The Haunting
Admiral Biscuit
“Spring is soon.”
I nodded. It was almost light when I woke up, and the sun was peeking above the horizon as I walked to work. The frost was not as thick on the windows, and chill winds rarely blew.
Spiles and buckets had gone up on maple trees, and I’d occasionally see a pony towing a sledge filled with metal barrels through town to the saphouse.
I could hear the song of nature changing.
“Spring’s a time for growth, for planting, for—” Milfoil wasn’t facing me; she was looking out the window and into the future. “For rebirth. We’ve put it off longer than we should have. We need to make sure that Windflower knows, so she can choose.”
“Are you telling me that ponies can’t—that after they die, they’re stuck as ghosts until the spring?”
“No . . . but—I think that something went wrong, and that the springtime is the best time to make it right again.”
“In human lore, we often associate the autumn and winter with death, and the spring with rebirth.” I stopped stirring the soup and walked over next to her. If it burned, so be it. “Do ponies delay funerals or burials for the right time? There are some humans that believe in auspicious days for doing things—or not doing things, probably. Some days that are unlucky . . . is it like that?”
“I wouldn’t have said so. If you’d asked me last year, I would have thought . . . I would have thought that it always works out like it should. That your spirit knows where to go.
“But sometimes, it must not.”
“I’ve heard of a legend that the first person buried in a new cemetery guides all the souls who arrive later.” I couldn’t remember where I’d heard that, but it didn’t matter.
Milfoil sighed. “If that’s true, we might not be any help to her. But we have to try. I know we have to try, and I think it has to be soon.”
I went over and knelt down on the floor beside her. She leaned her head against my shoulder and the two of us sat and watched night fall in silence.
•••
We were still there when Windflower arrived, two statues, frozen in time.
She darted up to us and poked at Milfoil with a hoof, as if to say that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. And then once she’d gotten our attention, she pointed to the kitchen.
I’d completely forgotten about the soup. Judging by the smell, I’d have to chip what was left of it out of the pot later.
I took the pot off the stove and set it aside. It could have been worse; the stove had cooled a bit due to my inattention.
As I was clearing off the burnt remains of our dinner, Milfoil shook her head. I thought you were learning, she mouthed at me.
I didn’t have a witty reply—I’d thought I was, too.
•••
Windflower picked up her flower book and brought it to the table, then she pointed to the drawer where Milfoil was keeping the sketches for the garden.
“We have something we have to talk about first,” Milfoil said. “It’s really important, okay?”
Windflower’s ears dropped, but she set the book down and drifted back into the living room.
Just then it hit me that I could be the bad guy—I could break the news to her. And maybe I should be the one. Or, if not that, I could at least start. I knew as much as Milfoil did, and it was possible that if I blundered it could be waved away because I was a dumb human.
“How come you live in the forest?” Live might not have been the right term, but I couldn’t think of a better one.
Windflower shook her head and swept her forehooves around. Then she tilted her head and made for the hallway, and the two of us followed her upstairs.
She pointed to a bedroom door. I didn’t need Milfoil to tell me that that had been Windflower’s room when she was alive.
Windflower opened the door to reveal a mostly-empty room, only containing a few boxes I hadn’t gotten around to unpacking yet.
Surely, she should have known that that was what she’d find. I’d seen her exploring the house before. And yet, she looked vaguely confused, as if she’d actually expected to find her bedroom there, just as she’d left it.
She ghost-trotted past us and further down the hallway, then pointed up to the attic.
I obligingly pulled the string to lower the stairs—not that she needed them—and she vanished into the attic, to return a minute later with her duck, held firmly in her mouth. I hadn’t realized that she’d brought it back.
Windflower took that to her room and set it down, perhaps expecting that in so doing it would cause everything she’d lost to reappear, but it didn’t.
She stomped a ghostly fore-hoof in frustration, and then fled down to the living room and the comfort of her plant.
“What happened in the woods?”
Windflower shook her head.
“Do you remember?”
Her shoulders slumped, and she nodded.
She floated into the kitchen and picked up the plant book, then plunked it down on the floor. She flipped through the pages, studying the plants, before finally settling on heath aster.
Windflower pointed to it, and then out into the woods.
“You were after wild aster?” Milfoil asked.
Windflower nodded, and then pointed to the backyard.
“She wanted to transplant it,” Milfoil explained. “It’s pretty.”
Windflower moved over to the ranks of potted plants. It took me a moment to figure out what she was doing as she bobbed her head next to one of the plants, and then I got it. She couldn’t hold the shovel in her hooves; she’d have been holding it in her mouth. She was pantomiming digging up the plant.
She grasped around the stem and mimicked picking it up, and then her ears spun back, pinned, and she dove into the plants.
Either she was really selling this reenactment, or even the memory of the aenocyon brought terror.
“You ran and hid.”
Windflower nodded.
Windflower ducked down behind the plant pots, only the tips of her ears sticking above them. I pictured the clearing in my mind—if it had been there then, she would surely have been under the felled tree, something a wolf couldn’t get in. It would have torn at it, surely, trying to—
Why didn’t it? I wasn’t a woodsman, but I surely would have been able to see claw marks on the tree. Even months later, they would have been evident.
Milfoil had come to the same realization.
Windflower cautiously stuck her head above the pots and looked curiously at the two of us. I hoped the expression of horror wasn’t visible on my face, maybe she wasn’t good at reading humans.
“Did you . . .” Milfoil bit her lip, not wanting to ask the next question.
Was her hiding spot not as good, not as secure as she thought? Not able to keep a reaching paw or slavering jaws out? Or did she not make it at all? Was the transition nearly instantaneous, or was there a period of time that she mercifully didn’t remember?
She tapped her hoof against her breast, and pointed to her hiding spot. Then she pointed to the center of the living room, and did her best pantomime of a prowling wolf.
To further illustrate, she came out of her hiding spot and boldly circled the floor, before pausing and sticking her nose down to the ground only to pull it back up in triumph.
That proved to be too much for her, and she fled back to the illusory safety of the plants, crouching down behind them once again.
•••
It would have been enough for me; I thought that we’d really made progress. She did remember what had happened, at least in broad strokes. The before and the after, and I thought that if she was smart, she ought to be able to put the pieces together from that. If she wanted to—denial was a powerful emotion.
She had to be thinking it in the back of her mind, didn’t she? That things had been different for her after.
Milfoil wasn’t satisfied with leaving things the way that they were, and moved among the valerian and yarrow. “You tried to run,” Milfoil said quietly. “You tried to hide, but you didn’t escape.”
Windflower was frantically shaking her head.
“We know, and I think you do, too.”
Windflower darted between the plants, putting some distance between her and Milfoil, but it didn’t matter; words carried. “We’ve seen the bones in the clearing. Where did they come from? Whose bones are they?”
Windflower flickered, and went through the collection of pots, a faint blur. She raced up the stairs, perhaps to the safety of her room or the attic . . . or perhaps to the woods.
Might she be able to pick up one of her own bones if she wanted to?
•••
“We should look for her,” Milfoil said. “First in the house, and if not—”
“You could have—“ been more gentle. I bit that thought off. There were kinds of bad news where there was no good way to break it, and honestly if it had been left up to me, I might have danced around the topic until next winter . . . or forever.
“She has to know to make a decision. We can’t decide for her.”
“No, you’re right.” I wanted to sit on the couch with Milfoil and take comfort from her warmth, from grooming her mane, from the peace of togetherness, and we would, but now was not the time.
We checked her bedroom first, and that’s where she was. There was no bed to hide under, so she was huddled behind the boxes, rolling her duck back and forth.
It was a lousy hiding spot, and as soon as she saw us, she fled again, flying over our heads and out the door. The duck rolled until it bumped against the boxes.
I never really thought about dying; that was something that I knew in the back of my mind would eventually happen in the far-distant future. Whenever I thought of it sooner, I sort of alternated between dying peacefully or a hero’s death. But if it actually came, how would I really react? Trying to hide actually seemed quite rational. Denying it was happening . . . or that it had happened.
“She probably went to the attic,” I said. “I—do you think that chasing her down is the best idea? I mean, with how she died, and she’s surely already having flashbacks.”
Milfoil clenched her jaw. “I think if I ever come back as a ghost, you’d better tell me right away.”
•••
I hadn’t folded the attic steps all the way down, but that was no trouble for Milfoil. She might have struggled with the pull-rope; I’d cut that short since I was tired of brushing my head against it, but I think she could have jumped and grabbed on.
Milfoil paused halfway up. Ponies on stairs was weird, they made it look natural, but when I really stopped to think about the mechanics of it, I could feel a headache coming on. Of course, the same could be said for lots of things that ponies did.
One other thing she could do, something that I could never manage with a hundred years to practice, was Mom voice.
I could have said a hundred words or a thousand. I could have plead, begged, bartered, cajoled, and none of it would have worked as effectively as a single word from Milfoil.
“Windflower.”
That was it.
That was all she said; that was all she needed to say.
She didn’t get an instant response, but she didn’t repeat herself. She didn’t have to.
A ghostly muzzle poked over the edge of the attic coaming, ears down, contrite.
Something passed between them, something that I did not know, could not know, and then Windflower rushed down the stairs, flying over both of us, zipping through the hallway, opening doors, darting into rooms and coming back out just as quickly.
Milfoil and I followed her, down the hallway and the stairs, back to the living room. We watched as she frantically threw open the cupboards in the kitchen and then rushed back to the safety of the plants, to one particular plant.
Windflower wrapped her forelegs around the pot which contained the amaranth as a drowning man might grasp a life buoy.
She clutched the pot tightly and stuck her muzzle against the amaranth.
The plant shuddered and wilted. Milfoil pinned her ears back and Windflower retreated in horror.
She desperately looked between the two of us, before darting over to Milfoil and wrapping her ghostly hooves around her neck. I saw her flinch for just an instant, and then she leaned over and nuzzled Windflower.
The poor thing. I hope she gets better
Damn. This chapter hits hard.
Ahh, so Windflower had basically believed that Milfoil and Anon were the ones who had been ghosts/apparitions until she was confronted by the truth (that she didn't survive the wolf attack).
Damn, Biscuit, you're gonna make me cry.
Oh Windflower... you poor filly..
Error 504: Feels not Found
poor thing, and all the feels for us
Ouch these next few chapters are going to be brutal for these three. I hope they are able to help her move on.
Feels are getting harder, especially with Windflowers loss of plant. Was hoping that at least would be left to remember her by, given it was her last living link.
9506479
So do I but I don't think she'll be coming back to life for a happy ending.
Yeah, there was no rigth way of doing this.
Erg... so it seems that if she doesn't move on, she's going to become something akin to a revenant. A cute pony revenant, but still a danger to anyone that she comes close to.
Hard truths :( Poor girl.
At least she’s got people who love her to help her through it.
Her being confused and surprised that her bedroom was empty even though she’d seen it before...there is EXACTLY that scene in The Sixth Sense where a ghost realized what’s happened and suddenly starts seeing clearly.
9506525
You can have some of mine. I have too many.
Being kind doesn't always mean being nice.
9506697
I doubt it, if I remember revenants are both physical and out for revenge.
But that is my personal thoughts.
Had no idea those things were called spiles.
Well that was eventful...
It's even more sad because she cannot voice her frustrations. Waking up from a dream can be utterly terrifying...
Keep going! ;)
Ow, Why'd you make me try to think about that?
9506697
Nah, revenants are almost exclusively murder victims, and will absolutely never rest until they find their killer. Windflower is far too distractible to be a revenant.
Damn, this story is developing almost dangerous concentrations of Feelium.
9506807
media.tenor.com/images/34a4dbaf65a94a3b971f1bebac855687/tenor.gif
9507051
Now imagine a pony on a ladder!
Oof. Rubbing Windflower's nose in her postmortem status might not have been the most delicate approach, but it certainly got results. Hopefully Milfoil's instincts are right about spring being a good time to help this poor soul pass on.
As for the flower, I suspect that was just emotional distress rather than any ghostly draining effects. Milfoil clearly feels the same.
9506532 The deer in our area are now eating plants which should be deadly.
"Hey ghost pony. Yer dead. Ya got eaten by a wolf. And not in a hot way."
Alondro, master of tact and subtlety.
9506532
Deer resistant just means they're delightfully chewy.
9506892
9507055
I apologize, I conflated 'revenant' with 'hungry spirit' in my mind. But it turns out she doesn't really fit the myths about a hungry spirit either, except in that she's draining the life from anything around her to maintain herself in her present form.
I can imagine a way that this could end happily, but it does not involve Windflower from remaining in her present state. It also relies on laws of nature and magic in Equestria that we are not privy to, so it's wild speculation at best.
The poor dear...
...omg.
Poor baby...
9512575
Heading from central to eastern oregon is actually a really beautiful trip, especially if you go from portland over hood. The scenery suddenly changes from forest to scrub land in a matter of seconds, and the cliff faces look almost artificial in their hexagonal patterns. Another great view is from the top of Timberline, you can see the desert beyond the forest.
9507055
The children of FNaF are a prime example
9514002
I'd say the FanF children are more vengeful ghosts than revenants as a revenant is usually depicted as a thin corpse or skeleton with a Vampiric nature and they are known to be highly intelligent in their revenge the FnaF kids aren't like that at all I'd say the closest to being a revenant is spring trap
In the kitchen, the soup burned silently.
Called it.
Basic rule: If you can't watch it, and there's a chance of burning, take the pot off the heat source
I'm suddenly reminded of Fallout Equestria: Pink Eyes. The main character of that story is a ghost filly who doesn't realise she died, and is, two centuries later, looking for her mother.
The ending obviously didn't give her quite what she hoped to find
Though, much like this, it's a ghost story with a cute edge, and an overall hopeful message. Well worth the read. In fact, rated higher than Fallout Equestria itself in the Fimfic rankings, somehow
Hah!
"Remember, Milfoil, only until your plants blossom. Then it's really time to go."
Oh no...
10077621
That actually sounds like it could be the title of a poem.
Yeah, that’s the smart thing to do.
Ghosts rarely find what they want to find, unfortunately.
Really? That’s kind of surprising; maybe it’s because some people automatically downvote Fallout: Equestria stuff.
I’ve legit seen it work in real life. It’s scary.
Yeah, set limits. That’s important. “You can stay a ghost until your plants bloom, then you gotta go to your grave.”
10078968
Yea, that was pretty much the author's conclusion too when I told him about it.