Warning, the following chapter may not be fit for all readers.
While the chapter does not contain outright gore, it does contain material that is graphic in nature and may be considered downright Nightmare feed. I'm Scrooging Granny Smith in this.
Granny Smith woke with a start to the sound of animals and ponies alike calling in fright out in the orchards. “What in Tar-nation is all that ruckus!?” Granny grumbled as she got up and opened the window to have a look. Granny had been in a right funk ever since the night of the timberwolf attack and hadn't exactly been a very loving Granny. Still though, despite a number of mean spirited things that had come unbidden from her mouth, she still cared. Out in the compound between house and barn ponies were rushing about bringing in wounded ponies.
Granny pulled away from the window and rushed downstairs to find Applejack and Big Mac looking out on the scene. “Get back to yer rooms, pronto!” Granny ordered and rushed outside.
“What’s happening?!” Granny called as she tried to get the attention of frightened ponies.
“Wolf. Huge!” Shouted Mr Greenhoves coming up to her. He was an old friend of hers, a brown earth pony whose mane and tail were sporting their fair share of gray in the auburn. “Timber wolf, only I hesitate to call it that. It’s like something out of a nightmare. Bright Macintosh and Pear Butter went with axes to help the militia drive it off.”
“Bright Mac, but he can barely walk?!” Granny exclaimed and ran in the direction the ponies were fleeing from.
The apple groves seemed extra creepy that night. Granny shook off a shudder. It was dark. Far darker than it normally should be. Her path lit only by the occasional abandoned torch as she ran down through the row, passing tree after tree, the sound of ponies screaming in terror leading her on.
There was no moon that night.
Why was there no moon?
Granny was running, running, running through the darkness, heavy with dread. Her familiar apple trees twisted, uncaring, mocking, barren, and not a pony in sight.
Only the sound of terror, and the forgotten torches to guide her on.
She crested a hill and there it was, huge and foreboding, the shape of a wolf, a pony clenched in its massive jaw like Winona holding a rag toy. The worst part is that it wasn’t just animated litter from the forest. It was made not just of branches but of bone, covered in spots with torn hide, and the stench – oh the stench, and… it seemed enveloped in a shadow that no light could penetrate save just in spots where it’s form was revealed. Its eyes shown as though made of burning coals, and when its gaze fell upon Granny her legs gave way. The beast then shook the pony and cast its carcass to come crashing down right in front of Granny.
“I… I’m sorry Granny. - I’m sorry. - I tried – to save him,” Pear Butter gasped while her empty eyes gazed at Granny, her body horribly twisted.
“No, no, no...” Granny whimpered. “No!”
🛏
Granny woke with a start. It had been a dream. A horrible dream. She threw off her covers, sprang to her hooves, and rushed to Bright Mack and Pear Butter’s bedroom only to find a well-made bed and a picture of the perfect pair over the bed draped in black fabric.
“No, no, it didn't happen that way it didn’t!” Granny exclaimed in desperation and ran to check all the bedrooms.
No pony was there, not even little Apple bloom. Applejack and Apple Bloom’s bedding was stripped away and sheets covering the desk and dressers like no one was expected to be using the room for a very long time.
When Granny got downstairs there was no one about, and only the signs of habitation that of a funeral gathering having taken place perhaps the night before.
“Bright Mac! Bright Mac!” Granny called as she ran outside. “Pear Butter! Applejack!”
“Granny?!” Big Mac called as he rushed out of the barn. “Granny.” He ran to her, the odor of the early morning chores heavy on him. “It’s going to be alright. We’ll...”
“Where’s your Ma and Pa?” Granny pleaded.
“Granny, they got et. Don cha remember?” Big Mac said softly. “Maybe you should go have a lay-down.”
“I’m not laying down!” Granny protested. “Where’s yer sister?!”
“You sent her away. To stay with kin in Manehattan. Apple Bloom is with Miss Lofty wait-en to see if anyone el' adopt her.”
“Apple Bloom? With that chicken eater?!”
“Granny, what are you talking about. Lofty and Holiday are good ponies.”
“The chicken eater, that false alicorn, that daughter of Nightmare Moon, Miss Nova… Big Mac?” Big Mac turned to ash before her eyes and vanished on the morning breeze. The day grew dark as clouds from the Everfree billowed overhead.
“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Boomed a voice that sounded like the creaking of a great tree.
Granny turned to see the beast in all its horror. The bone, the flesh, and rotting branches where there was no bone. Inside its torso the remains of recognizable ponies. Bright Mac, Pear Butter, Big Mac, Applejack, and Bloom who'd been swallowed whole. Bloom's hollow eyes looked out at Granny and then she spoke in a raspy tone, "we did what you wanted, we followed Bright Mac, just like you kept telling us we should."
“Didn’t you want Pear Butter to die? Didn't you want them all to die, to follow one after the other into the jaws of death? ” The beast said in a low guttural growl as it slowly walked up to her.
Black fluid dripped from its massive jaw, and wherever it fell the ground cracked and turned ashen as though parched by a great fire. Its eyes of flame ever searching zeroing in on Granny and looking right through to her soul.
“You had them both. They were alive, but you weren’t happy with that. You’d much rather that pear lover run headlong into her doom,” it stated as it came ever closer, blotting out the very sun till only nightmare and shadow remained. Not even the farm was left. Just a bare open plane where the carcasses of trees thrust empty branches upward into a moonless night. Even the stars began to dim and vanish until only the seeking eyes of flame were left.
“You could not be grateful for what you had. You showed your family only bitterness when you should have showed them gratitude. Even the feud between the Apples and the Pears was your doing. You vile miserable ungrateful…”
In a flash it was all gone, replaced by an endless plane of mist where pastel bubbles floated here and there.
Among the bubbles stood a black and white filly with both wings and a horn. A moment later Nightmare Moon herself joined her.
“..old nag,” the filly said softly.
“Remindeth us ne’r to ang'r thee mine own daught'r.”
“Can’t sayeth the mare didn’t have it coming.”
“Nay, we imagineth not.”
“I doth desire I haven't ov'r done it and hath killed h'r in the admonition.”
“Seems a foalish timeth to bethink of that now?”
"I didn't even get to have sea ponies drag her into the well."
"And kill her off for sure my little one. Dreams are not to be toyed with for a reason. So why?
"I wanted her to have a vision of what she'd been asking, and it wasn't just what Applejack had said. Every time I was around her, one moment she'd be acting all nice, and then she's making snide little comments that sets everyone around her on edge.
"Let us hope that you haven't done something you will regret."