Cursed Be He That Moves My Bones
It was half past bedtime, but the feel of midnight had arrived early: that tremblesome feeling when the world lies silent, and monsters lurk beneath hospital beds. Sweetie Belle couldn’t sleep. She was too ghostweary to sleep, and so kept glancing at the medicine closet, where a pack of shadows had gathered to escape the moonlight.
“But you know,” said the closet in a voice fit for knarred trees in a winters storm. “It’s not bad being a ghost, not once you get used to it. Oh, the fun you’ll have! You can scare ponies you don’t like. You get to visit your own funeral and then haunt your gravestone. ‘Here lies Little Miss Horn Skull,’ your parents will say. ‘Our Darling Disease Death, our late Skeleton-in-the-Earth. How we miss her.’ ”
Sweetie shivered under the blankets, reminding herself that closets didn’t speak. Closets were dead wood, brass bolts, and steel screws, and whoever had heard of screws that talked?
Even so, she gulped and said, “Wh-why would I go to my own funeral? Isn’t that weird?”
“Weird?” replied the closet in a groanful voice. “Why would you not go? Why would you not want to see how loved you were? Going to my own funeral was the best decision I ever made, make no mistake.”
Sweetie stared at the closet. The closet stared right back, unblinking.
“Closets don’t go to funerals,” Sweetie said at last, though her voice was only half sure and a quarter certain. “And they know when to be quiet and quit lying.”
The closet shook its head. Or rather, with no head to shake, the doors opened and shut, ever so slightly; and it said, “Hah! You honestly think that I'm the closet? Oh, that is precious. I died right in that bed of yours. Such a gruesome, ghastsome death it was too – a dozen doctors by my side, and not a single one of them could save me...
“But I digress. I merely haunt this closet, because the bed is strictly for patients. It’s for the most terminal of foals. The no-hopers. The final-stops. The end-of-the-lines.”
“No it’s not. You’re lying.”
“I saw the doctors in here earlier, tap-tapping against your horn. I heard the surgeons muttering. It sounded serious.”
"I don’t care. Leave me alone.”
“You ought to think of something to carve on your tombstone, Sickly Belle, while you have time. Here! Something like this. It’s a work in progress, but you get the idea.”
The ghost-in-the-closet cackle-chortled, then began to chant. Its voice was that of tombs and graveyards, and maggot-stinking coffins buried in the dirt.
“Cursed be he that moves my bones,
Cursed be she that digs.”
Sweetie clambered from bed onto the moon soaked tiles. Her horn – her throbbing, pounding horn which was the reason she was in hospital in the first place – ached with every step, a pain like hammers, like mallets. Yet she fixed her eyes upon the closet, and marched towards it.
The ghost continued.
“Cursed be they who crack this stone,
Be boiled alive
Like pigs, young pigs!
Be boiled, be broiled
Like pigs!”
“Why would you even say that?” Sweetie snapped. “Go away!”
And she opened the closet to shout at the ghost, and get it to leave her once and for all.
The closet was empty.
A shoal of shadows nipped at her hooves, and the little hospital room seemed bigger than before, larger, huger, vaster, greater, grander. She was alone. Her eyes watered, and with her heart and soul, blood, bile, bones, she wished she was home again. Yet though the sky star-sparkled through the window, the stars weren’t in a wish granting mood that night. Wishes wouldn’t help her. Magic wouldn’t soothe her. It was up to Sweetie herself to spin the feel of home there and then in the hospital.
“R-Rarity,” she whispered. “I need you...”
There was a moon gleaming pause. Behind her, Sweetie imagined the sound of her sister's hoofsteps. She didn't turn to look. It made it easier to pretend that Rarity was really in the room with her, and not fast asleep in the boutique.
“Whatever is the matter, darling?” she imagined Rarity saying.
Sweetie gulped. “I’m…”
“Come along, dear. Spit it out.”
Sweetie answered in a mouse-voice. “I'm scared. I’m scared that something’s going to go wrong tomorrow, and I’m not going to see you again.”
Still she didn't turn. And still she pretended that Rarity was whispering in her ear. “That’s O.K, Sweetie darling,” she imagined Rarity saying. “Everypony gets scared, every filly, every foal, every mare and stallion. Everypony. What matters is the manner in which we face our fears, and how we conduct ourselves when chilled by the shadow of fright. You are Sweetie Belle. You are kind, and loved, and you are not alone: you are brave. Don’t forget that. Don’t you ever.”
Sweetie shiver-shook on the cold tiles. Finally, she turned, and in the light of the moon she climbed back into bed, lonesome and home-yearning, yet warm. Rarity wasn't there of course, not really – yet, despite the fact that she wasn't there, Sweetie felt her presence. She felt it in her heart.
“I’m not alone,” she told herself. “I’m scared, but that’s alright, ’cause I’m not alone, I’m not alone, I’m not alone…”
And because she wasn’t alone, she found the courage to confront her nightmares, and sing them away.
“C-cursed be he that moves my bones,
Cursed be she that digs.”
There was a whisper of nightmares, a voice in the gloom. “What are you doing, Sickly Belle?” said the ghost-in-the-closet. “Those are my words. I didn’t give you the say-so that you could steal them.”
There was an edge to its voice, as though it sensed that no more was it the captain of Sweetie Belle’s fears. Sweetie sang louder.
“Cursed be they who tease—
Oh please!
Gimme a break,
Oh please!
Fiend in the dark,
You nasty ghost.
A coward at least,
A bully at most.”
“You think I’m teasing you?” said the ghost. “You think I’m a bully? A pester-nuisance? A hassle hound? I’m simply telling you the truth, my luckless ghost-to-be. I’m merely getting you set-up for the next life.”
Still Sweetie refused to listen, instead singing louder, louder, and LOUDER.
“Loved be they who sing,
Who play,
Who laugh,
Who kiss,
Who hug,
Who wish,
Who share their bliss,
Who – listen to this:
Fathers, brothers,
Sisters and mothers,
Friends so loved by me, you see,
My friends so loved by me!
They dwell in my heart,
Then in my dreams,
Best friends so dear to me, to me!
My friends so dear to me!”
Sweetie closed her eyes, and she felt so loved, so exceptionally, exceedingly, extraordinarily loved. And now she imagined that it wasn’t just herself snuggle-wrapped in the sheets, but her mother and father as well, her sister, and her dearest friends.
As long as she kept her eyes shut, nothing could prove otherwise. So long as she kept her eyes shut, she could imagine that they were really with her, and their love thundered in her heart.
“I’m not afraid of you,” Sweetie hissed at the ghost-in-the-closet. “You’re just a big old meanie-head, and I’m not afraid. Anyway, if I was a no-hoper, Rarity would be here. If I was a final-stop, my friends would be here. If I was an end-of-the-line, everypony would be here, because they wouldn’t leave me alone when I needed them the most.”
The truth of it blossomed in her heart. The fires of friendship blazed through her little body, setting alight her legs and hooves, belly and lungs, her horn. Sweetie Belle opened her eyes.
She gasped.
There stood the ghost.
When she had first heard the terrible voice in the gloom, Sweetie had pictured something dread-terrible, a shadow wrapped in darkness, with fangs of midnight. But now that the ghost had revealed itself, it was nothing of the sort. The ghost was a nightshine filly, a stardust pony: a foal made from the stuff of moonlight, with wide eyes and a trembling lip. The ghost looked younger than her. She was shaking, and her eyes watered with glowshine tears.
When the ghost spoke again, she sounded different, like another pony entirely. The foul tones were dropped. Her voice was as soft as the falling snow on a calm December night.
“But how do you know you’re loved so?” she said to Sweetie. “So what if you’re not dying? How do you know somepony loves you if they don’t visit you when it counts?”
A gulpworthy thought came to Sweetie Belle. Her voice was scarcely half a step above breathing. “Did you really visit your own funeral?" she asked the ghost. "Did you really listen to everypony talk about you?”
The ghost answered with hush-shush, then shook her head. “I didn't go,” she whispered at last. "I was too scared to."
“Then why lie? Why were you teasing me?”
Now the ghost tapped the tiles with a hoof and blushed the colour of moondust. “I dunno. Seeing you there all alone in the bed... it made me feel... it made me feel—"
Sweetie interrupted her. "Lonely?" she said.
The ghost gulped. "I’m sorry I fright-terrored you," she said. "I don't know what came over me. But you didn’t deserve that.”
It was an hour past bedtime, yet the feel of midnight had arrived early: that special feeling of sister hugs, and of facing the darkness with bravery and courage.
There were other forces at work that night, besides those of darkness and terror and lonlieness. They worked inside of Sweetie’s heart, drawing strength from the fires of her friendship.
What matters, she had imagined Rarity saying, is the manner in which we face our fears, and how we conduct ourselves when chilled by the shadow of fright.
The ghost was tiny, and lonesome, and shaking. Her tears glowed brighter.
Sweetie shuffled under the sheets. “Um… this is kind of a big bed here. I don’t know if maybe—”
There was no need to finish. The little ghost smiled, and her smile transformed her from a creature of tombstones to a spirit of pure day-shine. Her fur glowed bright: brighter than the stars, brighter than planets, brighter than the moon! And then she laughed and climbed under the covers. Sweetie wrapped her forelegs around her, ghostweary no more, but peaceful.
“I lied, you know,” whispered the ghost. “It’s not fun, being a ghost. Ponies don’t notice you, even when you need them to.”
“Ponies don’t always notice you,” Sweetie answered. “That doesn’t mean they don’t care. It doesn’t mean they’re not there, or that they don’t love you. Anyway, I noticed you.”
“Only because I teased you.”
But what the ghost had done in her loneliness didn’t matter to Sweetie Belle, not anymore: the two of them were together, now, and that’s what counted. They closed their eyes, and sang in the darkness.
“Lost be those who fear, who hate:
Oh lonely lonesome ghosts.
Forgotten.
Mislaid.
Missing.
Astray.
It’s what we fear the most, you hear?
It’s what we fear the most.
Yet in the dark, in this room,
In this dreary frigid gloom,
We found new love! New love! New love!
We let new love take bloom.
Blessed be they who love, my dears.
Blessed by they who love.”
Author's Note
November 2017: Made a few light edits here and there, in order to clarify some of the more needlessly obtuse elements this story previously had. Hopefully it reads more clearly now.
