Something Sweet to Bite: A New Generation

Chapters

Wear A Costume
Check Your Candy
Keep The Jack-o-Lanterns Lit
Don't Take Down Your Decorations Early
Don't Hurt the Innocent
Respect the Dead
Pass Out Candy

Wear A Costume

"I have always been here before" - Roky Erickson

The Autumn wind whistles playfully, carrying the sounds of children's laughter along with the last few ragged leaves stripped from the bare bones of Maretime Bay's trees. The town is alight with the glow of jack-o-lanterns, pumpkin light spilling out of windows and shining on porches all around town. Downtown is no different, where ghastly green and putrid purple lights flicker between buildings, vying for space with spooky spider webs and scary skeletons. The creepy silhouettes of shadowy ponies leer down on giggling trick-or-treaters as they dash from building to building crying, "Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite!" The sounds of costume parties in full swing and other such revelries fill the crisp Fall air and, despite the chill of the evening, the warmth of fun and friendship permeate the air.

Mane Melody was no different, as it was packed to the brim and almost visibly shaking from side to side as the Nightmare Night Monster Par-tay got underway. The costume fashion show had been a huge hit and everywhere you looked ponies were shaking their tails and having a wonderful time. Jazz had to admit that Pipp’s idea to throw the huge bash at the salon had turned out to be a great success, although she was still uncertain as to how exactly it was meant to drum up business. Still, sometimes you just had to do things for the fun of it, and Jazzy and Rocky had certainly had a great time hanging the decorations and getting all the snacks together for the event, even if it meant Jazz ended up cutting it almost too close for comfort to select her own costume for the fashion show.

Last minute though it had been, Jazz's costume had gotten its fair amount of cheers and she'd had fun partying with all her friends despite the few hiccups along the way. Still, all good things had to come to an end, and after a few hours of dancing and drinking things were starting to wind down. The proprietress of the shop and her inner circle, that was to say Pipp Petals and her friends, had already left to go ‘trick or treating’ earlier on. It sounded like they were going to have a blast, even if they were a little old to be doing such things, but as an employee Jazz was responsible for staying until the other party guests left so she could close up the shop and clean. The party tried to carry on after Pipp and her crew left, but without the main attraction of Mane Melody the event soon fizzled to an inevitable end.

Now, as Jazz waved goodbye to the last of the partying patrons and she closed and locked the door behind them, it was down to just Jazz Hooves and Rocky Riff. With the last guest gone it was time for the pair of ponies to start cleaning up and getting the shop back in order for tomorrow - Or at least that was what was supposed to be happening. Only Jazz found herself suddenly completely alone. Where had Rocky gotten to? The Earth Pony mare couldn’t find the flighty Pegasus stallion anywhere!

“Rocky, it’s time to close up! Come help me sweep and put up the chairs so we can head out!” Jazz figured the decorations could stay up until they came in the next day but they really ought to at least get all the confetti, streamers, and deflated balloons off the floor before somepony slipped on them. She could probably handle most of the clean up on her own but it would be nice to have some help hauling out the trash bags afterwards. “Where is that pegaus?” Jazz asked herself aloud, exasperated.

Jazz hoped that Rocky hadn't found some cute pony from the party to take out back for a little ‘Rocky and roll’ as the stallion crassly liked to call it. Although he had never been so vulgar as to ask Jazz to join him for one of his ‘rock sessions’ as of yet, it still irritated the young stylist whenever he'd disappear like this when they were on the clock. Jazz had known him to sneak off fairly often, only to return with his feathers ruffled and a self-satisfied smirk on his ridiculously punch-able face. Being an Earth Pony, maybe Jazz was just naturally more grounded, but she felt that there was a time for work and a time for play and she felt that mixing the two the way Rocky sometimes did was pretty unprofessional.

With a sigh of vexation, Jazz decided to just go backstage and try calling for Rocky again just in case he was 'too busy' and hadn’t heard her the first time.

The mare struggled to climb up on stage, the flippers and inner tube that were part of her costume making it somewhat difficult to get around. Getting backstage from there wasn't a problem, but what was a problem however was the fact that she found the backstage area to be completely dark. Jazz groped for a light switch in the pitch black room, and after a few unsuccessful attempts she realized she might have better luck if she remove her flippers first. At last her hoof grazed a switch but, a few fruitless flicks, she realized there was no points and the lights just weren't going to come on.

It wasn’t that surprising that the power had gone out as a salon slash sound-stage could pull a lot of power. In fact there had been a problem with the power earlier that very night during the party, although that had turned out to just be from somepony tripping over the cords and unplugging the power strip everything had been plugged into. Accidents could happen, and maybe the breaker had been tripped, but then why were the lights out front still on?

Jazz had a sneaking suspicion that there might be something more going on here than just a simple power outage. She smelled a Nightmare Night trick.

“Hey Rocky, if this is your idea of a holiday prank then it’s pretty lame! I stopped being afraid of the dark when I was a little filly!” That wasn't entirely, true as Jazz still slept with a night light even now. She kept it purely for safety purposes, of course, so she wouldn’t trip if she got up to get a drink of water in the middle night, but her co-worker didn’t need to know about that. “Or... are you not alone back here? Ugh, I really don't need to see something that scary tonight. Seriously, if you’re back here messing around with somepony, just wrap it up so we can go home already, okay!?”

Jazz stepped further into the darkened back rooms. It was really quite difficult for the little pony to see anything, even with the light from the front of the store. For example, at first she didn’t react at all to the presence of the other mare that sat just a hairsbreadth beside her. The stranger was silhouetted in front of the vanity mirror, her reflection only visible as a dark shadow against the silvery glass. With a pop and a buzz the bulbs that framed the mirror suddenly lit up and, from Jazz's perspective, it was as if the stranger suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The image in the cold glass caused Jazz to jump, a squeak of a scream slipping from her as if a bucket of cold water had just spilled down her spine as she realized she wasn't alone!

Although who could blame her for such a reaction? The mare in the mirror was pale as a ghost, with long strands of scraggly red hair that draped limply in front of her face in thick dark cords. A pair of piercing pink and blue eyes that almost seemed to glow stared blankly from behind that thicket of unruly mane, freezing Jazz to the spot like a spooked deer. The apparition was coated from her muzzle down her front with a slick and sticky red substance that could only be blood! The stylist shrieked again in classic Scream-Queen fashion, but her cry of horror died slowly away in her throat as the stranger in the make-up chair remained perfectly still, like some sort of lifeless doll. She didn't even so much as twitch a muscle at Jazz's cry, leaving the mare feeling rather foalish for reacting as she had.

After all, it was Nightmare Night. Seeing ponies dressed up in weird and spooky outfits should have been an expected occurrence. Getting a hold of herself, Jazz realized she must just be looking at one last party goer that had somehow ended up backstage. The blood was obviously fake, too bright red to be real, and her entire look was clearly that of some stereotypical ghostly-zombie. It was almost ridiculous how stereotypical it was, like some fright out of an old horror movie. It was the kind of look that had been all the rage a few years ago when they had 're-discovered' movies from ancient Neighpon that featured long haired ghostly mares that haunted the living - the embodiment of some long forgotten grudge. Jazz's embarrassment was only compounded as she remembered how badly those films had made her jump after she had bragged about how there was no way some dirty haired mare could scare a professional stylist. It seemed she was eating crow all over again.

“Oh wow, you gave me quite the scare just now,” she admitted, embracing the truth even if her cheeks were burning hot with shame. The mare needed a moment to catch her breath and calm her pulse. Even if her brain knew she shouldn't be frightened, if she didn't relax her heart might beat its way right out of her chest! “That is a nice costume! Very creepy. Too bad you didn’t enter the fashion show earlier, you would have won for sure!”

Jazz got no immediate response from the mare in the chair with the mile long stare, leading to an awkward drawn out silence. Then, as if somepony somewhere had flipped a switch, the stranger suddenly tilted her head so hard to the side that her spine audibly snapped making Jazz involuntarily jump again. In a voice as cracked and dry as an old tomb, but also high and brittle as glass, the ghastly mare whispered “Ni-ce cos-tume…” the stranger seemed to roll the words around in her mouth, a black and orange striped tongue flicking out to taste them, “Nice… costume…” she said a little louder, with more confidence. The chair she was sitting on whipped around and suddenly the pony was staring right at jazz, a huge smile splitting her face wide open to show twin rows of sharp shark-like candy corn teeth between pale white lips. In a perfect mimicry of Jazz’s voice the grotesque mare chirped, “Nice costume!”

“Uh, thanks,” replied the stylist, not sure if she had really heard her own voice come out of that frightening gash of a mouth or not. Instead she focused on the compliment. Although her Rainbow wig had been pretty last minute, she thought she pulled it off rather well with the addition of the aquatic gear. It might be a little out of season but everypony loved a Summery look on a mare, especially the stallions. The praise rang a little hollow though, coming from so creepy apparition, but Jazz didn't give that a second thought. There was every possibility that this pony party guest had just had a little too much punch and was only repeating the phrase rather than giving a genuine compliment. Either way, Jazz forced a professional smile of her own, “Anyways… We're closing up soon and you’re really not supposed to be back here in the first place. As the saying goes 'you don’t have to go home but you, uh, can’t stay here', okay?”

The stranger just continued to smile at Jazz, those disturbingly glowing eyes boring into her. There was something not quite right about this one, the stylist decided. Now that the she had a moment to better assess this mare's look, was it only a costume? The drool dripping from her fangs looked pretty convincing; and while the strangers skin had looked uniformly pale to the point of transparency before, Jazz began to notice how irregular and patchy her fur was, as if it were a poorly tanned hide rather than any fabric she'd seen before. Beneath the layer of fur Jazz could pick out bits and pieces of something shiny that glistened disturbingly in the light from the vanity mirror. Were those some sort of chunks of candy? The make-up in those scary movies that Jazz had seen in the Maretime Bay Cinema hadn't been as unsettling as this mare appeared to be. Either she had some sort of Bridlewood level magical stylist or...

As Jazz's vision adjusted to the glow from the vanity, the stylist noticed that what she had taken for 'fake' blood before was in fact dripping into a pool of that was spreading beneath the strangers chair. From there it had been smeared across the floor, leaving a trail that went past Jazz's own hooves and behind her to…

The fluorescent lights finally flickered fitfully back on with a plaintive whine and hum. As Jazz turned to follow the crimson trail she could see why the lights had not worked at first, as many of them were damaged beyond repair, broken by dents in both the fixtures and the ceiling that held them. The ceiling itself, like the floor, had been splattered with blood, along with the walls and the other vanity mirrors. In fact the vanity that sat opposite from the one Jazz stood beside had been bashed to pieces, a shower of sparks sizzling from the broken bulbs around the shattered wooden frame. Glittering shards of smashed glass were strewn everywhere across the tile floor and reflected the light in a fashion not unlike a disco ball might, if it had been stained scarlet.

Jazz took all of this in very calmly but, when her eyes fell on the crumpled heap that lay slumped in the vanity’s remains, she couldn't help but raise a hoof to her mouth in shock. It was hard to tell what exactly she was looking at, as first as the lights were flickering on and off. However it was not long before Jazz's eyes grew wide with the horror of recognition when she realized she had at last found her missing co-worker... Or at least what was left of him.

Rocky had been ripped wide open from groin to gullet.

Earlier in the night Rocky had been wearing a simple skull mask and now his actual skull had been expose, the flesh flayed carefully from his face. His lower jaw was missing, and his rib-cage had been broken open, spread apart in an obscene facsimile of his broken feathery wings. All of his internal organs were gone, leaving his tongue hanging limply from his skull into the vacant cavity where his innards had once been. His fore and hind limbs were in tatters from the broken glass embedded in them and were bent at agonizingly impossible angles, the bones twisted and broken until they poked through the ragged flesh. A few tears still pooled in the hollow sockets of his blank, dead eyes, indicating that as sudden and violent as his end had clearly been he had still been conscious for far too much of it. The blood Jazz had mistaken for fake was in fact his. Viscera and chunks of meat that had belonged to him were splattered all around his maimed remains.

On the wall beside his body were scrawled two words in congealing blood.

“~Candy Mare~”

“Hungry…” whispered the stranger in a voice made all the more disturbing by its close proximity to Jazz's ear. There had been no other sound, no indication of any movement, only the sudden overwhelming presence of the creepy pony crouched right next to the stylist!

Jazz tried to turn, to flee, but too late she felt cords wrap around her legs and sweep her off of her hooves. She fell with a splash into a puddle of Rocky’s gore. She looked down to see what had caught her and gasped in horror to see that it was the strangers dirty looking hair that had snagged her! No longer limp, the thick strands of red and black were now alive and writhing like a nest of vipers! Jazz could feel that what she had taken for mere strands of filthy hair were in fact long strands of cold, steel-like living whips of what looked like licorice!

Worse, Jazz realized that the stranger had indeed been wearing a costume of sorts, but it was not that of a ghoul or ghost. No, instead it was a makeshift pony costume made from Rocky's skinned hide! Beneath the raw hide and tufts of fur the stylist could now see that the creature before her was made entirely of candy! As the flayed flesh fell away like a sticky peel to reveal the truth that lay beneath, the mad mare hummed a creepy little tune as the coils of her mane tightened around Jazz's struggling limbs.

With sudden violence Jazz felt herself sent hurtling through the air with enough force to rip the ridiculous rainbow wig from her now upside-down head. She was turned in midair to face her captor and found the end of her muzzle to be mere inches from the grinning monsters malicious maw. As that predators grin parted, she distinctly heard this time the monster speak in a voice that mocked Jazz's own, “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!”

With that, Jazz was whipped around and felt her face smash into the other vanity mirror. Sparks of electricity and hot glass rained down in what felt like slow motion as jolts of pain snaked through her shattered cheekbones and jaw into her teeth and the rest of her skull. The stranger wasn't satisfied with that alone, however, so without a shred of mercy she whipped Jazz back and smashed the mare's body into the jagged shards of the swiftly splintering hunk of furniture. She did this over and over again, the crooked spikes of glass and wood ripping into the Earth Pony's flesh! Tears flooded from Jazz's bruised and bulging eyes as the stylist realized that this must have been the exact same treatment that Rocky had endured, and it was likely that the stranger was intending to do everything else that she had done to the stallion to Jazz as well!

A wail of despair turned into an ear splitting screech of pain as Jazz felt her bones twist and break, popping out of socket as more and more shards of wood and glass were driven into her flesh with shotgun force. The scream rose in pitch higher and higher before resolving into a muffled gurgle as a tendril of living licorice snaked into her mouth to wrap around her broken lower jaw. Without warning, Jazz felt the mandible ripped the from her skull in a spray of spit and blood, her tongue left flapping uselessly from the hole in her face!

The brutality didn't stop there as Jazz felt her skin stretch as it was taken with the jawbone! At last, it began to shred apart as the licorice whips stripped her open, pulling away a huge chunk of flesh from her underbelly that exposed her insides from her throat down to between her hind legs. With the light swiftly dying in her eyes, Jazz stared at her reflection in the broken mirror with numbed horror as her killer took the wad of flesh she had torn off and plastered it against her own chest, covering up the blood slicked candy horror that she was and giving her the appearance of being just another pony. The effect was far better than what she had previously achieved with Rocky's skin, so that at first glance she could almost be mistaken for a normal pony.

With her oncoming death fogging her mind Jazz felt tendrils tugging at the skin that was still, for the moment, plastered against her skull. As they began to peel off her face like a cheap Nightmare Night mask, the mare suddenly realized 'Oh! I guess what she meant was that she thinks I would make a nice costume…'. That epiphany was the last thing to flash across her brain before she finally succumbed to the shock and blood loss from what had been done to her.

The Candy Mare tore the shreds of Rocky's face off and threw them unceremoniously on the floor to don Jazz's own and, with a maniacal cackle, celebrated by prying open the young mare's rib-cage to feast on the soft delicacies within.

Check Your Candy

"And the laughter unending echoes through the haunted house" -Roky Erickson

Lights flickered on and off at random at the control station as the Unicorn busied herself, pushing buttons and pulling levers. In front of the mare several monitors displayed different rooms, each showing one or two ponies laughing or screaming as they passed through them, although they did so soundlessly as there was no audio feed. Each of the rooms had their own 'gimmick'. For example, every now and then 'ghosts' would fall from the ceiling or a framed portrait's eyes would glow and follow the ponies as they walked down a spooky corridor. There was a 'bone room' where skeletal ponies were rigged to pop out, some from the ceiling and others from trick doors in the hallway, set to give a little jump-scare to those who passed within range. There were even trained Pegamice that would swoop down and startle anypony who came near their roost, although they would sometimes draw giggles instead of screams, the desired effect of 'surprise' and more importantly 'distraction' was still achieved. The Pegamice had been a short notice substitution since Misty couldn't find any bats to do the job, but honestly the winged mice had been easier to train.

Misty had originally thrown up this Haunted House as a means to attract Sunny and her friends, and more importantly their pet dragon Sparky, and it had proved to be a surprising success. In fact it was a little too successful, which was to say it had attracted her prey just fine but had also seemingly drawn half the population of Maretime Bay! Now, instead of serving as the perfect trap for Misty to at last acquire dragon fire for Opaline, the haunted attraction was the perfect Nightmare Night destination for a whole host of ponies that Misty had no idea what to do with! This was in large part thanks to Pipp Petal's live-streaming her and her friends trip through the spooky mansion and telling all her followers how '#spooktacular' it had been. Now there was a positive flood of ponies moving slowly through a space originally designed only for about six or seven ponies to go through at once. Sweat poured down Misty's forehead as the blue Unicorn huffed and wheezed, working herself to the bone as she quickly darted from one set of controls to the other trying to keep up with the procession of ponies going through 'Misty's Jump-Scare Emporium'.

"Ooh, what have I done!" Misty moaned to herself. She didn't want to blow her cover as Opaline's assistant, but at the same time running a Haunted House wasn't getting her any closer to fulfilling her mistress's wishes for her to capture Sparky! "How many more ponies could possibly want to do this? And how much longer am I going to have to keep this up!? Wait a minute, haven't those three little fillies already gone through twice!? And they're going through again! Urgh, I'm going to be at this until dawn at this rate!"

Just then, the locket on the chain around Misty's neck began to vibrate and glow. A sinister looking eye opened and smoke poured forth from the enchanted object. From the billowing vapors there next came a loud and stern voice shouting "Misty!" then the image of a looming magenta Alicorn with teal eye shadow and a twin-drill mane-style took hazy form from the fumes. "Why are you still in this pathetic 'Spook-House'? Why have you not returned!?" she demanded to know.

"A thousand apologies mistress," begged Misty pathetically, though she did so without breaking her concentration on running the switchboard or taking her eyes off the monitors. "But I've still got all of these ponies here that came for the attraction. I'm afraid if I just shut it down without any explanation then they'll get suspicious about why it was even here. I don't want them to have any chance of figuring out that it was all just a ruse."

"Are there really that many oafs queuing up for your little spookarama? Ugh, Equestria has really gone down hill. Must I think of everything for you Misty? No wonder you haven't gotten your cutie mark yet," complained Opaline. "Simply devise some excuse for why the attraction must be closed early. Tell them there has been a malfunction, or that the ridiculous excuse for a sheriff determined that the equipment creates a fire hazard or something!"

Misty at last turned from the console to address Opaline directly, "Wouldn't that be something that the Fire Marshal would have to determine?" she asked quizzically, "I don't mean to second guess you, but I don't think we want anypony coming out and inspecting things. Then they might find out I don't even have a licences to operate this attraction. Then, even if I'm lucky enough to avoid getting arrested, there will be a court summons and I'll have to appear before the magistrate. I'd need to hire a lawyer, and then there's the whole matter of legal fees, even if we don't try to fight it - And if we do fight it, I don't think we'll have a hoof to stand on."

"Misty, focus!" cried Opaline, losing patience with her protege, "None of that will matter once I've got that little dragon in my power and I can use its dragon fire to recharge my Fire Alicorn magic! As long as you do your job you needn't worry about what passes for the local 'authorities' or their insipid laws. I will be the law!"

As the Alicorn projection and her pony minion continued to argue about the advisedness of disregarding the potential scrutiny of the local government, something strange began to happen on the monitors behind them. Guests continued to pass through the rooms even though there were no more spooks or jump-scares, and many of them wore looks of disappointment on their face, but there was one who entered the haunt that was all smiles. Grinning from ear to ear with a rictus so wide it threatened to split the top of her head off, this smiling stranger moved deceptively quickly through the no longer haunted halls. Although she never appeared to move at more than a walking pace she still appeared immediately in the next monitor once she disappeared from the one prior, as if she had teleported once she was off screen.

As her toothy grin and glowing eyes passed through the dark, ponies began to laugh a little nervously while others screamed thinking she was part of the attraction, though this all still passed in total silence since the monitors didn't have sound. Then the feeds began to fizzle in and out, fading to snow and looping, or zooming in incredibly close before zooming out again. Things were growing stranger by the moment as the smiling mare now appeared on multiple monitors at once, although the other guests were not similarly duplicated. That wasn't the end of the oddity, however, as the leering pony began to shift and change into strange amorphous forms that twisted into horrifying new shapes that lunged without warning at the horrified patrons.

Within moments all was chaos.

On one monitor a stallion was desperately clawing at the floorboards with his hooves as he was being dragged backwards and off screen to some unknown fate. A different display showed an extreme close up of an eye before it pulled back to reveal that the orb was no longer in the head that it belonged to, the nerve ending thrashing slightly as vitreous fluid slowly drained from it onto the floor before it was stomped to mush by the hooves of a little one-eyed filly fleeing for her life! An ax flashed across one display while a mace flew through another, an entire armory of weapons both modern and medieval unleashed from a dozen different angles. Likewise huge shark tooth filled maws and massive ripping claws raked through the dangling fake spiderwebs and ghosts, hundreds of needle sharp points exploding through the plastic skeletons and the pony's bodies caught between them. A wild beast seemed to dart across the ceiling on one monitor while a massive scythe swept through the length of a different corridor bisecting everything in its path. Flailing tendrils grasped at the limbs of running ponies and plucked them out of frame, only to slither back with their detached limbs waving about like freshly snatch prizes to spurt a crimson mist that splashed over everything.

In all these strange and horrific scenes it should be noted that each out of place object seemed to be made entirely out of candy; Every creature, weapon, and claw was a craft of confection, but no less deadly for their sweet composition! It was almost as if some twisted cross between artisan and chef had decided to unveil a particularly avant garde art gallery of violent treats in the middle of the haunt! The most outlandish thing to flash up on the monitors would have to have been a chainsaw made entirely out of sweets, the 'teeth' of which were formed from candy corn colored fangs that whirred silently across the blade as it was brought to bare on the face of a particularly unlucky colt in a wheelchair. As the revolving chain of fangs came down, it sent a spray of crimson up to splash across the camera lens and cause the screen to temporarily go dark red before fizzling completely out. One by one each of the monitors suffered a similar fate, the broadcast of carnage ending in a blank black screen.

Then, miraculously, the monitors all came back on at once and resumed their usual feed.

There was not a single pony remaining inside the attraction, not even the grinning stranger that had been the catalyst for the prior series of uncanny events. Although... It couldn't be said that the images being transmitted to the control room had not been completely unaltered.

The changes were subtle but made the once almost friendly haunted house seem far more grim. Now the skeletons had suddenly multiplied in the bone room, the new additions not the gleaming white of the originals but instead rather gooey and caked with dripping gore. These were far more grizzly and gruesome, and seemed to be dangle from the ceiling by loops of intestine or tattered skins rather than the thin wire the others hung from. Even more peculiar, the flesh and bones seemed to have been gnawed on, as teeth marks ran up and down the new ivory arrivals.

Likewise, the sheets of the fake ghosts had been washed completely scarlet, their torn and soaked cloth now drizzled a steady rain of scarlet into a similarly colored pool that had completely covered the floor like a shallow pond. The portraits frames here were either broken, slashed, or hung crooked as if something had smashed into them with great force. The glowing 'eyes' now flickered on and off haphazardly, sparks occasionally popping from shredded wiring. Only the poor Pegamice remained unscathed, although they huddled together shivering in the highest rafters packed tightly into a nook as high as they could get. It was clear that whatever it had been that stalked the halls below, the winged rodents wanted no part of it.

Both Misty and Opaline seemed oblivious to these changes, as they continued each to try to convince the other of why they either should or should not immediately abandon the haunted house. In fact, they were so engrossed in their conversation that they did not notice when the leering image of the smiling stranger suddenly appeared in the corner of one glowing monitor again. He pink and blue eyes swirled with fresh madness as she drew closer and closer, her image growing larger and spreading across every single monitor as if she were actually coming towards Misty through the flickering screens!

With the stranger's image blown up in such huge relief against the backdrop of the monitors it was easy to tell that this mare was also, like the various weapons and monsters that had swarmed through the corridors, made entirely of candy from the tip of her ears down to her hooves. Her lollipop eyes peered out from beneath a nest of black and red licorice hair. Her rosy cheeks were peppermints on either side of that ever razor sharp candy corn grin that had moved so swiftly through the halls. Even the long black and orange striped tongue, which slithered out of her mouth to leave a sticky green trail across the other side of the screens, seemed to be made of some stretchy gum or taffy. For those who knew how to recognize her, there was no mistaking this pony for anyone other than the Candy Mare.

Then, just as suddenly as she appeared, everything went dark - not just the monitors this time but the entire control console and every light in the place. All was as dark and quiet as a tomb. The loss of the hum of machinery left a rather unsettling vacuum of sound that every creak, scrape, and groan of the old mansion came flooding in to fill.

"Aha! A power outage! A perfect excuse to close up shop Misty!" exclaimed Opaline, proudly. "I'm so glad I thought of it. Now you can finally stop your dawdling and return home!"

"Uh, yes Opaline. Of course Opaline," assured Misty, saluting. "Right away Opaline."

As the image of the Alicorn queen faded and the 'eye' of the magic locket closed, Misty found herself suddenly alone in the dark and a primal terror squeezed her heart, making it difficult to breathe. Her horn sparkled to life, creating a rainbow glow that just barely illuminated the now suddenly cavernous feeling control room. It wasn't so much that she was afraid of the dark, nor even of being alone. Mistress Opaline's moods often meant that the Unicorn would have to keep her own company in the gloomy castle that she called home, but there was something about being by oneself in an unfamiliar setting that just felt extra unnerving.

What had happened? Everything had been going smoothly without a hitch up until now. Misty knew that she had plugged into the power grid correctly and that the equipment she was using was in good condition. Was there a blown fuse or a bad connection or something? Misty knew she had promised Opaline that she would report back soon, but she had better do one last sweep of the attraction just to make sure that there were no remaining patrons trapped inside.

Trapped... That was it, that was the feeling that had descended on Misty in the few moments after Opaline's image had vanished. She had felt like a wild animal suddenly caught in a trap. What a peculiar reaction. It wasn't like there was anything dangerous about the old rundown manor Misty had 'borrowed' for her deception. The Unicorn tried her best to shrug off the sensation and instead focused on what she ought to do next.

The door to the control room opened with a long, low creak that sent a shiver down Misty's spine, even though she was the one making the sound It was little details like that which had led Misty to select this particular abandoned home for her Nightmare Night attraction in the first place, but now that she was experiencing it all alone in the dark she was less than thrilled about her choice. Why hadn't she just set up some goofy little corn maze or a walk through dungeon in a well lit apartment complex? No, she had to go for authenticity!

"Hello?" Misty called without leaving the relative safety of the control room just yet. "Is anypony out there? We seem to be experiencing some, er... Technical difficulties. If you could please make your way to the nearest exit in an orderly fashion, we'll be suspending operations for the rest of the evening... That is, if that's okay with all of you?"

The velvet gloom swallowed her words. She waited, listening, just in case there was any sort of response. In the distance she thought she heard a giggle, but something that creepy was probably just her imagination working overtime - Right With some difficulty Misty choked down the apprehension that rose like bile at the back of her throat and, with an audible gulp to swallow down those emotions, she tentatively trotted into the dark.

The multi-colored glow from the Unicorn's horn did barely more then give sharper definition to the shadows around her, leaving Misty with only a few inches of visibility to work with as she slowly crept through the silent hallway. It was amazing how in the short interim since she had last entered the control room to now ,when she had re-emerged into the house proper, that the mansion had taken on such a far more sinister aspect. Was it just the dark, or had a seemingly malevolent change truly come over the uninhabited abode? The difference was much more so than a few fake cobwebs and a little darkness could casually explain. It was almost as if there were someone, or something, waiting out of sight around every corner. But that was silly - if there was really something here that intended her harm why wouldn't it just... Just strike her and get it over with?

Misty was beginning to feel uncomfortably like she would on those occasions when she would unwittingly draw Opaline's ire. Without any way of truly knowing what she had done wrong she would have to fumble about and guess not just what her mistake had been but also how severely Opaline intended to punish her. The worst part was she wouldn't always punish her, either, until long after she had forgotten she was in trouble to begin with. All too often the Misty would spend hours curled up into a ball of mental anguish only for her mistress's apparent displeasure to evaporate as if it had never been. Whether she received a punishment or a reprieve, the anxiety that tied her stomach in knots all day up until that point had often been far worse than whatever consequences she received. If something bad was going to happen to Misty she would rather it just happen so she could deal with it and move on.

As that thought drifted across the young mare's mind her hooves suddenly squelched stickily into a pool of something cold and wet that, from the feel of it, was not water. The level of light from her horn too low for her to see much of anything even had she glanced down, but even so she instead chose decisively to keep her eyes riveted straight ahead. She was entirely unwilling to see what it was exactly that she was walking through, as she was certain it would do nothing to help her maintain her composure. Better to ignore it, stay calm, and quickly move on than draw attention to herself.

Something that was harder to ignore was the smell that now assaulted her nostrils. It was like a revolting mix of copper, hot garbage, and rotting fish. Either somepony had a very embarrassing reaction to one of the attractions jump-scares, or maybe Misty had finally just stumbled onto the reason why the run down home had been abandoned in the first place. Perhaps there was an overflowing septic tank on the premises? That was better than the alternatives that now raced unbidden through Misty's mind. Either way, the halls reeked of something almost supernaturally foul that left the young mare struggling to suppress a gag.

The aroma only blossomed and worsened once she started to pass through the bone room. Misty tried to pretend not to notice the shiny new additions to the skeletons she had bought in surplus. Though a part of her knew she was in denial, she managed to convince herself that she had simply miscounted them before. Surely since she had set everything up in something of a rush such a mistake would be easy to make. Although, credulity could only be stretched so far when she found herself having to squeeze through a narrow gap between two of the skeletons she had 'miscounted' only for their slick and slightly warm bones to rub along her flanks and send shivers down her spine, giving her goose flesh, and leaving dark stains on her fur.

After that Misty quickened her step so that she was passing through the hall of now broken portraits at a trot. Somepony must have panicked and accidentally bumped into the pictures in the dark she told herself, Very hard... over and over again. A fresh chill passed down Misty's spine as she noticed that there were scraps of fur clinging to the shattered picture frames. Against her better judgement she took a closer look and noticed that there were also now a few teeth embedded in the splintered wood, their cracked and bloody roots poking out of the frame like a hidden prize for a particularly demented tooth fairy or a less than scrupulous dentist. Misty very much wished that she hadn't seen that.

"I-if anypony is s-still in here, we are now v-very much closed!" The Unicorn stammered, backing quickly away from her grizzly discovery as if she were trying to distance herself from the very thought of the violence that they hinted at. "I-if you can s-still here me, please follow the sound of my voice and I'll lead you to the exit!"

Once again her words seemed to simply vanish into the abyss, not even so much as an echo coming back to her in reply. Except...Just on the edge of her hearing... A muffled giggle came from uncomfortably nearby. Misty whirled in the direction of the sound and brightened the sparkle of her horn, but all she managed to reveal was more signs of carnage that she was certain hadn't been there earlier in the evening. Calm as she had been able to remain up until this point, Misty was rapidly losing her nerve.

"I'm not trapped, I'm not trapped, I'm not trapped," she muttered to herself over and over, failing to reassure herself. "I know exactly where the exit is! I can leave whenever I want! I am not trapped!"

Maybe it would be a good idea to get to the exit sooner rather than later? After all, Mistress Opaline would surely prefer if she hurried along. Besides, there was clearly no pony left inside the manor.

No pony alive, anyways.

Abandoning any pretense of calm, Misty broke into a run.

The house was far too quiet and the darkness was absolutely pregnant with barely concealed malice. It might have just been her nerves getting to her, but Misty needed to get out as soon as possible! Unfortunately, the Unicorn lost her footing as she skidded around a corner and into the room of hanging ghosts. She went head over hooves as her trotters skidded through the sticky liquid that had filled the corridor. She spun around, leaving a squelching trail through the gelatinous sludge, and in her attempt to right herself only added further to her momentum as she ended up tumbling flank first through the front doors.

Misty lay sprawled on the ground outside under the night sky, her heart thundering in her chest like a stampede of bunnycorns. The young mare had never been so happy, or relieved, to be lying flat in the dirt in her life!

She'd made it out!

Although her head was spinning and her vision was swimming, the mere act of exiting the building was absolutely elating! It felt like an amazing triumph for some reason. Misty lay still for a little longer, panting with both relief and exertion. Between grateful gulps of cool night air she gasped "Wow! I really need - to remember - if I do one of these - again - that haunted houses are a lot scarier - when they're pitch black!"

After she said this, the double doors she had just crashed through suddenly slammed shut. Had the wind blown them closed? Or had there been somepony else inside after all? Confused and still a little shaken, Misty was torn between investigating further and just pretending she hadn't noticed. Surely she should just leave and get on with the rest of her night, right?

Before Misty could decide, the doors creaked open ever so slightly. This time the mare distinctly heard the sound of a little filly laughing. It was so out of place it made her fur go rigid down her back. But if there was some pony still inside, it was probably a good idea to make sure they got out safely, even if they had been messing with her and playing silly games when she had been trying to lead them to the exit.

"Is somepony there?" Misty called, rising to her hooves and slowly edging towards the slightly ajar doors. The light of the full moon did nothing to illuminate the darkness beying the small crack through which Misty peered, so that if there was somepony standing even mere inches behind those doors then there was no way Misty could tell just by looking. Even so the sense of menace seemed to have dissipated now that Misty was outside, which only caused her curiosity to increase. As she pondered the merits of opening the doors the rest of the way and taking one last look around inside, something bounced out of the gloom and rolled to a stop between Misty's hooves,"What's this?"

With an arc of her eyebrows, the aura of Misty's magic lifted the small object up so she could see it better in the moonlight. It was a completely unremarkable, yet oddly compelling piece of candy.

The young mare felt her tummy rumble a low growl. She hadn't even seen a morsel of food since she had been at the party at Mane Melody earlier in the night. At that time she had been too busy trying to blend in to snag a bite, though there had been refreshments aplenty. Most of which, Misty guiltily had to admit to herself, she had ruined in the attempt to get the party guests to display their magic for Opaline to observe. The Unicorn realized that now that panic was no longer filling the pit of her stomach she was actually quite ravenous, having skipped her supper to carry out her mistress's mission.

It was just a little candy, so innocent and pure, surely even Opaline wouldn't hold it against Misty if she had a bit of a snack? It was Nightmare Night, after all. Everypony else would be stuffing themselves sick with treats... Why shouldn't Misty have a little taste of the sweeter side of life? There was a crinkle of paper, followed by the sound of chewing, and a delighted moan as sugar melted over a grateful tongue.

It took the Candy Mare all of her self control to keep her gob clamped shut, her blood-stained hooves physically holding her muzzle closed so that she wouldn't explode with laughter as she watched Misty through the crack in the door. Mere inches away as the ghoulish mare was, she'd completely give herself away if she so much as let a single tittle of a titter slip past her lips. As the Unicorn at last walked away, masticating joyfully, the Candy Mare let loose a high pitched cackle as she rolled back and forth on the bloody floorboards as if she had just witnessed the most hilarious, side-splitting thing.

As Misty was engulfed by the bank of fog that lay between her and the long trek home she did not seem to notice the laughter at all, instead merely cantering carefree into the night, just one more mare swallowed by the mist.

Keep The Jack-o-Lanterns Lit

"All the more they've been snickering, hiding there for you. Hoping you would see them hiding there, become aware say 'boo'" - Roky Erickson

The moon grew dim as the night grew older and clouds rolled in over the roaring waves. The sky rumbled with distant thunder and the occasional orange or green flash of silent heat lightning. Dry grasses swayed in the breeze as the gaggle of equines below the oncoming storm ran up the path that led to the Crystal Brighthouse. They were laughing and shouting, a tiny baby dragon riding on one of the pony's backs giggling away, as a huge cloud of dust followed in their wake. However, the others didn't notice that their stallion friend was hanging a little further back, trudging slowly up the dirt road. Only little puffs of dust rose from Hitch's hoof-steps, the Autumn breeze swirled dead leaves past him as if trying to encourage him to pick up the pace.

It had been a raucous Nightmare Nigh, between the fashion-show-party at Mane Melody, the impromptu trick or treating, and the Haunted House that they went through after that. It wasn't that Hitch hadn't enjoyed himself, but for the moment he found the relative quiet and calm of the Fall evening far more to his liking. The party had been great and his costume had been a hit - Hitch knew going with the mustache had been the right call and everypony else seemed to agree - and the haunted house had been fun too, sort of. There was a truly scary moment there where he had lost track of his little buddy, but they had found Sparky unharmed and had made it out safe and sound - Although Hitch and his friends had ended up having to run screaming from the spooky attraction. Maybe that was it? Maybe the risk of losing Sparky for real had been just a little too much for him.

If Hitch was being honest with himself, he didn't much care for Nightmare Night. The socializing and other activities were fine but all the ghouls, ghosts, and other horrors were just a bit much for his nerves. Not that he was afraid or anything! No, not Brave Sheriff Hitch, protector of Maretime Bay! But it was just that Nightmare Night made Hitch feel less like the mature and respected officer of the law that he was and more like the little colt he had been not that long ago. Growing up, the world had seemed just a little bit scarier and more chaotic than he would have liked, what with all of the worry about Pegasi and Unicorn's potentially attacking his hometown. It didn't matter that those fears had proved to be unfounded, they had still shaped his young life and it had been him trying to deal with those fears that had led him to pursue a career in law enforcement to begin with. That and, of course, him doing his best to keep his friend Sunny out of trouble.

Sunny's activism wasn't something Hitch really had a problem with. He thought her civic-mindedness was great and her drive to bring ponies together regardless of race was commendable. However, Sunny's approach definitely was often a problem, as she had no problem putting herself in the middle of things and 'speaking truth to power' as she put it. Which usually just meant a lot of messes Hitch would inevitably have to clean up and a lot of headaches for those in authority. While he had done what he could to remind everyone that Sunny's heart was in the right place, smoothing things over with the rest of the town hadn't always been easy. Hitch was glad that the return of magic to Equestria had led to Sunny being less disruptive and more constructive, if for no other reason than it tended to keep her inside the bounds of the law, and out of trouble. Well, out of political trouble anyways. Since their new friends had moved to Maretime Bay it seemed like new and different kinds of trouble had a tendency to find them everyday!

Hitch didn't even bother trying to suppress the smile that spread across his face as he looked up the hill towards the lighthouse that had been rebuilt as the Crystal Brighthouse, the new home for Sunny and the rest of their friends. Seeing them all together, screaming and giggling, warmed Hitch's heart and took away a lot of the chill he felt from the night air. Things really had taken a turn for the better, for both him and his childhood friend. Even if things were a little louder and crazier now than they had been before, their friends more than made up for it.

These were the thoughts occupying Hitch's mind as he reached the Brighthouse and tripped over one of the jack-o-lantern's that was on either side of the big double front doors. The others had already gone inside, so at least they weren't around to see him tumble, but Hitch was still irritated.

"Ugh, great! Just when I was starting to feel a little better" grumbled Hitch as he righted himself and adjusted his fake mustache. "Nightmare Night just isn't for me. Reckless things like throwing noisy parties, scaring each other for treats, and purposefully going through frightening haunted houses are bad enough. But leaving something that is both a fire hazard and a tripping hazard just lying in front of a door is one step too far for me!"

Saying this Hitch bent down and, with a little puff of his cheeks and a whistle of air, blew out the candle inside of the grinning pumpkin shell. A few curls of black smoke drifted out of the now dark eye holes in the jack-o-lantern's face and dissipated on the night breeze.

A strangled sound like a growl or a moan of disgust drifted from the gloom.

"What was that? Is somepony there!?" called Hitch, suddenly on guard. "There better not be any ponies out there planning some sort of mischief, because I'm the Sheriff around here and I don't have a problem letting somepony spend the rest of their Nightmare Night behind bars!"

Hitch stood there, nervously challenging the dark of the night and the oncoming storm. When there was no answer or any other sort of a response the Earth Pony gave a little sigh of relief and trotted over to the other jack-o-lantern that sat opposite the one he had extinguished. He leaned down once again and puffed out the tiny candle light that burned inside. There was another low growl, but softer this time, so much so that Hitch didn't even notice it. All that caught his attention was the bank of fog that was slowly creeping up the hill towards him, which he dismissed almost immediately. Fog this time of year was pretty common so it wasn't exactly notable, even if it did seem to glow in the fading moonlight. Instead of investigating these phenomena more closely he blithely opened the door to the Brighthouse, his mind already on what he was going to do with the rest of his evening, and went inside.

In the dark behind him the thick fog suddenly began to sweep up the hill in earnest, a pair of glowing pink and blue swirling eyes traveling swiftly with it.

A few kernels of pony-corn bounced off of Hitch's forehead as he walked into the living room, "Hey!"

"Hey yourself Sheriff! Want some? It's freshly popped!" snickered Zipp as she hovered casually by, a hoof-full of more of the buttery snack halfway to her mouth. She scarfed down the salty sweet treat quickly, chewing as she said, "Mmm, hey, the rest of the girls decided to get a bunch of snacks together and watch horror movies upstairs until we all fall asleep. You interested in joining in?"

"I think I've had enough horror for one night," admitted Hitch wearily. "I'm just going to grab Sparky and then head back to the Sheriff Station. You seen the little scamp?"

"I'm sure he's around somewhere," answered the Pegasus Princess as she started to drift up the stairs. She smiled over her shoulder mischievously and called down, "If you can't find him on your own, you could always hire me to track him down for you!"

"No thanks detective, you go and have fun with your horror movie marathon," Hitch answered with a wink. "If he's upstairs maybe then give me a holler, otherwise downstairs is my jurisdiction."

"Right you are Sheriff!" replied Zipp with a mock salute from the top of the stairs as she flipped off the lights, plunging the living room into darkness, leaving only the moonlight shining through the windows for illumination. "Good night~ Sleep tight~ And don't let the Candy Mare bite, mwa ha ha ha ha!"

"Yeah yeah, hahaha~" replied the stallion, not really finding the joke all that funny. He muttered, “Candy Mare isn’t real, she’s just a story.”

The legend of the Candy Mare, a ghostly pony that spirited away children on Nightmare Night and punished ponies that broke the rules wasn't his idea of a fun bedtime story. It was just an old pony's tale told around campfires. The kind of legend meant to spook fillies and colts into behaving. Hitch had never needed such incentive to behave, he'd always been a good little colt.

With a heavy sigh Hitch removed his cool sunglasses, collar, and tie. He was about to take off the mustache, but at the last moment thought better of it. It wouldn't hurt to wear it for a little longer, right? A wry smile on his lips, and fake bristles above them, Hitch called out to his little buddy "Alright, Sparky, it's time we were heading for home and getting you in bed! Where are you little buddy?"

There was the sound of a baby dragons laughter and the clatter of little clawed feet scampering towards Izzy's arts and crafts corner. Sparky loved to play hide and seek there and it seemed like the little guy was in a playful mood.

"Come on Sparky, now is not the time for fun and games. We'll have plenty of time for that tomorrow," Hitch trotted over to the corner and peaked under Izzy's workbench, but instead of the little dragon he expected to find all that he could see were a few pieces of candy. Oh no, Sparky and sugar were a dangerously bad mix. If he had too much sugar then he might get the hiccups, and if a magical fire breathing dragon got hiccups there was no telling what kind of havoc he might wreak! On top of that, if Sparky had gotten into their impressive haul from trick-or-treating, Hitch might not be able to put the little guy down for the night until he crashed from the ensuing sugar high! This could be just the start of a very long and difficult Nightmare Night for the Sheriff."Sparky, if you want a healthy snack I can make you one before we leave, but no more candy okay? Baby dragons need their rest and too much sugar before sleeping will give you bad dreams!"

Hitch could have sworn he heard an excited 'ooh' and more claws scurrying towards the kitchen and dining area. Good. If Sparky was still hungry enough to get excited about Hitch making snacks then maybe he hadn't completely gorged himself on sugary treats. There might still be a way to salvage things after all!

But as Hitch crossed back through the living room to head to the kitchen, he felt like something was amiss. It was dark in the Brighthouse, what with everypony else upstairs, the lights were mostly off downstairs. However, it was getting harder and harder for Hitch to see for some reason, as if what illumination he had to work with was slowly dimming before his eyes. The air seemed strange, like there was a soft green haziness about everything. There was a sour sweetness to the air, and also a damp rancid stench that made him think of salt marshes and the underside of rotted logs.

Hitch looked around to see if he could figure out what might be the cause of all this but there was no readily apparent explanation. Then, at last, his eyes fell on the front door which was now standing wide open. Hadn't he closed the door behind himself when he had come in? He must not have closed it all the way or maybe the latch just hadn't caught and the chilly Autumnal air must have pushed the door the rest of the way open. Indeed, the night air even now was pouring into the house along with a low dense fog. The invading mist seemed to be the reason why visibility was dropping rapidly.

The stallion went to close the door, but took a moment to glance outside. The eerie fog had engulfed not just the hillside, turning the Brighthouse into an island in the midst of a sea of clouds, but had also taken over the entire town of Maretime Bay. It wasn't that unusual of a sight for a coastal town this time of year, but there was something unsettling about the slightly glowing mist that made the hairs on the back of Hitch's neck stand on end. It was vaguely unnatural how the thick oily coils of cold fog flowed about, swallowing the entire town like some colossal beast, snuffing out the warm glow of the distant homes and shops. Hitch shook himself, trying to dispel the image from his mind as he suppressed a shiver that ran down his spine. He pulled the door shut and made sure it latched this time before he went ahead and locked the door for good measure. He didn't know what it was he hoped to keep out, but better safe than sorry, right?

Yet as Hitch turned and made his way back towards the kitchen where he had last heard the sounds of his little friend Sparky, the fog that had drifted inside the Brighthouse held just as thick and pervasive as before. Indeed it was as if shutting the door had only concentrated the thick billowing clouds.

"Uh, guys?" he called tentatively up to the others. "There's something kind of strange going on down here! Guys!? Sunny?" The last was in response to a girlish giggle that seemed to be coming from where Sunny kept her smoothie making supplies by the kitchenette. "Did you come down to make some smoothie's for you and the girls? I'm sorry about this weird mist, I left the door open by accident. Are you... Are you there? It's hard to see anything."

The kitchen was dark and dead silent. The fog was piled up high against the windows so that they blocked most of the remaining moonlight that fought a losing battle to break through the clouds. The room was awash in a dim green glow that made it seem like Hitch was underwater rather than indoors.

Then, as if by some magic trick, the mist finally thinned enough that Hitch could see the kitchen around him. He discovered that he was indeed not alone, however the mare that stood before him was not his childhood friend Sunny, but rather some stranger he had never met before. She was much taller than he was and seemed to loom in the half-light, a predatory grin plastered across her pale face. Her eyes, which glowed disturbingly brightly in the gloom, locked with Hitch's own and she held him in thrall to her gaze, From head to hoof this uninvited guest seemed to be completely coated in swirls and whirls of candy, a chaotic sugar frosted mixture of wrapped and unwrapped sweets that sparkled and gleamed in the half-light. This close to her the stink of sugar and rotting meat hit him across his snout like a wet sock full of gravel. He physically flinched back from her scent alone.

"Wh-who are you?" stammered Hitch, not willing to believe his eyes. There was no way she was real! She didn't exist! This had to be a trick! There was no way that this intruder was the Candy Mare! "What are you doing here?"

Horrifying as it was to find such an apparition standing in his friend's kitchen, the more frightening thing was what sat on the counter at her hoof-tips - Sunny's blender. There shouldn't have been anything terrifying about that, but what was inside of that blender made Hitch's heart stop and his bowels turn to water.

"Sparky!?" the name erupted from Hitch as a strangled yelp as his breath caught in his throat. Sure enough, the baby dragon was inside the jug, his lower lip quivering and his eyes huge and teary as his little claws scrabbled uselessly against the interior of the glass. The stranger's smile seemed to grow wider as she noticed Hitch's distress and how he reacted as her hoof came perilously close to the 'ON' button. "No! No, don't do that!" Hitch begged.

He got down on his knees and pleaded.

Every time he cried out the twisted mare would pull back her hoof, but as soon as he was quiet again her hoof would inch back to the button.

This cruel little game went back and forth like this for some time until finally with a high pitched squeal of sadistic glee the malicious mare jammed the button down and hit 'PUREE'!

The resulting noise was cacophonous, setting Hitch's teeth on edge! The stallion's anguished screams joined Sparky's squalls of pain but it was the sound of sharp blades shredding scales and ripping through meat at high speed that was loudest of all! The weird, childish laughter of the bloodthirsty stranger made for ghastly accompaniment as she held the lid of the jug down, its clear sides suddenly awash in crimson pulp.

Next the maniac moved her hoof to the 'CHOP' setting, and the whirring blades slowed for a moment before they began to bite even deeper into draconic flesh! Now the baby dragon inside was being truly dismembered, his tiny severed limbs banging around inside the jug as bones popped from their sockets or were snapped in half. This went on only for a few moments before the mad mare jammed the 'GRIND' button, followed by 'CRUSH', and finally 'LIQUEFY'!

After an eternity the 'OFF' button was finally pressed. With a wet slurp, the Candy Mare pealed back the rubber topper to reveal the red slurry within, a single deflated eye that had somehow survived the whole ordeal bobbing to the top. The methodical ghoul then put the lid back on and hit 'PULSE' a few times for good measure. After that she simply took the jug off its stand and poured the contents into an awaiting frosted glass that seemed to have been set aside just for that purpose.

In a voice that perfectly mimicked Sunny, the Candy Mare said "Drink up, it's a new flavor and I know you're absolutely going to love it!" before sliding it across the counter to where Hitch was slumped in a weeping heap. The pink silly straw and tiny orange paper umbrella sticking out of the drink may have looked festive, but they did nothing to mitigate the stallion's despair. As Hitch looked up at Sparky's murderer, he was forced to watch as she callously downed the rest of the blender's contents and licked her sugar-frosted lips with every sign of immense satisfaction.

"Why... Why!?" he wailed, "Why would you do something so cruel to someone so innocent!?"

Running her black and orange striped tongue over her candy-corn fangs, the Candy Mare smiled "Because it was funny, silly! Don't worry though," Then she smashed the heavy glass jug, still slick with Sparky's remains, across Hitch's face. The heavy glass container barely chipped on the impact, but the same could not be said of the stallion's jaw which dislocated in a spray of teeth and errant fake mustache bristles. The Earth Pony was left sprawled out across the kitchen floor. "There's plenty more where that came from!"

"Hey Hitch, are you still around?" called out Zipp, "Are you sure you don't want to come hang out? Sunny, Izzy, and Pipp are all busy screaming and giggling at every jump scare in these horror movies and I kind of want somepony to join me in ruthlessly mocking how goofy the special effects and story are. Does that sound fun? Hitch?"

There was something that sounded like a reply, but it was kind of muffled. The Pegasus glided down the stairs towards the sound.

As Zipp, still holding her empty pony-corn bowl, reached the bottom floor she was surprised to find a thick layer of fog had taken over the lower levels of the Crystal Brighthouse. Had somepony left a window open or something? Her hoof went to the light switch, but as she flipped it up and down a few times she realized the lights weren't coming on. She'd have to grab a flash light and check the breaker box once she found Hitch.

"Hey, you still down here Hitch buddy? Seems like we might have blown a fuse or something. Did you go to check?" Zipp called out louder, realizing the strange mist seemed to be muffling her words, "Or are you still looking for Sparky? I know I was teasing about you hiring me to find the little guy earlier, but I'd be happy to help - free of charge! After all, what are friends for?"

It was only as the Pegasi's wings took her closer to the dining area that she noticed a low but insistent, whirring noise. The lights might be out down here but the power still seemed to be on. That was strange. What was stranger was how the clouds of fog seemed to glow, granting a fitful illumination that deepened the shadows and seemed to distort everything around her.

As Zipp pricked up her ears and followed the sound, she found herself drawn to the dining room. As she drew closer the fog seemed to part, as if to give her a better view of what lay on the table. What she saw spread before her made the bowl fall from her hooves and hit the floor with a clatter as her hooves shot up to cover her mouth in shock.

It was Hitch!

Her friend and one of the nicest colts she had ever known lay stretched out, spread-eagle, his fur all matted and crusted with blood! Or perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that he was pinned to the dining surface as it appeared that every piece of cutlery that they owned - every knife, fork, and yes even all of the little spoons - were stuck through every last inch of his body! He was stuck to the table like a butterfly pinned to a cork board, two huge chef knives jammed into his empty eye sockets! An uncountable number of other knives of all shapes and sizes had been jammed into his mouth and tongue until the orifice was completely filled with gleaming serrated metal!

But the truly sick thing was the source of the 'whirring' sound that had drawn Zipp's attention in the first place. Sitting in a hollow dug into the very center of Hitch's gut was the remains of Sunny's blender. The whirring metal blades of the motorized appliance stuck up through the stallion's innards, the spinning blades rotating and spinning his intestines around them like a fork-full of spaghetti. The gleaming white innards writhed like a nest of maggots amid bloody froth, in constant motion thanks to the gore soaked contraption. Worse, there were bite marks all over Hitch's body and places where pieces of him had clearly been eaten. The wounds had started to scab over, which seemed to indicate that he had still been alive as something had partially eaten him. There were clear signs that Hitch had struggled and fought whomever had done this, but the stallion had been overwhelmed. Zipp marveled at what had been done to her friend despite herself, as it seemed that his torment had gone on for some time, the responsible party painstakingly taking their time to draw out the most pain possible while the stallion had still lived.

How had they not heard any of this? Surely Hitch would have screamed, or at least made some sort of pained noises given the awful agony he had clearly been put through. Why hadn't he called for help? Was he trying to protect his friends upstairs by foolishly facing this torture alone? Or had his tormentor found a way to silence him so that they would not have to worry about being disturbed as they had done their grizzly work?

Zipp's detective mind switched into overdrive. The muffling effect that she had noticed the fog had on her own voice! Had it silenced Hitch's shouts and screams as well? Was it some kind of magic that distorted sound? Then maybe Hitch's attacker had relied on that to prevent anypony from coming to his aid! Which meant that since the fog was still present... Then maybe the killer was too!

That last thought occurred to Zipp just as a viscera veiled visage loomed out of the fog beside her, all blood-stained fangs and insane swirling eyes.

"Want some?" asked the Candy Mare in an exact copy of Zipp's voice, holding up her fallen ponycorn bowl. It now contained what appeared to be Hitch's half chewed brain, the eyes still attached by the optic nerves dangling over the rim of the bowl, "It's freshly popped!"

Don't Take Down Your Decorations Early

"And the music fills and fills; Terrifies, horrifies, forever scares. The children of the night, what music we make!" - Roky Erickson

An ear-piercing shriek shattered the relative silence of the Crystal Brighthouse, rattling the windows in their frames and causing the very floor to shake! Sunny, Izzy, and Pipp all hugged each other tightly and screamed again before the echoes of their prior terror truly had the chance to entirely fade away. From the way they were acting, one could be forgiven for thinking they were watching the scariest horror movie ever committed to film. However, the movie being projected onto the wall of their bedroom really wasn't all that frightening as far as Zipp could tell, but the girls were hamming it up and playing along with each other, making a bonding experience out of pretending to be scared.

Zipp couldn't help rolling her eyes. The elder Pegasus princess lay across her bed, her head propped up by one hoof while she ate another hoof-full of ponycorn with the other, clearly bored and less than impressed with the other mare's shenanigans. Her three friends were too engrossed to notice the young mare's apathy, eyes glued to the screen in anticipation of the next jump-scare to react to. Or more precisely the next opportunity to scream as loud as they could. It had been like this for the past half hour or so and Zipp was starting to get a headache.

They were at a scene where a little colt carrying a pumpkin was coming home from school when three older fillies suddenly tripped him. They started chanting “She’s gonna get you, she’s gonna get you, she’s gonna get you!” The biggest and snottiest bully then added in a sing song voice, “~The Candy Mare is coming!~”

The colt defiantly shouted back, “No she’s not! She's not even real! Leave me alone!” Before trying to salvage the now somewhat squashed remains of his tiny pumpkin.

“He doesn’t believe us. Don’t you know what happens on Nightmare Night?” asked one of the children, snidely.

“Yeah, we get candy!” The kid shot back, although now he sounded a little doubtful.

That just made his trio of tormentors dissolve into a fit of cruel giggles as they chanted ‘The Candy Mare, the Candy Mare, the Candy Mare’ over and over again as if it was the most entertaining thing in the world.

As the poor little colt finally got to his hooves and was able to scramble away from the triad of persecutors there was a dramatic sting in the movies musical score just as he bumped into who, the audience is supposed to think, is the killer. Sunny, Izzy, and Pipp all shrieked again, but nothing much else really happened in the film. It was one of those slow burn, atmospheric type affairs, where it was mostly dramatic first person shots from the killers perspective as they stalked their victims. If maybe Zipp was watching it alone she might even have been drawn in by the cinematography, but with her friends wailing like banshees at every jump-scare she found it increasingly hard to maintain any kind of focus.

To be fair it wasm't just her friends melodramatic over-acting, but the actors as well. Even that Zipp might have forgiven if the effects weren't so cheap and obviously fake. Normally a run of the mill slasher being on the cheap side wouldn't be a deal breaker, but it was hard to take some random pony in a spooky mask seriously as some sort of quasi-supernatural entity. Maybe that was the point? It was probably going to turn out the slasher’s true identity was just an ex-coltfriend or a filly-hood enemy that had inexplicably ‘gone crazy’ after some ridiculously contrived childhood trauma. That was usually how these things went.

Zipp tended to go for more psychological thrillers or cerebral' who-dun-it?' style pictures, so she got very little out of these sort of more pedestrian plot-lines. But Sunny liked these simple films because they were predictable. It made them feel safer, almost comfortable, as opposed to something with a more complicated script. Being so over-the-top was also a plus since that made them less realistic. If somepony made the argument that something in a horror movie like this 'couldn't really happen' to Sunny, she'd just enthusiastically agree and say how great she thought that was. Which she did kind of have a point. Even if something similar were to happen in real life, you'd never be so dumb as to make all of the awful decisions and obvious mistakes as the cast of hapless victims had. Ponies were a lot smarter than that, even teen-aged ones. Zipp didn't mind indulging Sunny's guilty pleasure but, when she was the only one not enjoying herself, she felt a little put out.

Noticing her bowl of pony-corn was down to a few un-popped kernels, Zipp gave a long luxurious stretch and said, "Hey, I'm going on a snack run, any pony-else want anything?" Yeah, play it cool, but it was definitely time for a break from all the screaming.

Izzy paused the movie, "Nah, I'm good, I've got everything I need right here!" Izzy wrapped her arms around a pile of trick or treat candy that was nearly as tall as she was.

"I don't see how you two can eat all that junk," glowered Pipp, taking advantage of the break in the movie to update her PonyGram with a quick selfie of her making a shocked face and pointing a hoof at the still frame of the film - '#Candymare #Terrifying #screamqueen #PippSqueaksWatchAlongandReviewComingSoon'. "You know it's all just going to go to your flanks. It's not like you won't have plenty of fattening foods to look forward to during Harvest & Hugs Day and Winter Wishday."

"There's something special about Nightmare Night treats though, right?" asked Sunny rhetorically, tossing a piece of taffy into the air and catching between her teeth before gobbling it down. " Like there's something almost magical about it! All the running around you have to do, going from door to door to collect it all, it makes it feel like a prize! Besides, with all that trotting through the streets I bet we burned more calories than Izzy and Zipp could pack on eating a few snacks before bed."

"Well, when you put it that way, could you bring me back a slice of carrot cake Zipp? I wouldn't mind something sweet but I'm burnt out on candy," asked Pipp, although before her sister could respond she got a mischievous look in her eyes, "That is, if you don't get lost in Hitch's eyes on your way back."

"What's that supposed to mean?" challenged Zipp, defensively. Leave it to Pipp to guess that she might have an ulterior motive for checking out of the horror movie. It would be nice if Hitch changed his mind and joined them so she could maybe have someone to pick the thing apart with, but that didn't make her little sister's implications justified."You know we're just friends. We're all just friends!"

"Uh-huh. I saw you two dancing at Mane Melody tonight," replied the younger Pegasus suggestively, fluffing her wings up with a grin. "Seemed like you were being very friendly to me."

"We were all dancing with him!" cried out the Zipp, exasperated. "You were dancing too!"

"Suuure," retorted Pipp, either not buying it or pretending not to so as to get under Zipp's skin. "A little sister can tell, you know."

"Pfft! Yeah right! Shut up!"exclaimed Zipp blushing ever so slightly, finally catching on that Pipp was just trying to wind her up. She playfully tossed her remaining ponycorn at her sibling in retaliation, before taking to her wings and heading downstairs. She called back "Just for that, no cake for you. If you want it, you can get off your flanks and come get it yourself!"

"Ugh, but that would mean getting off the floor, and getting on my hooves, and going down all those stairs," whined the pudgy pink Pegasus, flailing her limbs pathetically, trying fruitlessly to appeal for sympathy.

"Couldn't you just fly down there, like Zipp?" asked Izzy, tilting her head to the side quizzically.

"It's the principle of the thing," responded Pipp, folding her forelimbs against her chest and pouting.

"Well, if we're taking a break then I think I'm going to take the opportunity to visit the little filly's room," informed Sunny, standing up and stretching her limbs as she excused herself to take advantage of the facilities. "Don't restart the film without me. It's getting to the good part and I can't wait to see how you girls react!"

"Okie-dokie, hurry back!" replied Izzy cheerfully.

Once Sunny was out of the room, silence reigned.

It wasn't that Izzy and Pipp didn't get along, but rather that they were very rarely left alone with just each other for company. While they were both very similar in that they were both artistic ponies, in their own way, they contrasted in that Izzy often had her head in the clouds while Pipp tended had her eyes glued to her smart phone. The two got along just fine so long as they were on the same page but starting a conversation could be a little tough, especially since growing up in Bridlewood verses growing up in Zephyr Heights left them without many shared interests.

"So... What's your favorite Nightmare Night candy?" asked Izzy nonchalantly as she ate a hoof-full of gum drops, trying to break the ice. It wasn't that the Unicorn didn't care, she was actually super excited to hear Pipp's reply, but she was learning that sometimes if she was too enthusiastic about seemingly mundane things it made other ponies uncomfortable. Izzy didn't want to be off-putting. She needn't have worried.

"Oh my gosh! I don't think I could pick just one, you know? I mean I love all things chocolate, but then fruit flavored gummies are really good too!" was the he Pegasus pop-stars avid reply, Pipp exhibiting plenty of ardor for the subject. "Yeah, I can't decide. How about you, what's your favorite?

"Rock candy," answered Izzy slightly before her friend was finished asking. "I just love looking at it and touching it and the way it crunches up between your teeth! They don't seem to really pass it out for Nightmare Night all that much in Maretime Bay though. It's mostly toffee apples and caramelized carrots around here. Which is fine, but..."

"But you kind of miss the treats you got when you were trick or treating in Bridlewood." finished Pipp for her, understanding all too well how she felt. "I know what you mean. I guess they've never heard of candy corn outside of Zephyr Heights."

"Oh no, we have that, but it's not my favorite," admitted Izzy, making a face. "It tastes like earwax."

"How do you know what earwax tastes like?" asked Pipp, intrigued.

"Uh, actually it's not just the candy that's different," the Unicorn quickly changed the subject. She glanced around the room, making sure a certain somepony hadn't come back yet. "The decorations are sort of... Creepy? But creepy for the wrong reasons? Not 'spooky' creepy, more kind of 'insensitive' creepy. It makes me a little uncomfortable."

Pipp arced an eyebrow and point blank asked, "You're talking about the spooky Pegasus and Unicorn silhouettes aren't you?" Izzy just silently nodded. Pipp and Zipp had noticed them too, but just put them down to old habits dying hard. It wasn't that long ago that each of the three tribes had feared the others to some extent. There was bound to be some leftover rough edges to polish. Even so... "I get that they're traditional for Maretime Bay, and that a lot of Earth Ponies are still a little nervous about the idea of Pegasi and Unicorn's having our magic back, but you'd think they'd realize it's kind of in poor taste. I mean with us living here together with them and everything now, you'd think they'd realize we're not scary monsters out to melt their brains or whatever."

"I don't mind the ones in town so much, but..." Izzy trailed off. Then she pointed to one of the windows where two such spooky silhouettes still hung. To be fair, they were alongside a traditional silhouette of an ancient Alicorn known as Nightmare Moon that Sunny had put up, but that didn't make them any less unnerving. "Sleeping in the same room with them has been kind of rough."

"I totally understand. You know... Nightmare Night is almost over," Pipp said thoughtfully. She quickly spread her wings and rose from the floor to fly over to the window and the offending decorations. "Why don't we just go ahead and get rid of these? There's really no point having them hung up anymore anyways. Who, aside from us, will even see them way out here?"

"No don't!" exclaimed Izzy suddenly, loud enough to startle Pipp and stop her in the mid-peel of one of the decals. Her friend sounded truly panicked.

"Why not?" asked Pipp, confused. "I don't like them anymore than you do and I don't think Sunny will really care so long as we explain to her that they were bothering us."

"But that would be jinxy!" declared Izzy, as if the answer were obvious. "Nightmare Night has rules! Old rules meant to protect us ponies! There are things that can creep and crawl out of the dark on the spookiest night of the year, so we keep to the traditions passed down by our ancestors."

Understanding dawned on the young Pegasus Princess, "Oh, you mean like wear a costume, pass out candy, and never blow out a jack-o-lantern, right?"

"Yes, those are some of the rules. You should also always check your candy, always respect the dead, never intentionally hurt the innocent, and..." the Unicorn stood for emphasis, her horn lighting up as she used her sparkle to smooth the half peeled decal back against the pane of glass, "Never take down your decorations early!"

"It's just one decoration though! It's not like we're going to take down all of them. After all, these things are hardly traditional Nightmare Night decorations anyways! They're just painful reminders of the past when Earth Ponies, Pegasi, and Unicorns were still divided. Besides" Pipp put her hooves against the glass once more and peeled both the decals off in one single swift motion. "What's the worst that can happen?"

Somepony hurtled into the wall right beside Pipp, impacting right in the middle of the horror film projection! Blood splattered everywhere as both Pipp and Izzy screamed in shock and surprise! The pony had hit the wall with such force that cracks radiated outwards across the surface. While such an impact would probably have shattered every bone in their body, on top of that they had also already been severely mutilated. Gashes crisscrossed all over their body rendering them almost entirely unrecognizable as they slowly slid down, leaving a bloody smear down the wall, and landed on the floor with a sickening thud.

It was with deepening fright that Izzy and Pipp realized that this pony's flesh had been picked apart and partially eaten. Each limb, including their wings, were left hanging in useless crippled tatters. Thin bloody strips of meat and sinew just barely hid the exposed bone that gleamed white and yellow beneath. The victim's back looked like it had been broken and twisted around on itself like a pretzel. There were multiple shallow, oozing wounds all over their chest and abdomen as well. The ruin spread all the way from her throat down between her legs to their tail, which had been ripped out at the root! The flesh on the pony's head, which had been neatly peeled back, as if with a slow and steady knife exposing the raw red skull underneath, had only a few scraps of blue and pink mane still attached. The eye lids were left undisturbed and were closed tight, making the faceless abomination look almost peaceful, as if they were sleeping rather than lying broken and dead.

But that wasn't what caused Pipp's stomach to churn and open into a pit of horror. No, as severe as the damage was and as heartbreaking as it might have been to see such carnage wrought on some unknown pony, there was worse to come. For it was when the ghoulish cadaver of a pony opened her eyes and started to weakly move her unusable limbs that Pipp and Izzy both realized that they were not looking at a corpse at all!

This pony was still alive!

"Pipp... Pipp is that you?" the apparition asked weakly in a feminine voice that was ill matched to her blood dripping features.

In that moment, Pipp's terror truly blossomed, for she realized this grizzly marionette that only barely resembled a pony anymore was in fact her own sister. The pop-star opened her mouth to scream, but no sound would come. Her throat constricted shut on he vocal cords preventing more than a high hissing sound like steam escaping a tea kettle to escape from her mouth. Even with her voice gone she still tried to scream over and over again as her wings gave out and she fell to the floor beside her sister, bent double with grief and horror as she stared at the ruin that had been made of Zephyrina Storm.

Izzy bent double as well, although hers was more from hysterical nausea than grief. The Unicorn's gagging and dry heaving were the only sounds for the moment as she reeled and swayed, hooves trembling. At last she puked, a gout of vomit erupting from Izzy's throat which splattered the bedroom with a putrid mix of half digested gum drops, fruit, and yellow bile. The sour smelling stomach acid pooled in a watery little puddle that stretched towards Zipp's flayed body. It met and mixed into the blood that slowly oozed from the young mare's many injuries, forming a strange swirled pattern of filth on the floor. Another heave from Izzy and a fresh spray of throw-up doused both Pipp and Zipp before Izzy could turn her head away. Pipp groaned and desperately tore the sheets from her bed in a attempt to wipe the filth off of her big sister. All she succeeded in doing was smearing the mess even more, ruining her sheets and rubbing the vomit into Zipp's wounds. This just caused the already clearly agonized Pegasus to cry out in fresh pain at the touch of the cotton sheets and the burning bile.

"Don't... Don't bother with me." pleaded Zipp feebly. She tried to lift her forelimbs in protest but the tendons had been severed in multiple places, so all she could manage was to awkwardly wiggle them against Pipp's chest. "I'm done for... You have to run! Get out! Get help..."

"H-help...? Help? I need to get help?" Pipp croaked as her voice shakily returned to her, hot tears rolling down her chubby cheeks. She stared blankly at Zipp for a moment as if she were having a hard time processing her sister's words. Then something finally clicked and the younger Pegasi's eyes darted from her Zipp to her smart phone. "You're right, I need to get help! I have to call for help!"

Scooping up her fallen phone, Pipp tapped away frantically, trying to remember the number for 9-1-1 (it was nine-one-one). In that moment it did not occur to her that Hitch was the only law enforcement officer in Maretime Bay. She didn't think about how moments ago they were thinking that he might still be in the Brighthouse, just one floor below. She also had no way to know that trying to contact him would be a fruitless endeavor, given he lay very much dead in the kitchen bellow. Even were none of that the case, it wouldn't have mattered anyways. Once Pipp hit send the ringtone of the outgoing call only rang twice before it was suddenly cut off and replaced by the dial tone of a disconnected call.

"What? Did they hang up on me!?" the Pegasus princess cried out in disbelief, immediately trying the number again. This time the call went straight to what sounded like a pre-recorded message.

"The number you have dialed has been disconnected... Permanently! If you have reached this number in error, then hang up and wait to die. I'll be with you shortly." An ear-piercing giggle then erupted from the phone as the screen flashed rapidly through various pictures of Zipp being torn to shreds, photos taken with Zipp's phone by some horrifying candy coated mare that posed in several for a selfie that Pipp had never laid eyes on before. Then the screen went dark and unresponsive. There was a pop and a puff of smoke rose from the device.

Pipp's phone had died. Somehow her cell phone dying was even more dread inducing than what had befallen her sister.

"Izzy," Pipp looked her friend dead in the eye. "We have to get out of here! Now!"

But before either mare could act, they heard strange sounds rising from down stairs. It started quietly at first, but soon grew louder and clearer. It was a voice, a child like voice, singing, "♪~Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite!~♪" The phrase was repeated over and over, getting closer and louder as something slowly walked up the steps from below. Izzy and Pipp's ears pricked up as new voices joined in. "♪~Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite!~♪" That was Jazz! And Pipp could have sworn Rocky was singing with her too! "♪~Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite!~♪" and that was Posey! And Hitch! And Izzy could have sworn that other voice was Misty! What was going on!? "♪~Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite!~♪"

The dissolved into a roar composed of thousands of voices just as it reached its crescendo. Then a single, lone filly that was covered all in candy reached the top of the steps and grinned at the pair of speechless mares as she said in her own comparatively quiet voice "Trick or Treat!"

Saying that, the filly suddenly swelled in size, looming so tall that her writhing licorice mane brushed against the rafters! Mouths erupted all over her body, laughing and baring gnashing candy corn fangs! A particularly large mouth opened wide in the monstrosities belly to expose the half digested bones of chewed up ponies the monster had apparently already devoured earlier that evening. Sharp peppermint claws and peanut brittle blades erupted all over the terrors body as tendrils and tongues of half melted candy wriggled and writhed in the air. Sizzling saliva drizzled from the many slavering mouths as dozens of new eyes split open the creature's flesh and turned their baleful gaze towards Pipp Petals.

"-Eep-" A pathetic squeak was all that the Pegasus could manage as the wall of candied flesh rushed towards her, an unstoppable avalanche of sugar frosted agony.

Flesh ripped and bone twisted as Pipp was caught up by the abomination. Somehow she instinctively realized that she was about to be put through the exact same treatment that Zipp had received. This innate knowledge only caused her to wail in despair as tiny hooked claws, fangs, and needle like tendrils punctured her flesh over and over. Blood rained down from her ravaged body to splash over her ruined phone and the frozen upturned face of Izzy Moonbow. Her friend seemed to be transfixed, frozen with fear. The writhing pop-star tried to tell the Unicorn to run, to take the opportunity while this horrid thing was distracted with her, to get away. But then Pipp felt her spine crackle and pop like fireworks at one of her concerts as the fiend broke her back in multiple places and everything at last went black.

Izzy watched it all in mute terror, trembling like a leaf. The young mare tried to close her eyes against the ceaseless tide of terror, to spare herself the horrific image of her friend being flayed alive, however she was too afraid to look away. All she could do instead was mutter "Bing-bong-bing! Bing-bong! Bing-bong!"

The Unicorn twitched, trying to do the ritual that would ward off 'The Jinxies', but her limbs felt like pool noodles. It was like pins and needles were running up and down her legs and into the fear that gnawed away inside her belly. The young mare squinted her eyes tight shut at last and managed to block out the sounds of Pipp being eaten. Now Izzy started to dance, hopping from one hoof to the other.

"Bing-bong-bing! Bing-bong! Bing-bong!" Izzy cried out, louder and louder.

Now Izzy tried her best to focus. Tried to get her sparkle right. More than anything she wanted to use her Unicorn Magic to whisk herself and her friends away from this nightmare. There were stories of ancient Unicorn's that could use their sparkle to travel long distances in a blink of an eye. If ever there was a time to find out that were true, now was the time for Izzy to find out!

Suddenly there was silence.

Had she done it? Had the legends been true? Had Izzy used her magic to teleport them all away from this awful monster that had come out of the night to devour them all?

Hope flared and immediately died as Izzy opened her eyes. She was still inside the Crystal Brighthouse. Zipp still lay dying in a puddle of filth on the bedroom floor. What was left of Pipp hung upside down from the beasts massive jaws as it absentmindedly chewed on the Pegasi's spine, half her body already swallowed down the cannibal corpse's candied maw.

The monster was clearly confused by how Izzy had reacted to what was happening. It had killed many a mare and stallion this night and seen many ponies break down and lose their mind at the horror of their last moments, but the creature had never seen a pony lose their sanity quite in the same manner that this Unicorn clearly had. Letting her keep living like this would be cruel. With a thoughtful look the abomination considered it, then spat Pipp's remains out on the floor and moved towards Izzy, the baffled interest that had momentarily bloomed in its many glowing eyes swiftly replaced with malevolence and madness. More than that the thing exuded an unrelenting hunger, that surpassed even its hatred, as it gazed down on the last remaining morsel in the room.

"But I didn't break the rules!" Izzy protested, tears of both fear and frustration pouring from her eyes. "I didn't do anything wrong!"

That did not seem to matter in the least to the ferocious fiend as two clawed appendages grabbed Izzy and it shoved a long black and orange tongue down the Unicorn's throat. The gore slick appendage snaked down deep, and took hold of something far inside the Unicorn, then proceeded to pull Izzy's insides out! The young mare felt something huge coming up her throat, popping the bones in her neck one vertebrae at a time as the putrid sweet taste of the monsters cold slippery tongue was replaced with the warm copper tang of her own blood flooding her mouth. Her tear-stained cheeks bulged as rope after rope of pink entrails stretched between her lips like taffy, followed by the wet quivering sack that was her inside-out stomach, its contents long since purged. Last was the trailing tail of her esophagus which tore free with a painful rip from the meat at the back of throat.

Izzy’s tormentor was not done with her, however, as sharp hooked spider like appendages exploded from the things body and rammed themselves down the Unicorn's throat. There were so many of the long chitinous things that they broke Izzy's jaw with a loud crack as they forced her mouth open unnaturally wide. Each hook came back out dragging her other organs; Izzy's liver, kidneys, lungs, and her still beating heart all came into the light one by one. Crumpled into a hollowed out-pile of meat and bones, the neuron’s of Izzy’s brain miraculously still fired as she stared up at her killer. The amorphous candy beast held up the mare's glistening insides as if they were each a prized trophy. Then, with the contempt of a grubby child devouring sweetmeats, the fiend slurped the offal down with her many maws. Filthy juices sprayed everywhere as the organs burst between candy corn fangs and were rolled like a savory treat over taffy tongues. Blood and other viscera dripped from the monstrous mare’s mouths as she leered down at Izzy.

Even still, the monster was not yet satisfied.

Thick black and red licorice cords whipped down from the creature's head to invade Izzy's mouth one last time, opening her dislocated jaws almost comically wide. As the last of Izzy’s awareness began to fade, she could feel the tendrils slithering beneath her skin, through her meat, and down deep into her bones. She felt her legs snap as the iron grip of the tentacles tightened around them, then they crackled and popped so many times she lost count as her bones were pulverized into a fine powder. Izzy more heard than felt her body being folded up into itself, wadded into a ball of pain and suffering that was slowly being pulled forward through a mouth she could no longer close, even if she had enough awareness to want to. At last, mercifully, Izzy felt the cold embrace of death. It happened right as the wet wadded up mess that had been her body lodged itself between her teeth. Fortunately all her senses had long since shut down. All except her hearing.

As even that finally faded away, the last thing she heard was the mocking laughter of the Candy Mare.

Don't Hurt the Innocent

"If you have ghosts you have everything" - Roky Erickson

Water swirled down the drain as steam drifted up from the wash basin. Sunny Starscout just finished washing her hooves and dried them off as she smiles at her reflection in the mirror over the sink. She was still wearing her 'Nightmare Moon' costume and couldn't help but grin at how 'spooky' it made her look. A complete departure from her usual, well, sunny appearance.

It had truly been one of the best Nightmare Night's she had ever had the good fortune to experience. Sure she had Hitch and, to a lesser extent, Sprout to go trick or treating with when they were younger but it was just that much more fantastic having a larger group of friends to spend the holiday with. It magnified the 'spooktacular' fun to a degree she'd previously only ever dreamed of. It wasn't just sharing her traditions either but actually spending time with all her friends. both new and old, that really made it special. Pipp, Zipp, Izzy, Hitch, and even Sparky brought their own brand of fun to the evening. Of course Sunny was opposed to just about everything that Nightmare Moon had stood for, but Sunny almost wished that the night could last forever, just so the fun would never end. Sadly, in a few short hours it would all be over. Oh well, at least she'd get to spend what was left of the spookiest night of the year with her best friends!

Turning off the faucet, the young mare turned out the lights, and stepped back out onto the ground floor. Sunny had been in such a rush to get to the little fillies room earlier that she hadn't really taken the time to notice just how dark it was down here, as if every light in the house had gone out. Her hoof went to the light switch but that didn't change anything. The only illumination came from above in the form of the soft glow from the paused movie projection upstairs. The darkness suddenly exploded as a flash of orange lightning spider-webbed across the sky, lighting up the Crystal Brighthouse's windows. The crack of thunder that immediately followed let Sunny know that the brewing storm almost right on top of them! Ah, that must be it! The storm knocked out the power. Wait, no, then why is the projector still working upstairs? And how were the lights still on in the washroom?

There was another strobbing pulse of lightning as fat green claws of electricity raked across the sky outside, scarring an afterimage into the clouds. This time Sunny got a good look at her surroundings. An eerie green fog had enveloped the floor, rising to about her knees. It swished and swirled around her hooves in odd hypnotic patterns, cool to the touch. Okay how did I miss that? Low clouds don't usually gather inside a ponies home. Why does it seem to glow a soft green? What could have caused this? Is this some sort of prank? The mysteries seemed to just be piling one upon the other.

It dawned on Sunny that Nightmare Night wasn't quite over yet, and she knew that everypony was entitled to one good scare. Perhaps this really was some kind of prank organized by her friends? The blackout and the mist both were fairly uncanny, but a Unicorn's magic might flip the breakers without her ever having to come down stairs and a few agile Pegasi might corral some wayward storm clouds into an enclosed space to create a creepy fog. A mischievous Unicorn and her Pegasi pals working in tandem could probably cook all of this up in no time with a little patience and practice. Like, say, maybe in the time it took a particular unsuspecting Earth Pony named Sunny to get back from the bathroom?

Oh no, my friends are being way too obvious! Sunny thought. Still, it was sweet of them to keep up the Nightmare Night fun for Sunny's sake. After all, sometimes it was fun to be scared... Even if you knew there was really no reason to be. She'd need to pretend that she hadn't figured it out without letting them know she'd realized it was them causing all these strange phenomena. With that in mind Sunny slowly crept up the stairs, making sure to step in such a way for maximum creepy squeakiness to herald her coming, that way they could prepare for her return. It was hard to suppress a squeal of delight as she imagined the kind of surprises her new friends might have cooked up for her!

Just to make doubly sure Sunny didn't ruin any of their careful plans, she called out, "Hey guys, something strange is going on around here! There's this really creepy fog and a scary storm outside, and I can't seem to turn on any of the lights! It's so dark and spooky down here, I sure hope there isn't somepony hiding and waiting to jump out and frighten me!" Maybe she was laying it on a little thick, but it was hard to stay in character when she was grinning from ear to ear. She was really appreciating all the effort her friends must have gone through to create this unearthly atmosphere. "Are you all okay up there?"

As Sunny reached the landing and carefully cantered into the bedroom, she was more convinced than ever that she was the victim of a Nightmare Night prank, and it was a doozy that had been masterfully executed! Emphasis on the word 'executed'! There was blood sprayed everywhere in the room! The floor, the walls, and even the ceiling were all dripping with the crimson fluid. It was a huge mess and, considering they'd need to go to sleep soon, it struck Sunny as being kind of overkill. They'd gotten it all over the crystal elevator, their beds, and Sunny could see that several set of sheets were completely ruined. They would be up to the wee hours of the morning cleaning and doing laundry. Maybe since it was fake blood there was a quick and easy way to clean it up that Sunny just wasn't aware of?

An amazingly subtle touch was what had been done with the film projected onto the bedroom wall. Cracks radiated around the films grainy image as if the film were breaking through into their reality! A trail of fake blood leading down from the image to the floor gave the impression that something had actually drug its gore dripping carcass out of the movie itself! The horror film had been paused right at the scene where the slasher was revealed to be not just any ordinary pony, but actually one with supernatural power. The killer's incredible abilities, which included the power to seemingly teleport, mimic their victims voices, and cause an eye watering amount of damage with multiple weapons that seemed to come from nowhere, were all revealed to not be the result of poor editing or bad writing but rather instead a product of the killer’s uncanny paranormal nature!

The plot had been written in such a way the audience would take it for granted that the murderer was one of the final mares friends or an ex-lover in disguise, yet this had been nothing more than a clever ruse to distract from the villain actually being a ghostly entity. In reality the killer that stalked our heroes had no relation to them at all. In fact, they had merely been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had unfortunately attracted the killer's attention through pure happenstance. They were less an antagonist and more a force of nature. It seemed that in line with that the set up in the bedroom was meant to indicate that the killer had used her powers to escape from the film! As if they were the ones responsible for all the spooky goings-on in the Crystal Brighthouse! How clever!

It was going to take a lot of spackle to repair the wall, but sweet Celestia it was quite the effective set up!

Only, there was one problem. Sunny was pretty sure she was the only one that had seen ‘Nightmare Night’ before. Her friends weren't as into these old slasher movies as she was. Most of the films Sunny collected had come out before they had even been born. It didn't seem likely that they would have known about this films twist from their own experience. As far as Sunny knew she was the only pony who even knew this film was an option for their entertainment this evening.

As if to punctuate this realization the storm outside grew worse. Sunny could hear the wind howling as thick sheets of rain pounded the outside of the Crystal Brighthouse. It sounded like they were in for a real Nor'easter, rather than a simple little cloud burst stirred up by a couple of Pegasi. A shiver went down the young mare's spine as she began to think that her friends might not actually be responsible for everything she was seeing. Maybe they weren't accountable for any of it, in fact.

"Okay guys, I'm sorry to ruin the fun, but I think that's enough," hollered Sunny, still holding on to the hope that this was all just a joke. When there was no reply she instead tried, "I get it, you all went to a lot of effort to give me a Nightmare Night to remember, but enough is enough! You can come out now! It's not funny anymore!"

In the center of the second floor, situated between all the beds, there was a glass elevator that led up to the upper reaches of the Crystal Bright house. Sunny hadn't really paid to much attention to it, too distracted by the grizzly scene in the rest of the bedroom. All of the sudden though, the doors slid open with a soft hiss and more green fog spilled out from inside to flood the bedroom just like the downstairs. Sunny sighed with relief, thinking this was at last her friends making their appearance, but instead when she looked inside there was nopony there. Only four glowing jack-o-lanterns, each with a hauntingly familiar face carved into the orange rind.

Sunny didn't have long to consider what it was about those pumpkin faces that were so disturbing, before her attention was seized by another strange phenomena. The Prisbeam, which typically shone down from within the elevator shaft in rainbow hues, had completely changed. Sunny hadn't noticed before because the glass tube that housed the elevator had been so splattered with blood as to be almost opaque but now with the doors open she could see that the Prisbeam had gone from every color of the rainbow to a dull black and grey monochrome that was edged with a sinister crackling red sparkle. As far as they could tell the rainbow of light represented the flow of magic from ponies into the land of Equestria itself and back again. Something had clearly gone terribly wrong! This bizarre rainbow of darkness thrummed and pulsed weakly in a way that was painful to Sunny's eyes, causing strange images to blossom in her mind and dance across her vision.

There were flashes of an Earth Pony being pounded over and over into the jagged glass shards of a pair of broken mirrors. This was followed by the apparition of a mutilated mare crawling painfully across a blood stained floor to a phone that was just out of her reach, just before something ripped off her scalp and bit into her skull. The visions came faster, overlapping one another, and they were now joined by a series of auditory hallucinations as well. A symphony of screams - cries of anguish, despair, and pain - echoed inside of Sunny's head as she saw ponies chopped to pieces, ripped to shreds, ground to a paste, and devoured mercilessly by many unrelenting maws all lined with candy corn fangs. Sunny fell to the floor and added her own screams to the cacophonous noise as she clamped her hooves over her ears, trying to drown out the endless sounds of torment and horror. It felt as if she was forced to endure every act of savagery, every cruelty, with her own body. Her senses were flooded with sensations both unfamiliar and agonizing as she writhed and foamed at the mouth.

Sunny could perceive that what she was experiencing was not some trick or illusion, no, but instead an awful, terrible truth that was playing out even now in the streets of Maretime Bay. A cold hard truth that had been haunting the town as Nightmare Night had gone on. One that she and her friends had been blissfully unaware of until it was far too late!

At last, the manifestations slowed. Now Sunny was once again downstairs in her kitchen, watching a strange mare she had caught glances of in her other visions lean over a meal spread out on the table, eating it with gusto. Only instead of a warm home cooked meal being eaten it was Sunny's friend Hitch! The horrified young mare could see from how wide his eyes were that Hitch was still alive as the stranger ate him, but he was helpless against her, pinned down by so much cutlery stuck into his body that he could barely twitch! His mouth had been so jammed full of knives that his moans of pain and screams of terror only came out as a low gurgling hiss, silenced by the cold sharp metal.

The image shifted, although it was still the same scene. Hitch was now, mercifully, dead. Yet there was a new victim present to suffer, as Sunny watched helplessly as Zipp came into the room. It seemed to take the Pegasus a moment to process what she was seeing and in that moment of hesitation the horrific mare who had tortured and eaten Hitch got the drop on Zipp too! The brutality unleashed on the unwitting princess was made all the more unbearable as Sunny was forced to listen to the monstrous mare's girlish giggles as she sadistically entertained herself with Zipp's suffering.

Now Sunny was back in the bedroom, but there was no blood - Not yet. That did not last long as, unbelievably, Zipp made it upstairs still alive but mortally injured. It looked like the fiend had purposely thrown her up the stairs to act as both ultimatum and terroristic threat. Sunny realized neither Pipp nor Izzy were equipped to deal with such a shocking situation so suddenly being thrust on them, and so it was only with deepening despair that Sunny watched the shadowy monstrosity came up the stairs after them.

What happened next threatened to destroy Sunny's already reeling mind, The thing she had thought was merely a murderous pony warped and changed into a towering abomination that proceeded to tear into Pipp. Izzy watched on just as Sunny did, helpless to save her friends. Then the grotesque thing turned its baleful gaze on her and proceeded to violate her in the worst ways imaginable. Sunny realized that the same had apparently been done to almost every pony that had crossed this ghoul's path that evening. Maretime Bay had been saturated in blood and suffering and Sunny hadn't even noticed! The blood was not fake, neither was the fog, or the magical storm that raged above the town. All of it was being caused by this maniacal shape changing beast that laughed at the agony of any pony unfortunate enough to cross her path as it feasted upon their flesh as well as their fright!

The moment passed and the visions faded.

Sunny felt sore all over. Fresh blood dripped from her nose and ears, and her eyes were bloodshot with tears. She felt her gorge rise in her throat, but she fought down the urge to vomit. It would only delay what she had to do.

Wiping her bloody nose clean with the back of her hoof, Sunny stepped into the elevator and pushed the button that would take her up to the Gallery Deck and the Lantern Room. She didn't truly know what awaited her up there, but with every fiber of her being she knew that this was where she had to go.

As the elevator rose up the glass tube, Sunny looked out over Maretime Bay. The entire town was obscured by boiling green fog which unnaturally swirled around, making the buildings appear like decrepit tombstones in some long forgotten and neglected graveyard. The foreboding metaphor was not far from the truth, as Sunny realized that many of the homes had been turned into abattoirs and charnel houses this evening. Surprisingly, Sunny thought she could see figures slowly moving about in the misty streets, lit up by the occasional flash of lightning. They swayed slowly, sadly back and forth, as if listening to some sorrowful silent serenade.

As the elevator continued to ascend, Sunny began to hear the song too.

♪~Nightmare Night, what a fright, give me something sweet to bite~♪

At first she thought she was imagining it, but she dismissed that thought as the song grew louder. It was coming from above.

♪~Nightmare Night, what a fright, give me something sweet to bite~♪

She had heard this song before, being sung by many voices when she had been trapped in her visions. Now it was being sung by a lone despondent voice in a slow, soft monotone.

♪~Nightmare Night, what a fright, give me something sweet to bite~♪

At last the elevator doors slid open revealing the gallery deck. It was only a few steps up into the lantern room. When Sunny arrived there she realized things worse than she had thought. The Unity Crystals were still intact, but they were cracked, warped, and twisted. The artifacts were caught in a thick black and red web that filled the Lantern Room. The cord-like threads pulsed like a heart beat, each throb seeming to suck the magic from the crystals and further distort them. Each pulsation sent a stab pf pain directly into Sunny's mind like an ice-pick was being jammed into her skull. Yet as the pain grew stronger the pounding grew weaker and, with each passing moment, the Prisbeam grew darker. The light grew fuzzy and indistinct, as if it were on the verge of fading altogether.

♪~Nightmare Night, what a fright, give me something sweet to bite~♪

And there she was, the cause of it all.

The stranger who had invaded their home and their town was standing almost nonchalantly out on the Widow's Walk, looking out over the town. A freezing wind swirled around her, swishing and whirling her long black and red mane, but not a drop of rain dared to fall on her. This monster was the eye of the storm of madness and malice that had been unleashed on Maretime Bay. She was the abomination that spoke in the tones of a child and, though she could mimic many stolen voices, the voice she was using now was uniquely her own. There was only one name for her...

"Candy Mare..." whispered Sunny. Her visions had shown her more than just the ghouls actions, but had revealed her nature to Sunny as well. Sure enough, the thing in front of her only barely resembled a pony and was in actuality composed of a hodgepodge of sweets and treats smooshed together in a vaguely pony-like shape. Some of the confections that composed her were so ancient that they had long ago rotted or crystallized, and this rendered her all the more hideous as she turned to regard the little pony who had spoken her name. Sunny howled, "What did you do!?"

"You know what I did," replied the Candy Mare softly. "You saw everything. All that I've done tonight. All that I'm planning to do, if you don't find a way to stop me."

"Why? Why show me that!?" demanded Sunny, outraged. "You're just going to kill me anyways, right? That's your plan! So why make me suffer through seeing all of that pain and horror!?"

"So you would understand," answered the candified corpse as she smiled ever so sickeningly sweetly at Sunny. "So you would know exactly how grateful I am to you."

"Grateful!?" cried Sunny, aghast "You've killed and tortured so many innocents and you day you are grateful!?"

"None of you are innocent!" roared the Candy Mare spitefully, an aura of dark crimson power crackling over her form. Eyes and toothy mouths rippled through her candy flesh, but with apparent effort the beast restrained herself. More calmly, she continued, "Never the less, yes, I am grateful. I wanted to show you my gratitude."

"This is gratitude!? Hah!" cried Sunny, unable to suppress her tears as she laughed bitterly. "Gratitude for what!?"

"Why, for everything you and your friends have accomplished Sunny! For finding the Unity Crystals! For bringing Magic back to Equestria! For bringing me, back to Equestria! " exclaimed the monstrosity as she suddenly loomed impossibly tall over the Earth Pony, her pink and blue glowing eyes turning to fiery red pinpricks in empty black sockets. "Your disrespect for the dead, for the wishes of those that sealed away Equestria's magic, is what brought me back from beyond the veil! That and the magic you so brazenly unleashed are what have infused me with the power to be here tonight!"

"What?" asked Sunny, dumbfounded. That couldn't possibly be true. "We brought you back? There's no way! We couldn't possibly have brought you back!"

"Of course you did," replied the Candy Mare smugly, her gentle tone giving way to one that was remarkably spiteful. "Did you think when you brought magic back that you only brought back the good magic? Equestria's history is chock full of tales of dark sorcery, wicked despots, and evil creatures that haunted the shadows of this land. Did it never occur to you that by bringing magic back you might bring all those things back with it? Are you so naive to think that you could take the good without the bad?"

"No that's not what I mean!" roared Sunny, as she stamped her hooves in frustration. "There is no way we could have brought you, specifically, back! The Candy Mare isn't real! She was a cautionary tale to keep fillies and colts afraid of breaking their parents rules! Just an old pony tale told around campfires and in front of mirrors at sleepovers. The subject of cheesy slasher films and bad melodramas! She never actually existed!"

That admonishment seemed to give the Candy Mare pause. She seemed to shrink as the building aura of power around her faded and her eyes returned to their usual pink and blue state. She was remarkably fragile in that moment, like an ancient doll that had been left all alone in an attic somewhere to gather dust and cobwebs.

"Maybe you're right," the creature whispered wistfully. "Something has felt off all night. I don't seem to be entirely myself anymore, or at least not how I remember myself being. I am different from what I was before, changed in a way that makes me question why I'm doing any of this. Perhaps I was just a story in this Equestria. A simple nightmare that never truly existed."

Sunny almost felt pity for this broken creature. Almost but not quite. She could never forgive what had been done, but maybe this monster was a victim in her own way.

However, any burgeoning sympathy that Sunny might have been feeling was obliterated by what she said next.

"But does any of that really matter?" asked the Candy Mare as insanity and more than a little cruelty flooded back into her swirling eyes. A wide grin split her horrid face from ear to ear as she laughed in Sunny's face, "Waxing existential over the whys and wherefores is just a waste of time. Clearly all that evil magic went somewhere, and that somewhere is me! I am here now! I exist now! And I plan to keep it that way!"

"Not if I have anything to say about it!" swore Sunny as a golden pair of wings erupted from her back and a glowing horn of light sprouted from her forehead. The force of the Alicorn's very appearance seemed to push back against the darkness, opening a hole in the clouds above that allowed the moon to shine down around her. The Unity Crystals seemed to stabilize and the licorice web that held them started to shrivel at the touch of the golden glow. "For my friends! For Equestria! It's time to bring your story to an end!"

"Aww, what's the matter Sunny-bunny?" mocked the Candy Mare in Argyle's voice. In Sunny's father's voice! "Are you going to do your part, hoof to heart?"

Fury erupted inside of Sunny as she launched herself at the cannibalistic corpse in a blind rage. This monster defiling her father's memory was the last straw that pushed her from righteous anger to absolute fury! All she wanted was to wipe that terrible smile off of this horror's abominable face!

Tendrils and claws exploded towards Sunny, but her magic fried them to a cinder, causing them to shrivel and melt like a bowl of ice-cream under a burning noon day sun. The Candy Mare gave an unearthly screech and yowled more like a dying cat than a wounded pony. Then Sunny was on her, sending candy flying in every direction as she tore into the monster with her bare hooves as well as her magic! Melted chocolate and caramel splashed against the inside of the lighthouse's glass and bits and pieces of charred candy scattered out over the Widows Walk and sleeted down onto the ground below. The storm seemed to reach the pinnacle of its fury as the heavens broke, lashing the two opponents with wind and torrential rain as they fought!

When Sunny was done venting her wrath all that remained of the Candy Mare was her sugar skull, broken in several places so you could see through the hollow candy shell to the green gummy brains within, and a throbbing shriveled up piece of meat that was the only part of her that was not made of candy - her heart. Yet even as Sunny stood over her, huffing and puffing, as she tried to catch her breath she could see that the bits and pieces of candy that remained in the Lantern Room were wriggling their way back towards the desiccated heart. Before the Alicorn's eyes, pieces of the shattered sugar skull started to float back into place, and fresh lollipop eyes grew in its empty sockets as a new set of candy corn teeth erupted from the monstrosities jaws. The quickly regenerating severed head smiled savagely up at Sunny.

"Good try, for an amateur," the ghoul hissed, her voice a whisper, dry as leaves and crisp as an Autumn morning. "But you don't get to end my story. I get to end yours!"

"Guess again," Sunny's eyes suddenly shone with a golden inner light that was quite at odds with her Nightmare Moon costume. A beam of pure magic erupted from the Alicorn's horn and tour through the sugar skull, shattering it once more, and this time disintegrating its brains along with it. The beam of light shifted to engulf the ragged heart, charring it black, before Sunny smashed her hoof down upon it. The carbonized muscle crumbled to ash and was blown away by the howling storm winds. The pieces of candy still in the tower ceased their wiggling and fell still. Sunny lifted her hoof from the ashes, her hoof-print in stark relief against the cinders, and raised the hoof to her chest. "Like you said, I did my part. Hoof to heart."

With the threat of the Candy Mare gone, Sunny's wings and horn faded. She at last allowed herself to break down and, with a shuddering sob, curled up with her back against the candy gore smeared glass of the Brighthouse.

Sunny cried for everyone who had died; all of her friends, her family, and for the ponies that she had hardly even known who had simply been going about their lives in Maretime Bay. Ponies that Sunny would now never get the chance to know any better than that. She cried for all the pain and horror they had suffered and all that had been lost. She could only imagine what this would do to the relations between the pony tribes once word got out, but it seemed like it could only undo all the careful progress that they had made. The small faction of ponies that still grumbled against the return of magic as something dangerous would likely gain a significant number of new followers.

But more than anything, Sunny cried for herself. Not just for the fear and rage that the Candy Mare had sown in her heart, but for all the doubt that she had planted there too. Sunny had no way to know for sure if the things the Candy Mare said had been lies or the truth when she said it was Sunny and her friends fault for bringing her to Equestria. Even if it was a lie, it was true enough that Sunny hadn't really considered what dark forces she and her friends might unleash by trying to restore magic. In light of all of that, this was no victory or cause for celebration, but a grim warning of worse that might be yet to come. As such, she might find herself joining the anti-return of magic faction, as heartbreaking as that would be.

But Sunny was certain that she had not set out to disrespect the dead, as the Candy Mare had claimed. She had nothing but love and respect for the ponies who had come before her, and from what she had seen she believed that Twilight Sparkle and her friends had intended for magic to eventually return to Equestria, not stay sealed away forever. Sunny just had a better understanding now of what led to them making the difficult decision to lock magic away and hide Equestria from the rest of the world in the first place. That was, if threats like the Candy Mare were the alternative.

Still, if the option was between a divided Equestria without magic or a united one with magic, what choice had Sunny and her friends really had? Being in constant fear and misery were not how ponies were meant to live. Sunny had just wanted everyone to be happy and to be friends again. Was that so wrong? But if it was not, then why had her childhood dream twisted into such a terrible nightmare? Why had so many ponies suffered and died as a result?

As Sunny's small frame continued to shake, racked with grief, she didn't notice that the storm outside had not abated entirely. Indeed, it seemed to be steadily growing worse instead, with the fog thickening and rising up to completely engulf the Crystal Brighthouse in its billowing cloak. Sunny didn't see how the shriveled tendrils of licorice that bound the Unity Crystals swelled, tightened their grip, and burrowed still deeper into the magical stones. Not until it was too late did Sunny notice anything was wrong at all.

Then the Prisbeam went out and all light in the Crystal Brighthouse went with it.

"Sunny..."

In the darkness, a pained whisper drifted down from above. It didn't sound like the Candy Mare, but it did sound familiar.

"Who's that?" she asked, blurry eyes unable to focus for all the tears she had shed. "Who's there?"

"SunNy... We'Re... SsSo...GlaD... tO ssSeE YoU..."

Sunny got to her hooves, her braid swirling about as her wings and horn manifested in a golden blaze once more, "I asked who is there! Answer me!"

However, even as her magical wings and horn came into being they began to dim and fizzle, before finally fading away in a shower of sparks. The only illumination in the room was the strange pallid glow of the fog and the occasional flash of crackling lightning. By that fitful light, something that squelched wetly lowered itself from the ceiling. There was the sound of wings flapping limply as well as something soft and damp churning about to the accompaniment of the a ceaseless snapping of bone. The licorice webbing dissolved as the now useless Unity Crystals fell to shatter on the floor. At the same time something that blotted out the sky hung dripping just above Sunny's head.

"We...mIsssSEd...yOu..."

Eight eye sockets suddenly blazed with a deep crimson light that shone like a beacon in the dark. The ruddy glow filled the Brighthouse and radiated so brightly that the beams cast themselves out over the sea and the town far below. Sunny's mind reeled and her stomach churned as she looked up at the thing that was at one and the same time an unthinkable atrocity as well as a strangely compelling work of art. It was a twisted facsimile of the Unity Crystals made out of flesh and bone. But not just any flesh or bones, but rather those of her friends!

Sunny could pick out each one of them. In the center was Hitch, scrunched down into a hideous boneless ball of meat that slithered and seethed, twisting and rotating constantly in place in the position the Earth Pony Crystal would be. Zipp and Pipp were wrapped around either side of him, mouths sewn shut with pulsing licorice tendrils, their bodies melded together by their twisted legs and their backs bent painfully so that their wings stretched out to either side in a representation of the Pegasus Crystal. Lastly, crowning the bizarre corpse sculpture in the place of the Unicorn Crystal was Izzy's decapitated head, grotesquely bloated and misshapen. Izzy's own boneless body had been jammed inside of her painfully distended jaws, leaving her mouth constantly masticating her own flesh. Red and black licorice writhed like maggots over, in, and through the living obscenity; bestowing upon it the unnatural life and vitality that thrummed through her friends dead flesh.

"JoiN...Us...SsSunNy...ToGeTHeR wE wIlL bRiNG MaGiC tO ThE WoRLd!"

Their voices in her head were strange and hypnotic. Sunny could not stop listening. She could not move or look away. As the young mare watched in astonishment, this violation of her friends quickly candified, a thick crystalline sugar spreading over their conjoined form. From this semi-translucent candy coating new eyes and slavering mouths erupted, jagged rock candy teeth gnashing together hungrily as the monstrosity loomed over Sunny. The licorice tendrils which had previously held the creature together now shot out, wrapping themselves around Sunny's limbs, torso, and throat. There was no hope of escape as Sunny felt herself lifted bodily into the air. With a sound like cracking ribs and ripping flesh, a huge mouth opened in the very center of the obscene candy facsimile of the Unity Crystal, revealing a heart shaped hollow within that was wreathed around in candy fangs that spun like the teeth of a chainsaw. Sunny heard her own voice whispering from the void within.

"This is where you belong. This is where you have always belonged. At the heart of your friends, at the heart of magic, at the heart of everything! This is how it ends, and begins..."

"No, this isn't right!" protested Sunny as she struggled weakly, her last spark of defiance flaring against the dark magic that clouded her mind. "This isn't where I belong! Is it...?"

Whether it was or was not no longer mattered, Sunny's last words were lost to the sound of the enormous jaws slamming shut around her suspended form. A band-saw whine filled the tower as fresh blood and flakes of meat sprayed in every direction from the constructs makeshift mouth. Both the grinding and cutting noises as well as Sunny's screams were muffled. They went on for some time as the mare was contorted and compressed smaller and smaller to fit the heart shaped hole in the center of the monster. As the last of her life's-blood trickled out of the seams of the artificial Candy Crystals, the thing finally swallowed. The composite creature moaned with pleasure in five voices, like a party of starving people might after enjoying a meal long in the coming.

"Mmm...DeLiCioUsss! We...wAnT...MoRe..."

The crimson glow that emanated from the Crystal Brighthouse swept out over the horizon, searching for that next meal. Far below, the candy ghouls that were all that remained of the citizens of of Maretime Bay, began the slow and somber march inland towards Zephyr Heights and Bridlewood. The Autumn chill and the pallid green fog following with them.

Respect the Dead

"A perfect monster has no end" - Roky Erickson

Darkness reigned in the halls of Opaline's castle. It had done so for centuries now, ever since the Fire Alicorn had taken up residence within. She preferred it that way, it made it so what little magic remained to her could shine all the brighter when she chose to invoke it. Not that there was much left these days - just the occasional spark where, before there had been a roaring inferno. Opaline possessed just enough power that she could peer inside of Twilight's little bubble and watch the pathetic ponies going about their drab little lives. The Alicorn had grown sick of watching them laugh and play on this Nightmare Night, so now she simply sat upon her throne, one hoof tapping impatiently as she awaited Misty's return.

Truth be told there was really no good reason for Opaline to wait up for her minion. She highly doubted there would be anything new to report and, given how she had blown her chance to get her hooves on that baby dragon earlier, it was also unlikely that Misty would bring her anything she actually wanted - let alone needed - as a gift to mitigate her failure. Of course, it wasn't that Opaline was in any way concerned for the wayward Unicorn. Perish the thought! The once and future Queen of Equestria didn't give a flying feather what happened to one so insignificant pony. But Misty was her one connection to the rest of Equestria at the moment, since Opaline herself was kept out by that infernal barrier Twilight had set up when she had sealed away the magic. If something had happened to Misty that would be a major setback to her plans. Yes, sad as it was, Opaline had to rely on Misty to move forward with her designs to claim all the magic once again and take her rightful place as ruler of all ponydom.

Yes, that was it. There was no simpering sentimentality about her worries that kept Opaline from getting her beauty sleep. She wasn't anxious about why Misty was so late getting home for her own sake! Nor was she distressed about it! No! On the contrary, she was furious! How dare Misty potentially put all her plans at risk and make her fear all that work she had done raising, manipulating, and brainwashing the little foal would have gone to waste! That was why the Alicorn was sitting alone in her dark throne room, staring at the door to her chamber. If... No, when Misty finally deigned to show herself, Opaline would be there ready and waiting to reprimand her for her tardiness. She couldn't wait to give that useless little failure a piece of her mind!

That was assuming Misty did make it home, of course.

Opaline bit her lower lip, her angry demeanor cracking for a moment as a few sweat drops appeared on her brow, betraying her true feelings.

Feelings that evaporated as her chamber door swung open with a whoosh of howling wind, pushing with it a scattering of dry autumn leaves and a billowing cloud of fog that subsumed the throne room. Silhouetted in the doorway by a flash of lightning stood a mare, the storm following in her wake.

"Ah, finally, you've returned Misty," started Opaline putting on her haughtiest facade, "It's about time! Do you have any idea how long you left me waiting for you to..."

The Alicorn's words trailed off as Misty staggered through the door and just barely managed to shut it against the raging tempest. The Unicorn was soaked to the bone and there were leaves and twigs all tangled in her frizzy blue hair. Drenched as she was, she shivered and her entire body shook with a wracking cough that made her frame quake from horn to hoof. After the coughing fit subsided, Misty turned a weak gaze to her mistress, her face pale and stiff with barely suppressed misery. "I'm so... So terribly, sorry, Opaline... please forgi-" Another round of coughing interrupted Misty's apology.

"Why, Misty, whatever's the matter?" asked Opaline, a note of genuine concern creeping into her voice for a split second before she corrected herself. "I hope you haven't brought some sort of disease to my castle from those vile backwards ponies!"

"No, I... Don't think so. I tried to get back as soon as I could, but this fog swallowed Maretime Bay whole. It was so strange. I kept getting turned around..." Misty's voice was hollow and distant, as if she were still lost and trying to find her way. She staggered towards Opaline as she continued haltingly. "It was everywhere! It was like it was following me, wherever I went! At first I thought I was alone - but then I noticed there were other ponies standing around in the fog. They were wearing these strange costumes, like they had been ripped apart and... And half-eaten... But they were also covered in candy? Like the parts of them that were missing had been replaced by sweets. Why were they all wearing the same Nightmare Night costume?"

"Misty, calm down. You're speaking nonsense!" chided Opaline, rising from her throne, meeting Misty half way across the room. She held Misty to keep the pitifully weakling from falling over, not to give her any sort of comfort or support, or anything. "Now tell me slowly, what happened?"

The frail young mare looked up into Opaline's face as fat tears wobbled at the corners of her eyes, "They were following me! I know they were! And they kept singing this weird song all slow and whispery 'Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite' like that, over and over! So I started to run! But when I did my insides started to hurt. It was like something was clawing me up on the inside. But I knew I couldn't stop! I had to make it back to you! Otherwise... Otherwise I don't know what might have happened!"

Misty's eyelids began to flutter and she started to go limp against Opaline. This wouldn't do. The Alicorn Queen shook her minion. She wasn't allowed to pass out before she'd finished her report. "Wake up! No sleeping on the job Misty! Tell me how you got away. Or... Were you followed!?"

"No, no! I would never lead them back to you Opaline," assured Misty, her eyes open but the light in them fading fast, her irises turning grey and milky. "I ran despite the pain. I cut through the forest. But then there was suddenly a thunderstorm. Or more like a hurricane, rain falling in sheets and gale force winds lashing at me. It felt like the branches of every tree I passed were reaching out to grab me, clawing at me, all while the pain inside grew worse and worse. It was like a nightmare!" Misty choked back a sob, her tears running down her cheeks. "I don't remember when it finally stopped, but I made it out. I made it through the storm! But when the castle finally came into sight there was this weird flash of red on the horizon and the storm seemed to suddenly surge after me. It was as if something had been holding the storm back but then it was suddenly gone! I don't know what it means, but that horrible green fog was getting pushed in front of it and I swear that I heard laughter and singing on the wind!"

As if to punctuate her words there was an explosion of thunder that shook the entire castle, lightning illuminating the stained glass windows to cast bizarre shadows across the throne room. Opaline's ears pricked up and she sniffed the air, goose flesh rippled over her body as she felt the tell-tale tingle of magic in the air! There was no mistaking it! The question was, was it merely the product of this sudden storm or was it some sort of spell? Had magic somehow spilled through the barrier, carried by the squall? This would require further investigation.

Opaline let Misty fall like a wet sack of potatoes to the floor and turned her attention to the scrying circle in the center of the throne room. A sparkle of magic jumped from her horn and glimmered around the circumference as a hazy image of Maretime Bay shimmered to life. Sure enough, just as Misty had said the town was engulfed in a dense glowing mist that unfortunately obscured most of her vision. The atmosphere above was what caught her attention, as it was swirling with storm clouds which all seemed to be centered around the Crystal Brighthouse. As usual, Opaline's spell sight did not seem to extend within the rebuilt lighthouse itself, but it didn't need to for her to mark the dramatic change to the home of those who had brought magic back to Equestria. The Prisbeam had gone out and in it's place was now a sinister scarlet glow that swept across the land like the searching eye of some eldrich daemon. As she continued to gaze at the image, the beam appeared to focus on her, as if it could somehow see her through her own scrying spell! She quickly dispelled the image, just in case. She didn't want anypony spying on her, after all!

None the less, a fiendish grin spread across Opaline's face. This was marvelous! She didn't know what had happened, but everything that she could see seemed to point to just one thing. Something had gone horribly wrong with the Unity Crystals and Twilight's insipid plans had been dashed to pieces! From the looks of it, magic was running wild in Equestria and the barrier that had kept Opaline apart from her birthright for so long was either gone, or weakened to the point it might as well be!

This was cause for celebration!

"Oh Misty, I've no idea what you've done, but this is glorious!" gloated Opaline, exulting in the moment. "The magic is free once more! Free for the taking! My taking! It will be mine again, and I will take my rightful place as absolute monarch of Equestri-"

A gout of blood burst from Misty's mouth with such force that it sprayed up to the top of the stained glass windows behind Opaline's throne and trickled down their surface, staining them scarlet. The throne itself was likewise drizzled in ichor, ruining its finish as the crimson mist hissed in the torches that blazed on either side of the royal seat. A frightened moan gurgled up through the blood that still steadily seeped through Misty's clenched teeth, her eyes bloodshot and wide with shock.

"Misty!" cried out Opaline aghast, her moment of triumph forgotten. "What's the meaning of this!?"

"I don't know! It hurts," the Unicorn groaned as she clutched her stomach. Misty started to panic. "It hurts, it hurts, it hurts,, it hurts!" The young mare clenched her jaw so hard that her teeth started to crack from the pressure. Even so, the steady flow of blood that spilled from between her teeth continued to drip and spread across the floor.

Opaline made to move towards her, but drew up short mid-way. What if Misty really had contracted some sort of illness? What if it was contagious? Or worse, what if it was some sort of curse? One last fail-safe measure which that insufferable Twilight Sparkle had put in place just in case things didn't go her way? Could that selfish little pest really have been so petty? A disease might be cured but a curse could not so easily be thwarted unless one knew its nature and the proper counter spell. Even if Twilight were not the responsible party, there was clearly something very wrong with Misty, Was Opaline willing to risk herself now when victory was finally within her grasp when there might very well be nothing that she could do to save Misty? Now, after all these years when it seemed all her dreams of revenge were on the cusp of finally coming true, why should she risk everything for one middling peon?

Misty turned pleading, miserable eyes streaming with tears up to her mistress. Hope and fear warred in the young mare's gaze. Opaline had raised her, cared for her, Surely she could save her, right? There was no way that Opaline would just abandon her, was there?

"Opaline... Please! Make it stop!" she screamed, bending double as something began to visibly move beneath her skin, distorting and distending her belly. She fell to floor to roll back and forth in her own blood, more vital fluid leaking from inside her all the while. Her voice rose as her agony increased, "MAKE IT STOP! MAKE IT STOP!! MAKE IT STOP! PLEASE JUST MAKE IT STOP!"

A fresh, almost volcanic eruption of bloody vomit silenced Misty's screams as it burst forth from her throat and rained down over the entire throne room. It was a ridiculous amount of blood that no single pony could possibly contain. No doubt about it then, this was a curse! An extremely vicious one at that!

Inside of the writhing young mare's belly a huge lump rose and began to work its way up her body, snapping her bones one by one as it stretched out her rib-cage. Misty's throat began to bulge outward as whatever the mass was moved into her mouth. The Unicorn's teeth went flying in a spray of gory giblets as a pair of slick hooves forcibly split open her lips from the inside! Misty blinked rapidly, her mind clearly overwhelmed with shock and pain as her jaw bones snapped and long candy coated limbs pushed their way out from inside of her. Her jaw dislocated completely, hanging slack as the rest of her head flopped backwards and a new shiny wet skull poked its way out of the ruin that had been her throat like a gleaming wet bubble. The rest of Misty's body split apart then, popping like an overly engorged water balloon stretched far past it's limits. There was a splash as fluids and entrails splattered everything in the room, including Opaline, as a shiny new pony stood where Misty had once been.

"Wish granted!" crowed the Candy Mare as she stretched to her full height, dripping bits and pieces of Misty from her glossy candy shell. "I made it stop!"

"You... You killed Misty!" cried Opaline in disbelief..

"Oh, it was the least I could do!" the reborn candy creature chortled sinisterly, rolling her shoulders and her head around with several loud pops. "Ending her suffering was such a paltry boon to grant after she had done me the huge favor of getting me past that pesky barrier! I've never done well with confinement. I do so detest it, don't you?"

Opaline was still in shock, "I suppose so. I've been locked out here for so long I guess I hadn't really given it much thought."

"Ah, but you can relate, can't you? Being trapped out here on your own, in your little freedom, while everypony else is locked inside?" crooned the Candy Mare, licking the pieces of Unicorn flesh from her hooves, apparently relishing the taste as she swallowed the viscera down. "The solitude alone would have been more than enough to drive most mad. That's why you took Misty in, wasn't it? To alleviate the mind numbing boredom and soul crushing loneliness, and to stave off the insanity they can bring?"

"What? O-of course not!" the Alicorn blustered, her wings ruffling in affront. "Misty was just a tool to be used! She never meant anything more to me! And she was a useless tool at that! Always stumbling and flailing about, always second guessing herself and... And questioning things... Obsessing over cutie marks and getting curious about other ponies..."

"Riiiight - Good then! So she won't be missed!" declared the Candy Mare gleefully. "Then I suppose I don't owe you any apology for ending her. I guess that concludes our business then! I suppose shall be on my way. Lots of world out there still to see and so many lives to devour!"

Opaline stood speechless as the Candy Mare turned away from her and tracked bloody hoof-prints across her floor towards the door. The magic she could sense roiling off of this creature was staggering. If Opaline was a furnace then this creature was a wildfire! Whatever this 'candied mare' truly was, it had clearly been twisted and distorted by layer upon layer of dark magic all coiled together like a tangled spool of razor ribbon. Not exactly the tidiest spell-work, but still not something you'd want to idly bump into. Whatever this pony was made of it was far more than just candy and even if Opaline had wanted to punish her, for the effrontery of killing her minion and defiling her property, she didn't think she was strong enough to do anything about it. Not yet anyway.

However, let her have a little time to absorb the ambient magic in the air... Just a little bit of time and the Fire Alicorn would roast her alive for what she had done!

"Oh, but you know..." the Candy Mare said thoughtfully, casting a casual glance over her shoulder. "It's a poor craftsmare that blames her tools."

"Oh really?" The gall of this impudent thing! How dare she talk down to her! It took every ounce of Opaline's self control to keep from snapping back, but she was too shrewd to be tempted into behaving openly aggressively. Just let her do and say whatever she wanted for the moment and then crush her like an ant when she could.

"Oh yes, you really should have more respect for your tools. And for the dead," continued the candy construct with a creepy cadaverous smirk. It was made all the more stark by the soft glow of a jack-o-lantern that seemed to have suddenly appeared, cradled in the crook of her forelimb. "Isn't that right, Misty?"

"What? Aghh!" pain shot up through Opaline's body as something bit deep into her hind-leg.

Opaline had been so focused on the Candy Mare that she hadn't noticed the pieces of Misty had started to slither back towards one another, growing and changing as they went. Now the Unicorn's semi-candified corpse had pieced itself back together and risen behind Opaline, reformed with jagged blue lollipop teeth that poked up from her still bleeding gums to bury themselves in her former mistress's flesh! A harsh whiny burst from Opaline's throat as she kicked hard, dislodging her former protege from her body, but the damage had already been done! The Alicorn could sense the curse that the bite had conveyed to her flesh as soon as the shards of candy had punctured her skin!

A wave of nausea surged through Opaline as she realized she was now condemned to suffer the same fate that Misty and, with dawning horror she realized, every other pony in Maretime Bay must have succumbed to! As if called into reality by her epiphany, the chamber door was once more blown open by the storm. In billowed the glowing mist that lay beyond, curling around the Candy Mare and surging towards Opaline. With it came a legion of undead ponies, shuffling and moaning, the pain and hungry gazes of the candy ghouls more than apparent! They surrounded Opaline on all sides, their bodies twisted and deformed by dark magic sweets, transformed into slavering engines of destruction! Opaline's mind cracked as the ponies she had for so long dismissed as beneath her closed in around her in a tightening noose of doom!

The Alicorn could only howl mindlessly as she was swarmed by the hungry dead and dragged down by their weight, teeth snapping and hooves gouging at her regal body. Opaline's skin tore and her bones broke as her flesh was ravaged by the many gnashing fangs of the drooling ghouls. Her screams carried on, echoing over and over as she was slowly eaten alive.

The Candy Mare couldn't help but laugh. The irony was just too delicious. The mare who had dreamed of putting herself above everypony else had ended up being drug down and crushed beneath the heaving masses! To aim so high and to end so low, left writhing helplessly in her own blood before her own desecrated throne! It was just too sublime! The perfect end to the perfect Nightmare Night!

"Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite!" The Candy Mare sang merrily, twirling around on her hind hooves as she lifted Misty's jack-o-lantern high into the air, Opaline's blood spraying across the orange gourd. "If you don't, better beware, hungry comes the Candy Mare!”

"No! Not like this! This can't be how it ends!" howled Opaline, her mutilated form rising defiantly from the swarming dead. "If these are to be my final moments, then I'm taking you with me!"

Screaming at the top of her lungs, an aura of cerulean flames erupted from the mangled Alicorn. The candle flame inside of the jack-o-lantern the Candy Mare held guttered and went out. The flickering pumpkin light drifted out of the now hollow gourd and towards Opaline. As the fire drew closer it merged with the Alicorn's flames, making them grow hotter and brighter still. The effect was immediate as a wave of fire exploded around Opaline to push back the swarming candy ghouls.

However, that was not to be the end of it. All over the distant town of Maretime Bay other candle flames drifted into the air from other jack-o-lantern's and sleeted through the sky like falling stars towards Opaline's dark castle. The candy ghoul's within both the town and the castle all fell limp and inert, as if the strings that puppeteered them like marionettes had been snapped. Opaline on the other hoof only rose higher into the air as her form bacame enshrouded in a roaring torrent of an orange inferno, the magic pumpkin lights infusing her very being with even more power! In that moment Opaline appeared almost like the mythical phoenix, wings spread wide as the blaze changed hue from orange to an intense purple that seemed to focus on her horn. This, then, was the power of a dying Fire Alicorn, her magic reaching critical mass just as she reached death's door.

"Burn. Burn higher! BURN THE FLAMES HIGHER AND HIGHER!~" roared Opaline as the living conflagration within her consumed her from the inside out, causing her hair and skin to peel away as smoke as heat rippled outwards in unstoppable waves from her core. All her resentment and wrath was at last released in an instant of molten fury! The dark castle was in it's final moments blazing brighter than a pyre on bonfire night. "BURN THE FLAMES NEVER TO EXPIRE!"

"Famous last words..." chuckled the Candy Mare to herself as her candy body bubbled and steamed, flash caramelizing in an instant.

The resulting explosion completely leveled the dark castle and the cliff-side it clung to. It could be seen shining like a beacon all the way from Maretime Bay, as a great black mushroom cloud punched a hole through storm and high into the upper atmosphere. As if in response, the storm broke, dissipating entirely in a matter of moments. It was as if it had never truly existed. The softly glowing fog was likewise swept away by a wall of boiling hot wind that singed the ground it swept over, igniting fires wherever it touched something dry enough to burn. The setting moon bore witness to the eruption of a rapidly spreading firestorm which replaced the thunderstorm, sending columns of thick smoke to choke out the first rays of dawn.

The sun rose like a molten ball of lead, its rays barely able to penetrate the thick pall of smoke that hung over the land. The ponies of Bridlewood and Zephyr Heights both couldn't help but notice how dark the morning was, and they would come to investigate the source of the smoke that stretched from horizon to horizon. They would find Maretime Bay a smoldering, charred ruin. The fire that had consumed the town seemed to have spread down from the northwest, but the flames still burned hot in that direction and it would take days for it to burn itself out.

In the meantime they searched for survivors, Unicorn's sifting through the rubble with their magic while Pegasi scouted from above. But of anypony still living there was no sign. It was almost as if the ponies of Maretime Bay had not even tried to escape the blaze, but merely laid down and waited for the conflagration to consume them. Such was the only explanation for the condition of the few charred skeletons found beneath the rubble, as well as those that were simply out in the streets, clenched tightly into fetal positions from what must have been the hellish heat of the inferno. What little consolation the ponies of Equestria could take from that was that it seemed that those who had died this way had at least died quickly, laid low before they could react.

Or at least, that was what the ponies assumed until they found what awaited them in the Crystal Brighthouse. The structure was one of the few to remain un-burned, and so a handful of ponies including Queen Haven and Alphabittle had rushed there first thing to check on the ponies that dwelled there. What they discovered inside would cause a second fire to be lit that day, and no pony was allowed to try and put out the flames out. The fire was allowed to burn on so that it could consume that house and the dark secrets it held. Those few ponies who had bore unfortunate witness to what was within were sworn to secrecy. They would have to silently suffer with those memories and the nightmares it brought them for the rest of their lives, and such knowledge left its mark on one and all who knew the truth. Queen Haven in particular, it was said, had aged dramatically after the experience as if she had suffer ed the effects of several decades in a few moments. No pony was allowed to mention the royal Princess's or speculate about their fate in her presence.

For everypony else, there was the lie that Sunny and her friends had perished in the same fire that had claimed the rest of Maretime Bay. In time, both they and the Unity Crystals would be forgotten. Magic would remain in Equestria, but the bubble that sealed it away from the rest of the world would not. It would not be long before the ponies of Equestria would have new challenges to contend with, and the mystery of what caused the fire that wiped out an entire settlement on one tragic Nightmare Night would become nothing more than a cautionary tale told around campfires. A myth to frighten fillies and colts before they were tucked into their sleeping bags. The subject of disaster films and melodramas.

But had the fires not blazed so hotly that day, then the ponies of Equestria might have found the smoking crater where Opaline's castle once stood and discovered answers to that mystery as well as many others.

Instead its stones, reduced to molten slag and hot ashes, remained untouched under the slate grey sky. At the epicenter of the destruction something that might have been a throne still stood, though it was now leaning crooked and crumbling in the dim light. Surrounding it were several skeletonized ponies, all of which - Unicorn, Pegasi, Earth Pony, and Alicorn alike - had been reduced to blackened bones crackling and popping with hot embers that flaked away from there charred surfaces. Despite this grizzly image there was a lightness to the air, as if something foul and oppressive that had hung about the place had at last been cleared away. Cleansed by the firestorm unleashed by Opaline's final act upon this earth.

There was no one there that day to feel the heat drop as the bronze disc of the sun became obscured by the thickening haze. No one to smell that sweet, sour wind that pushed aside the smoke and stench of charred flesh to flood the blast crater instead with sugary sweet foulness. No one to see a few charred leaves skitter over the blackened stones to reveal a patch of dark earth in the cracks of the broken foundation. No one to taste the cloying tang on the air as a handful of candies, scorched but still shiny, rolled gently from underneath a pile of skeletal remains to fall through the cracks and settle on the loamy soil below. There was no one to hear the fading whisper of a song, "Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite..." as the pieces of candy started to burrow down into the earth - Seeds sown in expectation of a Nightmare Night yet to come.

Instead there was the cold Autumn wind whistling mournfully, carrying the haunting echo of a child's laughter along with the ashes blown from the scorched bones of Maretime Bay.

Pass Out Candy

"The beast is coming to your house. The beast is coming to your town" - Roky Erickson

Posey shut her front door and slumped down with her back against it, her head in her hooves.

This had turned out to be one heck of a Nightmare Night. Trick-or-treaters, one after the other, had banged on her door demanding candy apples, carrots, and other treats even before the sun had really had a chance to set. Which would have been fine if that had been anything other than just the first trickle of ‘treaters’ she’d end up having to deal with, but that was far from the reality of the situation. Instead Posey had gotten pounded by one large group of ponies after another, many of whom she suspected were well past the 'sell by date' for tricking and/or treating. But what could she do? It was tradition to pass out treats on Nightmare Night and as much as Posey would have rather drawn the curtains and curled up with a good book she had instead made one emergency trip after another to the corner store to restock treats for the endless flow of would be tricksters.

Perhaps another pony would have found the whole situation more amusing and less challenging, but even Posey had to admit that she was sometimes a little bit… High strung. It wasn't her fault that it didn’t take much to shock or surprise her, she had just been born with very little patience and a short temper to go along with it. Well, maybe that was somewhat her fault, but it wasn't like she didn't make an effort! Of course she enjoyed a harmless Nightmare Night prank as much as the next pony, but Jump scare after jump scare quickly grew tiring, and everypony thought they were a comedian! It made events like Nightmare Night a trial even when the flow of pranksters was light.

The real low point of the evening had been when she opened her door after hearing a knock to find no trick-or-treaters what-so-ever on her doorstep. Then all of a sudden Sunny and her entire crew of friends suddenly jumped out at her! Posey screamed and tossed her treats into the air before running back inside her house, slamming the door behind her. Then she had heard a loud belch followed by an unmistakable poof; One that had become all too common when Sparky, the baby dragon with the magic flame breath, was around. Sure enough, the little menace had managed to turn Posey's prized flowers into pasta! Pasta of all things! The Sunny bunch at least had the good grace, or perhaps the common sense, to make themselves scarce before the Earth Pony could really lose it but sadly her blood pressure was already up and her face crimson with indignation by the time they ran off into the night.

Posey's head was pounding as she massaged her temples with her hooves, trying to calm herself down. There finally seemed to be a lull in the night's guests after that, and it had come none too soon. The bowl of treats by the door was empty again and the young mare didn't have it in her to run to the store to refill it even one more time. What Posey felt like she needed right now was a nice warm bath, maybe a little nip of cider, and a good long nap! Maybe one that would last until tomorrow afternoon! That was why, as she slowly got to her hooves and began to walk away from her front door, that the knock that immediately followed was so very unwelcome. The sound vibrated in her head, making it impossible to ignore her holiday caller though she desperately wished to. Instead, putting on a brave face and a smile she didn’t really feel, Posey opened her door for like the hundredth time that evening and greeted... An empty street?

Oh no, not again!

The mare quickly darted her vision from side to side, making sure nopony was hiding where she couldn’t see them, but there was no sign of any pony at all as far as she could tell. There was just her jack-o-lantern spilling its merry pumpkin light out into the darkness. The night was calm and a little chill. A full moon hung low over the horizon, the phantoms of clouds drifting in across the bay sweeping past it giving the round orb the illusion of motion. Thick banks of fog were beginning to roll into town, glowing hauntingly beneath the moonlight. A common sight this time of year as warm air off the bay met with the Autumn wind blowing down the plains from the distant mountains. There was something else that rode with the breeze though... A slight cloying scent, strangely sweet, yet it spoke of corruption underneath like rancid meat. Living in a seaside town Posey was used to the occasional fishy smell at low tide, but this was something else entirely.

It was something far more putrid.

Something revoltingly close by.

Posey held a hoof to her muzzle to block her nostrils.

The bushes shook gently in the night breeze and Posey coughed in disgust. The bushes! Those stupid pasta flowers that Sparky had made must be going bad already! She should probably go ahead and clean them up now or she was going to wake up to the reek of rotting pasta in the morning. The mare went back inside to get a trash bag and some gloves for her hooves. It took her a moment to find everything she needed, rummaging around under her kitchen sink, and she was too distracted to notice that she had left her front door wide open. Ghostly wisps of fog drifted inside, along with the abattoir stench, spilling over the threshold and into the Earth Pony's home.

When Posey went back to her porch, irritated but determined to get to work, the mare made a surprising discovery as somepony had already done her work for her! The mare's bushes were completely pasta free. It was a weird sort of trick to pull, but the she wasn’t about to complain if some trick-or-treaters had decided to clean up her hedgerow. Or maybe it had been some particularly smelly passing wild animal? Posey didn't care to speculate.

Now seemed as good a time as any to call it a night before any more strange occurrences had a chance to happen. Posey turned around and made the universal sign of ‘No More Candy’ by flipping off her porch light and closing her curtains. Thinking that she probably should have done that hours ago Posey put her gloves and the unopened trash bag into the empty treat bowl and, closing and locking her front door behind her, went back to her kitchen to put everything away.

However, when she trotted back into her kitchen she was in for a bit of a shock. There, over at the sink, was a mare she had never seen before pouring herself a tall glass of water! Posey watched mesmerized as the stranger brought the clean glass to her lips and took several long, slow, gulps of cool clear water before setting it back down on the counter with every sign of refreshment - even giving a little satisfied sigh. The rim of the glass was now coated in an oozing black filth that Posey could smell from across the room, the same substance which the mare couldn’t help but notice was now smeared tracked all across her floors! The source of the gross slime seemed to be the strangers costume and the candy bucket by her side, which steadily drizzled the foul substance with her every movement.

“What are you doing!?” Posey exploded, her annoyance with her night boiling over into pure rage at the gall of this filthy pony's invasion of her home!

The home invader seemed nonplussed by Posey's displeasure and merely languidly turned towards her, licking her lips with a long black and orange striped tongue. She rumbled, “Thirsty,” in a predatory fashion, as if that was all the explanation that was needed. The stranger's stomach then audibly growled. "Mmm... Hungry!" The costumed mare then picked up their skull shaped bucket and thrust it in Posey’s direction. A more grotesque thing the young mare had never seen in her life as it had been fashioned to appear like a decapitated pony’s head, complete with meat and sinew still clinging to the bone! The 'handle' of the bucket was made to appear to be composed of the severed heads braided mane. The hollowed out skull had a few pieces of candy stuck inside it, but mostly what it contained was more of the fetid dark substance that oozed from the hollow eye-sockets and dripped onto the kitchen floor as the invader shook the pail up and down eagerly. The only further elaboration from the unwelcome guest was for her to croak, “Trick or treat!”

“I’m all out of candy!” Posey angrily retorted, her eyes locked onto the candy bucket as her face twisted into a mask of revulsion.

Was this thing really just some tasteless prop? The smell that came off of it, the stink of rotten meat and charnel putrescent, made it seem all too real. What was worse was that despite the skull lacking any skin, Posey thought she found the things features familiar. As if the ruined face may have once belonged to somepony she had seen before, perhaps even one she saw from day to day around Maretime Bay. The face being almost recognizable made the fake decapitated head all the more unsettlingly realistic. It was fake, right?

That thought opened a pit of fear deep in Posey's stomach and quickly turned her anger into apprehension. The young mare realized now might be a good time to exercise some series restraint and reign in her temper. Biting off this pony's head might conceivably result in her losing her own. The last thing she wanted to do was antagonize the disturbing individual standing before her. “There’s some left over pie in the cold box though," she offered, "If you want a slice...”

“A slice... A slice?” echoed the intruder quizzically in a voice that was disturbingly similar to Posey’s own. The uninvited guest then started to giggle, high and sharp and girlish. She laughed as if Posey had said the funniest thing in the world in a voice that sounded far too young to be coming out of so large a pony. She chanted manically, “A slice, slice, slice, SLICE, SLICE!”

As the stranger continued to babble it finally clicked that the sickly sweet rotting smell that the Earth Pony had noticed before had not been coming from her bushes, but rather from this deranged pony who must have been hiding in them! Had the 'pasta' bushes attracted her to Posey's abode, or was it something else? Had she been the one to knock earlier? What exactly was she after? Panic rose inside of Posey and the young mare's eyes were already darting for the front door as the stranger suddenly snatched a butcher knife from the rack by the sink and lunged after her!

Posey screamed and ran for the front door, but the intruder was right behind her, whipping the knife blade back and forth across her back and flanks! The cuts weren’t deep as the knife was actually a little dull, but each shallow slice caused a fresh panicked scream to come bursting from Posey’s throat! After what felt like ages but must have been only a few short seconds, the young mare reached the front door and fumbled ineffectively with the lock. By then Posey's hooves were already getting slick from her own blood and shaking from fright, so struggle as she might she couldn’t get enough of a grip to unbolt the door and free herself. It didn’t help that the maniacal pony was so unrelenting in her assault, slashing Posey open repeatedly again and again as she laughed and laughed like a demented child.

Not getting anywhere with the door, Posey finally gave up and instead ran for the stairs. It wasn't the smart thing to do and she knew it, but she just wanted to get away from the barrage of cuts so she could buy herself some time to think. If Posey could just get a little bit of time, and a little distance, then maybe she could come up with another way to escaping her tormentor! The Earth Pony's adrenaline was pumping now and, though she realized there was nowhere she could go once she made it up the stairs but to her bedroom, there was the slim hope that she might be able to slam her bedroom door in the crazy mare’s wild-eyed face if she ran fast enough. At least that would stop the terrible bite of the erratically slashing knife into her body, if only for a few moments.

Panic and blood loss made climbing the stairs feel like climbing Mount Everhoof. Posey's legs felt like lead weights as she stomped up each step in what felt like the slow motion reserved for dreams. It was like one of those nightmares where you are being chased by a monster but the hallway or stairs you're running down seem to stretch on infinity. The sadistic mad mare stayed on Posey too, slicing at her legs and underbelly from below. The deranged intruder must have found a sharper part of the blade because the knife dug in deeply now, cutting one of the tendons in Posey’s hind legs, sending her sprawling as her hoof flopped uselessly at the end of her leg. Though she screamed all the louder, the young mare didn’t let this new pain stop her. Instead, with a burst of terror fueled speed, Posey leaped up the last few steps to the top of the landing. Her momentum carried her forward and she slammed into the wall at the top of the stairs, knocking down several paintings and a potted plant in her haste. Even so, she had reached the upper level! Gathering her strength in her one remaining good hind leg, Posey hurled herself into the relative safety of her bedroom, and tried to kick the door closed behind her.

Unfortunately, with her tendon cut, Posey was not as fast as she had hoped she would be and all she managed to do was to collapse on the floor before her tormentor caught up to her. Her attempt to kick the door shut in her attackers face only led to her uninvited guest having to briefly push the door aside as if it was no impediment at all. Then the vicious stranger leaped on top of Posey, her deranged smile wide as the young mare shrieked afresh at the horror of her inability to escape what was coming next. The home invader seemed to be done playing games now as she stabbed Posey repeatedly in the stomach, neck, and back - poking holes all over the poor pony's prone form.

Posey writhed and bucked but couldn’t seem to shake the reeking, cackling creature off of her. The EArth Pony couldn’t run, so now the only choice that remained was for her to fight!

Slamming one of her front hooves into the carpet, a flash of green magic surged through Posey and into the floor. In mere seconds a thick green vine broke through the floorboards and smashed into her attackers giggling face, slamming her into the nightstand by her bed, which toppled over under the invader's weight. Posey grunted in momentary triumph, until out of nowhere a hammer came down on the limb that had performed her magic! The hoof capsule shattered to pieces as blow after blow rained down on the appendage! A squeal of surprise and pain ripped its way out of Posey’s already raw throat. She was screaming so hard now that all that came out was a hoarse wheeze as, one by one, her attacker pinned down her legs and pounded her hooves to powder with a sledge hammer that had seemingly come from nowhere!

Little sparkles of green magic glinted ineffectively from the useless fragments of her hooves before sputtering out entirely. Posey held up the bloody, shaking stumps before her shocked face, the soft tissue that made up the pulpy insides of her hooves jiggling like jelly as she sobbed and silently screamed over and over. The cruel stranger merely mimicked Posey's motions, dropping her hammer for a moment so she could point and laugh at her suffering. Earth Pony’s had only just gained their new plant magic recently after living without it for thousands of years, and now this monster that ridiculed her loss had found a way to take it all away from her with nothing more than sick sadism and a handy blunt instrument.

Posey's torturer seemed to at last be satisfied with the damage that they had inflicted. The invader danced away, still laughing and mimicking the way Posey dangled her ruined hooves as she stared at them in dismay. Giggling maddly, the ghoulish mare turned away from her victim and left the room, the sound of her own hooves clattering down the stairs giving Posey no relief from the agony she had been left in. This clearly was not mercy. Was her malefactors intent to leave her broken to slowly bleed to death, anguished and alone?

As she pondered this, Posey he heard it. -chirp-

Where was that noise coming from? -chirp-

There it was again! -chirp-

It was Posey’s cell phone! -chirp-

She was getting a text message!

Gritting her teeth, every movement bringing a fresh wave of excruciating pain, Posey began to slowly crawl across her bedroom floor to the fallen night stand. Her wounds stung as they twisted and stretched with each motion, blood oozing from her limbs that felt like they were on fire. The pulpy remains of her hooves smeared into the carpet and felt like they were being rolled in acid dipped needles or a nest of fire ants. Even so, Posey bore it all with only the occasional whimper, trying not to give away how close she was to salvation in case her attacker were still nearby. Ruined though her hooves were, if she could just get to her cell phone then maybe, just maybe she could call for help!

For the second time in as many moments, something that might have only taken seconds felt like it stretched out for an eternity as the mutilated mare drug her broken body the last few inches to her bed side. With movements rendered clumsy by her flayed limbs, Posey reached the table, huffy and puffing with exertion. Weak as a kitten, the mare groaned as she pushed aside the splintered wood and the broken glass from the lamp, trying to find her phone among the debris. The splinters and shards were the least of her pains, but having to dig through this last obstacle to her potential deliverance made the pricks and stings all the worse for the impediment they posed to her only chance to save herself!

At last, success!

Posey's raw bleeding nerves brushed against the cool smoothness of her phones plastic shell. The flayed mare fumbled with the touch screen, trying to unlock it, smearing blood and viscera all over the smooth screen. The background was a picture of her mother, who had apparently been the one texting, likely to check up on her daughter as she had done every night since Posey had moved out to live on her own. The image of a mother coated in her daughters gore was gut wrenching and brought fresh tears to her eyes, but Posey had no time to think about that just now. She had to call for help!

The injured mare had just managed to hit send when a shadow fell over her. Though it was painful to do so, Posey turned away from the phone to glance over her shoulder and moaned in abject despair at what she saw. Her attacker had returned, loaded down with supplies she could only assume were meant to bring her fresh pain and misery. Apparently the murderous mare had raided the kitchen as in one hoof she now held a familiar cylinder, the container of Posey’s artisanal pink sea salt. Clenched in her grinning maw there was also a nearly full bottle of malt vinegar and slung over her back was a plastic bag filled with fresh lemons.

Renewed shrieks erupted unbidden from Posey’s throat as the intruder sprinkled the salt over her ragged form. She then reached down and really ground the coarse pink crystals hard into her open wounds. Without pausing, she uncorked the bottle of vinegar and upended it, emptying its contents so that the writhing mare was drenched in the stinging acidic juices which also seeped into her cuts. The sadistic pony made sure to grind more hooves-full of the salt into the young mare's wounds, making sure each gouge received attention. Posey's entire body seized and convulsed with the pain as she thrashed uncontrollably.

What came next happened so fast it made Posey gasp with shock, as she felt a blade much sharper than her kitchen knife slice across her forehead and around the circumference of her skull. Grabbing a hoof-full of her mane, the stranger grinned at Posey, lapping up the tears sliding down her cheeks. Then in one horrible wrenching motion she pulled her, and Posey felt her scalp rip free from her head! More salt and vinegar were then splashed liberally on the freshly exposed meat underneath, mixing with the hot blood that now drizzled down the poor mare’s face to mix with her tears.

As she looked up into the face of her killer, Posey at last noticed that she wasn’t a pony at all. Sharp candy corn fangs stretched in a sick smile beneath pink and blue lollipop eyes swirled with madness. A mane of black and red licorice thrashed like a nest of vipers as the creature removed the ‘pony costume’ it had been wearing the whole time to reveal the glistening candy body that had been hidden underneath.

A candy mare…? the young mare wondered in disbelief as the monsters dripping maw came closer and closer to her face. Her killer's thick black and orange tongue lashed out again to lick the bloody tears from Posey's face.

“Mmm… Hungry,” the sick freak muttered with every sign of satisfaction at the taste, like a gourmand savoring a particularly savory feast.

As if to literally add insult to injury, the monster then squeezed a wedge of lemon into the prone mare’s eyes, spurting the burning citric acid right into her pupils. Posey squealed, blinking furiously to try and clear away the stinging juices, but to no avail. Blinded as she was Posey couldn’t see what came next, but she could certainly feel it and hear it as there was a loud… CRUNCH

The young mare would never have to worry about having any migraines or headaches ever again. The Candy Mare had bitten off the top of Posey’s head, leaving only a portion of her brain still sitting in the 'bowl' of her breached skull. The Earth Pony’s body went slack with the sudden absence of a mind to control her limbs and, with the relaxing of muscles the damage done to her previously had caused, her skin to split and ruptured like that of a burst sausage. A gluttonous grin spread between the abominations bulging cheeks as she crunched bone with relish, bits of white and grey brain matter dribbling down her chin, before swallowing down the salt and vinegar flavored treat with gusto. Grinning, the Candy Mare bent down to take another bite.

Meanwhile, across town at the home of Posey’s parents, her father couldn’t help but notice that his wife paled as she listened intently to whoever was on the other end of the line. The phone call had come fairly late, but then they had been trying to reach their daughter to wish her a happy Nightmare Night since earlier in the evening. It wouldn't surprise him if his busy girl had waited until right before she was about to turn in for the night to respond to her mothers texts. It seemed to be getting harder and harder to keep in touch these days.

He had expected his wife to be thrilled to finally hear back from their little Posey, yet as the matronly mare ended the call, her hooves were visibly shaking and her eyes were distant. She sat, quiet and fidgeting for a moment, clearly anxious about something. Her husband could tell that something was amiss. He glanced over the top of his newspaper and asked “Is everything alright dear?”

Posey's mother didn’t answer right away, uncertainty scrawled across her features. Then she seemed to make up her mind and smiled weakly,”Yes dear, it's fine. Just a prank call. It’s shocking what the younger generation does for fun these days…” Yes a prank, it had to be. There was no way she’d just listened in on her daughters last anguished cries or the sounds of some thing crunching up her bones with all the delight of a fat filly gorging themselves on a pumpkin pie. Things that horrible just didn't happen in their quiet little town.

At least, she didn't think they did...

As she trailed off her partner simply grunted his agreement, dismissing the event as some sort of wrong number or childish prank, his mind already back on his paper. Neither pony paid any attention to the thick fog bank gathering outside their windows or the sweet, sour wind that whistled mournfully in the bare trees outside. There was no way they could know that the entire town of Maretime Bay was slowly being engulfed by a glowing green mist. If either of the elder ponies noticed that the laughter of the trick-or-treaters had suddenly grown strange and distant, neither said a word to the other about it.

They just sat quietly, each lost in their private thoughts, as the storm gathered.