The Equestrian Horror
“The gravity of what is possible extends far beyond our feeble imaginations. Far beyond known and unknown magic. It is only limited by the infinite void of space which surrounds it. If one could call this a limit at all...”
Reality isn’t quite what we had hoped it would be, as I have found out. The borders between worlds are thinner than paper to the Great things which act as the keys, the locks, and the gates themselves. These things are not bound by space or time. They continue to grow and look upon us with indifference. I have caught but a glimpse of what awaited beyond the void and have become mad from the revelation of their presence. I fear the destruction of my fellow ponies and myself. I fear the unknown abhorrence which sits atop its pedestal of festering nightmares and now dangles high above me, waiting for my inevitable destruction.
Everything started with Lyra, the nyon green unicorn. She was one to keep to her boundaries, but something awoke her interests that caused her to step out of her bubble of everyday life. She learned of humans. How, I cannot say. She would always blather on about their opposable thumbs and ability to pick things up with ease. As far as I could tell, they were mythical creatures and beyond that, I didn’t really care. I would listen to her rant about her discoveries, which weren’t really discoveries to begin with. They were simply malformed quotes and stories from blasphemous tomes which she claimed to be ancient, even though they were most likely forgeries. Works of fiction. The books were written in scribbled nonsense that made me cringe whenever the text was presented to me. Still, she was enjoying herself and I had no right to trample upon that.
As Lyra’s fascination grew and her collection of tomes increased, I grew more and more irritated. They were piled up on every inch of her floor in her home. I visited her one day and a loose stack nearly buried me alive. I scolded her and told her she ought to get rid of them but she insisted that she was getting somewhere.
After this incident I returned to my own home and after a bit of reflection, I realized that I was much too harsh on her. The next day I returned to apologize. However upon knocking on the door, I received no response. The eerie silence worried me greatly, her blinds were closed and Bon Bon had already left for the day. Out of great concern for my friend, I busted the wooden door open with all my strength. Dust flew everywhere all at once and the stacks of books began to shake. I cringed as they all fell around me.
When the dust finally settled, I saw the disfigured body of Lyra laying in the middle of the room. I couldn’t bear to look at the malformed figure for more than a second. After notifying the police, the only thing they could tell me about her death was that it was self-inflicted. I told them that it was impossible. How could she bend and twist her own body around in such a hideous manner on her own? The police had no answer for me. It turns out she was slathered in cuts from a knife which was found right beside her body. Those wounds could conceivably be self inflicted, but there was something missing.
The date of her death was the 26th of March. Just as spring was settling in. I attended the eulogy and the funeral in respect. After all I did consider her somewhat of a friend. She had left a will, it seemed. It was strange, all I could think of as the lawyer handed me the note was the timing of all this. She had a will prepared, why? Did she expect to die? Regardless, I respected her final wishes. The envelope contained nothing but a note and a small key. The key was made of pure silver and the note made of old fashioned paper. It read:
Hello, Drip.
You’re probably wondering what this key is for. Whoever handed it to you, I want you to bribe their silence. I left you some money as well. You may use it for this purpose. You can never be too careful. The key you have will open up a door that should never be opened again, lest you end up like me. I want you to use it one more time, though. Inside my house, under the floorboard nearest to the fireplace is a stash which can be opened with this key. I want you to take the stash’s contents and burn it. Burn all of it. Tell Bon Bon I’m sorry it ended like this.
Remember me fondly,
Lyra
What was I to do? I had to keep this a secret, it was her last wish after all. I consoled Bon Bon for her loss. She was staying with her family for a few days, giving me the perfect chance to fulfill these last rites. I promptly paid the lawyer as instructed and made my way back to Lyra’s home. It seemed ridiculous to go to such great lengths to keep this secret, even from the lawyer.
Her home was completely rid of the tomes she borrowed from the library. It had only been a few days since her death and everypony was already monopolizing on her assets. It was truly disgusting. I thank Celestia that she would never be so inconsiderate. I bent down beside the fireplace looking for a loose floorboard and sure enough, there it was. Underneath was a black-as-night safe with a combination lock on the front. How could this be? She gave me a key, there must have been a keyhole somewhere on it.
After a bit of searching, I found that the small silver key fit in a small socket on the bottom of the safe. It seemed the combination lock was just a ruse to fool any unlucky thieves. The bottom of the safe opened up and a vast amount of papers fell all over the floor along with a single book. Such an intricate precaution specially crafted for the sole purpose of guarding these papers. They must be worth something if Lyra was willing to die over them.
I assembled the scattered papers together in a neat stack and turned my attention to the book. It was titled: “The Necronomicon”. Bound in what looked to be thick, bizarre leather, the ink a ghastly red, and the pages thinner than the edge of a knife, this book was quite the piece to look at. There were subtexts under the title in some strange language I did not recognize. Be it pony curiosity or a blatant disregard for authority by instruction, I decided to take a peek at what could very well be the death of me.
Upon opening to the first page, I felt a sudden rush of fantastic wind blow into my face. Though not literally, it was more like something had just taken a clean wipe against my consciousness. I saw a sudden but brief vision of fantastic alien cities. I was flying high above the dreary green and thunderous clouds of some higher world. The vision halted abruptly. I put the book down as it was too much for me to bear at that moment.
Just as the book’s back cover hit the table, Bon Bon entered through her front door. She was dressed normally and her face was ridden of tears. It seemed she made quite the recovery.
“Oh, hello, Drip. What are you doing here?” she asked. I stood in a way that hid the book and documents from her sight.
“Lyra said she left me a few things. I’ve got them right here,” I showcased the papers for a brief second but concealed them quickly once again.
“Oh, alright then.”
“I’ll be going now. Sorry to disturb you.” I hustled towards the door. Bon Bon stopped me.
“Drip, you really shouldn’t read those,” she whispered into my ear. I was already outside her door as I slowly turned around in question. She smirked while the door eerily closed in my face. Why was she even home? She was supposed to be on her way to visit her family.
I stared blankly into nothingness my entire walk home. Every moment the book touched my flesh, I felt more and more distanced from where I was standing. What could have happened to Lyra? Clearly this book was the cause of it. In respect of her final wishes and fear for my own sanity, I took the book out in my yard and set it aflame. I had my neighbor keep watch over it, lest the fire spread, while I left to read the other documents, which seemed to be far less menacing than that cursed book.
Every single paper was some newspaper article or police case file concerning various unexplained deaths. I skimmed them briefly. There weren’t terribly interesting. However one or two them did describe a fate similar to the one Lyra had suffered. A body found disfigured, bent and twisted beyond recognition, along with self inflicted wounds. This is what troubled me most. There was only one document out of place from the rest. It had strange markings on it, some foreign language, with Equestrian dialectal translations on the side. It was a translation key, probably for the unnamed language in that horrid book. I read a couple verses written in red on the sharp scrap of paper: “The mind of the uneasy is the mind of the Gods.” What in the world was this? A sharp migraine suddenly filled my head and I stumbled back outside to check on the fire.
The book remained perfectly intact. Its paper unscathed and the fire diminishing. I dismissed my neighbor and picked up the book once again. My migraine intensified and another vision showcased in front of me. I heard distant whispers, echoes of distorted infinity. What lay ahead of me was not that of the physical, nor was it ethereal. What this vision was trying to reveal to me slowly took shape in the vast chasm of absolute destruction. These concepts of destruction and infinity were being explained to me through the vision. Thought not verbal or written. It was as if the concepts themselves were manifesting and nestling into my mind. The void reached out to me with an arm, long and slender. it wanted me to conjoin with it.
My vision suddenly halted and I found myself in a hospital bed, linked to life support. Four years had passed in what seemed like a few moments in the realm of maddening revelation.
Something happened after my encounter in the vision, I’m sure of it. I had simply lost recollection of it, though. The doctors were shocked to see I had awoken. The hospital allowed me to return home after a few days.
I wasn’t concerned with the loss of my own chance to experience life, my lost time. For what I had seen toppled over all else. I felt a disgusting presence over me at all times from then on. It followed me wherever I went and was always trying to ensnare me. I felt my own insanity begin to build itself on top of what little intelligence was hosting it.
Was it these “humans” causing all of this? Were they the cause of Lyra’s death? Would they be the cause of mine? The fables of such creatures never mentioned anything like this. Still, something was trying to come into our world and it was using my mind as a vessel. This much I knew. It was telling me so. It was telling me to at least live up until the moment it needed to break free. Other than this, it never spoke directly to me.
I couldn’t sleep. Not a wink. My mind was littered with faint visions of horrid monstrosities which made little to no geometric sense. I sat in my bed every night, panting and trying to ignore what was pressing down on me. During the days, I did just the same at my workplace.
I sought an audience with royalty. Perhaps Celestia, being as old as she was, could give me a faint grasp on what was happening to me. Her guards were reluctant to let me in as I was twitchy and spontaneous. I didn’t even know what I might do.
“Celestia, what’s going on with me?" I asked. She clearly had no idea what I was talking about. I probably just looked like some nut who wanted to spout his nonsense to somepony who would listen. I was dismissed without an answer. Perhaps I should have asked a sensical question. Although with something of this magnitude, I’m sure even a faint description would be enough. Celestia didn’t know anything about any of this. Perhaps this presence was much older than Celestia herself. This was all I could infer.
I started cracking my neck a lot after that. I don’t know why, it was the strangest urge. Constantly, I would have to shift it side to side. For some reason, I felt it helped keep the overbearing presence at bay. Walking down the street I must have looked like a raving lunatic. Though at this point I was seriously starting to consider the possibility that I was. Maybe the book really was nothing and I’m just going crazy. That would be the easy answer. No. This was real. More real than I’d like to think.
Unable to concentrate, I stopped showing up for work, lest I endanger the lives of others. Some days I couldn’t even get out of bed, the headaches were so painful. At all hours of the day I could hear a high pitched static noise whenever it was quiet. This wasn’t the normal background noise that everypony hears. This was something much more menacing. If it was quiet enough, I could hear screaming underneath it all. I had to listen to this every second of every day for the better part of a year. I had enough savings to last me for a good while but soon I was unable to pay the rent and was evicted. I sold most of my things to a pawn shop so I could afford food.
All of my decisions seemed perfectly rational to me, but to everypony else, I was a lunatic who had lost his life. Who knows? Maybe I was. It didn’t really matter to me anymore whether or not this was real. The presence’s voice grew louder and clearer every day. It told me to mutilate myself on a few occasions. Only once did I go through with it. I thought that maybe it would go away if I did. But no, all I got out of that was a trip to the hospital and a stack of bills I could not pay for.
I was now living in an alley, waiting for ponies to toss scraps of food or some money my way. I couldn’t do anything but lay there and try to drown out the presence’s voice. I found that grinding my teeth made its voice quieter. Though when my jaw was exhausted, I could hear it clearly. Underneath the static and the screaming, I could hear a third sound. It was unlike anything else in Equestria. I heard the sound, and I use the term “sound” loosely, as it was more of an audible apparition, and it was terrifying. It shook me to my very core. Every drop of blood in my body became thinner whenever I “heard” it. The pain it inflicted when it spoke was unbearable.
There was no way I was going to survive another day like this. I needed a way out but I had nopony to turn to. The only pony who could have conceivably helped me was Lyra. I knew that she was dead. But perhaps I was dead too, in a way. This thing in my mind and over my shoulder certainly made me feel dead. I was desensitized to the point where I could no longer see color or hear the voices of ponies around me.
I had an epiphany. The book. That... Necronomicon. It got me into this mess so certainly it could get me out. I returned to the pawn shop as that was the only place I could have taken it.
“That creepy old book? Yeah I sold it to this one dame with a yellow coat,” the shopkeeper explained. “She said her name was ‘boom boom’ or somethin’ like that.”
“How long ago was that?” I asked.
“Oh geez. Musta been... two months ago?” he said. My eyes widened. That must have been only days after or the exact day that I sold it. It was as if she knew I would be getting rid of it. I thanked the shopkeep for his blatant disregard for customer confidentiality and visited Bon Bon at her old house. After four years I’m sure she would be ecstatic to see me.
“Bon Bon! It’s Drip!” I was cracking my neck and twitching all over. I’m sure she was terrified of me. She said nothing and stared at my delirious state. “I’ve been meaning to ask you...” I started.
“I can see you’re almost gone,” she interrupted.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It’s right behind you, isn’t it?”
“What?” I leaned forward, feeling the ever encompassing presence creep up on me from behind. “How do you know about that?” I asked. She smirked from her doorway as I stood in the cold night, trying to avoid the presence.
“I visited you every day in the hospital for a long time. After the first two years though, I figured you were already gone,” she said.
“Well, I wasn’t! Hehehe...” I tried to laugh but this situation was just too strange for laughter to be appropriate.
“You tried reading the book, didn’t you?” she asked. My eyes widened with fear.
“You know about the book?”
“Lyra couldn’t handle it. It got to her the very first time she saw it,” said Bon Bon. A sharp pain struck my very being. Not in any particular spot on my body, but it was as if something had just hit my soul. Was it her words? Was I being cursed? I fell to the ground at her doorstep.
“Can you help?” I desperately asked, reaching a hoof out towards her. She just looked at me from above and shook her head.
“You lasted over four years. That should be more than enough time for Yog-sothoth to make his way through.” She leaned in on my face as I struggled to keep my eyes open. “I gave Lyra that book, you know. Humans are real, you know. But this isn’t the humans doing, Drip. This is something greater and more complex than the very machinery of nature. The gravity of what is possible extends far beyond our feeble imaginations. Far beyond known and unknown magic. It is only limited by the infinite void of space which surrounds it. If one could call this a limit at all...” I felt my entire body begin to compress with her words. “They’ve been waiting for somepony to help them into our world. We’re special for some strange reason. They can slip into other worlds as easily as they created them, but not ours.” The blood coursing through my veins felt like it was both boiling and freezing simultaneously. “Thank you for helping things along.”
That dreaded migraine returned once again and the presence told me that I wouldn’t be returning from the vision this time. My neck slowly began to bend on its own accord. The sharp edge of my hooves lifted to my body and started clawing. I could feel every sensation and the pain only seemed to appease the presence which was tightening its grasp on me. I felt my mind tear open as the presence slipped its way through into our realm. It needed a vessel. It had been waiting for one that could properly contain its visage, and I was just the one it needed. I could feel my very atoms ripping out of place as my thoughts faded into obscurity. I can only hope that my world is ready for what I have unleashed.
