Middwich

I was ripped from my half-sleep by the pungent scent of the sea invading my nostrils. As if I wasn’t already awake, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“We’re here, sleepyhead,” Lyra whispered. I looked over at her side of the carriage. She was grinning as she stared out the window. I looked past her at the view outside. Our ride had stopped. By the side of the road, I caught a glimpse of a white sign that proudly declared, WELCOME TO LOVELY MIDDWICH.

They sure were proud of their scenery.

And by scenery I meant a flat, grey ocean that lapped at a grey beach smothered by grey fog that seeped from the bloated, grey sky.

“Looks grey,” I sleepily muttered.

“Hush, Bonnie. It’ll clear right up in a day or two.”

Lyra wanted to believe that and I did too. The thick, sloggy weather wasn’t usual for this part of the year. I thought, if I’d be stuck for five days in whatever backwater wharf Lyra whisked me away to, I’d at least like to catch some sun. She said it would be an “experience.” That’s the word she kept slinging at me. That and “adventure.” I’m not sure what that brochure put into her pretty little head, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth.

I squeaked open the carriage door and stepped out. My hooves, normally pale, looked bright against the (yep, grey) asphalt road. I groaned as I stretched my legs. Three hours sitting in a coach left my bones feeling stale.

Dampness stuck to the inside of my lungs as I breathed in the sea air. Taking a better look around, I saw some dull brick buildings a ways down the street. They were little miscellaneous storefronts, all tightly crammed together. A shopping district right off the bat—great. Lyra was probably going to buy me a snow globe or something.

“Here y’are, Missus Heartstrings,” creaked a voice. A grunt came from the other side of the carriage, accompanied by some thumping. “Yer luggage.”

“Oh, thank you, Mr. Stagecoach.” She sounded like an angel compared to the stallion. I wandered around the wide vehicle and found Lyra lifting her suitcase. Stood next to her was a slightly brown, slightly unshaven earth pony. His small eyes stared nowhere in particular as he held my suitcase in his mouth.

“Vhe fleasure iv all nine, na’an,” he muffled unconvincingly. Dropping my luggage to the ground, he thrust out a calloused, expectant hoof. “That’ll be twenty-three.”

While Lyra zipped open her coin purse, I gazed absentmindedly at our suitcases. Mine was bare and shabby; hers was enthusiastically plastered with stickers, country flags, and gift shop souvenirs piled on a half inch thick. Neither of us remembered what color it used to be.

With hardly more than a “Have a good’un,” the carriage stallion took the bits and pulled his rickety ride off down the road, heading away from town and eventually disappearing around the bend.

“Not a bad guy.” Lyra smiled. “Straightforward, at least.”

I examined a newly-broken wheel on my suitcase. “I’m just glad I didn’t pack anything fragile.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, I didn’t want to be rude. He offered to carry our stuff, so I let him. Speaking of, want me to get that for you?”

I nodded graciously. My luggage lit up with a yellow aura and floated over to Lyra, where they hung above her head.

“Thank ya kindly, Missus Heartstrings,” I grunted.

She snickered past her hoof. “Real nice. The throat cancer cadence really gets me hot.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I chuckled.

We both began towards the town’s entrance. Clouded glass doors and faded awnings lined the road on either side, the shops going on for a few blocks. I sighed, “First thing’s first, we gotta get to our room. My flank hurts.”

“Yeah, your flank’s killin me too, Bon,” Lyra smirked. “Let’s look around. I think there’s a café a block down. The map shows—”

I gripped her by the shoulders and brought her face up to mine. I let her take in every syllable. “Lyra H. Heartstrings, you do not understand me. My butt is numb.”

“Oh my gosh, fine.” She giggled, brushing my hooves away. “We’ll go to the hotel, then we can shop later. Lessee …” Lyra unfurled a glossy map and poked at it, muttering to herself. “… west, up Neighton … turn on West Dustford … okay, I got it. Let’s get going.”

* * *

Markets and sundries, barber shops and florists, daycares and libraries, bars and restaurants. All jammed up against one another in some unholy rapid-fire consumerist paradise. A shameless tourist trap through-and-through. Except nothing was open.

“You didn’t bring us to a ghost town, did you?” I half-joked. Lyra and I had taken a quick wander around the sullen streets. An empty neon sign (YES, WE’RE OPEN) hung in a nearby smudged window. I cupped my hooves to the speckled glass and peered in. Unoccupied. Empty flower pots and fluorescent tubes sat alone in the dark, caked with dust. Some of the shops looked they went unused for years. Maybe decades.

“Hey, Ly, wanna see if any of these doors are unlocked?” I called. “Maybe we can jack a cash register.” I anticipated a sigh from her. No response. I turned around. “Lyra?”

She sat on the sidewalk opposite of me, gazing into a dead clothing store. Rows of bare coat hangers hung in the window like a ribcage. Something behind them. My heart leapt—another pony lurked in the dark. The figure was yellowed, scraped to hell, and torn at the seams … a mannequin. Posed to look like it was prancing or running. I felt like a spooked cat, literally jumping at shadows.

I trotted up beside Lyra. “See something you like?”

In the cloudy glass, her reflected gaze switched from the mannequin to me. “It’s just kind of sad. Imagining what used to be here, I mean.” Her eyes flicked back to the model pony, to where its face might have been. “It’s like everyone up and left all at once. This place probably used to be crazy busy back in the day. What do you think could have made this town dry up so fast?” She pried her eyes away from the model and onto me, curious.

I shrugged. “Suicide cult?”

Lyra snorted. “Yeah, that’s it.” She turned and started off down the street. “We should get to the hotel before the hatchet-slinging fish-ponies try to eat us.”

Couldn’t argue with that. I followed after her into the white air.

It was a quiet walk. The kind of quiet that felt like deprivation. I didn’t hate the silence with Lyra by my side, but it still wasn’t a pleasant silence. Straining my ears, I could barely catch the faded waves from the distant beach. I found relief in that, that there was indeed still a world beyond this street. Otherwise, even the wind had left us alone. Silence permeated the fog, and the fog permeated our throats. I shivered in the tingly sea chill. For a moment, two sets of hoofsteps made all the noise in Middwich.

That hotel room couldn’t come sooner.

* * *

“Aw, c’mon, Bonnie! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! How else are you gonna learn about … uh …” Lyra looked back at the little wooden billboard next to the building. “… about the town’s colorful past as a fishing village?”

The Middwich Historical Society was a squat, admittedly funny-looking little establishment. It was repurposed out of what I guessed was an old house. The rough wood siding was bleached and salt-soaked and a little warped. Behind the seaside building, a lone jetty reached out into the waves that licked at its algae-slimed support posts. A sign out front advertised the various “attractions”. I rubbed my forehead and groaned. This just had to be on the way to the hotel, didn’t it?

“There’s a lot of information I can stand to miss out on.” I sneered. “Especially about the technological marvel of the modern flotation device.”

Lyra’s face fell. She walked toward me—I’d kept my distance from the Historical Whatever Place; I wanted nothing to do with this town’s disturbing buoy obsession.

“Please, Bon?” Gently grabbing my foreleg, she murmured, “Can you just do it for the sake of doing it? Just to say we did?” A little tug. “Just on the off chance you won’t hate it? I promise … I won’t even make you read about the buoys.”

Her innocent sincerity about it made me laugh. How was I supposed to say no to those round eyes and floppy ears? “Okay, okay. You convinced me.” I threw up my hooves in false surrender. “Maybe it won’t kill me to step inside.”

Lyra smiled back. “Glad to hear it. We don’t even have to stop at the gift shop.” She pulled me towards the scuffed wooden door. “Just a few minutes here and we can go to the hotel, okay?”

* * *

It smelt as musty on the inside as it looked on the outside. The faintly moist carpet on my hooves made me shudder. Despite the lights being on, nobody else was around. Just a couple dumb tourists. Everything—the loose wallpaper, the stale lighting, the cheap flooring—it all carried an ill, greenish-brown affliction, like the room itself was seasick. Various placards and displays sat on the walls, all telling of Middwich’s sufficiently boring history.

“Whoa …” Lyra was off snooping around while I watched from a couch in the corner. “Hey Bon, say the name of the town we’re in!”

“Tartarus,” I replied. Despite her facing away from me, I knew she rolled her eyes. “Middwich,” I corrected before she could chastise. “Why? Do you die if you say it three times in a row?”

She turned and grinned at me. “Ah-ha! You’ve been saying it wrong this whole time! It’s actually pronounced ‘Mid-idge’.”

“Okay. Why?” So were you, idiot! Like I cared. But I humored her.

“Griffons are why.” A big, important plaque on the wall told her so. “It’s an old Groveric name. It says here, around half a century ago, the town received huge wave of Griffonstone immigrants. Griffons are carnivores, so they had to find an unintrusive supply of food. They ended up teaching the native ponies how to fish.

“This led to trade alliances being set up between pony and griffon nations. The town’s economy soared, and Equestria’s first fishermare boom town was born! In appreciation, the native ponies let the griffons rename the town.” Finished, she turned to me and smiled proudly.

“Cool,” I yawned. “I think ‘fishermare boom town’ is the least interesting thing I’ve ever heard.”

Lyra huffed and went back to studying. “But what’s weird is that it doesn’t say what Middwich was called before that. I can’t find it anywhere …”

She searched for an answer among the exhibits. In the meantime, I was lectured on the more exciting parts of the town’s history. Things like Middwich’s town fish (the Equestrian Coalfish), the lighthouse’s foghorn (still hoof-powered!), and griffons (do YOU know what an “omnivore” is?).

I groaned as I lifted myself from the sofa, shaking off the cramps. “Lyra, look … I know you love this kind of stuff. I really do. But right now, I’m so tired I can feel my body shutting down. Can’t we please just do this tomorrow or something?”

She turned around from poring over some model boats and sighed. “You gave it a chance, and I guess that’s all I asked for. Let’s go.”

We stepped out together. I didn’t like seeing her so down, but I really was exhausted. “So did you find out about … uh, Middwich’s old name?” I struggled to pronounce it the right way. Hell if I wasn’t going to keep saying Mid-witch in my head, though.

“Hey, you actually remembered something.” Lyra smiled weakly, but shook her head. “I swear I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find a thing about it. I don’t know if it was an oversight or what. You saw how crazy they were about their history.”

Silence triumphed for a minute.

“I mean, don’t you think it’s weird?” she continued. “I’m sorry, I just—this is really eating at me. They documented every little detail. Why wouldn’t they say what it was called before Middwich?”

I patted her on the withers. “Jeez, Ly, don’t blow a capillary. Maybe they just … I dunno, forgot it? Didn’t you say it was renamed like fifty years ago?”

“That’s not …” Lyra trailed off, sighing sharply. “Whatever. I’m just being an idiot.”

I awkwardly mumbled, “Not really.”

* * *

    Things were quiet again as we made our way through the town, soon passing the edge of the shopping district. We turned onto West Dustford, a road that followed the outskirts of a modest little subdivision. Tiny one-story houses spanned a few blocks down the street. Totally desolate, of course. I caught glimpses of garden tools or trash cans in the front lawns, the tool sheds … but the windows were always dark. We walked along still, down the one long road, for what felt like miles. My legs buzzed in agony, desperate for rest, but we couldn’t stop now.

“Look, Bon.” Lyra broke the silence at last, pointing over the thick horizon. “Almost there.”

I had to squint through the fog, but I could just about make it out. A large building, towering four stories high, stood in the distance. Black windows neatly lined the façade, whose aged architecture clearly labelled it the oldest thing in town. All things considered, it really didn’t look half bad. Old as all hell and kind of creepy—the kind of place that just screams, haunted!—but not in ruins by any stretch.

Face it, I thought. You’ve woken up in worse.

* * *

Middwich Seaport Hotel

* * *