//------------------------------// // Chapter 2 // Story: The Haunting // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// The Haunting Admiral Biscuit I noticed when I went to make breakfast that one of the cabinets was open, and I was sure I'd left them all closed the night before, but it didn't really stand out in my mind. Could be that I'd forgotten it, or else it wasn't quite plumb on the wall. Ponies either hadn't invented magnetic latches for cabinets, or else they were like door locks—something that the snobby ponies in Canterlot had, but nopony else bothered with. I pushed it back shut before I accidentally banged my head on it, my mind already on my plans for the day. There were more boxes to be unpacked and things to be put away and I was already going to have to re-think my plan for the second bedroom because once I got a couple of bookshelves in there, the space I'd planned for a desk was awfully crowded. Besides, the window was lower than I'd thought, and I wasn't sure I wanted to block the bottom quadrant. It took longer than I'd anticipated to get hot water from my shower—rather than have a water heater in every home, Haywards Heath had public hot water, and either I was at the far end of the system, or else it wasn't well-insulated. But when it did start flowing, it was quite pleasant, and as I was showering, half the ideas I'd had for arranging things washed out of my mind completely. Springtime would have been the best time to have moved into a new house, but I'd had to settle for what I could get, and it was the beginning of autumn. The mornings were a bit chilly, and I didn't open the bathroom window until I was almost done bathing. I might not have even then except the clouds of steam reminded me that without an exhaust fan, I might wind up with a mold problem in my new house, and I didn't know yet if Kilz was a thing that ponies had invented. The showerhead was too low, which was something I'd have to get changed. It felt like the kind of thing that should take priority, although my grandmother had never had a shower in her house, so maybe I could just get used to taking baths. At least the bathtub was plenty big enough. Of course I'd forgotten the towels—I was just used to them being in the bathroom. I darted across the house, keeping a wary eye on my windows, just in case there was some pegasus outside spying in, but I didn't see any. Downstairs, it was even worse. The towels were in one of the last boxes that I'd panic-packed, and I felt stupidly conspicuous in my living room with open windows on all sides of me. By the time I'd finally found the towels, I was seriously considering getting blackout curtains made for all the windows, even though I hadn't seen a single pony in all the time I was downstairs. I scampered back to the relative safety of the bathroom, even though it was probably unnecessary. I'd mostly drip-dried by the time I'd found my towels. At least I had remembered to bring clothes upstairs. I hadn't unpacked my cooking utensils yet, and I didn't really feel like learning the idiosyncrasies of the stove just yet, so I thought that I'd go to a bakery or restaurant for breakfast. That would also give me a chance to meet some of the townsfolk. ••••• In America, towns were generally laid out in a grid. Ponies didn’t feel the need for that kind of restriction when it came to urban planning. They also didn’t go for paved roads, which had taken some getting used to at first. There wasn’t always a clear delineation between what was the road and what was somepony’s front lawn. Sometimes there were fences as boundaries, other times it was a row of flowers, and on some occasions there simply wasn’t anything. In those places, I figured that it was safest to either follow other ponies, or walk in an essentially straight line to the next clear border, assuming that the middle part was the street. I hadn’t gotten yelled at to get off the lawn yet, so either my plan was working, or ponies just didn’t care if you walked on their grass. The curved roads and half-timbered houses with their thatched roofs gave the town a medieval sort of feel, and that was reinforced by the way that ponies who sold things usually did so out of their homes. Combined with no zoning that I could identify, it meant that on any given street, I might walk by a few ordinary houses with a coopers shop tucked in the middle. Some enterprising ponies grew vegetables all around their house, and more than one in-town resident had free-range chickens to provide them with eggs. Haywards Heath was unsurprisingly surrounded by farmland, not only growing the staple crops I was used to—corn and wheat and hay and beans—but also flowers. It was really weird to see every color of tulips stretching out in neat rows. Fruit trees were also commonplace, both in town and also in orchards outside town. Apples were popular, pears less so. We were too far north for anypony to attempt to grow citrus trees, but there was one pony who had a cluster of cherry trees and who offered a wide variety of cherry treats at the market. One day, I was going to try her cherry leaf tea, since it seemed popular with the other ponies. If the winding streets, thatch-roof houses, and cottage businesses hadn’t been enough to give the town a comfortable old-timey feel, ponies going about their business towing wagons completed the picture. It was hard to imagine that it hadn’t been so long ago in human history when this sort of traffic was commonplace. While there were places back on Earth that offered horse-drawn carriage rides—which kind of gave the idea of the way things were—it lacked the authenticity of two ponies pulling a beat-up flatbed wagon piled high with crates of merchandise from the railroad station to the general store, or the occasional pony passing through town towing an agricultural implement. I’d usually give those ponies a wide berth; I had no idea how good wagon brakes were and didn’t fancy being run over by one, especially since the road and the sidewalk were the same thing. ••••• I could generally read Equestrian, although not if it was overly stylized or abbreviated. Luckily, a lot of pony restaurants had outdoor eating areas, which made them easy to find even when they were the lower floor of a house. I'd gotten a good general idea of the layout of the town, and it didn't take me too long to pick a little cafe that looked popular. I got a few stares as I went inside, but that didn't bother me too much. I asked the cook to make me whatever she thought was best and got a big mug of coffee. I was looking around for a table, when an older brown stallion waved me over to his table. I took the seat opposite him and stuck out my hand. He regarded it somewhat warily, but finally reached up to give me a hoofbump. Most of the ponies I'd met thus far were friendly, but some of them took time to warm up to me, and he was no exception. Aside from his brief greeting, he didn't speak to me and I couldn't help but wonder why he'd even called me over to share his table if he didn't want to make conversation. Surely it would have been easier to size me up if I'd been sitting at a table further away, and then he wouldn't have had to pretend that he wasn't staring at me as I drank my coffee. Looking back, I can't even remember what I ate for breakfast, because I'd gotten kind of fixated on him. He had grey hairs in his coat, and really bushy white eyebrows and a little splotch of jam on the corner of his mouth that I really wanted to wipe off. He didn't say anything until I'd cleared my plate. I wasn't sure if I was supposed to bring my dishes back to the counter or leave them on the table for a pony to clear off, and I'd been paying too much attention to him to notice the other tables around us. “Good to see somepony new movin' in,” he said. “It's a nice town.” He nodded. “You need anything, just let me know.” And then he got up and walked out, leaving his plate behind while I puzzled over his words. I wasn't fool enough to think that it was some kind of noble obligation he'd just made. While I didn't know for sure—maybe ponies here were a lot different than the ponies in Manehattan had been—I was positive he didn't want me following him home and asking him for a cup of sugar, or for a guided tour of the local grocery store. Somehow, his words sounded almost ominous, like something that a random person might say in a horror movie, and I'd only realize as I was being chased by a vampire that I should have listened to him. As if on cue, the inside of the restaurant darkened a bit. Since I didn't hear any panicked shouts from outside, I assumed that a pegasus had just pushed a cloud across the sun.