The Haunting
Admiral Biscuit
I knew I had research to do. Before I’d seen her, I had been trying to figure out generalities and I hadn’t come up with anything, but now I had at least some specifics. First, that there was in fact a ghost. That was not a question; that was the undeniable truth. Second, said ghost played with toys in my attic, and perhaps also in other attics—that was something I could pursue. Was she a local spirit, one who lived in the neighborhood, or did she only haunt my house? Did other ponies know her?
Did she ever show up during the day? I didn’t think she would, but maybe she did and there had just been enough noise in town for me to not notice. Her color was not unlike sky-color, and just like stars can’t be readily observed during the day, maybe she couldn’t be, either.
If she was tied to my house, it had to have been either because she’d lived there before, or because some pony gypsy had cursed either me or the house, and I figured if it was a curse, the ghost would be more baleful. Maybe gypsy curses were friendlier in Equestria.
•••••
Sometimes the things that happen in the night are revealed for the nightmares or illusions that they were in the clear light of day, but not so this time. I was still completely convinced that there was a ghost in my house, and after the sun had well and truly risen, I went back to the attic and checked the little voids where the floor met the wall. Sure enough, the toys I’d seen her hiding were there, exactly where she’d put them.
They say that if you’re crazy, you’re the last one to know, but I didn’t feel crazy. I didn’t believe I’d hidden those toys there in some kind of a fugue state, or seen them before and remembered subconsciously that that’s where they were. In fact, while I could clearly remember having seen most of those toys in the toybox before, I had never seen the plush pony. I was absolutely certain of that.
I didn’t want to take any of them from their hiding place, even though I could imagine myself doing that some time in the future. I thought that there was a chance that one of the locals might recognize them, but I also thought that I’d have to work my way up to that. Back on Earth, at least, if I’d gone around holding a plush pony and asking anyone if they recognized it, I’d probably wind up in an institution before too long. I was a stranger in town, a new face, and they at least tolerated me--nopony shunned me or gave me the evil eye or anything like that—but if I just started proclaiming there was a ghost in my attic, there was a very good chance that everyone would start avoiding me. Ponies with butterfly nets would come after me.
Maybe not; maybe that was a thing that they all knew and I was the last one to have discovered it.
I turned that idea over in my mind while I was in the shower. It was a simple enough proposition: pony ghosts are real, and all the ponies know that. They’ve all seen them before. Maybe they have pony Ouija boards and summon their ancestors for advice under the light of a full moon.
I decided that probably wasn’t the case--surely if it had been, I would have heard something about it by now. None of their other abilities like cloudwalking or weather manipulation or unicorn magic or what was essentially terraforming had been hidden from me.
Just the same, if the topic just hadn’t come up yet, and I all of a sudden started talking about ghosts they’d probably think I was a simpleton, somebody who hadn’t yet figured out what everypony else knew. Like I thought I’d just made a great discovery that when you rubbed two sticks together long enough they got hot and maybe you could make fire.
If it turned out that I was following a well-trod path, so be it. At least I would have learned something before I went off half-cocked.
•••••
In terms of research, a week’s worth didn’t net me much. Not, at least, in terms of positive results. A trip to a bigger city with a better library was an option, and that was still on the table if needed, but it felt to me that I ought to be able to pin this down locally. Maybe I was being foolish, but I couldn’t ever remember reading a book or watching a movie where the case had been solved by going somewhere else, and while taking to fiction as my modus operandi was perhaps not the best idea, as a human that was the only place I’d encountered ghosts before, so it felt that it ought to work that way.
I had been clever enough to read though several promising foal’s books, figuring that if spotting ghosts was common enough, that fact would be mentioned in one of them.
It wasn’t. Not in foal books, not in young adult books, and not in adult books.
A really well-stocked library no doubt covered topics that everypony knows. Things like fire is hot or it hurts when you fall from a height. That you need to breathe and eat food to live, that everybody and everypony dies eventually. Although that last statement wasn’t a hundred percent certain, at least when it came to their princesses. Still, it was likely that the eventual heat-death of the universe would finish them, too.
At home, I’d improved my observation post. I’d redesigned my box-fort significantly, after scrounging for some new boxes to make it larger. Ponies didn’t have pre-packaged granola bars or bottled water, but they did have canteens and some kind of dessert bar that was basically chocolate and sugar which would be plenty to keep me going through the night if needed.
I got felt to nail to the steps on the ladder to the attic, which would soften my tread, and I moved my bedroom to be on the other side of the ladder so I wouldn’t have to sneak around it. That was a temporary arrangement; once I’d solved the mystery I’d change it back.
I started shifting my sleep schedule, going to bed in the afternoon and waking for the night. While proper blackout curtains would have to be custom-made, I was able to get some thick black velvety fabric to cover the windows in my temporary bedroom, which turned it dusky all day long and pitch black at night. The only downside was that with those in place and the door closed, it got rather hot in the room, and I didn’t sleep well.
I don’t think I would have been sleeping well anyway.
•••••
Despite striking out on the research front, I made more progress with observations. She showed up several more times over the next week. Once she played in the attic with her toys, but not before examining my improved box-fort. She moved all around it, studying it from all sides, but she seemed unable or unwilling to touch it or interact with it like she did with her toys. I didn’t know how to explain it, and it was kind of unnerving to be inside and to see her moving close, and then lose her for a bit until I found a spy-hole that got her back in my view for a little bit.
She seemed kind of frustrated that I’d blocked off the attic stairs. That was a silly thing for me to think; she went through the roof--how would a pile of boxes over the attic stairs stop her? It’s not like I’d specified ghost-proof wooden boxes, after all.
It did put a germ of an idea in my head, something I thought I could somehow test. Pony magic didn’t always interact well with humans, and it was possible that the same thing extended to spirits. I wasn’t quite sure yet how I’d apply that idea, but it was something that I could explore.
I also saw her in the backyard in the old garden, the one that the colt hadn’t mowed down. She moved among the plants slowly and deliberately. I couldn’t tell what she was interested in; I didn’t want to move from my kitchen observation post at all.
I would have sworn that I saw her attending a little cluster of plants but the next morning when I went out I couldn’t find them. I chalked it up to me not knowing all that much about plants, and how different things looked at night instead of during the day, but at the back of my mind I was wondering if there were ghost ponies, might there also be ghost plants?