In the middle of the Everfree forest, beneath the twisted and gnarled boughs of the trees overhead, rested a lone cabin. ‘Rested’ was the only word for it, old and dilapidated, beginning to sink in on itself as if it were letting out one last sigh of relief that its time was soon to be over. The roof was covered in years of fallen leaves and bird droppings, and the weight had started to crush its spine like a folding accordion.
The disrepair extended to the porch out front, slats broken and buckling, support posts all bent in the process of slowly collapsing. At one point there must have been a swing bench mounted outside, but all that was left was a pile of broken wood and dangling chains from the porch roof, rattling emptily in the wind. Moss-covered boards erratically crisscrossed all of the windows, although most of them had failed in their duty – fragments of glass shattered by the elements still lingered on the sill and ground beneath them.
Despite all the decay, the door to the cabin stood firm. Far firmer than the rest of it, the only sign of damage in the form of several long, deep, and jagged grooves carved into the wood.
Scratch marks.
But it sat flush in its frame even as the building sagged around it, and the wood was clear of rot and almost clean, at least when compared to the rest of the exterior.
Slipping under the doorframe, into the similarly decrepit interior. Dust hung in the air, thick as smoke, illuminated in a fiery orange glow by the shafts of dwindling evening sun that snuck between the boards on the windows. It covered every surface, layers upon layers, coating the entire cabin in muted grey.
The expected amenities were all to be found, crumbling away like the rest of it. A still-made bed in the corner, leaning awkwardly where one of the legs had snapped off. A large dining table, laid with a long-since-empty wine bottle beside a single plate. If there had ever been food on it, it was long gone. The wine bottle rested on its side, and a dark red stain was visible even through the dust. Most strikingly, a kitchen knife was embedded deep in the table top, although the years had rusted and dulled it.
A stove in one corner, the kettle atop it dented and forlorn, pots and pans lining the wall on crudely bent hooks above it, although many had become dislodged as the hooks twisted over the years and now lay in a heap on the floor below.
There were few personal touches. Not even enough to determine the species of the previous owner, let alone anything more. They could have been a dragon for all anyone could tell, though the style of surviving utensils and furniture suggested the previous inhabitant had been a pony.
The air was still, filled with empty expectation. The cabin was waiting. It had been waiting for years, drowned in stagnant silence, in dust and time. Every inch of it almost quivering in fervent anticipation. A drawn in breath that had never been released. Elastic pulled tight to the point of breaking, and then relentlessly and remorselessly held. Waiting. The knife in the table still catching the shafts of sunset, the words it had etched in the wood in its final duty now almost buried beneath the dust.
A moment that could wait forever, and had done for so many years already; a perfect, crystallised instant of preparation.
And then the door slammed open, crashing against the wall hard enough to leave a dent, and the moment shattered like glass.
“Anypony home?” The pegasus clutched her friend tighter and tried to ignore the damp warmth of blood on her fetlocks.
“Have you seen this place, Dash?” her friend said through gritted teeth, staggering a little as she leaned harder against the pegasus for support. “Ain’t no-one been here for years.”
“You haven’t been to some of the dumps I’ve seen ponies living in,” Dash replied. Humour that didn’t really work to hide her worry. She’d seen Applejack’s leg, and it was a miracle AJ was still conscious, let alone sassing her. That was reassuring, at least. If Applejack ever stopped mocking her then Dash knew it was time to be concerned. “Come on, over here.”
She led Applejack over to the half-collapsed bed, her friend hobbling along as best she could with her hindleg dangling and trailing behind her. Gently, so gently, Rainbow helped lower her down onto the crumpled frame, silently praying the rest of it wasn’t going to fall apart now it actually had some weight to hold up. It didn’t, thank Celestia, although Applejack let out another shudder of pain as she tried to pull her leg over to where it was supposed to be.
“Easy, don’t overdo it,” Dash said, leaning down to inspect the wound again with a grimace of her own.
“I ain’t, this just hurts worse than a kick from a mule with a temper.” Applejack stared resolutely at the cabin wall, determined not to look down. “It’s bad, huh?”
Dash sighed. “Yeah, it’s bad.”
“I swear, I don’t even know what happened. One moment I was fine, the next I was tumbling down that bank and all wrapped up in those vines.”
“Don’t worry about it, it’s gonna be fine,” said Dash, although she didn’t sound as sure as she’d hoped.
Gleaming white stabbed through Applejack’s shin, so bright even through the blood; erupted, jagged bone from where it had snapped right in two. Dash had seen her fair share of breaks and training accidents, but this was worse than most of what she’d seen before. Not that Rainbow would tell AJ that; it was the last thing she needed to hear right now.
Dash reached out and gently pressed her hoof above the wound. Warm. And then Applejack shrieked in pain and she quickly withdrew it again.
“That hurt?” Dash asked.
“What the hay kinda question is that? Of course it fucking hurt!”
Dash tried again, below the break this time. Cold. “How about that?” she asked.
“A little, not as bad,” said Applejack.
That wasn’t good.
“Okay, AJ?”
“Yeah?”
“This is really, really gonna suck, like a whole lot, and I’m sorry about that. But I have to get this leg in a splint and before I do that I need to straighten it out.”
Applejack frowned. “What’re you sayin’?”
“I have to pull it back into place.”
There was a long pause.
“Like hay you do.”
“If I don’t, you could lose the whole leg,” said Dash. “The circulation’s really bad.”
“But-”
“Think about it. You wouldn’t be able to buck apples anymore. Or pull ploughs, or fight off world-threatening monsters. How would you keep the farm running with a whole leg missing? So I have to pull it back, and it’s going to hurt.”
A sharp tinge of fear and distress in Applejack’s voice. “How badly?”
Dash chewed her lip. “You might want to find something to bite down on.”
“...horseapples.”
In the end, Applejack had to settle for gritting her teeth, hard, already grimacing in anticipation.
“Okay, ready?” Dash asked.
Applejack shook her head.
“Are you ever gonna be ready?”
Another head shake.
“Then we’ll do it on three, alright?”
A reluctant nod.
“One.” Dash reached forward and took her friend’s twisted leg in her hooves, Applejack letting out another sharp hiss of breath between her teeth. “Two.”
Dash didn’t get to three. Better that Applejack didn’t know it was coming. With a grunt of effort, she pulled the leg down enough that she could lever the jutting bone back through the wound. Even Applejack’s scream of agony couldn’t mask the terrible sound of it crunching back into place, and there was so much pain in AJ’s cry that it made Dash’s heart hurt just from knowing what she was putting her friend through. It had to be done, though. As long as she kept telling herself that, it would all be fine.
And then the cabin was mostly quiet again, AJ’s scream replaced with ragged sobs as she tried to regain her composure. The metallic tang of blood in the air was sharper than ever before as Applejack threw her head back and began to curse Rainbow with every kind of profanity Dash had ever heard, and quite a few that she hadn’t.
“You said on three,” Applejack spat, eventually. “Don’t you know how to count?”
“I thought it’d be easier if you weren’t tensing up for it.”
“You’re cold, Dash. Fuck that hurts.”
“That’s a good thing,” Rainbow insisted. “I’d be more worried if it stops hurting.”
“Easy for you to say.” Applejack reached up and wiped away the tears of pain that had escaped down her cheeks.
Another gentle touch against the lower part of Applejack’s leg again, just to make sure. Dash was rewarded with another groan of pain, but even more reassuringly Applejack’s skin was warm again. Or at least warming. Better than it had been, so cold it could have belonged to a corpse.
“That’s the hard part,” Dash told her. “Now we’ll just get it splinted up.”
“And how’d you plan on doing that in the middle of nowhere?”
Chewing her lip again in thought, Dash scanned the derelict cabin. “There’s got to be something around here we can use. I’ll find some string or something, and we can use those broken bed slats to hold it in place.”
Applejack was barely listening, rocking gently back and forth, nursing her shattered leg and trying not to scream again.
Even as Dash got up and began to rifle through the long-abandoned drawers, Applejack found her vision blurring a little. Woozy. Between the pain and the blood loss, it was a wonder she’d held on this long. But she was an Apple, after all, and she’d be damned if anyone was gonna say an Apple couldn’t handle a simple broken leg. No matter how much agony she was in.
She had lost a lot of blood though. How much she wasn’t even sure, only that it was altogether too much. How much was too much? Was there an amount of blood that crossed the line? Was there an amount that was okay to lose? Who decided? Maybe they did tests. Applejack could imagine Twilight doing stuff like that, with her science and textbooks. Although who would ever volunteer for an experiment like that? Yeah just keep taking blood out of me and I’ll tell you when I’m about to pass out. Sign me up.
“Applejack!”
Applejack blinked, her vision all at once eclipsed by Dash’s face. “Huh?”
“You gotta stay with me, okay?” Dash said. “You have to stay awake.”
“I’m fine,” Applejack replied, although she could hear the slight drag in her voice, as though she was speaking in slow motion.
“No, you’re not. But as long as you stay awake, you will be.” Dash settled herself at the foot of the bed, kneeling by AJ’s broken limb. “Now, I found some string, so I’ll sort out this splint and then go get help.”
Any wooziness Applejack had felt was replaced with icy fear pouring down her spine. “Wait, you’re just gonna up and leave me here? All alone?”
“Just while I go get Twilight and everyone. We’ll be back here before you even know I’m gone.”
Applejack shook her head vehemently, wincing as the movement jostled her leg. “You can’t leave me here, Dash. Not on my own.”
“I can’t carry you out, can I? And it won’t be long, I can fly and bring Twilight back. She’ll be able to do her magic teleport thingy or something.”
“You won’t find this place again.” Applejack could feel damp tears again, not from pain this time but exhausted desperation and panic. “We only stumbled on it by dumb luck, and you probably can’t even see it from the air.”
“I’ll remember,” Dash assured her. “I’ve got a great sense of direction.”
“Oh yeah? Which way is Ponyville from here?”
Dash hesitated, and her silence said it all.
“Exactly,” said Applejack. “Finding this place again would be finding a needle in a haystack.” She cast her gaze to the dwindling, orange light seeping through the cracks in the window boards. “And it’ll be dark soon. Please, Dash. Don’t leave me here. It’s a death sentence.”
Dash was staring at the jagged gouge in AJ’s leg, crimson staining her fur. “It could get infected if we don’t get help soon,” she said. “You really don’t want that.”
“I don’t,” Applejack agreed, “but if you can’t find me again then it won’t matter either way.”
Dash sighed in frustration. The only mare who could ever out-stubborn Rainbow herself was Applejack, and she knew there was no persuading her. “So what do you want us to do? It’s not like you can walk out of here in the state you’re in, and you’re right, it’s gonna be dark soon.”
“I can’t walk out by myself, but together we could. I won’t put weight on it, and we’ll go slow. And if we sleep here tonight we’ll have the whole day. We’d only have to get as far as Zecora’s, I’m sure she’ll have some potions or ointments for this. And then you can go get Twilight or whoever you want.”
“You want to sleep here? AJ, I…”
“Please,” Applejack begged. “This forest ain’t safe for just one pony. Especially not one with a broken leg.”
Dash hesitated. She’d never seen Applejack like this before, so desperate, almost foal-like as she pleaded for Rainbow to stay. Normally she was the one fearlessly leading the charge, rushing headfirst into danger without a second thought. Hay, this entire excursion had been her idea, after all, trying to track down the pack of troublesome timberwolves that had been harrying Sweet Apple Acres’ herd. And Applejack hadn’t even seemed the slightest bit worried when they’d set off that morning, marching between the black, twisted trees that marked the edge of the Everfree Forest without so much as a glance back.
But now Applejack just looked scared.
“Fine,” said Dash, already regretting it. “But this is a bad idea.”
“I know,” Applejack agreed. “It’s just that your one was worse.”
Dash couldn’t help but smile. That was more like Applejack. “Alright,” she said, “now hold still so I can splint your leg.”
“Wasn’t planning on moving it any.”
Dash hefted the two boards she’d set aside and pressed them either side of AJ’s leg, making sure the offending limb was straight and trying not to grimace whenever her hoof brushed up against a sticky patch of blood. To her credit, the only sound from Applejack as Rainbow straightened her leg was a muted grunt, although in some ways it might have been easier if Applejack was more vocal. As it was, Dash had to undergo her work in pregnant silence, spinning out longer and longer as Dash unwound the yarn she’d found in one of the drawers and began to bind the boards tightly.
“I’m sorry,” Applejack said, eventually, when the silence was too much to bear.
“For what?”
“Dragging you out here, not looking where I was going. All of it. I really messed this up, huh?”
“Don’t be stupid. It was an accident, that’s all. Bad luck. Could have happened to anyone.”
“Yeah, but it shouldn’t have. We’re only out here for those dang timberwolves, and if I hadn’t gotten us lost…”
“We weren’t lost,” said Dash. “Just temporarily misplaced.” She grinned at Applejack’s withering glare.
“I’m trying to make a sincere apology here. Can’t you at least let me do that?”
“Nope. You’ve got nothing to apologise for.”
“But-”
Dash paused a moment, staring her friend right in the eye. “If we were switched right now, if I’d broken my wing or something, would you help me out?”
“Of course I would, what kinda question is that?”
“There you go, then.” Dash pulled the last bit of string taut, tied it and then bit off the excess. “Now, stop feeling so guilty. We’ve got a long night ahead of us and if you’re apologising the whole time I’ll never get any sleep.”
Applejack laughed, another good sign. “You’re right. Sorry.”
“Hey, what’d I just say?”
“Yeah, yeah, alright.” Applejack gave her newly splinted leg an experimental wiggle. It held firm, locked in position. “Thanks, Dash. This is good.”
“I did learn some things at the academy. Legs are easy, anyway. Do you have any idea how hard it is to splint a wing?”
“I dunno. Break one and we’ll find out.”
Dash didn’t even dignify that with a response, leaving Applejack to her sarcasm as she stood to survey the cabin again.
“Who do you think lived here?” she asked, to herself as much as Applejack.
“I didn’t think anyone was crazy enough to live out here besides Zecora. And even she doesn’t live this far out.”
Dash’s gaze drifted around the long-abandoned cabin, drinking in the dust and devastation of time. “Neither does whoever was here. Not anymore.”
Her eyes caught on the knife sticking up from the table. There was something so jarring and out of place about it that Dash couldn’t help it, like catching a splinter when running a hoof along a fence. It would have taken a great deal of force to slam it so far into the table, buried in the wood almost up to the hilt. What would make a pony – or whatever it was – do something like that? An argument? A final farewell to the home they were just going to leave the forest to reclaim? She stepped forward, maybe to try and pull it out, she wasn’t quite sure, but then she stopped in her tracks as she saw the etchings against the well-worn table surface.
“What is it?” asked Applejack.
“They wrote something.” Dash took a deep breath and then released it over the table, blowing up a huge cloud of dust. Years’ worth, enough that she regretted her actions almost immediately, coughing and spluttering and rubbing her eyes clean. But when the dust settled – quite literally – the words the knife had carved into the table were all too clear.
Erratic and spidery, each letter hewn without care or grace, and as Dash traced over the rough indentations with a hoof she could almost feel the ferocious fervour that had gone into every slash. There was no need for care. Whoever had written here had done so with such intense desperation, a need to share this message with the world. It was important, at least to the writer, more important than anything, important enough that a hurried scratch into the wood was the only way they could find to tell the world. If Dash concentrated she could almost see the pony (she was sure it was a pony, although she couldn’t have explained why) hunched over the table, knife in hoof, frantically digging it into the wood so that whoever might stumble across it would know the truth, before…
Before what? Dash had no idea, only that they’d written it in panic and then slammed the knife into the table as if to serve as a final, fatal full stop. And with such obvious desperation and heartfelt effort put to the words, it made their apparent mundanity even more disappointing.
DON'T
OPEN
THE
DOOR
“What does it say?”
Applejack’s voice snapped Dash out of her reverie. She relayed the message, and Applejack raised an eyebrow, glancing at the still wide open cabin door.
“Bit late for that,” she snickered.
“Yeah.” But now the door itself was the object of Dash’s attention. There was something not quite right about it, from its far better condition than the surrounding cabin to the inch deep claw marks in its exterior that Dash hadn’t even noticed in her panic as she pulled Applejack inside.
But now, as it lay open and that doorway seemed to yawn wide like some gigantic maw to the forest, waiting to swallow them up between the trees and the monsters outside, Dash felt a deep, primordial unease just from looking at it. It wasn’t supposed to be open. It was wrong, somehow, wrong in the way you could look at a picture hanging on the wall and tell that it wasn’t straight even if you weren’t sure which way it would need to turn to correct it. Wrong in the way when you were walking home at night and all at once it was far too quiet and you just knew that someone was watching you from just out of sight and you didn’t run because you’d look foalish but at the same time every impulse was screaming at you run run it’s behind you it’s right behind you can’t you hear it can’t you hear how quiet it is.
And it was that same impulse that carried Dash over to the doorway and had her swing it shut, surprisingly easy despite how many years those hinges must have gone ignored, closing away the forest outside with a heavy thunk of wood against wood.
And seeing what was on the other side only made that feeling of unease even worse. The two ponies stared at the back of the door, silently taking in the sight before them, eyes wide.
“Okay,” Dash said, slowly. “That’s weird.”
Every inch of the door’s surface bristled with metal, chains and locks, bolts and latches, and as far as Dash could tell most of it served no purpose at all. Bolts crisscrossed and interconnected, held pointlessly in place by innumerable padlocks while chains snaked and coiled their way through the maze, some dangling limply and uselessly at one end, others doubling back on themselves, and some seemed to just disappear among the rusted metal, never to re-emerge. Locks binding locks, and yet none of them seemed to ever extend beyond the confines of the door’s edge, rendering them entirely useless.
Rainbow could practically feel the madness leaking out of the display before her. It soaked the air, and the longer she stared the more madness she saw. There weren’t even marks on the doorframe to suggest that at some point there had been latches since removed. Instead just locks without purpose, without effect, strapped together in a ramshackle collection of ineffectualness.
Except one.
A single, simple bolt reached past the edge of the door, with an actual latch on the frame to keep it. A good bolt, too. Heavy, about a quarter inch thick. Strong. Without thinking, Dash slid it across. It was easy, just like the door hinges had been, and no one could have ever guessed how many years they’d been left alone. Stranger still, rust had barely reached it. Maybe it was a different metal, maybe it had just been better maintained before the cabin was abandoned. Either way, it slotted into place with a satisfying clunk, and Dash stepped back again, trying not to look into the insanity any more. There was some kind of terrible pull to it, a whirlpool of curiosity, and a part of Dash wanted to try and follow each lock to see if they actually connected to each other or if they were just haphazardly attached wherever they could fit. If there was method in the madness, or simply madness alone.
But a bigger part of her knew it was just an askew picture, and the only way to straighten it would have been to tear the whole thing down. Better just to avoid looking at it.
“Guess you gotta have a few screws loose to think living out here sounds like a good idea,” said Applejack.
She was trying to sound glib, Dash knew, but there was also that edge in her voice that AJ couldn’t quite manage to hide. She felt it too, felt the not-quite-rightness of it, saw the madness that such an endeavour must have taken.
And she didn’t want to look at it either.
“I locked it,” Dash said, aware of how stupid it sounded, but at the same time knowing it wasn’t.
“Well, you better not open it again, the table said so.” Applejack sighed and leaned back slowly onto the bed, testing if it could bear her weight before committing. “Guess we’re here forever.”
“Just the night,” said Rainbow Dash, simultaneously wishing she hadn’t let Applejack talk her into staying and relieved that she hadn’t left AJ in this place all alone.
“I’m having the bed. Privilege of being wounded.”
“How generous.”
“That ain’t my element.” Applejack tipped her hat over her face and leaned back, and the bed crunched loudly beneath her. For just a moment her hat slipped back, her eyes locked with Dash and filled with wild panic, and then the bed disintegrated with a crash, Applejack landing hard on her rump. A moment of stunned silence, and then from the wreckage: “Ow.”
“Actually, don’t worry about it. The bed’s all yours,” Rainbow said, snickering. “You didn’t land on your leg, did you?”
“I’d be hollerin’ way more if I had.”
“Good.” Dash slumped down against the wall some distance from the door, not wanting to be too close to it, and watched and waited as the dim, orange light of late sunset through the window boards sputtered and died.
***
Applejack’s eyes snapped open, and there was nothing but darkness. Her leg twinged a little as she pulled herself upright, and maybe that was what had woken her – she normally had no trouble sleeping right through. A hard day’s work bucking apples would give any pony a good night’s sleep. She didn’t normally dream, either, or at least she didn’t remember them, but she had done tonight. It was already slipping away, like trying to hold water in her hooves, but she was pretty sure it had something to do with locks.
The bed (or what was left of it) had done her sleep no favours. She supposed it wasn’t much of a step up from sleeping on the floor, and maybe even worse. At least the floor would have been flat.
As her eyes began to adjust to the gloom, the familiar shapes around the cabin came into focus. Scant moonlight crept between the forest’s canopy, less still between the boards over the windows, only enough to make out faint outlines as her eyes got used to the dark. The knife, jutting straight up from the table. The faint gleam of the locks and bolts on the back of the door. Crumpled remnants of furniture littering the floor, the derelict pile of pans. Rainbow Dash, crouched by a window on the far side of the cabin, peering nervously out between the window boards.
Okay, no, that last one didn’t seem right.
“Dash?” she asked, her voice ringing out in the darkness, hoarse from sleep.
Without turning around, Rainbow held up a hoof in her direction. “Shhh.”
Normally, Applejack would have taken some kind of offence to that, or at least demanded to know why she was being silenced. But not tonight. Tonight she could hear the raw fear in her friend’s voice, panic and dread. Tonight that silencing was imperative, and Applejack kept her mouth shut.
Dash dropped away from the window and began to shuffle across the cabin towards her. Low, quiet, careful.
“Listen,” she murmured when she reached Applejack, head cocked slightly. “It’s quiet, but listen.”
And Applejack did. Her ears strained in the darkness, listening for sounds that always seemed to carry so well at night, every little noise so loud and prominent. But there was nothing. Nothing but their breathing, Dash’s quick and scared, nothing but the gentle creak of the cabin in the sighing wind.
And then she heard it.
From the back of the cabin, outside. A scratching, scrabbling. Claws against wood.
Now she knew they were no longer alone, Applejack opted to communicate in that silent way that only long lasting friends could, a language of expressions, eye movements and slight nods.
What is it?
A shrug. I don’t know.
Dash then tried to mouth a word, exaggerated enough that Applejack could make it out even in the gloom
Bear?
Applejack frowned, listening intently. If anything, the scrabbling only got louder. Frantic, desperate. Digging, or searching for weak points.
She shook her head. Not a bear. If she didn’t know any better Applejack would have sworn it was a rat – she’d heard that kind of frenzied scratching coming from the rafters and nooks of her barns plenty of times – but for a rat to make a sound like this it would have to be the size of a large dog. At least.
Timberwolves, maybe, although Applejack didn’t think they were the type to go scratching like that either. Sniffing, maybe, but not this.
No, this was something else. She knew as well as anypony that the Everfree was home to far worse things than bears and timberwolves, things nopony would ever want to tussle with, and all Applejack could do was hope that it was something more mundane that was currently trying to burrow its way into the cabin.
Or whatever it was doing.
The two ponies stayed stock-still as the scratching began to move, meandering around the back wall. Searching for something. A way in? Did it know what this was?
...did it know they were in here?
Maybe it could smell them. Maybe it could smell the blood, now caked into and spiking her fur. Oh, of course it could, she’d practically left a trail behind her when Dash had dragged her here. A damned map – follow the line until you get to the pony that can’t put up a fight anymore. Applejack cursed herself for not thinking about it sooner, although she’d been in no state to think about anything like that, really.
Hay, if it hadn’t been for the cabin they’d be in way more trouble than this. Applejack dreaded to think what would have happened if they hadn’t found it, if they’d just decided to keep going. Nothing good.
Still, something about the creature’s earnest efforts made the fur on the back of her neck stand on end, complete with that unpleasant, shivery sensation. The thing outside was eager, excited. And that feeling only worsened as the claws reached the far corner and began to work its way around. The noise changed, no longer a scrabbling search, but a long dragging, scraping its claws along the length of the building, on and on, until it passed by one of the boarded up windows.
From where the two ponies sat, frozen, it was impossible to make out anything distinct. Only that it was big, blocking out every trace of moonlight as it passed the window, shuttering out the dimly illuminated gaps between the boards and replacing them with nothing but darkness.
It didn’t pause, or hesitate; it just kept moving, past the second window too, and all the while that terrible grating noise as its claws tore at the wood. It wasn’t smooth, catching and biting against gnarls and knots, and each time that happened there would be a horrifying crunch as the creature carried on regardless, tearing large chunks out of the exterior.
Maybe it was a bear. It was hard to imagine something else with such size and careless strength. But no, as much as Applejack would have liked it to be (and even that thought sounded crazy out of context), there was no way this thing was a bear.
It was too big.
And all the two ponies could do was sit and stare and wait, holding their breath, trying not to make the slightest of sounds. Maybe it already knew they were in here, but if it didn’t, and if they could just stay quiet and hidden, maybe it would leave.
Maybe. Applejack doubted it.
It knew.
The creature reached the front of the cabin, and the dragging stopped abruptly at the door. And then there was silence. Applejack’s chest burned from holding her breath, her body screaming at her to just breathe, but she couldn’t. The air was ice, and it had frozen her so completely that even breathing was too much. And it would hear her, somehow, she knew it would.
Something grabbed at her foreleg, and Applejack damn near jumped through the roof, broken leg and all. She whirled on Dash, furious at her friend’s ignorance, but her anger melted away when she saw how scared Rainbow was.
Do you think it’s gone?
Applejack turned back towards the doorway. No sound. No movement. Nothing.
She shook her head. No. It’s still there.
What’s it doing?
I don’t know. Waiting.
For what?
I don’t know.
There was a quiet thump against the door as the creature tried to push it open. It didn’t work, of course, but maybe that would be enough to dissuade it. Maybe it would retreat back into the darkness between the trees and leave Dash and Applejack and the cabin alone.
Or maybe it could still smell the blood, and it wasn’t going to leave until it had tasted it.
Another thump, harder this time. More insistent, more demanding. The door rattled a little in its frame, but still refused to budge.
A third time, harder still, and then silence.
It was worse when it was silent. At least when it was trying to push the door open they knew what it was doing. The pregnant silences, though, were full of the terrifying unknown. Dash’s grip on her leg tightened, almost painful as Applejack allowed her a slow, quiet breath, trying to ignore how shaky it was. But it couldn’t get in, not without breaking the whole thing down. And if it couldn’t do that, well, wild animals weren’t clever. It might have discovered that the door was a way in, or maybe the blood just smelled stronger there.
And as if in answer, the silence was broken by a metallic creaking as the door handle began to turn.
Slowly, oh so slowly and agonisingly it turned, the old, rusted metal screeching in protest. Why so slow? Was it trying to creep in unknown, perhaps thinking they were still asleep inside? Was it just unsure what the handle was, how it worked?
No, it knew what it was doing, how to open the door, and the thought sent another chill down Applejack’s back.
Even if her leg hadn’t been broken, she knew she wouldn’t have been able to move, rooted to the spot by her fear and Rainbow’s tight grasp as the handle turned and twisted and groaned. The latch slid home, and the thing outside pushed.
And the door clunked solidly against the drawn across bolt.
Thank Celestia that Dash had pulled it across, thank Celestia that whoever had lived here had put it there in the first place. The thing outside couldn’t get in. They were safe. The handle clicked back upright as the creature abandoned its attempt, and silence again.
Brief, this time, because then the thing on the other side of the door spoke.
It wasn’t what Applejack had expected. She didn’t know what she had been expecting, or if she’d even expected it to be able to talk at all, but definitely not this. Definitely not the voice of a young filly, terrified and full of tears.
“Hello?” she asked, her voice muffled behind the wood. “Please, is somepony in there? I… I need help.”
Applejack and Dash exchanged nervous glances. This had to be a trick, a trap. Surely. No filly would have blocked out the windows like that as she walked past them, no filly could have clawed their way down the side of the cabin. And yet the terror in the voice that slipped between the cracks around the door sounded all too real.
“Please,” she begged. “Please, I know you’re in there. I’m hurt, really bad. And I think there’s something else out here with me, something dangerous.”
Applejack could see how badly Dash wanted to say something, wanted to call out, could see the corners of Dash’s mouth twitch. She was quick to stop her, grabbing her shoulder to get her attention and shaking her head.
No.
“Please,” the filly
Not a filly don’t believe it no matter what it sounds like
begged. “Don’t leave me out here. I just want to go home. I just want to get out. Please don’t make me go back into the forest.”
Rainbow’s attention snapped back and forth between the door and Applejack, hopelessly torn. No matter how vehemently Applejack shook her head.
Don’t. It’s a trick.
“Please.” The filly’s sobs were so loud, now.
“We can just peek,” Dash whispered. “Just check, just to make sure.”
“That’s exactly what it wants us to do,” Applejack hissed. “You know it, same as me.”
“And if it really is a filly stuck out there, all alone with… whatever that thing was, and we just left them? Could you have that on your conscience?”
“It’s not a filly,” Applejack insisted. “It can’t be.”
“But what if it is?”
That last sentence came out a little louder than Dash had meant it to, and she quickly cupped her hooves over her mouth to try and silence herself, but of course it was too late. The damage was done.
“Rainbow Dash?” asked the filly behind the door, her voice filled with sudden hope. “Is that you?”
Something had changed, shifted. Something wasn’t the same, wasn’t quite as it was supposed to be. But it was impossible to tell what, and even the thought itself seemed too hard for Dash to hold onto, her mind having to grasp desperately at the idea just to consider it. Something had changed, something important. Something she should have remembered.
But what? Dash was here, same as she had been, Applejack was here, as she had been, and Scootaloo’s voice was sneaking under the door, just like it had been.
No that’s not right something is different there
She turned to Applejack, and the confusion on her friend’s face suggested she was having similar concerns, but then the door rattled loudly again and broke any remaining concentration on the escaping memory. Or dream, or imagination; Rainbow wasn’t sure which of those it had been.
“Rainbow Dash?” Scootaloo asked again, that hope from before beginning to die a little in her voice, replaced by doubt and heartbreak, and whatever Dash had been worried about stopped being important. Stopped being conceivable. “You’re gonna let me in, right?”
Of course she was, it was Scootaloo, and the little filly was in so much trouble. How could she ever have decided to leave her out there, how was that something they could ever dream of doing? Dash would never do that.
But as she started to pull herself upright she felt Applejack holding her back.
“What are you doing?” Dash asked, dumbfounded. “We have to help her.”
“It’s not Scootaloo,” Applejack whispered.
“What? Of course it is, who else would it be?”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Applejack insisted. “We’re missing something, forgetting something. Can’t you feel it?”
The nagging itch returned to the back of Dash’s mind. Something changed, something not-quite-right. Claws against wood, darkness through the window, and then…
Scootaloo at the door, and the itch was gone again.
“Rainbow, please,” Scootaloo begged, the door handle rattling as she desperately tried to find safety in the cabin, but the bolt held firm. “It’s coming, I can hear it. I’m sorry I followed you, I’m sorry if I’m being annoying again.” Each and every word drenched in panic and fear, every sentence punctuated by another terrified push on the handle. Tears staining her voice. “I just wanted to show that I could be brave, like you. I just wanted… I just wanted to make you proud of me. Please, Dash, don’t let it get me. I don’t want it to get me.”
Dash was up on her hooves before she’d really thought about it, but Applejack’s grip didn’t loosen, not even a little.
“What the hay are you doing?” Dash demanded. “She’s going to get-”
“Something’s wrong,” Applejack hissed. “Why is she out here? Why didn’t she show herself when I broke my leg? Why did she wait until it was dark to try and get in? We’ve been here for hours, was she just sleeping in the forest?”
The itch returned in full force, that niggling, irrepressible doubt. As much as Dash hated hesitating, hated the thought of Scootaloo out there, Applejack was right. None of those things made sense, just made the small part of her insisting that something was amiss all the more sure of itself.
“It’s not Scootaloo,” Applejack said, “but whatever it is really wants us to open that door.”
“And what if you’re wrong? We’re just gonna leave Scoots out there?” She shook her head. “I can’t do that.”
“Dash, don’t.”
But Rainbow yanked her leg free and charged across the cabin. The knife glinted a little in the gloom, and even though it was too dark to truly see the words she felt like she could still see the contours of the phrase carved into the table.
Don’t open the door
And Dash hesitated. Even as Scootaloo continued to plead with her, that terrible doubt spread and worsened. Something wrong, something obvious, something forgotten.
But.
But what if she was wrong? What if they were both wrong? Even if there was something else waiting for them on the other side of that door, all teeth and claws and hurt, was it worth even the tiniest of chances that it might be Scootaloo out there instead?
Dash thought she’d known the answer, thought it was obvious, which is why she’d gotten halfway across the cabin before even hesitating. But hesitate she had done, because Applejack was right, it didn’t make sense.
Don’t open the door
But what if?
Applejack grunted in pain as she tried to stand and failed as her leg sent another shooting bolt of agony upwards, and she collapsed back down again with a loud yelp of pain.
Too loud.
The frantically rattling door handle stopped in an instant, snapping loudly back into position, and then the outside was quiet once more. That awful quiet again, one that was full of something.. Listening, watching, waiting.
“Scootaloo?” Dash asked the silence, her voice trembling slightly. “Are you okay?”
Nothing.
Dash stepped closer to the door, ignoring Applejack’s warning to stay clear, that it wasn’t Scootaloo, it was something that had taken her voice instead. She raised a hoof, slowly reaching for the bolt, ears straining. Close, inch by inch, hoof closing around the metal.
And then the door slammed against its frame, loud enough to send Dash stumbling to the floor as she tripped backwards in shock. As if something had been hurled against it, crashing so heavily into the wood it was amazing it didn’t split, didn’t shatter into a million pieces and the thing outside didn’t burst through the crumbling splinters and close its teeth around Dash’s neck before she could even scream and any noise she’d try and make would die in her throat.
But the door held strong, even as the thing outside crashed into it again. And again, and again, each slam hard enough to send a shudder through the entire cabin. The few pots that remained on their hooks were quickly dislodged, tumbling to join the others on the floor with loud, metallic clangs.
One final crunch against the wood, one final fit of frustration, and then nothing. Silence, dead and still. No steps, either, no sound of some great beast padding off into the darkness between the trees. Dash wasn’t naive enough to think it had given up; it was still out there, still waiting. Those slams had been too ferocious, too angry for it to just give up.
Too desperate.
“Okay,” she murmured from where she still lay on the floor, her voice trembling a little. “You were right, that wasn’t Scootaloo.”
“Not unless she’s had one heck of a growth spurt.”
“Is this really the time for jokes?”
“Nope. But it’s either that or scream, and I’m more inclined to go with the former.”
Dash climbed back up to her hooves, taking the reprieve to dust herself off. “It’s still out there,” she said.
“Yep, I can hear it.”
Dash paused. Listened. Nothing. “You can?”
Applejack nodded. “It’s in the silence. No bugs, no wind, no nothing. Ain’t natural.” She thought for a moment, chewing the inside of her cheek. “You think it can be other ponies, too? Why’d it pick Scootaloo?”
“I guess it thought I’d open the door for her.”
“You almost did.”
“Yeah,” Dash said, quietly. And then, raising her voice to shout, “But I didn’t! And I’m not going to, you hear me? Whatever you are, you’re going hungry tonight, and you picked the wrong ponies to mess with!”
“Dash…” Applejack muttered.
“What?”
“I ain’t in any condition to fight, don’t antagonise it. If it does get in then I’m just gonna be dead weight.”
“It won’t get in,” Dash said. “As long as we don’t open the door.”
“You’re the one who almost let it in, not me.”
“I…”
“Just remember it’s all a lie,” Applejack said. “Whatever happens, whoever it sounds like on the other side, it ain’t them. You and me are the only ones out here.”
Rainbow Dash nodded, and, with a final glance at the doorway, slunk over to the far side of the cabin, as far from the door as she could manage. She slumped down against the wall again, and waited, although she wasn’t entirely sure what for.
Whatever was coming next, she supposed.
***
Sleep was never a possibility.
Not even slightly. Dash was wide awake, ready for anything. Ready for nothing.
Something still sat wrong with her, beside the obvious. She felt like she’d forgotten something, something important. That same deep disconcerting sensation that maybe you’d left the front door unlocked, maybe you’d left the stove burning.
Maybe you’d forgotten something really important about the thing that lurked outside in the darkness.
That itching feeling, that creeping doubt. What was she missing? What had they forgotten? And how had it made them forget? And then there was Scootaloo. How had this thing stolen her voice? Maybe it was a changeling, Dash thought, although no changeling she’d known could have slammed so powerfully into the door, not unless they were far bigger than even Queen Chrysalis. And she’d definitely heard claws
When?
which pretty much discounted the changelings altogether, even if they weren’t all under Thorax’s new leadership and mostly docile.
No, not a changeling. Something else. Something much, much worse.
She hated how quiet it was. The voice might have been a lie but at least it left no doubt as to what the creature was doing. This silence, though…
It was heavy. Thick. Full of night. Full of wordless threat. Was it biding its time, working out a new plan? Was it even still there at all? Was it counting on them thinking it had left so they would open the door?
At least Dash understood the locks, now, even if their uselessness still made no sense. At least she knew what the previous occupant had been trying to keep out.
Don’t open the door. A warning? A reminder?
Her attention flicked over to AJ, still lying on the remains of what was once a bed. A pony would be forgiven for thinking she was asleep, but Dash knew better. Yes, she was lying back, and yes her eyes were shut, the gentle rise and fall of her chest the only sign of life, but AJ wasn’t asleep.
Dash knew she wasn’t, because Applejack snored.
So instead she must have been doing exactly as Dash was – listening.
Waiting.
The knock that broke the silence was so soft that Rainbow Dash wasn’t even sure she’d heard it until Twilight’s muffled voice followed.
“Hello?” Twilight asked, a faint nervousness underlying her voice. “Is anyone home?”
Dash snapped upright, glancing over at Applejack, who hadn’t acknowledged the sound at all, still lying back, eyes still closed. Although perhaps she was breathing a little faster now, or maybe that was just a trick of the dark.
“I’m looking for my friends,” Twilight said. “They’ve gone missing and I think they might have come this way.”
“Twilight!” Dash called, a rush of excitement and relief through her chest. Thank Celestia. Twilight had found them, and everything was going to be okay. “We’re in here!”
“Oh, thank goodness. Are you alright, Dash? Is Applejack with you?”
“Yeah, she’s here too.” Dash stepped quickly over to the door, reaching up to the bolt. “She’s broken her leg, though, so it’s a good thing you-”
A hoof grabbed firm onto Rainbow’s foreleg, making her jump as it pulled her away from the door. Applejack, wavering slightly as she tried not to put weight on her splinted limb, leaning against the wall for support.
“You’ve forgotten again,” she hissed.
“What?”
“Think. I know it’s fuzzy, it is for me too, but try to remember.”
“Girls?” Twilight knocked again, louder and more urgent this time. “Are you okay in there? Is something wrong?”
“Remember what?” Dash asked, brow furrowed in confusion.
“What’s outside? What’s the last thing you remember?”
The earnestness in Applejack’s voice only made Dash even more uneasy. “Outside? I don’t know what you’re talking about. You broke your leg, and so we hid here, and then we were gonna wait until morning.”
“And then?”
Dash bit her lip. Applejack was right, it was fuzzy. That was strange in and of itself; Rainbow didn’t think she’d slept, she was far too tired to have gotten any sleep, and there was none of that haze that always accompanied waking in the middle of the night. No, this was a different kind of fog over her thoughts. She could almost feel them, the lost memories, but then everything seemed to skip and merge together and melt around whatever she was trying to recall until it slipped out of her grasp again.
“There was something outside…” she said, slowly, dragging the words through the fog. “Something big. Teeth. Claws. And then…”
Don’t open the door
“Scootaloo?” An icy chill went down her back as the mist started to clear. “But it wasn’t Scootaloo, was it? It just sounded like her.” Another glance at the door, and now the darkness outside seemed to somehow seep through the cracks around the edges. “And that’s not Twilight.”
“Nope,” Applejack said. “It ain’t.” Her expression was full of pity as she gently patted Dash on the shoulder. “But it gets worse.”
She gestured towards the table, the knife that had been embedded in it now lying to one side, pulled out and used to carve other things into the table, below the message that was beginning to make all too much sense.
Names.
Scootaloo
Apple Bloom
Fluttershy
Pinkie Pie
Rainbow Dash
Starlight
Spike
The list went on, all names Dash recognised, but as she stared at it the pit that had begun to form in her stomach worsened. Not just because she couldn’t remember when these names had been added or why, but because even in the rough scratches that were all the knife could manage she could make out two distinct sets of hoofwriting.
One Applejack’s, the other her own.
And as Dash stared, horrible, terrible realisation slowly dawning, Applejack picked up the knife and carved Twilight’s name at the bottom of the list.
The door handle rattled as Rainbow tried to digest this new revelation. “What’s the matter, Rainbow?” Not-Twilight asked, filled with faux concern. “Is everything okay? If Applejack’s hurt we should get her to a hospital, I can help.”
It was a startlingly good imitation, and Dash did everything she could to ignore it. If she paid too much attention she could feel everything get blurry around the edges again, feel a pull towards the door bolt to let in whatever was so desperate to get at them.
It seemed so earnest, so genuine, exactly as Twilight herself would have been. Of course it just wanted to help, of course it just wanted to make sure they were okay, to help them to safety and out of this nightmare. But her promises were hollow, the voice nothing more than a stolen echo, and every word that crept under the door just made Dash feel even more sick.
“All these names,” she muttered, staring blankly at the list.
“Ayup. And maybe more besides,” Applejack said, grunting a little as she shifted her bad leg. “Some we might have forgotten before we even started writing them down.”
“I don’t… I don’t remember any of these.”
“Me either. Hay, you were the one explaining all this to me not too long ago.”
Another long silence as Dash tried and failed to remember that, too.
“My name’s on here,” she said eventually, and she knew it sounded stupid but it was the only one of her spiralling thoughts that she could properly put words to.
“I saw that. Probably for the best we don’t remember that one, huh?”
Dash fell quiet again, looking at but not really reading the sprawl of names that twisted across the table’s surface, always more names as her eyes flitted over them. “This is fucked.” It was all she could say. All she felt.
“I know.”
“How long have we been here? There’s so many.”
“No idea,” said Applejack, with an exhausted shrug. “It’s still dark out, no way to tell past that, not with the tree cover. Can’t see the moon.” She sighed, and hobbled back over to what was once a bed, gingerly lowering herself back down onto the bedding. “Guess we’ll just have to wait till morning, whenever that will be.”
“If we make it that long.”
Dash couldn’t pull herself away from the list.
Zecora
Celestia
Discord
Chrysalis
Trixie
Cadance
Luna
She closed her eyes to try and shut them out, but it didn’t help. They were seared on the back of her eyelids already, the whole room was, and the names spread and melted over the edge of the table, filling the cabin until no single spot was left clean of them, etched into every fibre of this place, stretching on forever.
She shook her head and opened her eyes again. The cabin was just as she’d left it, only the table adorned with those scratched words.
That was bad enough.
Some of the names she remembered. Not properly, not truly, but the barest shade of a memory. A word, a feeling, a flash of… something. Not really a memory, that would be too generous, but at least a fragment of familiarity. Dash may not have remembered them, but she remembered remembering them, what that had felt like.
Other names were completely hollow and blank. Meaningless. Gone.
She stopped staring, and rounded on the door.
“We know what you’re doing,” she shouted, letting all the frustration and anger well up into her voice and drown out the fear. “We know you’re lying, and you’re not gonna get in here. Because we’re never gonna open that door!”
“What are you talking about, Dash?” Twilight asked. “I’m here to help! You didn’t come back, and everyone was worried about you.”
“Dash, don’t,” warned Applejack, but it was too late to stop her. Like a snowball down a mountain, the further Dash’s fury rolled the faster it went, the harder it was to stop.
“You’re messing with the wrong ponies,” Dash spat. “Do you have any idea who we are?”
“Of course I do,” said Twilight. “You’re Rainbow Dash, and the other one is Applejack.”
A slight jolt through Dash’s chest. Excitement, nervousness, alarm? All three, and more besides?
“The other one?”
A slight pause from Twilight this time. “You’re Rainbow Dash, and you’re with Applejack,” she tried.
Dash was laughing. Loud. Wild. She didn’t know why; nothing about this was funny, not even a little bit. And yet catching the creature out filled her with a kind of savage jubilation. “See? You can’t even get it right. So try all you want, Twilight, but you will never, ever get in here.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Twilight insisted. “Just let me in so I can help.”
The door rattled again as the thing tried the handle once more, and then a frustrated, slamming knock, and then quiet again.
“Persistent, ain’t it?” said Applejack.
“But not clever,” Dash replied. “And Twilight would have just blown up the door by now, anyway.”
Applejack didn’t seem so convinced. “We had a bull once,” she said, wistfully, “used to keep escaping. Tore right through our barbed wire fences, and then would run around dragging it after him, all tangled up. Just so he could get to the cows. Musta hurt something fierce, those barbs sting like a bitch at the best of times, let alone having them dug in and sometimes pulling a wooden stake along for the ride. But he kept doing it, kept breaking out. Never tried jumping it, or breaking down the gate, just kept charging through the fence until we gave up and sold him.”
Dash frowned. “And?”
“Being stupid doesn’t mean it ain’t dangerous. The opposite, really. Something stupid doesn’t know when to give up.”
As if to prove her point, the door slammed loudly again, smashing against its frame as the thing outside tried once more to bash it open. Dash jolted a little in surprise, and there was another flicker of
sprawling to the floor, Scootaloo begging for help
memory there, one that had been almost entirely lost to wherever this thing consigned them to.
Applejack rolled her eyes. “That ain’t gonna work, you already tried it,” she shouted.
So much for not antagonising it, Dash thought, mere moments before her musing became almost prophetic.
“Applejack?” A voice filtered through the door, one that Rainbow Dash didn’t recognise. A stallion.
She turned to Applejack in confusion, only to find her friend wide-eyed in pure shock, mouth gaping dumbly open.
“...Dad?” Applejack asked, and there was so much fear in her voice, as if by simply saying the word the universe would understand how impossible this was and snatch it away from her again.
“AJ!” The voice outside was full of excitement, elation from hearing his daughter. “I knew it was you! You sound so grown up, but I’d still recognise you anywhere.”
Applejack’s eyes flooded with tears as she finally allowed herself to believe it. “Dad, you… I thought you were… Everyone did.”
“Thought I was what, sugarcube?”
“Gone,” Applejack concluded, in barely more than a whisper.
“Gone? Of course not, you think your mother and I would just leave you all on your lonesome? Just you and Mac and Bloom against the world? Never, you know that.”
“Is… Is Mom out there too?”
“She sure is, and she’s missed y’all just as much as I did. Now, why don’t you come on out here, let me get a look at you? See how you’ve grown.”
Some errant thought began to crawl at the back of Rainbow’s mind. She’d watched this all unfold, so pleased for her friend, so glad that after everything Applejack would have her family back. She knew how much AJ had missed them, had been her shoulder to cry on for so many nights, and they’d just been out here in the Everfree all along.
But there was that crawling again. Out in the Everfree? All alone? For years? It didn’t add up, didn’t make sense. So much about this didn’t make sense. What time was it? How long had they been in this cabin? The last thing Dash remembered was slamming the bolt home, and then…
Something about Scootaloo?
And names. The table. The knife.
Her eyes fell onto the scratched scrawl that covered the wood, and the memories slammed into her like a freight train. Not all of them, and not whole, but fragments of terror and dread. Claws against wood. Teeth around her neck. Not real, not all of it, but enough. Enough for her to remember what this thing was, what it did.
How it stole voices.
Applejack was already trying to stumble towards the door, to unlock and rejoin what she thought was her parents. The parents she’d missed so dearly, who she’d finally thought she’d gotten used to being without, only to have them returned to her out of nowhere.
But out of nowhere indeed, and Dash found herself standing between Applejack and the door, her heart heavy with guilt at what she had to do, what she had to tell her.
“Applejack, stop,” she said, and whether it was purely out of surprise or otherwise, Applejack did exactly that.
“What?”
“It’s not your Dad,” Rainbow said, wincing a little as she had to take them away from Applejack all over again, just as AJ thought she’d gotten them back.
“Yes it is, can’t you hear him? I know, I didn’t think I’d ever see him again either, but-”
“He’s dead, Applejack.” Another twinge of guilt, but Rainbow had to be blunt, had to be firm. Had to cut through the haze that this creature left behind when it messed with their memories like this. “You know he’s dead. That thing out there isn’t him, it just sounds like him.”
“What the hay are you talking about?”
“Just look at the names,” Dash said, gesturing to the table. “Read them and you’ll remember, you’ll realise this isn’t right.”
“Sugarcube?” asked the voice. “Everything alright in there? Are you coming or not?”
Applejack stared at the table for a long time, her eyes scanning the etchings, tears starting to roll down her cheeks. But when she looked up her features had hardened with surety. “Yeah, Dad,” she said. “I’m coming.”
The sinking feeling in Dash’s stomach plummeted further still.
“Applejack…” Rainbow began, not really knowing where she was going with it, but it didn’t matter in the end, as Applejack cut her off anyway.
“Get out of the way,” she said, her voice low and dull.
“It’s not him, it’s just-”
“Get out of the way. I ain’t gonna ask again.” Each word dropping like a hammer, heavy with implication.
“Look at the list! Don’t you remember? Even just a little bit? You have to know this isn’t right. You have to feel it.”
Applejack looked directly into her eyes, and what Dash saw in her friend’s face scared her. Applejack knew. Applejack remembered, just as Dash did, but she was ignoring it. She didn’t care. Didn’t want to believe it. Couldn’t bear to believe it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Applejack said, slowly. “All I know is my Dad’s outside and you’re in the way.”
“He’s not.” Dash’s voice was starting to crack now, too. “And I can’t let you throw yourself at whatever’s out there instead.”
The corner of Applejack’s mouth twitched. “You gonna stop me?”
“Please, Applejack, you know it’s not him. Deep down, you know. You know he’s dead.”
Applejack flinched as if struck. “Say it again,” she growled. “Say it again, I dare you, when he’s just been talking to us through the fucking door.”
“I know it’s hard, and I know it hurts, but-”
“Say it.”
Even with her leg hanging limply to one side, Applejack was trembling in fury, quivering with anger and betrayal.
“He’s dead,” Rainbow said, trying not to sound cold but pretty sure she did anyway. “And you know he’s not behind that door, no matter how much you want him to be.”
For a pony with a broken leg, Applejack moved fast.
Even if she was trying not to put weight on it, it must have hurt more than Dash could imagine, and yet AJ was still so quick that she was almost able to charge past in Dash’s surprise. Not quite, though, and Rainbow was just about fast enough to tackle her before she reached the door.
She didn’t go down easy.
Applejack was stronger, Dash had no illusions about that, but with one of her legs snapped in two it levelled the playing field enough to at least hold her back. But Applejack was wild, snarling with rage and desperation, giving everything she had just to try and shove Dash out of the way, just to get to her father. He was right there, so close, and Dash was the only thing keeping her from him.
Shooting pain stabbed through Dash’s ear as in her mad struggle Applejack bit down, hard. Dash tried to push her back with a shrill cry, but it only made that stabbing pain worse as they dropped down sideways onto the table, Rainbow half-expecting it to collapse under their weight as they landed on it heavily enough to knock the wind right out of her. Enough to dislodge Applejack’s clenched teeth, too, although Dash could feel warm blood running down the inside of her ear, pulsing heat from the wound.
They wrestled for a few more moments, Applejack still so frenzied as she tried to rip free and charge the door, even as it rattled in its frame as the excitement encouraged the thing outside, as it called and pleaded in the voice it had stolen for them to stop fighting and let him in so they could talk this out.
But even with her injury, Applejack was more than a match for Dash. As they rolled across the table, Rainbow knew she was losing. And when Applejack got on top again and pinned Rainbow’s forelegs down and Dash saw the madness that had sunk so deep in her friend’s eyes, she knew she had only one choice left.
“I’m sorry, AJ,” she said, before kicking out at Applejack’s broken leg.
She hated doing it, hated the crunch it made as her hoof connected solidly with the splint, hated the scream of pure agony that Applejack let out most of all. But even though she hated every part of it Dash knew she couldn’t let this moment go to waste, and she was quick to wriggle free of Applejack’s loosened grip and flip them over, holding her down, trying not to think about how much lasting damage she might have caused.
And for a moment she let herself think it might be okay. Yes, she’d had to hurt Applejack, and she would have to find a way to forgive herself for that, but at least the fight seemed to have gone out of AJ, any last resistance blown away by the pain. She lay limp, soft, beaten.
Just for a moment, though, because then Applejack twisted suddenly, and although Dash didn’t see her pick up the knife she definitely felt it when Applejack buried it into her flank.
Hot, lancing pain as the knife drove in deep, and that distraction was all it took for Applejack to buck Dash off of her, sending the pegasus flying. Her head hit the edge of the table as she fell, and for a moment Dash’s vision was replaced by simple emptiness, the world vanishing with a solid thump of skull against wood.
When reality returned, Dash found herself collapsed against the wall as Applejack struggled to her hooves once more.
“You stabbed me,” Dash said, more in disbelief than anything else, the shock and hurt surprise in her voice clear even through the little slur in her words, still dazed from her fall.
Applejack didn’t respond, righting herself at last. It was only then that Dash realised that the splint had come loose in their struggle, falling apart completely as Applejack tried to stand, the bed slats clattering uselessly to the ground.
Applejack didn’t even seem to notice.
She didn’t bother to keep her weight off it anymore, whatever had taken hold of her allowing no room for anything else. And so when she began to limp towards the door her leg crunched awfully with every step, a fresh splash of blood beginning to run down her shin, almost black in the darkness, and as far as Rainbow could tell Applejack didn’t even wince.
Dash tried to call out again, as if anything she could say would somehow persuade her friend, would stop her, but all she could really manage was some kind of pitiful bleating sound, reaching up a hoof at nothing – the only thing she could do apart from sit and watch as Applejack sealed their fates.
Her flank burned, the pain from the still-lodged knife the only thing really keeping her conscious. That, and the thump thump crunch of Applejack’s shuffling hoofsteps. There was damp, warm wetness against her temple where she’d hit the table in her fall, and when Dash pressed a hoof to the side of her head it was sticky.
Celestia, it was hard to concentrate, hard to think, hard to even stay upright, the world a blur, thump thump crunch, red stains on her hoof, sharp agony in her flank, the floor so uncomfortably stiff beneath her. Applejack reaching the doorway at last with a grunt, reaching triumphantly up towards the bolt.
“I’m here, Dad,” she said through the door, and she was smiling so brightly even through her tears. “And I’ll never let you go again. Never.”
The bolt slid back.
The door opened.
Applejack stopped smiling.
“Howdy, sugarcube,” said the voice outside, and even though Dash couldn’t see its owner from where she lay she could hear a strange, liquid quality to it. Almost like it was underwater. Almost like it was melting.
The scent of sweet, stagnant decay flooded the cabin. Choking, thick enough to drown in, the smell of things that had been rotting for weeks, festering in the sun, crawling with maggots and bloated with gas.
Applejack took an instinctive step backwards, and this time when she put weight on her shattered hindleg there was no ignoring it – whatever hypnotic spell keeping her from feeling it had long since dispersed – and she shrieked in pain and tumbled to her hindquarters, staring up at the creature outside in horror.
“What’s the matter, sugarcube?” asked the thing, it’s voice practically bubbling now, that rotting stench only worsening as the doorway was enveloped by shadow, Applejack’s eyes wide with terror as she tried to drag herself backwards with a wrenching sob of pain and fear. “Didn’t you miss me?”
Applejack’s mouth opened as if to give an answer, but it just hung loosely instead as she scrabbled for purchase on the floor, leaving a red smear against the boards as she pulled herself away from it.
“We missed you,” the voice said. “More than anything.”
Claws emerged through the doorway, clamping against the frame. Claws and little else besides, long and spindly, dripping with some dark fluid, thick and viscous. From where Dash sat she could just see the beginnings of an equally skeletal-looking arm, although then the thing outside started to heave itself forwards and Applejack’s horrified cries grew louder.
Stop it you have to stop it if it gets inside it’s all over
Some final burst of energy, coursing adrenaline, and Dash was on her hooves, ignoring the burning sensation from the knife jutting out of her flank, trying to see through the blur over her vision that was part concussion and part blood in her eyes. Trying to stay upright even though her hooves couldn’t quite cooperate with what she wanted them to do, unsteady and uneven as she charged at the open door, almost losing her balance completely.
But she couldn’t afford to do that, couldn’t trip, couldn’t fall. Fall and you’re dead. Fall and you’re both dead.
She wasn’t going to make it. The claw was reaching out towards Applejack now, and that arm just seemed to go on forever, far too long, far too thin, and through the tar-like blackness Dash could see glimpses of pale ivory, corpse-white skin, or maybe just bone. It was impossible to tell. Dash willed herself on, flapping her wings to keep balance and maybe give a burst of speed, but she was too late and the claw wrapped around Applejack’s broken leg, and then it began to pull. Far too quick, Applejack screaming in agony as it dragged her back towards the doorway.
But moments before she was pulled outside into oblivion, Dash’s hooves closed around the edge of the door and slammed it shut, so hard that it severed the creature’s limb completely, and the sound of it snapping like a broken bough ripped through the air.
The sound. The sound the thing outside made as its arm dropped limply to the floor – a scream, a cry, a hundred voices, a thousand, all howling together in pain and anguish and fury. A hurricane of despair and outrage. Loud enough to make Dash reel a little, but not enough to stop her from slamming the bolt home again just before the thing outside crashed against the cabin. That frantic scrabbling again as its claws sought purchase around the hinges, as if it could tug the entire thing free of its housing if it could only find somewhere to grip it. Too many claws, countless, all scratching and prying and digging into the wood as the thing continued to scream in that haunted, terrible cry.
Screeching, howling. Stretching on, impossibly so, drowning out everything, all thought, all perception. Dash sunk to the ground, clutching her ears as if that would do anything to help stifle the awful sound. It did not. Until finally, after an age, the sound began to recede as the creature shrunk back into the dark reaches of the forest again, wounded, humiliated, and angry. But leaving nonetheless, and the silence that filled the air when it was finally out of earshot wasn’t heavy with that anticipation from before. It was empty, still, like silence was supposed to be.
Silent, except for Applejack groaning on the floor. Dash was quick to her side, shaking her gently to try and rouse her, trying not to look at the impossible angle her leg was bent into.
“Hey, AJ, are you with me?”
Applejack’s eyes snapped open, gripping Dash’s shoulders hard as she stared up with wild, panicked eyes.
“Is it gone?” she whispered. “Or am I dead?”
“It’s gone,” Dash said, not sure whether to laugh or cry at Applejack’s question. Maybe both.
“I saw it, Rainbow. I saw it. It was… It grabbed me and I…” Applejack’s gaze went to her leg, and she shuddered in revulsion at the sight of three red and raw lines where the thing had grabbed her. Burnt, seared away fur and scalded flesh beneath. “I saw it.”
“Shh, it’s okay. I saw it too.”
And Dash had. Just a glimpse, just a fraction of a second as she’d slammed the door shut, but she had. Only flashes, her mind trying everything it could to forget, to push it into the dark recesses of her memory but it kept slithering its way back out. Claws, teeth, melting faces. A slab of dripping flesh. Faces she recognised, others barely recognisable as faces at all, joined together, warped and fused. Teeth and eyes and muzzles pushing out from the tar-like rot that drenched it, empty eye sockets, open mouths in wordless screams, disjointed features all squirming and writhing in an impossible mass.
And then the arms and claws, erupting out like knives between the faces, some piercing straight through them instead, out through the mouths and eye sockets, all reaching out to grab Applejack and drag her into the oozing, amorphous form.
The arm that Dash had severed as it tried to pull AJ through the door was gone, and somehow that didn’t surprise Rainbow in the slightest. Melted, dissolved. All that remained was a dark, still-wet stain on the cabin floor. That, and the marks it had left behind, both on Applejack’s leg and in deep gouges in the door frame.
“I’m sorry, Dash,” Applejack murmured, faintly. “I fucked up. I let it in.”
“Hey, it’s fine. We’re okay, right? I shut the door in time.”
“I stabbed you, I don’t even know why I did that. I don’t… I don’t remember it right.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dash said. “It wasn’t you, I know.”
“Dash…”
“What?”
“You saw it too, right?”
A pause. “Yeah, I saw it,” Dash said, eventually.
“It wasn’t real, right? Tell me it wasn’t real. Tell me that’s not what happened to him.”
“Of course it wasn’t real,” Dash assured her. “It was just a trick, like the rest of it.”
She wished she could be as sure as she sounded. She’d only seen him in old photographs before, but Rainbow had recognised him, even among the others, drenched in black ooze – the twisted and contorted face of Applejack’s father.
***
Pain.
Applejack woke to pain. That was far too light a word for it, really. She couldn’t understand how she’d ever slept through it in the first place, but she’d been so exhausted, so drained. And sleep she had done, and now the orange glow of early morning was seeping out between the boarded up windows, a sight Applejack hadn’t honestly been sure she’d ever get to see again.
Her leg throbbed, and she could see how swollen it had gotten. See the rings of red where the thing had grabbed her, feel the heat of the burns in her skin. They had to get out of here, and soon. Had to get a hospital, although she wasn’t looking forward to explaining it.
“Good, you’re up.”
Applejack blinked blearily. “Dash?”
Rainbow was peering between the window boards again, searching. “You passed out,” she said, “and I figured you’d be better off asleep.”
“Have you been up this whole time?”
Rainbow turned to her, dark circles under her eyes that were from far more than lack of sleep. “Like I could ever sleep after that.”
Applejack winced a little at the sight of Dash’s mangled ear, at the crimson trails down her flank. “I’m sorry, Dash, I-”
“Stop apologising. Besides, we’re about to be all square.”
In response to Applejack’s quizzical expression, Rainbow lifted up the pieces of the splint that had fallen away during the commotion.
“Because this is going to hurt like a bitch.”
It did.
After, Applejack removed her hoof from her mouth, certain her bite marks would have been visible if her fur hadn’t been in the way.
“Okay,” Dash said, standing and dusting herself off. “We’ve got the whole day before it gets dark again, and if we can get at least as far as Zecora’s cottage I can leave you there and fly to Ponyville to get help. We should have plenty of time, so we’re gonna go nice and slow, alright? And if you need to stop for a break you just have to say the word.”
“You should just go,” muttered Applejack. “Go get help, and I’ll stay here.”
Rainbow shook her head. “No way I’m leaving you here, not now we know what’s out there. It might have gone for now, but it could come back, and if you’re here alone then it’s over. We only made it through last night with both of us, and that still wasn’t what I’d call smooth sailing.”
Applejack took a long breath. “Alright,” she said. “But you better go real slow.”
Rainbow gave her a mock salute, and despite everything Applejack couldn’t help but smile. It was almost normal, almost. If you disregarded their injuries, and the faint lingering smell of rotting meat.
It took a couple of tries to get Applejack up onto her hooves. The first time she accidentally leaned on her busted leg, and the second time Dash slipped in her exhaustion and sent both of them to the ground again. But the third time was the charm, and although they swayed a little just from standing upright they didn’t immediately topple over, and Applejack considered that a success.
But now the door loomed in front of them, the maze of locks sending shivers down Applejack’s spine.
“Are you sure it’s gone?” she asked, her trepidation all too obvious. “If it ain’t, then…”
“It’s gone,” Dash said. “I’ve been listening all night. It never came back, I promise.”
Applejack nodded, although she could feel her heart thumping so loudly in her chest as Dash reached up to draw the bolt across one last time.
And then it seemed to stop entirely as someone knocked at the door.
“Hello? Is anyone home?”
Dash’s hoof froze in midair, halfway to the bolt.
“I’m looking for my friends,” said Twilight’s voice. “They went missing last night, and I think they might have come this way. Is anyone there?”
Applejack and Dash stared at each other, then back to the door. Not making a sound. Rainbow’s hoof still hanging in indecision.
No. No. It had to be Twilight this time It had to be, there was no way the thing from last night had come back. Things like that couldn’t do daylight, could they? Their place was dark and shadows, their place was the night. But now the sun was up and Dash was sure she hadn’t heard it come back. Hadn’t heard any more claws, or voices, at least until now.
So it had to be Twilight. The real one. Must be. She’d come to find them, to find her missing friends because that was exactly the sort of thing Twilight would do, and she was going to get them back to Ponyville and everything was going to be okay.
Surely.
And so Rainbow Dash opened the door.
