The Haunting at Buckwheat Manor

by NorrisThePony

Rating: teen
Tags: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Death, Drama, Original Character
Length: 17064

A stallion moves into a long abandoned manor. He does not live there alone.

Shady Fortune is an ambitious stallion. The old manor outside of town is an ancient eyesore. Where most ponies would see a tear-down job long-gone undone, Shady instead sees potential and beauty in the decrepit old house.

But he's not the only thing living in Buckwheat Manor, and Shady will soon learn that not all spirits remain at rest.

This story has a dramatic reading by Skijarama, which you can listen to here. Thanks!

Published 2022-12-14 18:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2022-12-14 18:00:00 UTC

The Haunting at Buckwheat Manor

I

Beyond the town limits of Sundown, at the end of a long dirt road, lay Buckwheat Manor.

It stood alone without peers, neighboured by the wild around it, playing host to no earthly chat besides the calling of birds and squirrels in the forest around. Grass, vines, and fungi crawled up the sides of the ancient house, as though the dirt beneath was trying to reclaim the manor and drag it back into the quieted forest grotto it had been erected within.

The air beyond the broken, rusted gate separating the manor from the road beyond felt cooler to Shady Fortune, as his hooves trod over the threshold and into the acre of property allotted to Buckwheat Manor. The trees above his head hadn’t been pruned or cared for in decades, and they cast the clearing and the house within in shaded half-light—no doubt the source of the sudden coolness.

Shady Fortune’s rattling carriage shattered the stillness of the forest, birds going silent and settling down on branches to look down at the lone earth pony approaching the manor for the first time in as long as the little creatures could recall.

It had been a bit of a trek, reaching Buckwheat Manor from the town of Sundown, which despite being the closest settlement still lay a good twenty-minute trot from the manor. And that was without lugging one’s earthly belongings behind themselves on an old rickety carriage down a dirt road that surely hadn’t seen regular use in decades.

Hopefully, Shady thought, he could change that.

He came to the front porch of Buckwheat Manor, the large plantation home now looming above him in all its decrepit disrepair. The shingles had faded to the point that they were unrecognizable from the stone foundation the manor was built upon. The windows were all boarded up, as were the double doors leading into the manor from the front-porch. At one point, the roof had begun to sag, and one of the house’s several chimneys had collapsed and was now lying sprawled across the overgrown lawn.

A prestigious mansion? Perhaps one day, it had been. Now, though, it was more akin to a demolition job in disguise. Yet it had been cheap, and Shady was, if nothing else, an ambitious stallion. He saw potential in the old manor, that perhaps a bit of a handy-work and patience might fully realize.

He quickly got to work, shuffling out of the carriage harness and unloading his affairs from within. He left his blankets and clothing within the carriage, having resigned himself to the reality that, unless he wanted to share his cot with rodents, it would likely be a more private resting spot than the mansion itself at the moment.

Besides his immediate necessities, he’d only brought the essentials for now. Canned food, a camp stove, toiletries and other amenities. Furniture could wait, especially since he’d yet to see within the manor itself to really tell how much he’d need.

Shady was still unloading his affairs when a pegasus mare came flapping over the trees from the direction of Sundown, pirouetting down through the air to come to a rest on the lawn a few yards from Shady. She gave a few quizzical, almost wary glances at the manor as she approached Shady, but still greeted him with a small wave of her wing.

She’d been the mare who Shady had been dealing with through his initial purchase of the manor, back at the town hall of Sundown. Sunny Meadow, she was called. Here she was now, right on time for the final transfer of land from public to private for the first time in six decades.

“Afternoon, Shady,” Sunny Meadow said, still glancing half at Shady and half at the manor. “I see you found it okay.”

“Hard to miss,” he replied, smirking.

“No kidding.” Sunny Meadow was already fishing through her saddlebags, withdrawing a few sheets of documentation and a ballpoint pen. “Still not sure what you’re thinkin’ with this one.”

“I’m thinkin’ it’s a damn nice house, that just needs a bit of love,” he returned, waving a hoof. “Those the forms?”

“Yeah,” she said, passing them over, not taking her eyes off of the manor before them. “But seriously. This place doesn’t give you the heeby-jeebies?”

Shady laughed. “No more than my grannie’s old place. It just needs some TLC. And if it’s a total demo job, I’m still probably gonna make a fortune off the land itself. What’ve I got to lose?”

Sunny Meadow shrugged. “Your bits to blow, I guess. But I’m just sayin’, I wouldn’t touch this place with a ten-foot pole. Some places are just better left to rot.”

“That’s the city-worker attitude in you,” Shady replied with a grin, taking the forms and using one of his food-barrels as a make-shift table to sign them upon. “How long’s this place been sitting here, anyways?”

“Since it was built? Er, gotta be two hundred by now. Since anypony’s been living here? Sixty, uh...” she glanced at a few of her own documents. “Seven. Sixty-seven years. We come by every once in awhile to make sure it’s still standin’ and nopony’s forced entry into it or whatever, but besides that you’re buyin’ it as is. Rat-eaten furniture and all.”

Shady chuckled. “What a steal.” He hoofed the documents back to her. “There ya go.”

“Righto.” She tucked away the documents once again, and offered a hoof which Shady gratefully shook. “Well. Y’know how to get into town and all that jazz already. No mail this far out, so you’ll have to collect that at the post-office back at Sundown. You want us to send somepony every couple weeks to check in on you? In case the rats getcha?”

“Probably a good idea.”

“Gotcha. I’ll see who I can talk into visiting this creepy place,” she snorted. “Well, then I think that about covers it, Shady. Good luck with, uh. This suicide mission.” She jerked her snout in the direction of the half-collapsed portion of the roof. “Y’know where to find me back in town if y’got any questions. And I’ll make sure Rickety Ratchet doesn’t go tryin’ to scam ya on your supplies.”

Shady said his thanks, and Sunny Meadow shortly thereafter took her leave, flapping her wings and disappearing over the trees as she made her way back into town. Alone again, he decided there was no time like the present to get a proper idea of what fresh Tartarus was ahead of him waiting in the old manor. Grabbing a crowbar from the wagon, he started towards the porch.

The old wood let out an indignant groan as his hooves trod onto the steps, but it thankfully didn’t collapse as he approached the boarded up double door. The boards had been stencilled with large block letters;

“DANGER, KEEP OUT!”

He brought the end of the crowbar down behind the boards, and, with a low grunt, wrenched them both off. The old screws gave way rather easily, and he tossed the boards aside and left the crowbar leaning on the porch-wall while he fiddled for the manor’s keys from his saddlebag. Bulky, ancient affairs, but the tumblers in the door lock had miraculously not yet rusted into oblivion. Gently, Shady pushed the double doors open, and took his first steps into Buckwheat Manor.

It was, indeed, still almost entirely furnished on the inside. It was the first thing he noticed, as he had to step over a shattered chandelier that had come crashing down in the foyer. Half of the glass had been splayed across the stairwell, which lead both up to the second floor of the manor and down towards what Shady assumed was a cellar.

He had the floor plan of the manor somewhere, back in his wagon, but with the furniture still intact it was quite easy for him to make out the purpose of each room on the first floor. Immediately to his left, a library and study joined into a living room, while to his right, beyond the stairwell, lay the spacious dining room and kitchen. With the windows all boarded up, it was rather dark within the manor even in the midst of day, and so Shady’s first order of business was to recover the crowbar from the porch and pry off the first couple boards blocking the many large windows surrounding the dining and living rooms. He supposed he could’ve just grabbed a kerosene lantern from the wagon, but he figured he would have to get to beautifying the manor eventually, why not start sooner?

Once the boards were removed, Shady could finally look outside the manor, at the decaying porch surrounding it from every direction, and the gently swaying fence of trees that seemed to box the house in from all around. They grew close enough together that even in the light of day, one did not have to look far before darkness overcame them.

Besides the thick coating of dust—which nearly gagged him on no rare occasion—Shady was quickly astonished at how preserved the interior of Buckwheat Manor truly was. Even the couches and love seats made of fabric in the living area hadn’t eroded completely nor been devoured by rats and moths. Indeed, as Shady’s exploring hooves took him around the first floor he found little to no traces of animal life at all. The one thing he’d been worried the most about on the way in—reclaiming the house from wildlife that had been given decades to reclaim in—seemed to be evaporating by the moment.

It was a strange thing, though. He was quite certain the house was not exactly airtight, and so he could think of no reason why it would be left alone by the woodland critters.

Regardless, it had been. It was one less thing for him to concern himself with, and so Shady figured he may as well count his blessings.

The old floor's creaking and moaning soundtracked his exploration, as his hooves took him from one room to the next. He started at the dining area, which bore another, smaller chandelier perched above a table meant for six ponies. The walls of the dining room had been painted with beautiful floral scenery, but time had been cruel to the surfaces they’d been painted upon. It lay partially in plastered remains on the floor and table, with the rest of the painted mural just recognizable enough to fill Shady with disappointment knowing he’d have to tear it down.

He very much doubted the original painter was still around for him to hire again, after all.

The living room was a similar story, though there were a good number of surviving paintings that wouldn’t need salvaging. They would, however, probably be relatively worthless, now. They depicted the house’s previous owners—presumably the Buckwheats, he supposed, who had apparently sold the place abruptly half a century ago and not ever returned. If there were any surviving members of the Buckwheat family, he supposed he could see if they wanted them.

The paintings were, at the very least, quite nice looking. The largest of them depicted four ponies—an older mare and stallion, standing proudly behind their presumed children, a young colt and a rather beautiful mare who seemed to be in her early twenties.

There was a chance, Shady supposed, that at the very least the Buckwheat children had surviving relatives, someplace. It was worth looking, he figured, before he used the old canvas for firewood instead.

He proceeded to the second floor with caution, vowing to keep the undoubtedly insect-infested cellar for last. He wasn’t necessarily arachnophobic, but the last thing he wanted was to begin his first day in Buckwheat Manor combing spiders and centipedes out of his mane. The stairwell leading to the second floor of the manor was just as daunting, though, with how loudly it creaked and groaned as Shady crept his way up.

Fortunately, he didn’t end up falling through them and taking an accelerated passage back down to the first floor. For all its complaints, the stairwell seemed to be still sturdy enough to support him, though whether or not it would support something heavier than him remained to be seen.

The second story of the house was as dark as the first, but with fewer sizable windows he could pry open to let in some light. As such, he had to examine it in relative darkness. There were four smaller bedrooms on the second floor, as well as a large suite for the master of the house and another on the opposite end of the house for the groundskeeper—if Shady’s knowledge of the layout of old manors was to be trusted, anyways. Tearing off a few of the boards revealed a balcony, which surrounded the front-facing wall of the house, accessible through an entrance from the master’s chamber and another at the landing at the top of the stairs.

The bedrooms were, like the furniture on the bottom floor, surprisingly well preserved for having been lying in wait for sixty years. Without light, he couldn’t really examine each room in detail, but at the very least he was able to assemble some idea of the layout of Buckwheat Manor. Shady was practically breathing into a hankerchief by now, though, with how densely the dust hung over the air, churned up by his hooves and his movement through the dormant rooms.

There was a smaller library, and a study, both on the second floor. Shady was only able to linger in the entrance for sometime, though—the roof above had been the section he had seen from outside that had collapsed inwards slightly, and the fireplace lay in a mass of bricks across the floor. The smell of rotting books was nearly overpowering, and so Shady closed the door and vowed not to open it until he’d recovered one of the ventilator masks from his carriage.

Each room bore more paintings, some beyond salvage, but many still presentable with a bit of restoration. The furniture was all the same rococo design, which might’ve been garish nowadays but Shady found to be rather fitting for the relative grandiose of the manor at large.

He returned to the master chamber one last time, before he made his way back down to his carriage. Tearing off a few more boards from the windows to let some light in, he vowed to make his call on whether or not he’d be staying the night within the manor itself. The dust was a problem, but not one he couldn’t solve in the few hours he had left before sundown. He wasn’t prepared to sleep on the ancient mattress of the generous king sized bed, but he’d taken along his own cot for that very purpose. It would suffice, until the pegasus movers arrived in a week’s time with the furniture order he’d be sending in.

Shady had been expecting so much less than what he’d gotten on his preliminary examination of Buckwheat Manor. He’d been expecting mounds of rat dung, furniture in tatters, a few angry possums snarling at him for every new bedroom he examined. And yet, if it hadn’t been for the dust and the scent of rot in a few places, he would have felt as though he had just stepped in from sixty-seven years ago, to greet the Buckwheat Family in the flesh.

Night fell, and by time it had, Shady had moved most of his affairs into the bottom foyer of Buckwheat Manor. The boards he’d removed from the windows were stacked in a pile on the front porch, to be used as firewood to combat the coming autumn night.

The windows that he was able to force open he left open, at least during the day, while he worked diligently over the hours to sweep out the thick coating of dust. It wasn’t exactly perfect come sundown, but it was significantly better than having to cough every couple seconds. And with the coming darkness and cold, he knew he’d have to conserve as much heat within the manor as he could.

He cooked his dinner outside, on the camp stove he’d brought in, having decided not to trust the woodstove in the kitchen to not flood the entire house in smoke. He did, however, risk lighting the fireplace in the library downstairs, which also made its way up through the Master’s Chamber on the top floor where he’d been staying. A quick examination with his kerosene lamp confirmed it was free of obstruction—a few hundred little creepy-crawlies excepted—although he’d had to clamber onto the roof to remove the covering from atop the chimney.

There was firewood in a woodshed outside the manor, but it was long rotted and dampened with the late autumn rains, and so Shady used the window planks instead, as well as some old newspapers for tinder. He read them thoughtfully whilst lounging by the fireplace to stay warm, as they told stories of the founding of towns that had long been imprinted into the maps of public consciousness in Equestria. Little moments of time suspended in inkprint, soon smouldering into ash to give way for warming Buckwheat Manor once again.

He had a daunting autumn ahead of him, but Shady felt content with his decision at that moment. He’d received quite the earful from his peers, when he’d told them what he’d been planning on doing with his savings—and his inheritance after his grandfather’s passing two winters prior. Buying that old condemned dump outside an ancient, quieted town in the woods in the midst of nowhere wasn’t a young pony’s ambition.

Yet there was something meaningful about it, to Shady. He didn’t know why Buckwheat Manor had been lying forgotten for so long. He didn’t know why Sunny Meadow seemed to regard it with such disdain and concern, either. There wasn’t much information about the manor that he was able to dredge up, among the ponies he spoke with in regards to it. It had sold abruptly shortly after the elder Buckwheat couple—the ones in the paintings, no doubt—had passed. This was one of the few facts about the house he did know, and even it was barren and dubious. He wasn’t given a reason why the Buckwheat children hadn’t inherited the manor. Surely, as Equestria’s borders expanded, as the woods around Ponyville and Canterlot grew more tamed, the Buckwheat children undoubtedly did not wish to stay cooped up in their parents old home. It made about as much sense as any other theory Shady could come up with.

Yet, for one reason or another, the house hadn’t sold. He’d asked Sunny Meadow about it—as well as a few varying locals of Sundown, but time hadn’t exactly been kind to the home’s legend. Perhaps there didn’t have to be a reason. Sundown itself would have been growing around the time, and the old, rickety manor past the town limits surely wasn’t incredibly tempting to a blooming community.

Regardless of the reason why it had been lying in wait, some part of him knew that there was a home buried deep beneath the dust and cold that held Buckwheat Manor in its grasp.

Dusk fell as Shady was putting the finishing touches on his grilled carrot and potato dinner, which he deposited unceremoniously onto a flimsy camping plate and carried with him towards Buckwheat Manor after extinguishing his stove and tucking it safely in his wagon. He ate on the porch, watching the last fringes of sunlight ebb out of the solemn sky, the air breathless and still and silent, and for but a brief moment Shady felt utterly sombre and alone.

The sensation faded. He finished his dinner, and, not wanting to play host to a hungry bear or family of raccoons throughout the night, took it in with him and deposited it in the sink in the kitchen, which reeked of rot and lichen. He stoked his fire in the library fireplace, and took to reading by the wavering light of his kerosene lamp, while darkness and cold wrapped its tendrils around Buckwheat Manor.

Then, he made his way upstairs, towards the master bedroom. He wasn’t exactly ready to sleep upon the old bed quite yet—not exactly trusting a decades-old affair to be bed-bug free, after all. He set up a cot beside it, instead, in such a position that he could look outside the window facing the entrance drive.

He had to admit, it was somewhat of an unsettling sight. The long rows of trees, on either side, lit only by the pale moonlight hanging overhead. The moon was too bright for there to be any stars, and it cast the shadows of the trees in every direction across the front lawn of Buckwheat Manor.

Still, he’d had a rather long day. The moment his head pressed against his cot, and his eyes closed, he could already feel sleep overtaking him.

II

Shady was awoken abruptly by something outside the manor.

He didn’t know what it was, just that something outside had apparently jerked him from his slumber. Enough to wake him, but as he lay staring at the ceiling waiting for the sound to come again, he was met only with the deafening stillness of the blood flowing through his own ears as his racing heart slowed back down to normal.

Curious wildlife, perhaps. Something investigating his cart left outside. Cursing beneath his breath, Shady reached for the kerosene lamp he had left beside his sleeping cot and illuminated it.

Light danced over the Master Bedroom, and illuminated the shape of a young mare looking back at him in the half-opened door leading out into the corridor.

Shady was on his hooves as though an electric current had been shot through him. A ragged cry left his throat, and his hooves knocked the lantern as he started up, causing it to roll several feet away. The light danced over the room as the lantern spun, and when it came to rest the mare was gone.

Shady stared, dumbfounded. “H-hello?”

There was, predictably, no response.

His shaking hooves found the lantern while his eyes refused to leave the door. He tugged the light closer, leaning down to grip it in his teeth. His heart was racing in his chest, even as his nerves caught up with him and the reality of his situation came crashing back down.

A lingering nightmare. He was being ridiculous.

Already, the sight of the mare was beginning to fade from his mind as wakefulness seeped back into his brain. He couldn’t even recall if she had been an earth pony, unicorn, or pegasus, though for some reason he had the distinct impression that she had been quite pretty. Already, her face was faded away, sent back to the realm of nightmares that had held him for a few moments too long whilst his mind caught up with his body.

But he sure as Tartarus wasn’t about to go back to bed, either.

The manor’s floor sounded out its complaints to the middle-of-the-night excursions of its new master, as Shady nervously made his way towards the hall at a creeping pace. His lantern illuminated the hall—empty, of course, up to the stairwell before the corridor twisted and continued on in another direction deeper into the manor. Shady was quite certain that he’d have heard anything going down the stairs, and so he began his search on the second floor.

The manor had grown quite cold over the night. He’d stoked the fire several hours ago, and it surely should have had enough fuel to continue burning long into the night, but he supposed he wasn’t burning the highest quality firewood available. He shivered, tempted to turn back and go grab one of the blankets he’d tucked into his cot with him, but vowed instead to keep on investigating.

There was a howling, outside. Quick, sudden, mournful. He almost dropped the lantern a second time, before reminding himself that it was just a bloody wolf and he would have to get used to it, living so deep in the woods.

Still, his heart was beating heavily, now. Shady didn’t consider himself a coward up to that moment, but he felt tempted to reappraise that opinion now.

He hovered above the stairwell for a moment, looking down, and then, not seeing anything, continued on down the hall towards the first of the three bedrooms immediately to his right past the stairs.

It was empty.

The second bedroom was, too, which left him with only the one final bedroom, and then the Servant’s Quarters at the far end of the manor. Calmness gradually returned to him as his searches turned up nothing—no evidence besides that of his own fraught nerves. The first night in a lonely old house in the midst of the wilderness, far from civilization, had just been awoken by a wolf’s howl, outside. It was the clearest explanation for his paranoia, and hardly a radically unexpected one.

He rounded the corner, and as he did he heard the groaning of wood floor directly beneath him, on the first floor of the house.

That sent a fresh tremor of terror through him. He certainly wasn’t imagining things now, and he was quite certain he wasn’t dreaming, either.

“Hello?!” he called again, louder and more indignant than before, though the sound of his voice seemed to be muffled by the old wood and thick motes of dust swirling about, and the lamp’s handle grasped in his maw. “This is private property, now, I’m afraid! You’re going to have to clear out!”

His intruder was seemingly not interested in conversing. Shady reached the stairwell down without any response to his barked-out remark, nor any further sounds of noise from within the house. As he turned the corner, though, he became aware of a few things at once.

Firstly, the source of the cold became obvious quite quickly, and it had nothing to do with the fire going out in the library. The double doors to the manor were opened wide, the cool night air greeting his face as he descended the steps and the front lawn came into view.

The winding drive-way through the orchard towards the road looked far different at night. As he came closer to the open door, he saw that a thin fog had rolled in throughout the night. The low-hanging moonlight shone like a spotlight behind sheets of night held between the thick birches and pines towering in opposite directions. The trees stood like soldiers rising wild and unkempt in regular intervals for the entire distance towards the rusted gate.

Halfway down the walk, seeming suspended upon the fog itself, was the young mare that Shady had first awoken to.

The sight was enough to unsettle Shady once more, but indignation was his more prominent emotion.

“Hey!” he barked out, storming out onto the porch, leaving the kerosene lamp inside the house with how brightly the moon was now filling its role.

The mare didn’t seem to react to his angry yell. She looked back at him, tilted her head curiously, and said nothing.

He stopped, his hooves having just left the porch and touched down upon the cool dirt. They stayed in this manner, staring at one another, Shady passively becoming aware once again of how uncannily quiet the courtyard in front of Buckwheat Manor seemed to be, with nary even a cricket’s call to sever the motionless silence. He could have been fooled into believing that him and this mare were the only living things in the courtyard of Buckwheat Manor. She was a unicorn, he could see that much, now, even with much of her form somewhat engulfed by the wispy streams of fog weaving between the trees in the courtyard. Her mane was well kept, arranged in a rather ornate but quite antiquated fashion, reminding Shady instantly of the ponies depicted in the paintings back inside the manor. Her coat colour and mane were both a pale, greyish white that made her seem as though she existed within the fog, not apart from it.

As they stared, Shady suddenly realized that the young mare was injured.

Several wayward streams of brackish, inky blood were descending from a point somewhere above her forehead, streaking down the right side of her face and onto the dirt. If she was bothered by this, she didn’t show it, although Shady could make out similar streaks of black beneath her eyes—ruined mascara dragged across the poor mare’s face by some crying fit she was no longer within.

Shady’s mood changed instantly. His expression softened, and he thought upon his indignant barking with shame immediately. “Ma’am, are you alright? Are you out here all alone?”

She continued to stare, and said nothing. Shady’s heart was racing once again, as he took a step closer to the mare.

Behind him, the doors to Buckwheat Manor slammed shut.

Shady whipped around immediately. He’d had his back to the manor, having quite instantly discarded the idea of there being anything within it after spotting the mare standing in the courtyard. But now, he saw his mistake quite clearly. He could see the light of his kerosene lamp, dancing about as though held, but it darted and weaved in and out of view from the windows in vastly unpredictable, impossible manners. Bobbing and weaving as though suspended in a hurricane’s gale, his discarded light danced, moving from the foyer to the library, and back, and then as suddenly as it all had begun it was extinguished, and Buckwheat Manor fell back into darkness.

Shady turned again. The mare was gone. Somehow, he was not surprised.

He was certain he was dreaming, now with how rapidly his heart was beating. He expected to wake up, back in his cot in the living room, at any moment, but wakefulness didn’t come.

The fog around him was growing thicker. The cold dug deep under his skin and coiled around his bones. He thought of the earlier wolf’s howl, and knew he was a fool to be standing about in the courtyard in the dead of night.

Yet, there was something in his house, and somehow, he had his doubts it was a pony.

The manor door was locked, by the time he reached the porch. Shady cursed bitterly, knowing he had left the keys back in his jacket, up in the master’s bedroom on the second floor.

He hadn’t been expecting home invaders this early into his tenure, and it was with growing dread that he reconciled the fact that he was not quite certain how he was going to get back inside to deal with whatever was terrorizing him in the dead of night.

The fog was thickening, rolling in from the surrounding woods. Shady fiddled with the door handle uselessly, and then peered through the library window, where he’d last seen his lamp dancing about and fading. He scanned the room from his outside vantage point, immediately seeing that the bookshelves—which had been arranged neatly despite the dust coating them—had been vivisected quite dramatically, their contents sprawled across the library as though with literary malice. The fire had been extinguished, and it was only by the thin light of the moon that Shady was able to examine the room.

There was movement within the manor’s hall, too. He couldn’t see what it was, but the shadows within were shifting.

Abandoning the porch, Shady trotted around towards the back of the manor, where preliminary glances of the floor plan had told him there was an entrance into the wine-cellar. It wasn’t where he wanted to be blindly venturing through, in the dead of night without light, but upon recalling the howling of wolves outside the manor, Shady couldn’t reconcile staying outside all night, either.

As he made his way around the manor, Shady felt watched by its lonely, darkened windows. By day time, and from within, they had provided lovely glimpses at the shadowy forest around the manor. But now, outside, with the light of the moon now being smothered away by the thickening fog, it felt as though Shady were peering into a pure, black void encased within the skeletal structure of a house.

By the time he reached the cellar door—an inclined plank of ancient wood and long-rusted hinges—his paranoia and fear had slowly been tapering away. He was mostly just growing frustrated, now, the more he thought over his current situation. As far as he was concerned, he had one of a few options on his hooves:

Firstly, by some sheer, exceptionally aggravating circumstance, the very first day he moved into Buckwheat Manor was the one where some vagrants had decided to squat within. They’d found a way to trick him outside, and now were running amok within his home. It didn’t quite explain the strange mare’s disappearance, but Shady wasn’t even sure she wasn’t still lurking about in the trees someplace, waiting for her accomplices to let her in.

Or, the other, equally aggravating option. Some pranksters within Sundown had heard wind of some rich young out-of-towner, purchasing the big scary old manor. They’d waited until the sun had set, and now he was the victim to some mean spirited game for the pleasure of a few bored locals with nothing better to do. The ponies in Sundown had seemed nice, and Shady was quite careful not to act in such a way that deserved such vitriol, but he couldn’t really reconcile his situation with any other explanation.

An old chain had been wrapped around the cellar door’s handles. Shady’s frustration grew, but his determination did as well, and the woodshed to Buckwheat Manor was nearby. Shady nearly tripped over a mound of dirt, as he grabbed an old, rusted axe from the wall of the shed, and then brought it down violently onto the chain. The cellar door be damned, he was replacing the rotted wood soon anyways.

He wrenched the cellar door open, and was promptly met with an assault of dust. He didn’t care. He pushed forwards, down the steps, and into the cellar. The floor—which had been wood, once, but was now half-reclaimed by dirt—was frigid and felt damp to the touch, as his hooves touched down. The cellar was claustrophobically small, having just enough room for a few large oak kegs on one side, and an array of canned goods on the other. There was just enough room for Shady to shuffle through, which he did blindly. At best, he could see the vaguest traces of light from beneath the closed door at the top of the stairs, and it was that single sliver that Shady hastily stormed towards.

At the foot of the steps, his hooves became damp with a thick, liquid substance. In the darkness, he couldn’t see what it was. He didn’t care. He ascended the steps two at a time, and shoved his way through the door and back into the manor.

“Alright, that’s it!” he hollered out. “Show’s over!”

If the intruders were intimidated, they didn’t show such. Shady practically cantered towards the library—it being the last place where he’d seen any degree of movement.

He stopped dead in his tracks in the entrance. Burned into the painted wallpaper of the library, and half onto the bookshelves themselves, were the still-smouldering embers, the only light in the otherwise still library.

The lantern. The bloody kerosene lantern, that he’d seen dancing about. It was tossed beneath, extinguished now, but unambiguously the culprit.

He stared at the burn marks, for what seemed like forever. As though he were expecting them to shift, and change. Then, when they didn’t, he turned, and began his vicious, furious search of the entire manor.

He upturned ancient beds, he looked into every closet, of every room. He screamed profanities at every shifting of the manor as the temperature outside continued to drop and the night continued to deepen. But his search, enthused as it was, refused to turn up anything of note, or any sign of some other presence within the manor.

That was, until he noticed the bloody scuff marks on the floor.

He cried out in surprise instantly. But when his nerves caught up with him, and his rational mind regained control, he followed them to their source. They were more prominent, and more visible, in the hallway above the cellar door. Much as Shady didn’t want to, he brought his search back down into the cellar, this time with one of his spare lamps held tightly in his maw.

His light danced over the dirt walls of the cellar. Here, the scuff marks were fully formed hoof prints, instead, ascending the steps in irregular, two-step intervals—

Shady froze. He looked down at his hoof, and nearly used it to strike himself for his own stupidity.

It was him. He was the one dragging the blackened ‘blood’ around.

At least, that’s what it looked like. He crept deeper, and deeper into the cellar, and finally he found the puddle of liquid that he’d felt himself cross through when he’d first stormed through the cellar.

Yet, he could not seem to find a source. It was as though the puddle of oil-like, reddish liquid had come from nowhere at all, simply placed randomly at the foot of the stairs.

“Hello?” he called. He didn’t realize how terrified he was until he heard his own voice. Yet there was no answer.

Eventually, his search simply brought him back to the library. The embers had been given time to burn in and settle, revealing a single, angrily scrawled message still glowing faintly.

LEAVE OUR HOME.

III

Shady didn’t sleep that night.

Instead, and against his better judgment, he set out for Sundown still under the cover of night, and still with the howls of distant timber-wolves ringing in his ears.

Foalish, but so was sticking around in that manor another moment longer.

It was dawn by the time he arrived in Sundown. He went to a diner, and nursed countless cups of coffee to try and steel his racing nerves. No matter how many times he ran the night through his head, it made less and less sense.

There couldn’t have been anypony there. Where would they have gone? He would have seen them, leaving the house, or along the road—there was one way back into Sundown, and unless he’d been visited by some mystical forest dwelling prankster, the only other explanation he had was that the strange mare was back in the house.

But how? How did she get there, when he’d seen her standing in the courtyard?

His questions had no answers that lay within the realm of the living. Fortunately, he knew somepony who specialized in something a bit more than that.

There was only one phone in the entire town of Sundown, and it was located in the train station.

He wasn’t surprised to find such out. Telephones were still relatively new to these parts of Equestria, and usually only able to connect towns already held together by a rail-line.

It cost Shady three bits alone just to place an outgoing call to Manehattan, but Shady supposed he couldn’t exactly complain too much about the miracle that was being able to hold a conversation with somepony hundreds of kilometres away. The more ponies became bitter and unimpressed by their own advancements, the more boring life at large became.

The line rang for nearly a minute, was picked up by an operator, and after Shady rattled off his transfer requests, he waited in silence for another thirty seconds before the line was picked up on the other end.

“Hello?” Even with the accumulated static of half-the-nation clinging to her voice, Shady recognized his sister immediately.

“Heya, Ivory.” Shady gripped the receiver tightly in both hooves. Already, his sister’s family voice was beginning to calm his fraught nerves.

“Gods, Shady, one night? You didn’t last one night without me having to bail you out?”

Shady chuckled. “It’s, uh. It’s complicated, over here.”

“I’d bet. How the blazes did you manage to blow all of Gram’s money already?” Shady could practically hear Ivory roll her eyes through the line, though her tone was light and teasing.

“Nothing like that. Place is actually in a lot better shape then I was worried of.”

“Yeah?” Ivory snorted. “Woulda thought you’d have been possum food already.”

“Funny,” Shady said, bluntly. “No, uh. It’s actually... Wildlife free. No mice. No possums. Not even any insects, that I’ve seen.”

“That’s weird. Isn’t that place ancient?”

“Yeah.”

“Foundation older than Luna’s tits?”

“Yup.” Shady smirked at his sister’s foul mouth. Mare or not, she’d always been the more brazen of the two of them. “And showing every sign of rot, too.”

“Then what’s keeping all the critters out?” Ivory seemed to be reorienting herself on the other end—Shady could hear rustling, the pulling of a chair as she sat down. Shady could practically place himself right there in her Manehattan apartment with her. “...Suspect you already know, if you’re callin’ me.”

“Just a, uh. Hunch. And me thinkin' 'bout what you said.”

“Yeah, well, I was kidding. Most ponies don’t go calling a spirit medium to appraise their house for ‘em.”

“Most ponies don’t have easy access to one,” Shady levelled. “I... Had a weird night, Ivory.”

“No kiddin’?” Ivory sounded quite intrigued, now. “What kinda somethin’ did you see? Fog-and-light-based? Ectoplasmic?”

Shady pursed his lips, contemplating his response. Across from him, one of the ponies waiting for the train on the platform was peering over at him, curiously, undoubtedly drawn in by the grave expression that had overtaken Shady’s face.

“...Still with me, Shady?”

“Yeah, yeah, sorry. Er, fog-and-light, no ectoplasm that I could see...” That had gotten the stranger’s attention, and Shady couldn’t help but blush and look away.

“Movin’ shit around on ya?”

“Yeah. Took my lamp, and tried to lock me outta the house.”

“Wait, seriously?” Ivory sounded incredulous. “Shady, is this a crank call? Am I dreaming? Is it my birthday? All of those things at once? You have a poltergeist in your house?”

“Look, Ivory, all I know for sure is that I had a really freaky night. And I know you were kidding when you told me to tell you if I did, but...” Shady sighed. “Can you, uh. Can you come by, sometime soon? I’d like to not have to worry about having a ghost in my house before I start reno-ing it.”

Ivory laughed. "Filly, meet candy store. I’d be ecstatic. But... Shoot, hold on...” Ivory fiddled about with some papers on the other end, the sound percolating through the static as she shifted the receiver from one ear to the other. “I can’t actually get down ‘till next week. I’m booked solid for the next few days. You got someplace to stay until then?”

Shady nodded—which, he realized, meant nothing at all to Ivory, so he confirmed it audibly, too. “Yeah, of course. Sundown ain’t Manehattan but it’s at least got a hotel. And who knows, maybe I’ll try some ghost hunting of my own. Got any recommendations for me?”

Ivory let out a little snort-laugh. “Right, well, don’t screw around too much if it’s movin’ stuff around and slammin’ doors. Gotta be a pretty powerful spirit if it’s doin’ that. As for advice... Well, I’d say spread some salt around your manor, if the ghost is getting' too rowdy. That should scare the ol’ hag away, and keep it from buggin’ ya.”

“Still can’t believe I’m even havin’ this conversation.”

“Me neither. Half of me thinks you’ve just got the jitters and you’re buggin’ me about some nightmare you had.”

“I... probably am.”

“Yeah, well, even if you are, I wanna see the ol’ haunted house myself anyways. Got an address for me to send for you, yet?”

“Send it to town hall, they’re holdin’ my mail.”

“10-4. Illustrious Real Estate Mogul of Sundown, already got his own PO box,” Ivory said, a warm tone on her teasing voice. “See ya in a week, Shady.”

Shady said his own goodbyes, and hung up the line before he got charged another three bits.

He wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of waiting a week for his sister to show up, but at the very least it would give him some time to relax his nerves and collect himself after the hellish few days he’d been having. And if anypony knew what to do about his current situation, it would be her. He couldn’t afford to complain about waiting for the best pony for the job.

Much as he was reluctant at the thought of spending another night in Buckwheat Manor after his eventful one last night, he eventually found himself meandering back there, after spending an hour or so more in Sundown buying some food and supplies. For all he knew, that one night would be an exception, a product of fraught nerves, like he still half-suspected. And so, with his cart full of some fresh produce, cookware, and more fuel for his lamps, he began his lengthy trek back to Buckwheat Manor.

As he left town, though, his sister’s advice echoed back in his head once more. He hitched his cart, and cantered back to the general store he’d just departed from.

The stallion behind the counter seemed amused. “Forget somethin’, son?”

Shady gave a sheepish nod. “Er, salt. Do you sell, uh. Road salt?”

“Road salt.” The clerk stared. “It’s October.”

“I know, I know. I, er. I like to be prepared, y’know? Never know when the first snowfall might creep up on ya!”

The clerk’s expression was somewhere between bewildered and amused, but thankfully he did, by some absurd luck, happen to have a few bags of road salt in a store room in the back of the general store. Shady gratefully bought two, hauled them back to his cart, and set out for home once again, now with a bit more paranormal preparation.

It was late in the afternoon by time he finally returned. As he turned onto the drive leading up to the manor, he felt the same sense of foreboding stillness once more, the moment his hooves touched onto the lawn. His hooves carried him closer to the manor, which still seemed to be peering back at him through those inky, darkened voids beyond the cracked windows.

The source of the sensation of stillness gradually dawned on him, though, as he approached the manor. Once he’d reached it, he detached himself from the cart, leaving it by the porch for the moment to go test out his theory. He trotted all the way back to the front gate, where he sat with his head angled upwards, watching the birds and squirrels and bugs and other living things go about their days ceaselessly. Every one of them moving about in that frantic, late-autumn manner that all creatures, even ponies, felt compelled to move as the winter drew closer.

There was something strangely deliberate about the flight patterns of the birds and insects, though. They were content to perch on the trees around Buckwheat Manor, or above the road. And yet, as Shady sat watching, in nearly ten minutes, he didn’t see a single one of them cross the threshold onto the grounds of the manor. If they had to get towards some point beyond, they flew around the perimeter. They took longer, far less efficient routes to get to places beyond the manor, as though dreading the notion of flying above it. The squirrels, too, would seemingly prefer to put themselves at greater risk of being plucked up by some bird of prey, travelling the lengthy way acrows the road instead of simply cutting across the unkempt long grasses of the manor lot.

It was no wonder the entire air felt so impossibly still, around Buckwheat Manor. Even the animals dreaded the idea of approaching it.

Shady exhaled deeply.

“What do you all know that I don’t?” Shady said aloud, shaking his head as he watched a squirrel prance across the rusted gate to get to the thick woods on the far side. They obviously had no insight to give him, and so Shady made his way back to go offload his cart and settle in for the evening.

It was quite frustrating, then, for him to discover that in the time since he’d parted ways with his produce less than fifteen minutes ago, it had all begun to rot as though infested with insects. All the fruits and vegetables he’d so carefully selected were now a wretched lump of foul smelling compost, leaking onto the bottom of his cart and the newspapers he’d grabbed from the general store.

“I think I get the hint,” Shady grumbled out—half to himself, half to Buckwheat Manor—as he dumped the bag of rotted produce into the forest off to the side. A night of canned beans and peaches would have to suffice, he supposed.

Night came faster than Shady would have liked. For the second time, he watched the sun fall, cold wind blowing through the woods and forcing him to retire inside to eat his dinner.

A pocket knife was his utensil of choice, and he ate the peaches and beans straight out of the cans. It was hardly a meal befitting the grandioseness of the manor around him, and he imagined in a past life the previous inhabitants would’ve been gawking in horror at his doing so in the midst of their library.

His graze drifted to the burnt writing on the wall. LEAVE OUR HOME.

It was so personal, so direct. He’d seen the bloody lamp, floating about as it wrote it down, and he was quite certain it hadn’t been held within a unicorn’s telekinesis. Floating, certainly, but by something far more than simple magic.

Of course, the manor would’ve been haunted. In retrospect, it made Sunny Meadow’s reaction, and the cheap and hasty sale of the house, make far more sense. They no doubt expected to see him the next morning, begging them to take the keys so he could go back home and invest in a house that wasn’t infested with wayward spirits.

Shady was no quitter, though. If the irigation system of the house needed repair, he’d fix it. If it needed new shingles, he’d climb up with some fresh ones and a hammer. If the bloody manor was inhabited with ghosts, he’d evict them like the pestersome squatters they were.

He stayed staring at that message, in all its crude, harsh bluntness. It was like it’d been spat out at him directly into his face.

“LEAVE. OUR. HOME.”

“Buckwheats?” Shady said, aloud, as though they would hear him. “Sorry, but it’s my home, now. Can’t we just be civil about that?”

The howling wind and crackling fire answered him. The manor groaned and shuddered as the old wood adjusted to the cooling night. Once Shady finished his dinner, and once the twilight outside began to thicken and darken into dusk, he dragged in one of the bags of road salt he’d deposited on the porch. He wanted a good night sleep, and if his sister felt that this was a good idea, he’d have to give it a shot.

Throwing the bag of salt over his back, Shady dug into the side with his pocket knife, forming a tiny little gash through which the salt began to slowly pour out. Then, he went on a little tour around the bottom floor of the house, spreading most of the salt at the stairs, library, foyer, and living areas where the majority of strange happenings had taken place. He had enough to cover some of the top floor, too, and so he spread some up the stairs and in the bedrooms there.

It took some time—and the feeling of salt crunching under his hooves everywhere he walked was hardly pleasant—but eventually he’d covered much of the manor in the stuff, no doubt to the chagrin of whatever spirit might or might not even be inhabiting the manor. It felt significantly later by the time he finished, and the moonlight was already beginning to shine through the large round window in the foyer room of the manor, casting the shadows of the railing banister onto the far wall and catching the broken glass of the fallen chandelier.

Depositing the empty salt bag, Shady locked the front door of Buckwheat Manor, took one of the newspapers he’d purchased in Sundown—a little damp with rotted produce, but still mostly legible—and headed upstairs to retire for the evening.

The night passed in that still, placid way that nights spent with oneself often do. The sound of the wind seemed to be growing stronger as the night carried forth, rustling through the trees outside which Shady watched through the musty windows of the master bedroom. The branches wavering ever so slightly at first, but eventually dancing and bobbing and shuddering as though a mighty beast were sauntering through the woods nearby.

Rain soon joined the chamber vocals of howling wind. It spattered onto the glass and down the roof, and Shady could hear it dripping into the study a few rooms over, too.

It was hard to sleep. Shady stayed awake even as the night matured. A check of his pocket-watch tucked in his nearby saddle-bag told him it was past midnight. He couldn’t find it in him to extinguish his lamp and close his eyes, though, and so he stayed staring at the oaken ceiling with his ears perked up listening to the wind and rain in the forest outside.

It would’ve been heavenly, and peaceful, if it hadn’t been for his fraught nerves. He supposed there were worse places in Equestria to lie awake in.

And, as he quickly realized, if he would’ve fallen asleep then he surely would have not heard the sound of quiet sobbing from the first floor of the manor.

It had blended with the rain and wind, at first. Shady hadn’t been certain he’d been hearing it, and it had been soft enough that he may have missed it even without the pouring rain.

Shakily, he sat up. He had to force himself to turn, and look towards the hallway, his heart pounding in his chest the whole while.

There was nothing there, however.

As Shady was beginning to realize, there was only one spirit in Buckwheat Manor, after all.

He knew that the slightest movement on his behalf would bring about a cacophony of creaking boards, and so he remained motionless with his ears perked in the direction of the hallway. They weren’t fooling him. Down the stairs, in what sounded like the hallway by the stairwell leading into the cellar, he could hear the unmistakable sound of a pony’s crying.

To Shady, she sounded scared. And confused.

Perhaps even more than he was, at the moment.

The sobbing continued for several minutes. Sometimes going silent, and then sounding out again from someplace else on the first floor. Nearby, but in a different room, and with no sound of hoofsteps or floorboards to sound out the movement of the pony. It was with dawning realization that Shady realized that the hall by the cellar’s entrance, and the cellar itself, was the only places he hadn’t really bothered to salt. Now, it seemed to be the only place he was hearing anything at all, and even then, it sounded significantly meeker and more restrained than the activities of the previous night.

Sobbing, whilst hardly moving at all. It was a far cry from vague threats burnt into the walls of his library and apparitions standing above his sleeping form. Perhaps the salt truly was working. He was half tempted to go right back to bed then and there.

His sister’s warnings of the dangers of paranormal beings still reverberating in his head, Shady instead began to creep his way towards the stairs, in the direction of the mare’s sobbing voice. Miracolously, she didn’t cease at the sound of Shady’s hoofsteps, even as he winced at the groaning of the floorboards. He crept down the hall and to the steps, and half-way down them he glanced over the balcony and down the hall in the direction of the sobs.

It was the same mare from earlier. She was lying with her back against the wall and her limbs curled tightly around herself, weeping into them. Her face was soaked wet in blood and dripping mascara. As Shady looked closer, he saw with surprise that she in-fact did not have any rear limbs at all, rather, her lower-body seemed to resolve into a lengthy, tail-like wisp, as though she were a seapony without any fins.

Her ‘tail’, if it could be called such, was curled around herself. Shady could see her body through it—make out the glint of jewellery that seemed to be illuminated by the soft, foggy glow she emanated.

The more Shady looked, the more he realized he’d seen this mare before.

On the picture, in the library. The one that had been desecrated. She was the young mare, the Buckwheat daughter.

Leave our home.

It was hard for Shady to reconcile the scrawled demand with the creature weeping before him. Against his better judgment, he cleared his throat and raised his voice.

“You’re one of the Buckwheats, aren’t you?”

Her sobbing stopped instantly. Her eyes went wide—ghostly black, pupilless, and peering with sheer terror in Shady’s direction.

She opened her mouth, and paused, as though doing so had required careful thought. As though she had to reassemble some memory as to how to go about speaking.

Eventually, she tried again. She locked eyes with Shady Fortune, and though she still looked terrified, she spoke with firmness all the same.

“Leave our home. Please. Leave.”

Shady sighed. He glanced over at the bag of salt, discarded by the entrance of the door. “No, I think it’s you who’s gotta do that, I’m afraid. It’s not personal, but, well. Your time’s passed.”

The mare’s expression seemed to shift. Her fear dissipated, and anger took over. She moved out of her pathetic, fetal crying position, and instead seemed to be keen on charging headlong towards Shady.

Or, at the very least, she tried to. She didn’t make it particularly far, before her trajectory took her directly into the lines of salt that Shady had put down. She hissed out in pain, and the dull glow that hung over her wispy form seemed to grow a little dimmer to Shady. She stumbled back, her cry splitting the silence of the manor.

He was at the bottom of the stairs, now. The discarded bag of salt was laying by the door, and the other, still full bag beside it. He gripped the full bag in his hooves, and with a little grunt, he hauled it onto his barrel and turned back towards the ghost.

She’d retreated back to the presently un-salted spot in the corridor. She was glancing back at Shady with an expression intermingled with fear and fury. To Shady, she looked more akin to a cornered animal, than any sort of equine creature, ghost or not.

Her words were a steady stream, now, spoken in a barely audible whisper. “Get out, get out, get out, get out...”

“I’m sorry,” Shady said. He took a wary step closer. She seemed not to hear nor see him, but he tried again. “Really, I am.”

He gripped the bag of salt, ready to tear it open. Already, he was thinking of the morning to follow. He could call Ivory up, and let her know that he’d taken care of his paranormal situation all by himself without her help, much as he appreciated her—

He stopped. The ghost-mare had gone silent, and was staring directly at him with her eyes widened. They were watering again, unblinking and alight with horror. It was the look somepony got, when the inevitability of death was bearing down upon them, and they could do little to prevent it. With dawning dread, Shady realized that it surely hadn't been the first time such a look had taken over this poor mare's beautiful face.

Shady let the bag of salt fall onto the hall floor.

“What in Tartarus am I doing...” he whispered, looking down at the grains of salt trodden beneath his hooves.

When he looked back up, the ghost of the young Buckwheat mare had gone, and he was alone once more.

Somehow, Shady felt even less at peace.

The rest of the night passed, with no further major intrusions from the ghostly mare. Nonetheless, Shady never truly felt alone as the night crept forth. Even if she hadn’t been vocal, there was always the vaguest sensation that there was something just in his peripheral, down the hall, outside the darkened windows. She was avoiding him, now, but she hadn’t left.

He’d scared her off. Not just that, but it seemed as though the salt that he had spread across the manor had done a rather adequate job at crippling her influence. He should have felt relief, but the sight of her terrified, resigned expression as he loomed over her haunted him more than any of her intrusions thus far.

He apologized, out loud, without thinking. It seemed an odd thing to do, but the moment he saw that painting, of the Buckwheat family, he couldn’t help himself

Nothing responded. The rain continued to fall. The night continued to pass.

Shady didn’t sleep. It was with relief that he watched the first traces of dawn light through the trees, and the pouring rain taper away into a thin drizzle before stopping altogether.

When the rain cleared, Shady headed outside. He boiled some water, made some oatmeal, and sat atop his cart eating it.

As the morning matured, he distracted his fraught nerves by doing some work on the manor—he boarded up that patch of exposed roof, knowing full well it was probably far too late to save the room below from the worse of water damage. At least the rest of the manor wasn’t so sorely affected as the one spot.

The sensation of being watched—in the corner of his eye, in the reflections of the musty glass windows of the manor—never fully left him. His eyes felt heavy, the culmination of two straight sleepless days characterized by fear and exhaustion was beginning to weigh him down.

He felt calmer inside the manor in the day time, but he chose to nap outside regardless. The rain had quickly been replaced by bright and shining sun occasionally blotted out by the clouds above. He found a spot by one of the trees in the front drive of the manor, and closed his eyes. Sleep came upon him laboriously slow, and he had to stop himself from opening his eyes to peer back at the manor every couple minutes.

Finally, though, sleep did come to him. His mind slowed, calmed, and eased him into dreams.

IV

It was pouring rain, and he had just managed to stumble through the front door of the manor.

His wife was tearing down the stairs in an instant. Her eyes were red and puffy, but she looked at him with palpable relief as he shook the rain out of his fur and the cold from his bones.

“Dear… dear…” she cooed out, her warm hooves wrapping around him as she nuzzled her snout into his neck. Her horn was alight in a moment, stripping off his rain-soaked overcoat, while she hurriedly led him towards the crackling fireplace in the library. “You're okay, thank goodness… you're okay.”

“I'm okay, my love.” He smiled as she practically forced him to sit by the fire. “But I fear my search…”

A great weariness overcame him. His gaze grew solemn, as he looked into Perennial Buckwheat's widened, anxious eyes. Thunder rolled outside, filling the silence as he struggled for the words.

Gently, he took her hoof instead, gripping it tightly in both of his own.

Already, her eyes were beginning to water. He knew this part would be difficult for her, but he had to push forth all the same.

“I… found their carriage,” he said, softly, looking away as her gaze deepened. “It had been… there is no mistaking it, it had been clawed upon, by timber-wolves. I could practically smell their oaken stench, through the rain.”

Perennial's breath caught as she let out a single choking sob, but did not interrupt him.

“I searched, my love. Even as the rain turned to storm, I searched. I screamed for your mother and your father, louder than even the thunder above. I searched far beyond where they had been forced to abandon their wagon. And… I found where hoof-prints in the mud ceased, and the prints of timber-wolves took their place.”

Perennial was crying now, openly. The infernal sound. He wanted to slap the bloody racket out of her throat, but he forced a patient frown instead, gripping the mare's hoof tighter. It seemed to, at the very least, shut her up for the moment.

“There was a great struggle, it seems. I could see the scattered remains of timber. The broken hilt of your father's blade. The torn remnants of your mother's summer hat—that wondrous one, that she bought in the city. But, though I searched tirelessly, I could not find them. I'm so sorry, my love.”

Her sobs returned. More intensely, but muted, as she sunk herself into his barrel to weep. He stroked her mane softly, as her chest heaved and her tears joined the rain dripping off of his coat. He let her weep as long as she wished, long into the night. His eyes traveled to the great painting hung in the library, of the four then-surviving Buckwheats.

One may as well have put a great slash through it—directly through the painted smiles of the wealthy family—for all the relevance it had, now. The only pony left who would truly have cared seemed too busy sobbing into his cold barrel to have noticed.

Outside, through the rain and thunder and crying wind, a lone timber-wolf howled out.

To him, it was like a triumphant song.

There was something else, being carried on the wind outside, too. A mare’s voice, drifting in through the glass windows. A single word, or a name, spoken in increasing volume...

“Shady.... Shady...”

“Shady!”

He started awake to the sight of Sunny Meadow looking down on him. “Ack!”

She blinked. “Somepony’s a heavy sleeper. Rough night?”

He groaned, sitting up and managing a little smile. “Ugh... guess so. Somehow the grass is comfier than my cot. What’s up, Sunny?”

Sunny chuckled. “Just a courtesy call. Makin’ sure you’re in one piece, and your first few nights in your lovely new home have been treatin’ ya well.”

“Oh, yeah.” Shady waved a hoof. “Totally uneventful.”

There seemed to be something about Shady’s tone that Sunny picked up on, almost immediately, because her glance went immediately to the manor. “Y’know, you can just tell me. I won’t judge.”

At that, Shady went silent, looking back at Sunny’s face. True to her word, her expression was one of apparent warmness and sympathy. She settled down onto the grass beside him.

“Can I, uh...” Shady sighed. “Can I ask you something I should’ve asked you earlier?”

“I dunno if I’ve got an answer, but sure.”

Shady smiled, despite everything. “You’ve been in Sundown for awhile, right, Sunny?”

“My whole life. And I’ve been workin’ with the city for about fifteen years, now. So yeah, I’d say I have.”

“Do... You know what happened to the Buckwheats? Before they moved?”

That seemed to garner some reaction from Sunny. Not of surprise, or frustration... It looked to Shady as though she had been expecting this question for some time, and had been mentally preparing for it for about as long.

"That's long before my time." She exhaled heavily. “Just that they apparently had the worse run of luck any family in or out of Sundown’s probably seen. If the ol’ mare’s tales are to be believed.” She replied.

Shady thought of the young Buckwheat mare. The ghost. He thought of her terrified, pleading face. “...Murder?”

Sunny shook her head. “Not unless you think timber-wolves, freak accidents, and equine grief can have malicious intent. Their youngest got caught in a brush fire, when he was no more than ten. The poor colt. Then the other two... Timber-wolves got ‘em both. There was no road back in those days, and I guess they got turned around in a storm headin’ back in from town...”

Shady felt as though a great weight was being placed on his chest. It seemed as though Sunny noticed it, too, because she went silent for several moments.

When she next spoke, her voice was a little more than a whisper. “What did you see, Shady?”

He didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He was quite convinced that, much as she said otherwise, there was simply no way Sunny was going to believe him. It was one thing to claim he saw some paranormal nonsense on his first, nervous night in town. It was quite another to claim he’d seen the past through some bloody daydream of his. She’d think he was mad for certain.

Then again, maybe she wouldn’t.

“What about the mare? Perennial? The... The daughter?”

“She stayed in the place with her husband, for a little while. After her folks died,” Sunny said. “But apparently, she wasn’t quite right. Reclusive. Angry. At herself, at the world. Her husband did all the shopping, was the only one who ever went into town. She drowned herself in the lake out beyond the trees there, behind the house. Did it a year after her parents died. I guess her husband sold the place after that.”

Shady was quiet. His head felt like it was spinning.

“Shady, I...” Sunny opened her mouth, and closed it again, as her thought died monetarily. Her eyes fell flat on her head. “We should have told you... Guess we thought you... Must have already known.”

“No, no, it’s not your fault.” Shady shook his head. “I was the one who looked at the damn haunted house outside of town and said that was where I wanted to put up a bloody picket fence.”

Sunny managed a chuckle. “You okay, though? You looked kinda, uh...”

“I’m fine. I’m fine, now that I know,” he said, nodding. “It’s just, uh. Well. You see all those old paintings, of all these old ponies, and it messes with you. You asked me if I had a rough night, and I guess I did. Nightmares, didn’t sleep—I guess I’m at that perfect age where I’m not quite a young stallion anymore. All full of existentialism.”

Sunny laughed again. “Hey, if you’re ‘not quite young’, I’m ancient history, whippersnapper.”

They shared another laugh, and Sunny took her leave shortly thereafter.

When she did, Shady headed back towards Buckwheat Manor with renewed vigour. His mind was aglow with images of his ghostly intruder, huddled sad and afraid in a darkened corner of the manor. Scared and confused, and an intruder to what should have been her home.

He found an ancient straw broom in the kitchen of the manor, and he set to work. Every grain of salt he’d deposited onto the hardwood floor to deter the spirit, he swept all up. He worked tirelessly well into the afternoon cleaning up his efforts from the previous day. Once he had, he gathered it all, and tossed it into the forest outside. The deer could enjoy it, for all he cared.

Once he finished, he stood in the foyer, looking up at the second floor landing, while the motes of dust swirled and danced through the beams of light descending from the windows.

“I’m sorry,” he said aloud, to the empty house. “I was... I was so, so wrong. If you can hear me, Perennial Buckwheat... I’m sorry.”

Nothing responded. Shady wasn’t surprised. He hadn’t seen much evidence of the ghost in any of his day-time ventures through Buckwheat Manor. Her influence, certainly, but she herself did not seem to like appearing while the sun and light reigned over the skies above. He would have to wait until night again, to make his amends with the mare. To try and understand, and make peace.

He’d grown up his entire life thinking that the ghostly spirits that remained in the world of the living had their own evil aims. His sister, much as he loved her, had further convinced him of that fact.

When his grandmother had joined the blurred, half-remembered faces of his mother and father in Elysium—or so he was told—he’d felt it greater than ever. Her good spirit had moved on, found peace. The sinister, ghastly ones, that remained here in Equestria, would never know such peace.

But now, Shady was starting to realize that within the walls of Buckwheat Manor was a scared, lonely, long lost soul. Just like him.

And if he deserved peace, then why shouldn’t she?

V

Prepared as he was for her, it took several nights before she returned.

Her influence became rare, for the ensuing few days. A book, fallen off a shelf when nopony had been there to touch it. The motes of dust in the air swirling about in strange patterns, as though being pushed by the passing of something he could not see.

He didn’t know for certain if he’d hurt and weakened her, or if she simply had grown more shy and wary. He hoped it was the latter.

At midnight, on his fifth night in Buckwheat Manor, Shady finally heard her again.

He was in the library, when it happened. He could feel her, as she materialized within the house, a few rooms over. An unearthly chill suddenly sweeping through him, through the entire manor, as the unliving second resident awoke and began to wander the manor’s halls. Shady breathed in a nervous, steely gasps. His heart was pounding, and he was quite certain he’d never been so anxious in all his days as he was right now. All the what-ifs and second thoughts resurfacing once more, as he realized how foalish he was truly being with this all.

The ghost—Perennial Buckwheat, Shady reminded himself that she had a name—was in the next room, but Shady felt as though she were watching him all the same. Perhaps she was listening to him as he himself sat with his ear practically pressed to the wall. She was still, but Shady could hear her breathing—an odd sound, shaky, uncertain, gasping. Sounding more as though it was being done out of the tradition of doing so than any sort of necessity.

To his surprise, she was the one who broke the silence. Her voice sounded out from within the room and outside of it, all at once. Shady could’ve sworn she was speaking into his head instead of into the manor.

“Please... Please don’t hurt me...”

Shady felt a pain of guilt in his chest, at her weary, broken voice. She sounded terrified of him. Never in a thousand years would he have imagined a ghost being afraid of him.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” he said. “I... I think we got off on the wrong hoof, Miss Buckwheat.”

“You shouldn’t be here. Why can’t you leave me be?”

“I shouldn’t, but I am here. We both are. Don’t you want somepony to talk to?”

There was silence, for several seconds. Then, Shady felt the temperature in the library drop a few more degrees. The fire he had lit was snuffed out instantly, and as he exhaled he was able to see his breath rising into the air before him.

Perennial Buckwheat drifted inside of the room from beyond one of the bookshelves shortly thereafter. Her hooves were intertwined nervously, and she appeared from the wall immediately opposite Shady, seeming to be deliberately keeping her distance and refusing to meet his eyes.

“I’m Shady,” he said, softly. “Shady Fortune.”

“I know.” Her voice was like the first birds in the morning, beginning the dawn chorus. Weary, and without confidence by its lonesome. “I’ve been watching you since you first arrived. And you talk in your sleep... So why can’t you just go?”

“Why should I?” Shady asked. “I don’t wish to harm you.”

“Yes, you do.” She finally looked up at him, narrowing her eyes. “You all do. All of you.”

“I don’t, Miss Buckwheat. I promise you that.”

“You hurt me, the other night. You wanted to. I c-c-couldn’t even... I couldn’t see where I was. Everywhere I went, it hurt... My own home... It hurt so much...”

Shady winced. "I know. I... I screwed up. I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t know. I’m sorry, I really, really am.”

“You don’t belong here. This isn’t your home. Why can’t you just leave?”

With a sigh, Shady nodded his head. “I know. I should.” He’d been thinking it over, since his talk with Sunny, and indeed he was beginning to wonder if maybe it was for the best. Who was he, to continue disturbing restless spirits? “But I wanted to try to talk to you, before I did.”

Perennial was silent for a moment. She fiddled with the pearl necklace around her neck, her ears going flat against her head. “Nopony wants to do that. They never did before. They certainly don’t now.”

“You wouldn’t be here talking to me if that was true, Miss Buckwheat.”

At that, Perennial exhaled. It was like she was sighing a mighty weight off of her chest. The entire time they were talking, she seemed to be drifting ever so slightly closer to Shady, but now she actually consciously seemed to chose to do so, her little wispy tail swishing behind her as she did. “Fine. But if you pull out the salt again...”

Shady managed a smile, despite everything. Gradually, his rapidly beating heart began to slow. “No, I’m done with that. I promise. I really am sorry, Miss Buckwheat.”

“I know I... Probably scared you. I scare everypony. I just wanted you to leave,” she admitted, hiding behind her mane. “A-and you can call me by my name, if you like. Calling me Miss... Hurts, a bit.”

“Perennial?”

She nodded.

“It’s good to meet you, Perennial.”

She looked up, shaking her head slowly. She seemed to notice Shady’s breath, rising as vapour, for he saw her eyes follow it up curiously as it rose to the ceiling. “No, it’s not. I’m just an inconvenience to you. I don’t want to be here, either.”

“Maybe I can help you.”

“You’d like that. You’d like it if I was gone.”

“No. That’s not what I meant,” Shady sighed. “But... I’ve never had a ghost for a friend, before. And if we’re both gonna be living here...”

She let out a harsh, cynical laugh. “That’s not funny.”

Shady blinked, and then ran over his sentence and face-hoofed.“R-right. Sorry.”

“I’m joking. Gallows humour. It’s the only kind I’ve got left.”

Shady managed a smile. “How long have you been here?”

“My whole life. My whole unlife. A hundred years. I don’t know. It feels like the same night, over and over. Sometimes I’m back alive, and I’m... Living it all over again.”

Shady thought of the stairs leading to the cellar. He thought of the blood dripping onto the floor of the cellar, and from her skull. He thought of that haunted look in her eyes, when he’d nearly exorcised her with the salt.

“I thought you were... Him,” she continued, softly. “When you showed up, I was back again. I panicked. I was scared.”

“Your husband?” Shady guessed, biting his lip. Perennial gave a single nod, her eyes squeezing shut. They’d begun to water, and the gash on her skull was deepening with black, colourless blood.

Shakily, he brought a hoof to her own. It passed cleanly through, but somehow, she seemed to feel it all the same. It felt like he was shoving his hoof into an ice fishing hole in the dead of winter, but he didn’t pull away.

“What did they tell you?” she croaked out. “A-about me. How I died. W-what?”

He didn’t answer, immediately. It was a little difficult to, with how weary and broken Perennial had sounded. He was half expecting the... Ghostly part of her to suddenly spike back to life. She might have seemed calm now, but he wondered just how she might act under distress.

Heaving a sigh, he proceeded anyways. “You drowned yourself, they say.”

She bristled, her eyes opening as she looked to Shady with an expression of fury. “Drowned...”

“I’m sorry...”

“You didn’t do it,” she replied. “That... That murderous, treacherous swine. He did. He took everything from me. He made it so that nopony would question it if I really did...”

She trailed off, heaving into a few ugly sobs, turning away from Shady and pulling her hooves away from his.

“It’s not fair,” she choked out, sinking her head into her hooves. “It’s not fair at all. I just want them back.”

“I know...” Shady said. It felt... Empty, coming from him, but he said it anyways.

It seemed Perennial agreed, because she drew her head up to glare at him. “Do you? Really? You’re still here. How in Tartarus do you know?”

“That doesn’t mean the ponies I love are all still here,” he replied. “My ma and pa... When I was just young enough that I still remember them. My granny raised me, and just this summer, she, too... It’s... Not the same, I know. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, either.”

She looked at him, for several seconds, her eyes locking with his as she seemed to be trying to read his expression. Searching for dishonesty that, after several moments, she seemed to realize was not there. “I’m sorry, Shady.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said, shaking his head. She was looking directly at him, now, with those wide, pupil-less eyes. Even in unlife, and even with her mascara spread down messily across her bloody face, she really was a beautiful mare, Shady thought.

He offered his hoof, again. Holding it down before her, not touching her own but instead presenting his for her.

With a quiet, soundless sob, she took it in her own. For a brief moment, he could have sworn he’d felt her, as though she were really there, in the flesh. Then, the moment passed, but she remained there, gazing into his eyes curiously.

“You’re the first pony who’s spoken to me in... In...” she sighed. “In so, so long. I’d forgotten what my voice even sounded like.”

“It sounds beautiful, Perennial.”

She managed a little chuckle, and wiped her eyes clean with a hoof. “Thank you, Shady. I wish I could’ve met somepony like you when I was still alive. I’d like to think maybe things might’ve been a bit different... If somepony had seen me, back then. As anything besides that sad, weepy old Buckwheat hag. Too broken to be anything besides a burden to her stallion. That’s how they remember me.”

Shady said nothing—he didn’t know what to say. Somehow, though, he didn’t feel compelled to. Perennial didn’t let go of his hoof, and though it was frigid, and he had to fight his body from shivering all about, there was some comfort in knowing he was a comfort to her.

“I just want them back...” she said again, sighing deeply. “Oaky, and Ma, and Pa. I miss ‘em a lot.”

“...Do you think that maybe they’re waiting for you?”

“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” Perennial smiled a joyless smile. She released Shady’s hoof, and brought it to her necklace, pulling on it gently as if for comfort. “I’m sorry that I’m here. But I don’t think I can ever leave.”

“My sister... She tells me that restless souls often stick around when they have... Well, unfinished business.”

Perennial laughed. “Do you think I have unfinished business? Really?”

He shook his head. “Maybe not. But I don’t think your soul could really be ‘at rest’ when, well...”

Shady trailed off, but he didn’t really have to continue. Perennial nodded her head slowly, playing with her necklace thoughtfully. “You oughta... You oughta just burn down the damn house, Shady. Forget about appeasing some old hag who never passed on.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I’m not alive. What does it matter what I want?”

“Why should what you want stop mattering when you pass?”

Perennial blinked. She stared, and slowly, a warm smile split across her face. She looked down at her hooves, nodding her head, once, twice, many times in succession, her eyes squeezing shut. “I... I just want somepony to know. What happened. I don’t want to be the only one carrying the truth anymore.”

“Then show me. You did already, didn’t you? Earlier? When I was asleep outside?”

“I was just trying to scare you. I thought you were just like him. I wanted to make you feel bad. Make you hurt. Petty, stupid revenge. ”

“It’s what I needed to see. I wasn’t... Seeing you like I should’ve.”

“Well. I’d like to say I won’t bother you anymore, but...” Perennial exhaled. “I don’t control it. I get scared, I panic. Like I said. Sometimes, I’m back, and I’m living it all over again. I’m never at peace. I’m not allowed to be. This conversation... I don’t even know if I’ll remember it.”

“I will,” Shady promised her. “And... If you want to show me the rest, of what happened. So somepony else knows. If you think that would help, then I want to help you.”

Perennial nodded. “Then... Okay.” She looked up, opening her eyes to gaze into Shady’s own. The bloody gash in her skull was gone, and her eyes seemed brighter, more lively, to Shady.

He closed his own.

When he opened them once again, he was back in the library. As it had been, in his first dream. Perennial was there, too, beside him and in her ghostly form, still.

Down the hall, deeper in the manor, he heard raised voices echoing through the void. It was like he was hearing them through a tunnel, but as he started towards the sound, and turned the corner, he saw the two ponies and their words came into focus.

Perennial—alive, unicorn Perennial.

And a stallion. Shady hadn’t seen him before, but his voice was instantly recognizable. He’d heard it coming from himself.

The two of them were arguing in the hall by the stairs leading down to the cellar. The same place where Shady had cornered Perennial with the salt. She was standing practically in the same corner, though with hardly the same meek demeanour.

“...Out. Get out, get out, get out!” Perennial was crying. “Leave our home!”

“You’re hysterical, dear. Again. Go to bed.”

“You lied to me! It’s all that you’ve done, ever since the beginning! You lied!”

“I did no such thing.”

“You told me you searched for them! But you left them! You left them to die!”

Her husband scoffed. Shady watched as he tried to turn and walk away, but Perennial stopped him with a flare of her horn, wrapping her telekinesis around his tail.

“You ran, you coward. You never gave a damn about them! Just their bloody fortune! It’s all you talk about!”

His mood gradually turned from frustration to fury. Subtle, but Shady could see the way the stallion's lips curled from a tired frown to a near-snarl. He turned back around. Beside him, the ghostly Perennial was staring at the floor, weeping silently.

“You keep telling yourself that, Perennial,” her husband growled out. “It won’t change anything. It won’t make anypony believe you.”

“Get out,” she snarled. “Now. I know that you want to, anyways. Just go. You wretched, thieving, treacherous coward, you—”

The rest of her retort was silenced as her husband struck her with a hoof. She stumbled back, losing her balance and tumbling to the hallway floor.

She lay there, for several moments. Her eyes wide in disbelief and horror.

“You’re delusional, Perennial. You’re hurting, and you’re in grief. Tomorrow, I’ll send for the sanatorium. You need help, and I can’t continue giving it to you like this.”

Her husband began to walk away. Perennial was faster. She rose to her hooves, and started to charge towards him—

He turned, and struck her again. Harder this time, enough that she was sent flailing to the side. Shady watched in terror as she fell directly towards the stairwell to the cellar. A horrid, cacophonous symphony of thumping flooding through the manor as she fell, step after step, before coming to a rest with her skull striking the ground at the bottom.

A thick, murky pool began to form around her head, her white mane turning red. Above, her husband turned, and continued to walk away.

Beside Shady, Perennial’s ghost was looking back at him, fresh betrayal and hurt back in her expression, as though she’d just experienced this all for the first time once more.

“He buried me the next morning,” Perennial whispered out. He felt her cold hooves in his. He was looking back in her eyes, back in the library. Back in the dust and the cold and the ghostly corpse of Buckwheat Manor after the wrath of decades had shaken it. “...Stuffed my body in a hole in the yard out back. The... The house was already empty , when I... ‘woke up.’ Everypony was gone. I’ve been reliving this every day since it happened. I’ve been thinking about what I did, and what I said... Ever since I said it. I’ve been falling down those stairs longer than I’ve ever been alive.”

“How... How did you know?” Shady asked. “About... Him...”

“I just... I knew,” she said. “The way he spoke of their fortune. The way he... He treated me, when there wasn’t anypony around anymore to make him stop. He only ever saw me as a way to get to riches. He never loved me. I was a fool to have ever loved him.”

“Perennial, I...” Shady felt as though he was about to retch. He wanted to reach through the decades to grasp this mare, to hug her, to stroke her mane and tell her it was over, it was a bad dream, it was all going to be okay...

But it hadn’t been. It hadn’t ever been okay for anypony within Buckwheat Manor.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry I had to... Bring all of this upon you, Shady. I’m sorry it couldn’t have just been easy.”

“He... He might be out there, somewhere. He might still be alive. I can...”

“Why?” she tilted her head. “What would that change?”

“Well, I have to do something to—”

“Shady, you’ve done more than anyone has ever done for me my whole life just by listening to me,” Perennial returned. "You’ve no business chasing repentance for something that didn’t happen to you.”

For a while, he simply looked at his hooves. His mind aflame, with fury and sorrow and a burning hatred for somepony he’d never see.

“What, then?” he asked, eventually. “What can I do to make things right, for you?”

“That isn’t your burden, Shady.”

“No. But I want to help.”

Perennial stared, for a moment, her distrustful eyes scanning Shady. Slowly, she gave a single, gentle nod.

“I’d like my body to be laid to rest, someplace nice. Out back, behind the manor, there’s a hill. It overlooks the forest, and you can see the river weave its way over to the lake. Can... Do you think maybe you can take me there?”

Shady promised her he would.

She led him to where her body had been buried—an unceremonious spot, in the forest behind the woodshed. When he’d begun to dig, with an old shovel from the nearby shed, she had vanished. He could hardly blame her; the last thing he would have been willing to endure is the recovery of his own corpse.

He tried not to think about the fact that the shovel he was using was likely the one that had dumped her in this hole he was now upturning.

He tried not to think about what he was about to find.

He worked long into the night, grunting and panting and exhausted, but working diligently all the same, driving the rusted shovel down, again and again. The cool autumn nights had made the dirt hard and compacted, but he did not slow.

Eventually, his shovel struck something that was not dirt.

Shady stopped. Grimacing, he knelt down before the hole, reaching a hoof delicately in to remove the old pearl necklace that Perennial Buckwheat had been wearing when she had been murdered.

It was connected to an equine skull with the last traces of her mane still clinging to it. She’d been curled into a fetal-like position when she’d been tossed into the shallow grave. Her fore-hooves were intertwined, still, as though even in death she’d had the same sheepish, nervous demeanour that she’d had in un-life.

He extracted her skeleton delicately, laying it down upon the grass on the lawn of Buckwheat Manor. He looked back at the old house, the witness to the gruesome scene Shady was committing. Perennial was still nowhere to be seen—in a spiritual sense, he supposed.

He laid her down upon one of the thick blankets he’d brought in his cart. Then, he lifted her gently into it, and began to make his way towards the harness.

Perennial materialized as he did. She refused to look behind, into the cart, nor the hole in the ground that Shady had just dug. Instead, she seemed fixated upon Shady himself.

He could feel her, as though she were helping him pull the cart herself. They made their way through the trees as the night continued to pass, and the first few birds began to chirrup out the promise of a coming dawn. Neither of them spoke—neither could think of what to say. The only sound was the rattling of the cart as Shady weaved through the trees.

They travelled for several miles, until Shady could see where the forest floor began to arch upwards, and the trees seemed to thin. Turning, he started to pull his cart up the hill, grunting a little as he struggled with the heavy weight. It snagged along tree-roots, bounced upon rocks—he did his best to be gentle and careful, but the ascent was an arduous one all the same.

When he finally reached the top, the view nearly took his breath away.

The entire forest seemed as though it had been sprawled about specifically for them. All the colours of fall on vivid display even in the predawn half-light. The hill fell away to rock before them, a hundred feet down. Beyond, the moon shimmered in the reflection of a lonely, untouched crystalline lake, which was greeted by a lengthy river that weaved like a viper through the forest, back towards Sundown. The town itself was a pinprick of faint burning light on a distant horizon. Behind him, he could see the clearing where Buckwheat Manor lay, but not the house itself.

There was a single lonely tree atop the hill, an ancient oak perhaps older than Buckwheat Manor, or Sundown.

And, beside the oak, looking down upon it all, a sight more beautiful than the entire horizon. Her long, wispy form glowing in the half-light, her eyes wide in awe. Her mouth creased into a gentle, peaceful smile.

“It’s beautiful,” Shady whispered out.

“It is, isn’t it?” Perennial sat, beside the oak, and waved for Shady to follow. He did, settling down beside her, his hind-legs dangling half over the drop-off above open air.

She rested her head upon his shoulder. In that moment, he could feel her. As though she was there. As though she were alive.

“I used to come here, when I was a filly,” she breathed, scanning the horizon. “Used to watch the geese when they flew home in the spring, touching down in that lake for the first time in some of their lives. I remember the way the trees used to dance in those angry winds in fall, or when the entire forest seemed to sparkle and shimmer in the winter moonlight. I remember all those lazy afternoons spent up here, sleeping beneath the hot summer sun...”

Shady gave a gentle nod, remaining silent.

Perennial exhaled, a decades-old sadness rolling off her shoulders. “Do you... Think that there’s any of this, on the other side?”

She was peering over at him, desperate for some hope she could believe.

“I guarantee it, Perennial. If nothing else, I can guarantee that.”

She smiled. Shady felt her hoof grip his, tightly. The coldness that had surrounded her for so long was gone. Her eyes were bright and full of life.

Then, she closed them, and lay back, her head resting against the trunk of the old oak. “It’s a nice place to nap, still. After all these years.”

“Some things don’t ever change,” he nodded. He lay back with her, and closed his own eyes to the first traces of light starting to poke over the distant spruce on the far horizon.

They lay in silence, and in that one moment, bathed in the warm light of a coming dawn, Perennial Buckwheat must have found that one thing she had been wandering the halls of Buckwheat Manor for decades searching.

“Hey, Shady...?”

“Yes, Perennial?”

“Take care of the old house for me, will you?”

He smiled warmly. “Promise.”

Something passed. The warmth beside him seemed to glow brighter, for but a moment.

Then, it vanished. For the first time since he’d arrived at Buckwheat Manor, Shady felt alone.

When he opened his eyes again, she was gone.

Epilogue

I

Shady buried Perennial Buckwheat in the blooming dawn, laying her to rest at the foot of the old oak. He clasped her pearl necklace around one of the tree’s branches.

He liked to think that wherever she was, she could still watch the sun rise over the woods around her old home.

His sister had arrived that afternoon. He’d found it hard to tell her what had happened, but he had done his best to try. He showed her the writing in the library, and the shallow grave where he’d found Perennial. He tried to explain, but he couldn’t.

Somehow, she had still understood. When she’d asked him if he needed a hug, he accepted it tearfully.

In the weeks to follow, and with Perennial’s demands still in his head even as he guiltily broke them, he attempted to track down tell of her husband. He’d visited nearly every library in Manehattan looking for records. When he’d found them, he didn’t know whether to be satisfied or disappointed.

A few years after Perennial had passed, her husband had drowned himself in the Celestial Sea. The fortune that he’d murdered her for had never been found. If it had ever existed at all.

He told the truth, to the ponies he could find who cared. Sunny, his sister, the townspeople of Sundown. It was a grim conversation to have, and a largely irrelevant one, with the rest of the world having long since allowed the Buckwheat's legends to fade into obscurity. Yet it felt important to Shady, all the same. They had to know that the mad young Buckwheat mare hadn't been mad at all, just a vulnerable mare who had needed a friend. A victim, yes, but never to herself.

There were no more hauntings at Buckwheat Manor. Shady never would have imagined he’d have missed them. Long after the house recovered from its decades of torpor, after months and years of restoration as he worked diligently to restore the house to its former beauty, he would find himself wandering the halls at night, restless and lonely.

Perhaps that was what he’d taken, from Perennial. Perhaps her burden was with him, now.

That was okay.

Wherever she was, Shady hoped she would remember him, too.

II

There was stillness all around. The air was refreshingly cool, like the last few days at the end of summer.

Grass gently brushed against Perennial’s hooves, as they took her on a leisurely walk through the vast fields that seemed to stretch to eternity behind her.

To her sides, lay forests of green and yellow and red. Tall trees rising into the bright, cloudless sky, lit by some light that felt greater than the Sun.

In front, a mare several decades Perennial’s elder stood waiting, a small, patient smile on her lips and a hoof extended. It took Perennial a moment to recognize the mare, for all the decades spent clawing the back of her mind for its image.

“Hello, Perennial,” the mare spoke softly, her voice warm and kind. She took the younger mare in her hooves, hugging her tightly.

Perennial’s breath caught in her throat. Her eyes begun to water.

“Ma...”

“I’m here, sweetie. You made it.”

There was so much Perennial wanted to say, but she couldn’t think of a single word to speak. She hugged her mother tighter, sobbing silently into her haunches, her heart burning with joy.

“I... had help," she gasped out, thinking of the kindly young stallion, on the other side of the veil. “I missed you so much. All of you... I m-miss...”

“We know,” her mother said, breathless and quiet, a hoof running through Perennial’s long and silvery mane. “Everypony’s here, Perennial. Everypony’s waiting.”

They remained that way, for what seemed like an eternity, and still never enough time for Perennial. Her joyous tears tumbled to the wispy, golden grass. Her heart was full. Her soul was at peace.

Finally, she was home.

Author's Note

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Thank you for reading.