The taxi cart strolled lively across the rocky trail that lead into the ups and downs of the thinning mountains covered by old trees. I was leaning myself against the thick leather side-cushion lacing the round wall of the passenger's chariot, while my Dad and the taxi driver chatted about things I really could care less about. My Dad, a tall, skinny, raggedy looking stallion with a huge loving smile on his face and a campfire set in his eyes, sat besides me. His Lime-green coat, short-cut blond tail, and extremely curios bouncing yellow mane all sat under his old brown mac hat his Dad gave him when he was like, eleven. Occasionally, while he was talking with Tim the cab-driver, he'd glance over to me and ask me things like, "How's the ride treating you sweetie?" or "You excited yet?"
To which I usually replied with a smile just like his, "Yeah Dad."
Then he'd go back to talking to Tim. For most of the trip, I stared. Not really thinking, but mute within my mind, silently taking in the scenery as the chariot moved by. This always seemed to be a practice used by people who don't have much to say on a ride to somewhere, and whenever somepony doesn't talk much on a ride it's usually me whenever I go anywhere. So the minutes dried and flew. The sky danced west slowly with the stars behind the world.
I breathed in, I breathed out. I was sleepy, but not really wanting to sleep yet.
I poked the horn on my head into the horn of my charming thoughts of smoking love like a cigarette, and drinking black coffee from a silver cup.

I felt a tap on my ribs and I jolted out of my daze. "See anything new sweetheart?" my Dad cooed at me. I looked at him weird, then I took a quick survey around where we were. The cabin was about a half mile away, and we've both been coming here ever since I could remember anything, but nothing looked any different. To the sides of the road laid columns upon columns of undressing trees. Many of the trees were already bare of their leaves, or nearly barren. Most of the trees though, were not. The Millwood forest was twisted beautifully like crowns of flowers upon the heads of kings. The branches and twigs always looked like they were striving to grasp each other, as if rings were being fit onto crooked fingers.
The leaves splotched in colors of greens to yellows and reds, browns and oranges too. Their colors immersed the entirety of the forest like stain-glass windows immerse cathedrals. There was always this enchanted vex about Millwood that I could never really put my hoof on.
It was almost as though, we were driving through a painting made out of the thoughts of a whirlwind painter.
I listened for anything different, but absolutely nothing turned up.
The birds sang, the tree branches creaked under the sun and the breathing of the sky, the chariot wheels grasped upon rock and dirt as it sauntered sluggishly uphill, and you could even hear a few squirrels chattering somewhere in the canopy above. The wind moved gently around us as if it were dancing to us 'hello again', with each soft gust grabbing at me and taking part of me away in tongues of dead poetry.
The air smelled of dying summer, which was the first of my favorite smells.

"Just close them!" Quickly he put his hooves on my eyes to blind me. I laughed softly and replaced his hooves with mine. I could hear him shuffling with some sort of box in the back of the cart, then I felt something lush grasp around the back of my neck and slowly get wrapped around. I took my hooves off of my eyes to see Dad wrapping me with a new scarf. When I saw it, I couldn't speak. The color was a deep velvet, and it was thickly woven with wool. Around the pale yellow hide I adorned from birth the scarf made me look as though I had become the season around us. The browning red of my mane curled vividly like briers rung around the folds and curves now wrapped around my neck.

"I bought it from this nice lady at that shop you and your friends go to sometimes. They say it's going to be a cold winter this year so, ya know, I thought you'd like a new scarf."
I couldn't stop smiling at him.
I hopped closer to his seat and gave him a hug, squeezing the bones out of his body, figuratively though.
"Thank you so much." I squeaked out between a smile.

"Yeah, well, you can pay me back later."
I let go of him and papped his hat onto the bridge of his nose, making him chuckle as he moved it back to his head.

The monotonous creaks and laments of the chariot eventually stopped, and I gently stepped out and onto the dusty road. I took to the back of the cart and started grabbing some of my stuff with my magic, cocooning my few suitcases in an illumination of yellow and hovering them lowly besides me. Dad, being an Earth pony, took his first bag in his maw and tossed the keys to the cabin at me, which I also caught in my magic.
Through a muffled speech he told me, "Gotta pay Tim, go ahead and open the door I'll be right behind you."
"Kay."
I fixed my scarf tighter around my neck as the chill of autumn started curving into my bones, and I turned and slowly walked to the cabin. Before me was a single story wooden house. The wood was ancient, harboring; a dark grey mixed with a black. The windows in the front, two of them, crossed in the same wood, were caked with barnacled dust but still clear. The curtains behind the windows were heavy and blue, backed by the lightlessness within the house. The front door, as cabin doors usually are, were planks of wood attached by the arms, with a curtained window in the middle of the top. The roof of the house was triangulated downwards, shingled in squares of black tar, and a metal chimney shoot protruded up out of the pitched teeth to watch the passing clouds waft by. The porch, the throne room of the door, carried on it's back a few rocking chairs and a tall stool all stationed to the left.
I smiled at the cabin as I made my way ever closer to it by each step taken.
"Hey there old guy." I joked.
A wavering gust blew across me, and I could almost hear something within it's voice say, "Hello my darling girl."

I hummed a laugh as I stepped onto the porch and stopped in front of the entrance door, the sounding vibrations of my hooves awakening the hollow timber. Putting one of the keys into the lock of the door, I turned the knob slowly. Immediately as I opened into the house, the cold stillness of the single room cabin lulled me as if in a dream I had found Heaven. I flipped the light switch up and a glow of mellow orange consumed the entirety of the room from the ceiling. One solitary blue couch in front of a wood burning furnace saluted to the right of the place. A wooden table with wooden chairs stood to the far left next to a countered kitchen sink and a gas stove. To the far back was the bathroom, the only other disclosed room in the cabin; then two more windows on either side of the walls, one above the kitchen sink, the other above the furnace, filtered into my sight. My heart became like the sun as my childhood collided like sea and rock. I strutted in, lips pierced into a half moon. I dropped my stuff next to the couch and sat on it's arm, then fell onto the somber cushions, absorbing all the chill of the frozen, musty fluff. I inhaled. The scent of the wet dust collected on the cushions flipped into my breath, then I exhaled.
A few minutes passed and Dad walked in, setting one of his bags by the door.
"The old place still standing?" He asked.

"I was more or less expecting your unrelenting sass to tear it down the moment you walked in. Somehow the walls must have grown stronger. They must have discovered your secrets."

"My secretssss...." I echoed.
"Burn the house down, nobody must know my secrets, the walls are liars and they'll tell Judy."

I lifted my arms up and started waving them around like pool noodles, wooing, "Nobody knooooows."

Dad cracked a smile and snickered, "You are by far the best use of decent sperm I've ever used."

- CRACK!!! -

A subtly loud sound erupted from the ceiling. We both looked up, wondering what it was, but it was probably just old house noises.
I turned back to him, raised an eyebrow and smirked, "What was that thing you said about my sass?"

***

The hidden warmth of the sun bled unto my livening corpse as I opened my eyes to the sinking shine of the evening grasping the course. I breathed in, chilling my lungs awake while my heart still rested. I could see the sun nodding through the harvesting canopy of the trees out the window, the shadows throwing their casts stretched to hide. The wind outside draped and lunged into the sounds of motion in motion. I looked up, the clock tacked to the wall read 8:27 P.M., but it was an hour late, so it was 7.
I glanced around. Dad wasn't inside, so he must have gone on a walk while I slept for the past few hours. I got off the couch and slowly walked to the bathroom, leaving my scarf on the cushion. When I stepped inside the small room, I switched on the light inside, closed the door behind me, and turned the shower head on. I glanced at the mirror waiting for the few seconds it took for the water to warm up. The only part of me I wanted to see were my eyes, so my eyes were all I saw, and they were still a drowning light blue.
Eventually, I climbed lazily into the tub, laid down to the floor of the basin, closed the shower curtains, and let the ironing rain wash me down the drain while the null of my mind drowned in rhythm against the walls of my bones. Steam was filling the room as the heat of the water and the deprived heat of the air coaxed into ghastly rising phantoms.
I stared up at the ceiling, for some reason thinking about Mom and how she was doing, and where she was. Then I though of Dad, hoping his walk was going well, and where he was. I gingerly sat up, rushing water through my mane, letting it curve down my neck and down my back. I exhaled. I bit the tip of my tongue, and hummed a tune to a song I remembered hearing a while ago, even adding the lyrics as I went.

" I climbed this hill, watching so still.
I took to the fears, of all I held dear,
but up on this height, a majestic sight
flooded the skies
and how I could feel you near... "

- CRACK!!! -

I stopped singing in a stutter. "What in the world was that?"
A loud sound boomed out from the sidewall of the shower, as if a large piece of wood was just cracked in half immediately. I put my ear to the wall to hear if it would happen again. A few seconds went by before the lights went out above me, and the room, being without any windows, became nearly pitch-black in one blink.
"Dad? Is that you? This isn't funny!"
A harsh spiked blow hit the left side of my face, hard enough to break a few soft cracks in my neck, and I screamed wildly.

I panicked, screeching in my mind 'SOMEONE HIT ME! I'AM ALONE! SOMEONE HIT ME!!!'

I tried to jump out of the tub but tripped between the curtain and the lip of the basin. I fell head first onto the floor, and the curtain crashed down on me. I scrambled to get up, colliding then into the door, hitting my head on the door knob. I ricocheted and hit the back of my head on the side of the toilet bowl. That's when the door swung open and Dad burst in and yelled my name, finding me momentarily gagged by my own throat as pain and distress racked my skull.
He looked at me caught in his shadow and the sunset light behind him. My head was bleeding badly from both the front and the back, and I was beginning to cry hysterically.
"WHAT HAPPENED!?!" He yelled, quickly grabbing a towel from the sink counter and quickly covering the fountains spewing red from my confused wounds.
I couldn't answer him, I was starting to bawl now and I couldn't make a single word come out of my mouth right, especially now with a towel covering my face and my blood pooling under me.
"Lie down sweetie, lie down!" He stammered. Dad was beginning to panic too. He didn't know what to do, and that's what scared him most right now.
"DAD, DAD, DAD, DAD..." I started gasping between word and breath at him, not stopping.
"Shhhh, Shhhhh-shhh, I'm here sweet heart, calm down, calm down you're going to be fine, okay, fine, okay!"
I started whimpering in my crying, then I choked out three words at him, "It hit me."

The door shut behind us and we were both cast back into the darkness of the unlit bathroom. That's when the walls began to scream. It came from everywhere, and vibrated everywhere. A high-pitched howl coming from all around us in the smallness of room. Then the room shook violently, along with the entire house it seemed. The howl, gurgling, and gnawing, and gnashing at us like we were killed meat, grew higher in pitch, and with each gradual raise of the pitch, the house shook more violently. Our own screams were mute.

- CRACK!!! -

I bolted upright on the couch, breathing frantically stale. My hooves flew to my head, checking my cuts. They weren't there, but a heavy throbbing of my pulse was. My chest was cold and my air, cheap. I looked down to find myself covered in a blanket hip-down, and sweat coating me like wire. I switched to the clock. 9:37, so it was 8:37 at night, and the sun had disappeared far beyond the mountains I laid in.
It was a dream... It was just a nightmare...
I started to breath slower to try and calm myself down, and after a few minutes it worked. The front door swung open and a chill of rot bore knives into the air of the cabin. Dad quickly stepped inside and shut the door, leaving the rest of the freeze outside.
He saw me awake and smiled.

"Well," He trotted over to me cheerily, "sucks to be you."
I laughed for a tad while he sat next to me on the couch.
My Dad has this great way of making somepony feel better by cracking jokes like that.
He pushed my side with his elbow, "Seriously though, you all right?"
"Yeah Dad, I'll be fine."
I few seconds of silence passed...

"Okay."
His voice suddenly turned blunt and exhaustive.
"Ready to start a fire?" He asked motioning with his head to the wood-burning furnace before us.
I turned my gaze to it, a sizzling arising slowly, then all at once set ablaze inside my stomach. My nostrils flared and the back of my neck grew hot, and a small kick pounded once under my eyes.
I belched one word in a soothed manner, "Yeah..."
Dad carefully slid off the couch, and walked to an old leather bag tucked dully in the corner of the room. He snatched it in his jaw, turned to the light switch, and dropped it down. My eyes adjusted flawlessly to see only the moonlight pouring in through the windows like ice melting down a drain, and for a moment that was all there was in existence.
The only thing Dad and I could hear was the wisps of our expiration, as all else outside of our souls went quite.
There was a dryness on my tongue, but spit in my throat.
Hoofsteps then. Dad lanced drearily back to the furnace in the bleakness of night. I got off the couch, and made my way to the furnace as well. The blanket I was wrapped in moments ago slid to the floor, and it was then that I remembered the scarf around my neck as it's touch grazed the skin of my chest.
It was such a pretty scarf.
I stopped to the small latch-door of the iron box, and Dad stood by my side. I put my hoof on the latch, and opened the furnace. Dad put the bag down, and it thudded as it's cargo hit the wooden floor under it.
He gave a big huff.

I took two steps away from him. The scents of the old furnace were strikingly overpowering, like death had mixed with ash and cinnamon.
Dad untwined the bag, and it's skin receded to the floorboards. Out from the skin, like a flower clawing out of the ground, was a simple glass jar. What was in the clear prism though, was the more interesting part. A small mass of clouded smoke illuminated in a dull, twisting white light swirled within the jar's translucent walls. The smoke corrupted and spewed wildly inside the trap, beating it'self in waves at the lid.
"How many did you manage to get this year?" I whispered aloud.
"Nineteen." He replied.
Nineteen of those things were inside the jar, nineteen of them to burn.
Dad opened a pocket on the outside of the leather bag, and grabbed a small box of matches.
"You want to be the one to do it this year?" He asked.
I stared at where his face was, seeing nothing but black silhouetted by the grief of the moon alongside the pearl glow from within the jar.

I took the box of matches in my magic, opened the side, picked a match, closed the side, and waited.
Dad set the jar on the bricks laying under the furnace. He put his hooves on the top of the jar and began to cautiously twist it open. Time grew but only slow, as it moved only slow in these few moments. Each turn rung a hollow cord as old tin slid against glass, then a pop.
The lid was open.
I got closer to him, kneeling low to the jar, my face only inches away from it's opening.
"Ready?" Dad asked, his hooves almost shaking atop the lid.
I struck the match and with a fizz it lit.

Dad quickly opened the lid, I threw the match wildly into the jar, Dad closed the lid, and the sun exploded from under us.
Dad blindly twisted the lid shut as fast as he possibly could and managed to tighten it perfectly.
He's been doing this for many years.
My sight was all and only a white sheet under my closed eyelids that began to blacken by each pant I cut. I stumbled back and buried my face into the couch cushions, hiding from the immensity of the brightness now inside jar.
A soft moaning echoed in the room. A soft groaning illuminated with the light now balancing the cabin.
The intense radiance eventually died down by the minute, and dulled slowly to the burning of a simple tongue of flame from within the jail of glass. I gathered the gull to look.
A great stirring blew inside the flaming trap, and distorted and tortured faces swirled within the jar like water boiling.
They were in pain, the ghosts were in pain.
Dad grabbed a pair of tongs in his maw and gently grabbed the blistering glass filter. He carefully placed it into the furnace, and shut the latch-door. The cabin had lit up like there was a real fire inside of it. The light convulsed, it grew and shrunk, all behind the bars of the furnace door. The tortured moaning was peaceful, to me and Dad at least.
And suddenly, it got alot cozier inside these wooden walls.

"Nice job" I looked at Dad's brightly lit face to see a wide grin chiming at me, "you did alot better than last year."
I giggled, "I learned from the best."
He walked up to me, kissed my forehead, and sat down on the couch, padding the cushion next to him for me to join.
For awhile we talked. He shared his stories, and I shared my life, including the parts I tended to make up.
When it was silent between us we'd listen with our lips stitched, to the whispering laments of the ghosts, and I never asked where he got them this time.
It was never really a great answer when wondered out loud.
It was late when we both fell asleep cocooned in the same blanket.

***

- CRACK!!! -

My eyes bolted open. My breath stabbed my lungs with a tang blow of billowing air. I sat up on the couch.
Dad was lying next to me, fast asleep on the left side of the cushions. Most of his body was covered by the blanket.

- CRACK!!! crack, CraCK, CRACK!!!!-

I took another sharp inhale, almost forgetting to breath out. The sounds were coming from the kitchen, somewhere behind me in the kitchen.
I ducked down and nestled into the nook between the cushions and the couch's back. It was the safest way I could ignore the kitchen and not step foot onto the floor.
Part of me though, needed to run away.

- CRACK!!! - - CRACK!!! -

Two more breaking sounds, still in the kitchen, but this time much louder. I gathered what I could CRACK!!!of the blanket without completely CRaCK!!! throwing it off Dad, and tossed it over my body. I CracK!!! scrambled under the sheet, lying as closely as I could to Dad's quite body hoping that my form could meld with his, and I would CRack CreK disappear into cotton folds.
Under the thick sheet of the covers I could still see the light of the ghosts in the furnace CRacKKKKK!!!, and I could see the wooden ceiling above me. So I clung to what I could of Dad, staring unblinkingly at the dimly lit boards of CraCK!! the ceiling. I was shakey, but out of everything I was silent. An uneasy feeling,CracK!!! filled the cabin, in every splinter, of everything it was. CRAck!

Three minutes passed hazily with air filling with the sound of freshly breaking wood, and than nothing; silence.
I saw only the pulsating shine casting lots onto the ceiling, I smelt nothing but the fragrant dew scent of ghosts burning, I felt spiders crawl invisibly across the sensations of my hollowing skin, my blood pumped an iron taste upon my tongue from the marrow of my teeth, I heard Dad's mellow breath and the moaning within the furnace.

Just behind me... I could hear it opening it's mouth and stretching it's calloused gums.

It wasn't until the ghosts started laughing inside their jar, that my heart had slowly, and cautiously, stopped beating.
I don't know what happened after Dad woke up, but it surely wasn't something very pleasant wrapped limply around him.

crack

Burning Ghosts

by Artist Unknown

Burning Ghosts