter. “Thanks to Twilight for helping me write it.”
Twilight was faring much better than her friends. “And the special effects!” She said, dimming her horn. “We used a mechanism made of wood, foam–”
“R-r-right, haha, that too,” Rainbow said.
Almost immediately, Rainbow Dash was barraged by arguing, complaining and chastising on all sides from all parties.
“That was too scary!”
“I think I swallowed a lollipop whole!”
“Duf adypoby hab a baddege? I bib by tooouggg...”
Apple Bloom started to get into it too. She had some choice words to say to Rainbow Dash, and a few for Princess Twilight for playing along with it. But beyond the fire, beyond the treeline, and beyond anypony else's attention, she saw something that made her blood run cold. She froze.
Far above her, looking down. A pair of beady eyes behind a pair of owl-like glasses on a pale, hairless face caught the light of the fire. The lips were pursed, the red-and-white-clad chest was rising and falling gently. It drew a single claw up from its side and put it to its lips. Then it tipped its red-and-white cap, hefted its cane, and strode off into the forest, somehow the perfect embodiment of inconspicuousness.
And yet the sight of it would be burned into Apple Bloom's memory forever.
Once she had seen it, she could never unsee it.
