//------------------------------// // Chapter 11 // Story: The Haunting // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// The Haunting Admiral Biscuit I’ve lived both in big cities and in small towns, and I think I like small towns the best. In a small town, everyone knows who you are—and as long as you don’t get a bad reputation, people will stop you on the street and talk to you. At restaurants, they know your order, where you like to sit. At the market, the mares wave to you and beckon you over if they’ve got something that they know you like. On Earth, though, even in a small town it would be a bit unusual for someone to sit down across from you at a restaurant unless invited. That apparently wasn’t a part of pony culture, though. Once a week, I treated myself to dinner at a restaurant. I was halfway done with my meal when he sat down across from me, and the waitress was right behind him. He didn’t speak until she’d set his drink in front of him and he’d had a sip. “How’re you finding Haywards Heath?” I shrugged. “It’s nice.” There were a hundred other things I could tell him, I suppose. How weird it was that the grocery store didn’t sell produce—I had to buy that from the market instead. How plain the walls of my house looked without electric sockets in them. How every day I felt that I’d fallen into a Thomas Kinkade painting. How my smugness over having hands was shattered each and every day when a pony did something I wouldn’t have imagined was possible. “Sometimes it’s hard to settle in,” he said. “To get used to new neighbors.” Or ghosts. “Well, it’s quiet where I live,” I said. “Peaceful.” He nodded, and just then the waitress came by again. “The usual.” Did local ponies even bother with menus? I hadn’t paid attention, but now that I thought about it, I couldn’t remember ever seeing any of them looking at a menu. Was that going to be the moment that I really fit into town? When I sat down and didn’t pick up the menu? He frowned and for a moment I thought that he was going to criticize my choice of dinner, but he didn’t. He took another sip of his drink instead and let any thoughts that he might have had about my dining choices pass unremarked. “Milfoil’s a nice mare,” he said. I wracked my brain for the name. I’d heard it before, I was sure of that, but I couldn’t remember where, and I didn’t want to admit that to him. “She’s my neighbor.” A last, desperate grasp at a straw. His eyes narrowed, and for a second, I thought I’d failed the test. He’d point an accusing hoof and declare me a fraud, a person not fit to live in Haywards Heath. “To the south,” he admitted. “We haven’t talked much. She brought some flowers when I moved in.” I’d put them in a cup until they’d finally wilted. She’d said something about how nice it was to see someone moving in to the house and I’d given a non committal answer. Maybe she’d talked to him about how sometimes there were lights at really odd hours around my house, or how she’d watched out her window as I stood in the front yard in my skivvies and yelled at the pegasi on my roof. How she’d seen me deep in contemplation as I examined the garden, looking for signs of a ghost. Maybe she was wondering if I wasn’t right in the head, if I had toys in my attic, and in a small town word got around. Or maybe this had nothing to do with that, and he was trying to be a matchmaker. I hadn’t seen a Mr. Milfoil. That would have been even more awkward. Why hadn’t I thought to ask her? Everybody knew that ghosts haunted familiar places, so it stood to reason that my ghost had lived in my house before I’d owned it. Surely she might be able to provide some insight, something that I hadn’t found at the library or the cemetery. Obviously, I couldn’t just go and bluntly say that I wanted to know who the ghost was, but if I was careful in how I worded it, I might get lots of information out of her. Neighbors were always gossipy. Heck, if the previous owners had left in a hurry because of a haunting, she’d know all about it. For a moment, the thought of a pony huddled in a box-fort waiting for a ghost to show herself played across my mind. What if the house was indeed cursed, not with a ghost, but with some curse of insanity? I shoved that thought into the deepest recesses of my mind. I knew what I’d seen, and I wasn’t crazy. Not at all. Even if the ponies in town thought otherwise. “Must be a bit different to be living in a pony town. In a pony house.” “It’s taken some getting used to,” I said honestly. “It’s more quiet and peaceful than a human city.” “Is that so?” “Well, most of the time.” He leaned forward ever so slightly. “It’s kind of noisy on market days.” “It is.” He moved back as the waitress brought his lunch. It never got old watching Earth ponies using their forehooves in ways that I never would have considered possible. She smoothly slipped the plate off her back and onto the table with a forehoof with just as much effortless delicacy as a human would have done. ••••• I wasn’t sure if it was rude to leave while he was eating, so I stayed. I didn’t have anywhere to be; it wouldn’t be dark for a while yet. There was plenty of time to get back home and take a little nap and then change into my ghost-watching clothes. To climb up the stairs and hide in my box-fort. This time I was going to pay particular attention to where she went after she left the house. That might be a useful bit of information for later. How it would be useful, I didn’t know for sure. I felt like she would be active all night long, and if that was so, she must be doing something when she wasn’t in my house. Where did she get the teacup from? I could have sworn that it had never been in my house before. It smelled weird; a smell I couldn’t quite place but that I knew I knew. Was she raiding other pony houses? Had she stolen all the toys, too? Had I put a temporary end to her pilfering by blocking the attic stairs? “Are you all right?” I blinked back to the present. His plate was empty. “Sorry. I was just, just thinking. About, um, work.” It wasn’t a great lie, but it satisfied him. “Don’t worry about dinner. I’ll pay. And listen: if you need anything, just let me know.” “Thanks.” I hadn’t expected him to offer to pay for my dinner. Did that mean I was obliged to him? Of course, ponies took friendship very seriously, and he was surely being sincere. “I appreciate that.” I reached over the table and he bumped my fist. ••••• That night while I was sitting in my box-fort, I replayed our conversation in my mind. It had been nagging at me that he seemed a little bit slow to reply to anything that I said. Like he had to think about it for a moment. I was probably reading too much into it. He might have been a bit hard of hearing, and heaven knows my Equestrian wasn’t the greatest. Add in some background noise in the restaurant, and it was likely he did have to think about everything I said for a moment. It gave him a bit of a weird vibe, but I was surely jumping at shadows. He was being completely honest about wanting to help me out if there was any help I needed. What would he have said if I’d told him that I had a ghost? Would have have galloped out into the street to find a pony priest? Did ponies even have priests? Would he think I was crazy? Or would he nod and say that he knew about it already and would I like some help taking care of it? I didn’t think that I would. I thought I had things completely under control. I suppose if I later found myself as a desiccated corpse, I might sing a different tune. Maybe if that happened and I came back as a ghost, too, I could stop by his house and apologize. There was a brief flash of light through the window, more imagined than seen, and I pressed my face against the rough wood of the box, just in time to see her muzzle poke through the roof.