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TRIGGER WARNING : Multiple murders by ax, poison, and stabbing!
Haunted mansion: You have to get those ghosts in there somehow, right?
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Cory grinned meanly as he bounced the heavy bag from hoof to hoof while he offered, “Yah, I got the money that I owes you, Canter. It’s right here. Not gonna pay you, though. Not yet. I means, it is Nightmare Night. I will give you the money first thing in the morning. Just spend the night in the old Crawfeather place. Should be a piece of cake, after all, you don’t believe in ghosts, so you says.”
“You are on, Cory. But make it 300, if you make me stay in there for the night!”
“You got it, Canter, if you stay the night, I’ll make it 300 when you come out at dawn.”
Now he was creeping down one of the empty hallways of the long abandoned mansion of Crawfeather. The darkness relieved only by the single candle held in Canter’s magic. Old furniture mostly covered by aged dust covers dotted the passage. He shivered, and it was not from the cold. He was wishing that he had not taken the dare to spend this Nightmare Night in the reputedly haunted Crawfeather mansion. Still, 300 golden bits was 300 golden bits.
Canter remembered all too vividly the ghastly past of this place. The land that the mansion was built on was originally owned by the Bordens, back in the very earliest days of Ponyville, before there was any sort of formal town.
After the Apple Clan had demonstrated the value of the land in the area for farming by creating one of the most productive apple orchards in Equestria, the land rush was on! The Bordens had claimed a big area and invested all that they had into clearing the land. It proved to be too stony for any sort of farm. It wasn’t just loose surface stone either. Rough upthrust sedimentary rock made up most of it. Clyde’s attempts to sell it to newcomers became a local joke.
Clyde Borden put the land up in a card game and lost it to Jason Crawfeather. For weeks afterwards, Clyde crowed about how bad Jason was taken in by winning that worthless land. Jason and his family quietly ignored him and set industriously to work. It was not too long before the Crawfeather Quarry was supplying the good building stone for foundations and nicely split slates for stout, weatherproof roofs that the rapidly growing community of Ponyville needed.
The fortune earned by the Crawfeathers and the resentment of the Bordens stoked the flames of the feud that followed. The orgy of murder was started by Poxy, one of Clyde’s grown colts.
Swinging an ax, he charged into the Crawfeathers and some guests, who were dining on their plaza! By the time that it was over, Chance Crawfeather was carried up to his room, his life blood soaking the sheets and bolster of his bed as he died.
Sweetbriar Crawfeather, Jason’s wife was laid out in the great room. One of the guests was a doctor who managed to stanch her wounds and saved her life. She would carry those scars to her grave.
Poxy was caught before he could escape. Three strong unicorns from the quarry held him down while Jason brained him with his own ax.
Pretending serious remorse for the actions of her brother, Lisset Borden came to serve the remaining Crawfeathers as a maid. She soon learned that all three of them, Jason, Sweetbriar, and their remaining filly, Sunblossom had a fondness for tomato soup. She served the unsuspecting family a tasty soup of tomatoes, basil, and a strong portion of poison hemlock.
Sunblossom collapsed at the table. In spite of the pangs from her own stomach, Sweetbriar assisted Sunblossom up to her room. In her attempt to appear innocent, Lisset helped her too.
Jason, in spite of the agony in his own innards, called for help from the house staff. It took them only moments to find the bottle that had contained the deadly concoction. They captured Lisset as she was coming down the stairs. Lisset was made to drink the soup that remained. She was dead before the ghastly wails of Sweetbriar announced the passing of Sunblossom.
Both Jason and Sweetbriar were ill for weeks before they recovered from the effects of the hemlock. In one regard Sweetbriar never recovered. Seeing both of her foals murdered by ax and poison drove her into madness.
She was known to haunt the rooms where they died and sought them about the mansion and their play yard. She even went down into the quarry seeking her “lost” foals. Most watched her with pity.
Searching the play yard again, as the year was passing into autumn, Sweetbriar stumbled on something concealed from her sight by her madness. The headstones of her missing foals, Chance and Sunblossom, could no longer be denied. She avidly read what was on each stone. Instead of wailing her loss, her heart became harder than the stones of the Crawfeather Quarry.
On a late autumn night with no moon to betray her, Sweetbriar sneaked down into the developing town of Ponyville. Unseen by any, she poured lamp oil over the front porch and back stoop of the Borden house and set it ablaze. Cunningly, she did not stay to see how her plot played out but repaired back to Crawfeather, avoiding the many foals out in fanciful costumes.
Entering the house, she beheld the horrid sight of Clyde Borden Hacking at the dead body of her beloved Jason with a double bit ax! She seized the weapon from his grasp as he pulled back for another stroke! With the power of her rage and madness, she took Clyde’s head from his body in a single stroke!
She dropped the ax, which stuck upright in the floor boards. In her struggles to drag the corpse of the assassin off of her husband’s body, her feet slipped in the spilled gore and she lost her footing! She fell on the ax and the razor sharp blade cut her throat!
The house staff and their foals returned from their Nightmare Night, which had been made more exciting by the deadly house fire that had destroyed the Borden house and, apparently, all the remaining Bordens!
The town’s newly appointed constables had far more to deal with than the usual Nightmare Night pranks. At least the feud would go no further. Neither Borden nor Crawfeather remained alive to carry it on.
Canter’s reverie was broken by the creaking of hinges. His ears straining to hear more failed to spot any further sound. This was not the first such sound that he’d heard, either. He had traced the first ones to open windows upstairs and drafts making old doors swing.
There was a creaking floorboard behind him! Whirling about in startlement he saw … Cory!
“Just checking up on you, Canter. Realized that you are missing out on Nightmare Night partying. Brought you a little to make up for it. Here. Got you something to drink in the bottle and a bunch of candies.”
“Nice of you, Cory.”
As Canter took the bag, the knife that Cory was hiding behind it plunged up, through the bottom of his jaw and into his brain through the weak area of skull on the underside!
Canter collapsed, dead before he hit the floor.
Cory’s gloat of, “Looks like that money stays mine! You ain’t going to see the dawn …” was interrupted!
Screaming foals in Nightmare Night costumes ran out of the old parlor and out into the night! The last one bucked the doors shut! The locking click of the latch was like a trump of doom! Cory was panting frantically and pounding on the door when the old handle turned. The opened door showed a brace of constables waiting to take him to jail.
Canter looked about, sort of puzzled. Everything was sort of gray, in spite of which, he could see clearly. There was a pony before him, also gone gray, and a good thing. He had several huge wounds. At least he was not bleeding from them. Canter could see furniture through him.
He invited, “Canter, right? I am Jason. Why don’t you come with me and meet the rest of the family?”