//------------------------------//
// A Grisly Find 
// Story: Story of the Blanks 
// by The Blue EM2 
//------------------------------//

Apple Bloom stepped through the threshold of the house. It was dark inside, and the hallway before her opened up into rooms on multiple sides. Above her was an old chandelier, still with candles, although none of them were lit which made it very hard to see. Apple Bloom removed her torch from her pocket and stepped forward, the cone of light that was projected forward from the torch penetrating the gloom. Unlike the rest of the town, which looked to be in good order and structural shape, this house was clearly suffering the effects of neglect. The walls were leaking, water dribbling down them like twin waterfalls, and cobwebs covered everything, from an old piano which by now must be hundreds of years old, to several walls littered in old newspapers and rubbish. Nearby was a cradle, with nothing inside it, and a strange music flowed through the air.

Apple Bloom was by now extremely tense. There was no way of knowing what may be inside this house. But she had to find out more. That girl had come this way, and she had to be somewhere in the house. So, she decided to start by looking upstairs. There was little of note in the bedrooms, and the bathroom was clear, if a little musty due to a lack of cleaning and use. The attic was also clear. Apple Bloom chose to check the main floor next, and found a place full of evidence of life. It was like the Marie Celeste of haunted houses. Everything was left out as if somebody was living here. The table was set up as if there were guests coming around to visit, the plates fully laid out and the cutlery in place, three sets of knifes, forks, and two spoons. A three course meal with soup and desert, perhaps? Apple Bloom walked past the door, and pulled it open, to walk through the parlour. Again, it had seen an obvious lack of use judging from the cracking plaster and cobwebs that permeated the place, but apart from that it seemed to be structurally sound. On one of the mantelpieces was a collection of photographs, which must have been expensive to take given the 1850s timewarp this place seemed to be, as well as a painting of three people hanging up on the wall. The three figures were a man, a woman, and a girl (who bore an uncanny resemblance to the one Apple Bloom had been following earlier), and seemed to be smiling. The caption below it read The Chalmer's Family, 1853. They seemed to be happy. What in the world had happened that left this place as it was?

Having been through the parlour, Apple Bloom had one last place to check. The basement. She went through slowly, worried about she might find down there. She had once caught a fragment of a film (admittedly by accident) about a madman who kept his mother's courpse in the basement. She paused on the stair. She could go back now, and save herself. But it was too late now. She had to find out what was going on here. So, ignoring the chill on the back of her neck, and the looming sense of horror building up in her heart, she descended the stairs. They were old, and made of wood, and creaked as you stepped down them. It was like being in the middle of a William Faulkner story, and Apple Bloom then reached the bottom, opening an old door in front of her that was covered in gauze. It creaked as it opened, the hinges being on the verge of breaking due to a lack of oiling. How had this place gone un-noticed for so long? It's rather difficult to just lose a mansion in the middle of nowhere!

The room she had just entered had shutters mounted to the walls, as well as a single table. This table had nothing on it, but that wasn't what raised Apple Bloom's attention. In the centre of the wall in front of her was a fireplace, which to her surprise was lit. But there was no trace of the girl anywhere. She had looked through the entire house and hadn't been able to find anything.

"Where did she go?" Apple Bloom asked, as she approached the fireplace and the roaring fire. The heat it was producing was nice given the overall chill that seemed to be permeating through the building and this part of the world, but even so something was wrong. She looked closer into the fireplace. "Nothin' in here," she said. Then she looked a little closer. Something white was sitting in amongst the coals, which were heaped up in a strange shape. "Nothin' in here except..."

The flames then suddenly roared, and the entire room was abruptly plunged into blackness, revealing what was lying in amongst the fire. Apple Bloom screamed and recoiled in horror.

Lying there, before her, in the fire, was a human skeleton. It showed no signs of decomposition despite the flesh and muscle being missing, and furthermore it seemed to be the body of a human female, the body being about the size of Apple Bloom based on a rough guess made by the girl. The bones were white, and showed no signs of being burned at all despite sitting in a fire.

Apple Bloom scrambled back in fright. "NO NO NO NO!" she screamed, running for the exit to the room. But the room was now pitch black, and she had forgotten the precise location of that gauze coloured door through which she had entered. She ran into a wall, and bounced off of it, getting back up as fast as she could before trying to feel her way along the wall to the door. She could feel something behind her, what seemed like breathing on her back.

"NO! GET AWAY FROM ME!" she cried, at last finding the door and pulling it open with all her strength. She slammed it shut and pointed her torch ahead. Why hadn't she thought to use her torch in the room? It seemed so stupid now, but she had been rendered unable to think straight due to being frightened. Apple Bloom cleared the stairs, two at a time, and bolted for the main door to the house, slamming it shut behind her and sprinting out into the cold, dark night. The sky had changed little, and if only she could reach Sunny Town, she could-



But Sunny Town was no longer safe. It was covered in a pail of black fog, the sky was dark, and the moon was red, the colour of blood. Apple Bloom stepped slowly through the ruins, the houses collapsed and decaying, as a voice echoed through the darkness, a voice she recognised as that of Grayson.

"There was no other way," it said, raspy and broken. "She was one of them. She would have brought death upon us all."

As Apple Bloom pressed on, she found another shocking sight. Several of the townsfolk were lumbering around like zombies. Their flesh was black and their eyes were red, skin rotting and sloughing from bones, which were in some cases exposed and sticking out at unnatural angles.

"She had become one of them!" gasped one of them. "We had to destroy her body to avoid corruption!"

"What are ya talkin' about?" Apple Bloom asked. "What corruption?"

"This location is haunted, as it was an Indian burial ground," the voice said again. "We disturbed the ancient spirits, and the dead began to rise. Blanks, they were called, due to their vacant expressions. They wouldn't die, no matter how many times we killed them. Eventually, they got all of us, as help never arrived. We are forever undying, cursed to relive this Hellish life over and over again. But do not fear. You can become like us, become undying."

"Become a mouldy pile o' flesh?" Apple Bloom asked. "No thank ya!" And she bolted, running through the street and vaulting over a cart. Nearby was the remains of Gladstone, similarly horrifying in appearance, his uniform tatty and his weapon rusty.

"Please..." he wheezed, his voice broken and weak from the taint that had infested him, his lungs rotting away even as he spoke. "Stay with us... You can have immortality. We shall ensure you never suffer her fate, or that anybody else suffers this fate..."

As she reached the edge of the town, two more appeared, one of them the woman she had helped earlier. A man came forward as well. "All we wanted was paradise," he gasped. "But all we got was Hell. Don't leave. The other's won't like it."

Apple Bloom went for the town entrance by the bridge, only for another to climb out of the Earth and lumber toward her. "Fools," she gasped. "Even in their deathlike state they do not understand. I should have protected her, but we made our choice settling here. This is our punishment, what we deserve for our sins. Now run. RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!"