The Claw

by GallaicusBrony92

Rating: mature
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Death, Original Character, Mystery, Horror, Starlight Glimmer, Violence
Length: 2378

That claw was disgusting. Why did that griffon keep it?

When Starlight started to investigate about that strange griffon who moved to Ponyville she never imagined what she would end up discovering. That trohpy was absolutely grotesque, but that wasn't the only reason she disliked it. There was something wrong about that claw...

This is an adaptation of the tale of mistery and suspense The Hand by the french author of the XIX century Guy de Maupassant. It's my second entry for the Halloween in April Horror Contest, of The Barcast

Published 2020-04-22 16:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2020-04-22 16:30:01 UTC

The Claw

Author's Note

This story is based on a short horror story written by Guy de Maupassant in 1883. This kind of horror is different from the modern horror we are familiar with, less explicit, and likes to play with the reader's mind. Something like Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven.
I hope you like it anyway. :ajsmug:
Here's the Original Tale by the way:
http://public-library.uk/ebooks/43/25.pdf

The Claw

As the saying goes: "If you seek revenge, you must remember to dig two graves." Revenge is something that not only can destroy your opponent, but you too, and not always literally. Sometimes you end up losing yourself in the process.

I learned that myself when I wanted to seek revenge against Twiligth for what she did to me, Trixie tried too, and everypony knows how it ended. Thanks to Twilight I could see the mistakes I was making and the terrible things I did to achieve my goal. Luckily, she was able to stop me on time; this is something that the one I’m going to talk about below cannot say.

Undoubtedly, the years I’ve lived in Ponyville have been the best years of my life. Since I came to live here, I’ve hardly ever had complaints, the ponies in this town are great and I’ve lived incredible adventures, but what happened to me that time was something so strange that I wouldn’t even know how to catalog it. Something that still gives me nightmares today.

It all started when that stranger moved to Ponyville. Generally this town is very welcoming; they accepted me, despite their reservations at first, and since the foundation of the School of Friendship multiple creatures have been seen around here. But that griffon was a special case.

He settled in an abandoned house on the outskirts of the town. That wasn’t strange per se, after all, there are many ponies who don’t live in Ponyville as such, Fluttershy and Applejack without going any further. But the strange thing was that this house was on the edge of the Everfree Forest. Not to mention the way of being of the aforementioned; he was very lonely and sullen, even by griffon standards. He had hired a pegasus as a butler and was the only pony he had contact with.

Soon the gossip began, and the ponies commented all kinds of rumors about the strange griffon who lived in the house on the edge of the forest. Everyone became interested in his identity; that griffon who didn’t speak to anypony and never went to town. A griffon whose only known hobby was to go out into the woods in the morning.

He was said to have fled Griffonstone due to a brawl and was taking refuge from his enemies. Others said that he had committed a horrible crime and was hiding.

"I tell you, that griffon hides something." Said Rainbow Dash who brought up the subject while having coffee.

"You’re still on that, Rainbow? You should stop reading Daring Do, your imagination is beyond you.” Applejack said.

"Never. Starlight, Am I right or what?” She asked me.

"Well, I don't know, maybe we shouldn't jump to conclusions." I said trying not to give importance to the matter.

I, personally, didn’t want to be part of the gossip and the collective hysteria, but in the end curiosity got the best of me and I began to investigate the mysterious gryffon, but I couldn’t find anything strange about him.

The only thing I discovered was his name. He called himself Hawkwell.

So, I tried to arrange a chance meeting between us. I knew that he went every morning to the forest to do Celestia knows what. I was walking through the forest calmly until I bumped into him. I faked my surprise because I didn't want him to think I was stalking him. Then I could see him better.

He was a huge griffon with reddish fur and feathers, blue eyes and a distinctive scar on one of them. He was sturdy and big, and he was kinda creepy. However, once we started talking, I discovered that the rumors didn’t reflect well on his personality.

"I’m really sorry, I think I lost my way." I said.

"Do not worry miss, it's always nice to find a mare as beautiful as you in this forest." His tone of voice was sophisticated and friendly, and I even blushed with the compliment.

Hawkwell accompanied me to the outskirts and we continued chatting quietly until we separated ways to our respective places.

Months passed and we continued chatting from time to time. One night, I found him in the garden of his house taking care of his plants to kill the aphid. He greeted me happily and politely invited me to come in and have a cider. I could not refuse.

There he treated me in a very polite way, quite the opposite of those aristocratic and snob unicorns from Canterlot. He praised Equestria and Ponyville and said it was the perfect place to live a peaceful life.

He told me that he had traveled a lot and met many creatures and had many adventures. When I asked him about the reason for so many trips, his answer puzzled me...

“I love the art of hunting; I've been hunting almost since I came out of the egg.” Said Hawkwell.

I heard lots of stories telling that griffins were exceptional hunters, but I thought it was a practice they had left behind.

Hawkwell then led me into a large room that left me stunned. There were numerous weapons there: swords, axes, spears, loaded crossbows… it was as if he was preparing for war.

In the room, of course, there were also trophies. I was stunned to see heads of manticores, chimeras, and even minotaur horns... Hawkwell was apparently a potential killer.

"My goodness, it must have been very difficult for you to kill those monsters." I said trying not to look scared.

"Those are nothing, dragons are worse." Said Hawkwell.

However, something caught my attention above other things. There was something on a counter on a velvet mat. I went closer to see it better and realized that it was a claw, but not skeletal; It was a feline claw with parched black fur and rotting yellow nails, with several of the muscles protruding from the dead skin and covered in dried blood. It was cut in the middle of the forearm, as if it had been struck by an axe, where two splintered bones were still visible.

Around the wrist a huge iron chain, riveted, welded to that unkempt member, held it to the wall with a very strong ring.

I was speechless, and Hawkwell came up to tell me about the trophy, as if that thing was what he was most proud of in this life. “This belonged to my greatest enemy, a cruel Abyssinian. I cut it off with a sword, ripped off the skin with a stone, and dried it in the sun for several days.”

For some reason I wanted to touch that spoil, it was huge, the cat who owned that claw should be a giant. The fingers were very long, and the nails were sharp enough to cut almost anything.

"He must have been a fearsome enemy." I said trying to hide the disgust I felt looking at that thing.

"He was, but I was stronger." The griffon said proudly. "However, I couldn’t trust her, so I put the chain on."

"Well, but she's not going anywhere anymore." I said wondering what that comment was about.

"Tell that to her, almost every night she tries to run away."

Hearing that comment, all the hair of my mane stood on end. I didn't know if Hawkwell had a very dark sense of humor or he was completely insane.

Over the months, I went back to his house several times, because that visit left me quite disturbed, but Hawkwell continued with his routine as if nothing had happened.

However, in the Fall I could see that the griffon’s behavior was increasingly strange. He went to bed late, locked himself up late, and shouted, as if arguing with someone, and always had a sword or a loaded crossbow within reach. As if he was preparing himself for a surprise attack.

But what drove me up the wall was what he did one night. Hawkwell, as if he was possessed by a fit of rage, picked up a flexible stick and began hitting that parched claw with a look of fury in his eyes.

That scared me a lot and I decided to leave the griffon alone and get on with my life. What I didn’t expect was what would end up happening.

One day I went to the market to buy some food when I saw Hawkwell's butler pegasus flying desperate and scared, asking for help. When I managed to understand what was happening to him, my blood ran cold. Hawkwell was found dead.

Ponyville had no police or anything similar, so I figured they would have to wait for some guards from Canterlot to investigate what happened. Decided to discover what happened to the griffon I went ahead to his house.

The front door was open, and I headed for where I suspected Hawkwell's lifeless body would be, the trophy room.

The image I saw was dantesque. The griffon's body showed signs of violence, it was clear that he had been murdered.

For obvious reasons, I became suspicious of the servant, but immediately dismissed him, as an assassin doesn’t leave the scene of the crime and announces it out loud in the center of the town.

The corpse was lying on its back with its beak open and several feathers from its torso and its wings torn off. Hawkwell had engaged in a brutal fight.

But he didn’t die from injuries, but from suffocation. His eyes were swollen, a clear sign of shortness of breath, and the expression on his face was unparalleled dread, something had terrified him at the time of his death, he was covered in blood and seemed to have something stuck in his beak. But what shocked me the most was seeing four puncture marks on his neck. It was as if four iron spikes had been nailed to him.

Suddenly something went through my mind and a chill ran down my spine. I went to the ledge, where I had once seen that grotesque claw, and gasped when I found it was gone. Only the broken chain remained attached to the wall.

Then I leaned towards the dead griffon and with my magic I removed from its beak a cut finger that belonged to the missing claw. By the marks it must have been cut with the griffon’s beak.

I tried to reconstruct the events as best I could but found nothing. No door had been forced, nor had any window. Later I learned that the servant had not listened to anything and only discovered that something was wrong when his master did not answer his calls.

When the Canterlot guard arrived, I told them everything I knew about the dead griffon. My friends asked me too, but I couldn't give them more information than I had. Everypony was dismayed by what happened. As far as I knew it was the first murder in the history of Ponyville, because that's how the Royal Guard classified it, and I could attest that Hawkwell's death wasn’t natural...

Eventually everything returned to normal in Ponyville, but one night I had a terrible nightmare.

In it I saw the claw, that horrible and huge claw crawling on the floor like a spider and climbing up to my bed, I had it right in front of my face when I suddenly woke up.

I went back to sleep and there it was again, this time climbing the curtains and falling on my bed, moving with his fingers as if they were legs.

Just then I didn’t wake up, but I received a visitor. It was Princess Luna.

"Thanks for showing up princess, I was going crazy." I said happier than ever to see the princess of the night.

"Starlight, I know what you're going through, but I came to warn you about something." The princess's tone was serious, and I could even say gloomy. "Do you know why Nightmare Moon was able to control ponies with her powers?"

I didn’t answer, so the princess kept talking. "Unlike dreams, nightmares are lodged in a different part of the brain. A part where real memories are also housed, that's why brain activity is so different when we have nightmares. Be very careful, Starlight.”

"Princess Luna, what do you mean?" I asked starting to freak out.

"What I mean is that... your nightmares are real."

Suddenly Luna vanished and there I could see it again, that hateful claw. Motionless as a statue. Until it started to move its fingers slowly, getting closer and closer to me. It stopped, and jumped at me.

I woke up with a scream hyperventilating and sweating, until I started to shiver with cold due to a breeze.

Breeze? I looked at the window and it was wide open. The worst thing is that I perfectly remembered closing it before I went to sleep.

When I got up to close it, I heard a noise in the darkness. I looked up and saw nothing, but when I looked down, I could see a bipedal figure in the dark who ran out under cover of night.

Determined to find out what was going on, I armed myself with all the courage I had and followed that mysterious creature. His trail led me to the Ponyville Cemetery.

There, amid the night haze, I could make out Hawkwell's grave, and on top of the tombstone rested that claw that tormented me at night. Motionless, but just as grotesque and threatening, and most importantly, a finger was missing.

Suddenly, I heard a noise behind me, and when I turned around, I could see a big figure that ran away from the Cemetery.

I couldn’t be sure, but in the dim moonlight it seemed to me that he was missing a claw...