Twilight awoke in the middle of the night. It wasn't a sudden awakening, like jolting upright from a nightmare in a cold sweat and gasping for air. Nor was it a calm alertness, as if she had been resting her eyes rather than deep in the warmth of pleasant dreams. Instead, she awoke slowly and groggily, her mind clinging to the dreams it was raised out of.
She had no desire to leave her bed, still wrapped snugly up in her covers. As such, she yawned, kept her eyes closed, and tried to drift off to sleep. It would not come easily.
Far off in the castle, faint but clear enough to draw her attention, was a sound: a steady knocking, like pipes in the walls. Eyes still shut, she wondered if Spike had awoken and gone to fetch a glass of water. Then some portion of her sleep-addled mind remembered that he was away on a trip for at least the next two days.
Sighing, she made a mental note to call a plumber the next day and then thought better of it and made an actual note. Even with her eyes closed, it was easy to grab her bedside quill and scribble the word "plumber" down on a piece of parchment.
Eventually, sleep came to her again, but the knocking continued. Twilight mused that it had a rhythm, almost like a gentle walk.
When Twilight awoke in the morning, there was no knocking of pipes in the castle. She wondered if her mind had simply imagined it in a haze of half-alertness, but still called the plumber. It was a few hours later, enough time to finish some paperwork and plan out the next two weeks’ schedules, when he arrived.
“You sure you heard knockin’?” Pipe Wrench asked, head buried into a section of crystal wall that Twilight had dislodged for him. He reached his hoof up towards the closest section of water pipes, feeling for any moisture on the walls.
“It was certainly like that,” Twilight said, shuffling a hoof against the floor. “I know it might be nothing, but… it was like thunk, thunk.” She imitated the noise as best she could.
After a few more moments of reaching and scanning his headlamp over the pipes, Pipe Wrench leaned out of the wall and rubbed his chin. “Well, I didn’t see any leakage, here or in the last four spots. Could be the town source had a pressure problem, but I haven’t gotten any news about it.” He offered a smile, and started walking down the hallway towards the stairwell that led to the basement of the castle. Twilight replaced the crystal wall segment, sealed it, and followed after him.
“Not to worry though, Princess. I know you might worry about wastin’ my time or something, but it’s best to be safe about these things. Longer you take to address the problem, the worse it can get.” Pipe Wrench trotted down the basement stairwell, Twilight staying close behind. Only his headlamp and Twilight’s hornlight lit the dark stairwell past the first few feet. “We’ll just shut off the main line into the castle and run everything for a bit. That should get whatever caused it cleared out. Easy enough for you to do if it happens again, too.”
Once they were at the bottom of the stairwell, Twilight flicked the light switch, illuminating the wide open area. There were a number of storage boxes littered about the room, though none were stacked in front of the more important electrical panels and pipes. Pipe Wrench shut the main supply valve off with a simple twist and then helped Twilight run the faucets throughout the castle until they were dry. Once that was done, he turned the main line back on slowly.
By the time they were finished it was late in the afternoon. Twilight handed Pipe Wrench a light bundle of bits—his fee plus a little extra for coming on short notice—and he accepted it kindly. A lingering thought finally surfaced in Twilight’s mind as he went to leave. “The knocking… does it usually happen when the water isn’t running?”
Pipe Wrench turned around. “Oh, sure, sometimes. I mean, water is always circulatin’ in the system. Can’t just have the pressure be low, or you’d have to wait minutes for a faucet to start runnin’. It was probably just some air buildin’ up. Could be a leak somewhere I couldn’t check, so do keep an eye out for any water damage.”
Twilight felt at ease and smiled. “I will. Thank you again.”
Just like in the morning, Twilight didn’t hear any knocking from the pipes the rest of the day and went to sleep soundly.
That night, Twilight awoke slowly again. There was no faint sound of knocking pipes to keep her awake, but she still had trouble sleeping. Tossing and turning, readjusting her covers and pillows, and even counting sheep didn't seem to help. Eventually, between sighs and grunts of frustration, she felt her mouth grow dry. “If I just get out of bed,” she mumbled to herself, eyes still shut, “I know it’ll be harder to sleep, but… Maybe some water will help. I can even grab a book on the way.”
With another deep sigh and her mind made up, Twilight threw the warm covers off of herself and slid out of bed. Her vision was blurry, eyes still half-lidded from sleep, but she walked towards the door. Then, she bumped head first into something. She took a step back, one of her forehooves rubbing at her head before drifting down to rub the sleep out of her eyes.
When she opened them, she was in the middle of her dark, shadowed room. There was nothing in front of her. She looked to her left and right, and then down at the floor to see if she’d knocked something over, but there wasn’t anything within a few feet of her. The dull pain in her forehead continued to throb. “Did I… maybe I was still more asleep than I thought,” she muttered to herself.
Twilight looked to the door on her right, still securely shut. “Just get some water and get back to sleep, Twilight,” she said as she trotted towards it. As she did, a cloud blocking the moon moved out of its way, and gentle silver moonlight began to fill her room through the balcony window.
Twilight slowed and then stopped. She tilted her head slightly to the side, eyes drifting to the right towards the shadow that mimicked her movements and then back to the still, dim shadow cast on the door.
She blinked once, twice, and the shadow didn’t move or change. She felt her legs tense, her wings fidget, and she slowly turned around. Taking slow breaths, she fought not to shut her eyes as one lingered on the dim shadow drifting towards the edge of her vision. Just as it was about to leave her sight, she jolted the rest of the way around and turned to put her back to the door.
The room was empty. On the floor, all she could see was the dim outlines cast by her curtains, swaying ever slightly in the still air of the room. There was no figure to cast the shadow between her and the window. She was alone. She repeated the facts to herself in her mind, but she still felt her heart hammering in her chest.
Breathing slowly in and out of her nostrils, she backed up towards the door. “There’s nothing there. Calm down, Twilight. Just relax.” She turned towards the door quickly and found only her own shadow projected against it. Her hooves shaking slightly, she opened the door and went out into the hallway.
The hall was much darker than her room, but a sliver of moonlight shone into it through the open doorway. She left it open and lit her horn, stepping out into the hallway. Soft, purple light shone on her path to the closest bathroom, but only reached far enough to barely illuminate the walls and doors on either side of her. Each were shut tightly, and only her own hoof steps echoed through the empty halls. Still, Twilight looked to her left and right over and over again, until she finally reached the bathroom.
She zipped inside and shut the door behind her. Not wanting to strain her eyes, she kept her horn lit, poured herself a glass of water, drank it, poured another, drank it, and then took the third back with her. As she shut the faucet off, she paused, the faint sound of knocking pipes coming up from a lower floor.
“It’s just a leak. You can find it tomorrow, Twilight,” she told herself, taking a deep breath and then trotting back to her room. She didn’t stop to get a book on the way, settling instead for the journal she kept in her bedroom. The knocking continued through the night, and Twilight fell asleep slowly, trying not to focus on it.
As her eyes grew heavier and her grip on the journal slipped away, she thought of how the rhythm was different this time. It was like quick trotting.
The next morning, the knocking was gone. Twilight checked every inch of every pipe in the castle, twice. She found not a drop of water leaking or any sign of water damage. After a shower, she shut off the main valve and drained the water by running the faucets, saving a bit of it to drink. With the water off all night, it would hopefully be fixed by the morning, and it certainly wouldn’t keep her up.
Twilight kept a few glasses of water at her bedside, along with two books to read. She fell asleep calmly with a book in her lap, just as the moon began to rise.
Twilight awoke in the middle of the night once more. This time, however, it was with a jolt. Her wings spread out as she bolted upright, knocking one glass of water onto the floor with a splash and shatter. She screamed from the noise, but kept still, one hoof on her chest above her pounding heart. Looking over the edge of the bed, she saw the glint of broken glass in the faint moonlight. “Shoot.”
She pushed her covers away and hovered out of bed, flying a few feet towards the door before setting herself down. “I need to clean this up before I forget. I just know I will, too.” As her heart calmed and her breath grew steadier, she placed her hoof on her eyes and rubbed the last fragments of sleep away from them. Her horn began to light, picking up the shattered bits of glass into a pile.
Out of the corner of her eye, in the center of the room, she saw a figure. Her horn dimmed, the glass dropping in a neat pile with a calm series of clinks, and Twilight turned her head towards it. There was nothing. The curtains swayed gently in the still air of the room, and wispy clouds began to clear from in front of the moon.
“Who’s there?” Twilight called out, walking towards the center of the room, where she was certain that whatever she saw, then and yesterday, had to be. Her mind, despite her alert eyes and pounding heart, must still have been clogged by the fog of imagined nightmares and phantoms. Twilight lit her horn, her eyes starting to shut as she reached for the light switch with her magic. In the moment it took to flip it up, her vision blurry, she was terrifyingly certain in what she saw.
There was a face inches away from her own. What features it may have had were impossible to say, but she knew that it was there.
As the lights came on, and Twilight’s magic faded, she kept her eyes shut. There was no noise except her own sharp, ragged breaths. When she opened her eyes to the glaring light, the last dark mires of sleep burned from her mind, she was alone again.
Then, she heard the knocking. It was faint, but not coming from one of the lower floors. Instead, she heard it from down the hallway. Twilight turned towards the door, reaching for the doorknob with her hoof, but stopped. The knocking was moving, growing louder and closer, and Twilight was certain it wasn’t in the walls. It was against the floor, and the rhythm was steady, a four-beat pattern that she couldn’t mistake for anything but a slow walk. Both of her hooves hit the door as she leaned her weight into it, her breath caught in her throat as she listened.
With every second, the knocking came closer and closer and, however impossible, Twilight felt it pounding louder and louder against her ears, to the point that she flattened her ears in a futile attempt to deafen it. The knocking, the steps, reached her door and then passed it. Their volume faded, and Twilight raised her ears again. Eventually, the knocking stopped entirely.
Finally, Twilight took the chance to breathe again, a shaky gasp of air that filled her lungs. Her hoof reached for the doorknob and slowly turned it. Its creak cut through the silence as she pulled it away and peered into the dark hallway. It looked no different, aside from the shadows that seemed to encroach on the light shining through the cracked doorway. Twilight saw her own shadow amidst the light. And then another, larger one blocked it out.
Twilight bolted into the hallway. She ran in the opposite direction that the knocking had gone, and flicked every light switch on the way not with her magic, but with her hoof. With every switch, she looked behind her at the empty, bright hallway, and saw that there was nothing there. Still, she continued to run. She darted into the bathroom at the end of the hall, and shut and locked the door behind her.
Only her rapid, shallow breaths broke the silence, until she called out through the door, “Look, Pinkie, Dash… it has to be one of you! You got a good laugh, yeah? I’m totally scared. Just… come out and I won’t be more mad than I already am.” No reply came and Twilight was left alone with her racing heart and raving mind.
She doubted what she had seen on some level, and even what she had heard, but another part of her mind didn’t doubt her senses. It couldn’t have been hallucinations or waking nightmares. It had to be real, but if it was, how could she have not seen it?
The knocking began again, but this time it was everywhere. Down the hall, within the walls, on the door, rattling it against the frame. Its rhythm was completely abandoned, nothing more than a cacophonous din of noise. Twilight flattened her ears and covered them with her hooves as she sank down to the floor against the door.
“Just go away! Just go away! Just go away!” she repeated against the onslaught, trying desperately to drown it out. It wasn’t going away. It would never go away unless she confronted it, and she knew exactly how to. The only time she’d really seen it, when she was certain it was not some imagined phantom. The one thing she avoided doing when confronted by it, afraid of what it would reveal. She steeled herself, stood up, and lit her horn to unlock the door and throw it open. A blast of magic flew from her horn and sailed into the hallway.
“Whoa! What was that about, Twilight?!” Spike called out, ducking to the floor. The bolt of magic hit the ceiling, dislodging a chunk of crystal in a burst of energy. There was nothing shown in the burst of magic light, aside from the shaking dragonling before Twilight.
Twilight’s chest heaved as she panted, her body shaking. She wouldn’t let her eyes close, and only pulled them away from the empty hallway behind Spike when he nudged her leg. Swallowing a lump in her throat, Twilight sighed and looked down at him. “Just… you scared me, Spike. Were you… Did you just get back?”
Spike slowly stood up, looking over his shoulder at the shattered crystal in the hallway. “Scared you? I thought someone had broken in with all the lights turned on in the middle of the night. Yeah, I had a late train in. There were some crazy delays or I would have been back before sundown.” He looked Twilight up and down, noticing her shaking limbs despite the smile she tried to keep. “Did you have a nightmare or something?”
Twilight took a few deep breaths, the rattling of her bones fading with each. “Yes, something like that. Glad to have you back, Spike.” Twilight pulled him into a gentle hug, her pounding heart finally calming. “Would you… mind sleeping in my room tonight? It might help me get some rest.”
Spike rolled his eyes as he hugged Twilight back. “If you need a brave, strong dragon watching over you, I guess.”
The two laughed and walked back to Twilight’s room. With a bit of effort, Twilight got back to sleep. The next morning, she had to sheepishly explain why the water was off when Spike attempted to take a bath.
The knocking of pipes didn’t come back the next night, or the night after that, or the week after that, or the month after that. Eventually, Twilight stopped laying awake in bed at night waiting for it. However, she never used her magic at night in the castle, to light her way or even just to flip a switch.
