//------------------------------// // Lovely Night // Story: When he Comes Knocking // by Waxworks //------------------------------// Rainbow Dash wasn’t sleeping very well. She had an upcoming performance that she had to focus on and was trying to mentally run herself through it as a sort of “sleep practice”. She was drawing her hoof through the air in the pattern of the show over and over again in the hopes that it would remind her of it, but she was having limited success. Or at least, unsatisfying success. Mental gymnastics weren’t quite the same as true gymnastics (but she wasn’t going to say that to Twilight). Thus, she heard the noise, but it wasn’t the same as a normal noise. There was a quiet *puff-puff* noise at the door to her room. It sounded like someone was trying to knock. It being made of clouds, it was obvious why this didn’t quite work. Still, Rainbow Dash was up on her hooves in an instant and hovering in the air above her bed. She wasn’t expecting guests, especially in the middle of the night. “Who’s there?” she demanded. A deep, gravelly voice rhymed out, “You’ll know my name, it’s clear and clean. You’ll know the name of Mr. Mean.” “Who the hay is Mr. Mean?’ There were two more quiet puffs, and the voice was now coming from her closet. “Why, that’s me, dear Dashie.” “First, you don’t get to call me Dashie, only my friends do. Second, get the hay out of my house.” She didn’t find it odd that someone could pass from her door to her closet. The house was made of clouds, after all. Still, she didn’t like ponies sneaking in when she was sleeping. “But don’t you want to see what games we’ll play?” “Games, no. And you’re starting to get real creepy. I will beat your face in if you don’t leave.” There was more quiet puffing, and then the voice was coming from under her bed. “Oh come, it’s night, and day’s a drag. You don’t want to grow to a boring old hag.” Rainbow Dash zipped down and kicked her bed over. She threw up her hooves in a fighting stance and readied herself to hit whoever was under there. There was nothing. She swept over to the closet and threw it open, then zipped to the door to her room and flung it wide. There was nopony behind any of them. “Okay, what the hay?” She forced her way through the clouds making up her house and searched all over, returning to her bedroom when she found nopony anywhere. “Where are you, you creeper?” The voice came from her dresser. “The most scared that you’ve ever been, you’ll know the name of Mr. Mean.” “Yes. Mr. Mean. I get it. That’s you. What are you doing here?” “I made that plain didn’t I?” One of the drawers of her dresser slid open and a long hoof with a dangerously shiny metal horseshoe on it slid out. It reached up and clinked against the lamp on her dresser, drawing the hooked end across the glass. It screeched horribly. “I’m here to play.” Rainbow felt a little chill at the sight of the hoof. There was no way a pony could fit inside the dresser drawer that size. She was dealing with magic, and she wasn’t sure what to do. “Play… what?” she said, trying to buy time while she thought. She could run away, but to where? How would she get rid of this guy? “Why, a game! Any game. Something fun that you like. I know that you’re bored, why else stay up all night?” He continued to scrape his horseshoe against the ceramic of the lamp’s base. It left scratches on the finish, and the horrid scraping was digging itself into Rainbow’s head. “I don’t want to play any games. I have a performance tomorrow. Why don’t you play with… somepony else?” “They all said no in all separate ways. Now it’s just you and me. I can be here for days.” “No, I think you need to leave.” Rainbow flew down and kicked the dresser over. She grabbed the lamp as the dresser fell. It *flumphed* into the cloud floor, slamming the dresser drawer shut. A laugh came from her closet, wide open, but with nothing visible inside it. “So rude.” An eye appeared from the darkness between two of her Wonderbolts jumpsuits. It was twinkling with deeper darkness than shadow, and was fully dilated. She swore she could see stars inside it. “No games is it, Rainbow? I’ve one more friend to visit tonight, so I can make my way elsewhere.” He smiled, and Rainbow could see rows of glittering teeth, silver, with sharpened points like nails. Or were they actually nails? Rainbow hovered in the middle of the room. She couldn’t throw the closet on its side. “N-no! Go away! Go bother somepony…” she hesitated. Did she really want to tell this thing to bother somepony else? “Somepony else?” he laughed. It sounded like the smoke that came from the Cloudsdale weather machine. “As you wish.” There was a puffing sound, and the eye and teeth faded. “Wait!” Rainbow rushed forward and punched at her clothes. Her fist knocked her outfits off their hangers, dropping them into a messy pile at the bottom. Behind them, there was nothing. Not even a sign that anypony had been there. She kicked through them all in frustration. She didn’t know who she’d sent him to, but she needed to help. Twilight was shelving books in her library when she heard knocking. Given that it was all crystal, the knocking was more the musical clanging of metal on stone echoing through the castle than anything else. It rang down the halls and through open doors. It clanged around the great hall where the map of Harmony sat and ended inside the library, bouncing off the walls before being swallowed by the paper pages of her books. Twilight looked up from her current book and to the door leading down the halls toward the front door. She opened her mouth to call for Spike, then remembered that it was the middle of the night. She twitched her ears, listening for Spike’s movement, but she heard nothing. She sighed and trotted out of the library to the front door. Whatever it was, to come at this time of night it was surely an emergency. Before she made it halfway, the knock rang twice near the front doors, then knocked twice from a room inside. Twilight lit her horn and turned to where the new knocks had emanated from. She wasn’t sure how they got inside without opening the doors, but something seemed amiss. She followed it to the room the knocking came from and swung open the doors. Like many of the rooms in her castle, it was empty. It held a few token pieces of furniture, but there was nothing else in there. She turned away, only to feel something cold touch her back. She whipped around, jumping out of the room. Something stung her wither as she did, and she heard a quiet, rasping laugh come from the room. “Who’s there?” she demanded. Only the rasping laugh greeted her. Twilight backed away from the room, horn’s light shooting to and fro in the glittering passage of the castle. The halls, so wide and spacious before, now suddenly seemed to be filled with shadows in every jagged, crystalline corner. Shadows that were hiding her new assailant. “How did you get in here?” Twilight called out. “The most scared that you’ve ever been, you’ll know the name of Mr. Mean.” “Mr. Mean? Are you Mr. Mean?” “The same indeed.” Twilight felt something trickle down her foreleg and looked back at the stinging on her withers. She saw a scrape cut into her flesh, with ragged skin around the edges of the shallow cut, like somepony had slashed her with something jagged. “You’ve come to hurt me, then?” “To make the ponies jump in fright, that’s what I’m after, night to night. But having killed a pony, yes, I’ll kill you, too, and that’s no jest.” Twilight’s wings bristled and she bent low, facing the door to the room Mr. Mean was in. “You’ll have to do better than that! I’m a princess of Equestria!” She blasted the room with magic, tearing the door off its hinges and shattering it inward. Crystals tinkled to the ground, and when the mess settled she heard rasping laughter coming from inside. A ringing knock went twice, then came from elsewhere in the castle. From her bedroom. Where Spike was sleeping nearby. Her eyes widened as she realized where Mr. Mean was and what he was after. “Oh, no, Spike! Spiiiike! Wake up!” As she ran the mocking voice of Mr. Mean floated through the halls. “You’ll know my name, it’s clear and clean. You’ll know the name of Mr. Mean.” Spike’s terrified cry came from the bedroom as Twilight neared. She threw open the doors with her magic and readied an attack spell as she jumped inside. Spike was being dragged under his tiny basket somehow, disappearing into shadows. “Twilight, heeeeelp!” Spike yelled. “I’ve played your games, obeyed the rules, but now it’s YOUR turn to be fools!” A hoof with a shining metal horseshoe with a wickedly-hooked end came up out of the shadows and pressed on Spike’s head. Without thinking, Twilight grabbed it and Spike with her magic, and pulled. Twilight yanked and tugged against the otherworldly might of the shadowy creature, and slowly but surely Spike was dragged up, out, and onto the crystal stairs. Mr. Mean came with him. The figure Twilight had removed from under Spike’s bed was gaunt, with a sparkling smile and shiny metal horseshoes on each forehoof. They had nasty hooks at their backs, which is what he had cut Twilight with. He wore a tattered jacket that seemed to smoke and writhe with shadow, and his mane was long and limp. His eyes were wide and dark, and he never seemed to stop smiling. Twilight tugged Spike away from him and skittered backward. The pony smiled wider, and Twilight could see the glistening from his mouth was his teeth, which looked like they were made of the same material as his horseshoes, filed to sharp points. Nails, she wanted to say. “The most scared that you’ve ever been, you’ll know the name of Mr. Mean!” He stamped his hoof twice on the floor, then flowed over to Twilight’s bed. He disappeared underneath and knocked again. It came from under her bed. Knock. Knock. Then from her closet. Knock. Knock. Then from down the hall. Knock. Knock. Spike cowered underneath Twilight, his wings wrapped around himself. Twilight kept turning to try and follow the sounds of Mr. Mean’s laughter and knocking, but she couldn’t. When all went silent, she almost didn’t believe it. She waited, horn ready, but there was no knocking. She sighed finally, relaxing. “I think he’s gone.”