“So where’s the haunted house?” Dinky’s voice, repeating the question for the third time, now held an edge of plaintiveness. She had followed Sparkler willingly enough for the first few minutes, but as Sparkler led her further from the crowds in the town square and the candy-dispensing ponies on their doorsteps, her eagerness had begun to wane.
“I told you,” Sparkler answered, her playful grin a genuine one. “On the edge of town. But it’ll be worth it, I swear.” She skipped a little closer to Dinky, and gave her a playful nudge.
Dinky laughed, and Sparkler’s heart swelled. This was everything she had ever hoped. An adventure with her little sister. Time alone with Dinky Doo was as brilliant as she had daydreamed it would be. They were laughing together. This could be the beginning: a real family of her own. Sparkler’s relationship with her parents had sputtered and failed like a dying fire, but her sister could be different. She would be different. Sparkler would make sure of it.
She picked up her pace a little, and the sisters trotted side by side down one dark alley after another. Sparkler knew the route like the back of her hoof, and she didn’t hesitate for a moment. She had been planning this first meeting for weeks, and was confident she had picked the perfect location. Isolated, so it would be just the two of them. A little scary, to help them bond. Exciting, to make Dinky want to hang out with her cool older sister again. The tumbledown house on the outskirts of Ponyville, made much creepier by the darkness and the time of year, was absolutely ideal.
She had heard rumours about it from a couple of the younger colts at school. Apparently some old mare had lived there alone for years, and nopony had wanted the house after she died. So the house had fallen into disrepair, and there were even whispers that somepony had seen the old mare’s ghost wandering the garden. It sounded just scary enough to be a fun Nightmare Night trip. She had wanted something that would really impress Dinky — nopony else would take her to a haunted house with a real ghost. Certainly not her strait-laced, boring mother.
They rounded another corner, Sparkler’s cassock swishing on the cobblestones, and they both stopped. The street ahead of them tilted down a slight hill, running straight through a crowd of houses and on out into the countryside beyond. Just beyond the edge of Ponyville’s borders, squatting like a bullfrog on a bend in the road, was the house.
In its inhabited days, it would have been a simple, homely place. Just two floors, two windows on either side of a peeling door. The ivy might once have been a charming accentuation of the cottage’s simple appeal. But now, the red-tiled roof had caved in, with roof-timbers bared to the dark sky like a ribcage. And the ivy crawled over everything, choking, strangling the house, making it into a strange, malformed beast that rustled in the night breeze with an unmistakable air of menace. The moonlight glinted off shards of the shattered windowpanes.
Looking down at its hunched shape, Sparkler felt a shiver of delicious fear run down her spine. She looked sideways at Dinky.
Her eyes were wide and white in the dark. “Wow,” she breathed. “Creepy.”
Sparkler’s fear turned to pride. She had been right; this was the place. “Told you it would be,” she said lightly. “Always trust your big sister.” Saying the words for the first time gave her a thrill like nothing she’d ever experienced before. She looked down again at the foal beside her, and traced the shape of her own horn, her muzzle, her father’s ears, all on another pony. Was this what it felt like, to belong to a family?
She turned and led the way down the road, towards the house. “Let’s go.”
The gate creaked as they nudged it open. The garden was riddled with weeds; it was clear that nopony had tended this sorry little patch of soil for a long time. Swinging loose from a single hinge, the door banged quietly against the frame. Though she had seen and explored this place in the daylight to make sure it was safe enough to bring her little sister too, Sparkler felt the first twinges of unease. That dark aperture yawned before them like a mouth, ready and waiting to consume them.
Dinky, though, clearly felt no such twinges. A spring in her step, she trotted brightly forward and nudged the door open. Sparkler was left with no choice but to follow.
The first room they entered was large and bare, with only a few broken sticks of furniture and large patches of mildew creeping up the walls. The moon shone its wan light in through the broken window pane, and Sparkler swallowed. Dinky turned to look at her, golden eyes gleaming, and beckoned her onwards. Hastening forward, Sparkler tried to take the lead. After all, this was her haunted house. Her treat for Dinky.
“Hey,” she whispered, keeping her voice low so as not to break the atmosphere. “There’s a cellar over this way. It’s really creepy down there; want to come?”
Dinky’s expression lit up and she nodded furiously. “Yes!”
Moving cautiously, Sparkler led the way through the forsaken living room, where a single rotten sofa still mouldered, and opened the small door beneath the staircase. A series of stone steps awaited them, each one descending a little further into shadow, until they were lost from view.
“Wow.” Dinky let out a breath. “This place is so cool. Just like in one of my books.”
“Come on!” Relieved to be back in the role of guide, Sparkler took point as they went down the stairs.
The cellar was almost entirely pitch black. Even the pale threads of moonlight that illuminated the ground floor could not penetrate down here, and if she hadn’t known better Sparkler could have believed that any number of monsters lurked in the shadows, just waiting for unsuspecting fillies to wander down here. Of course, Sparkler reminded herself firmly, she did know better. She was the big sister here. It was her job to keep a level head.
As always, thinking of herself as a sister gave her a little boost. It was such a strange and sweet sensation, to have family other than her mother.
“Look over here,” she hissed to Dinky, tugging on her tunic sleeve to pull her over to a spot where she had seen some rusted iron railings on her previous visit. “There’s a cage in this corner, where the old witch used to keep the foals she ate.” She guided Dinky’s hoof over to the railings and felt the smaller foal shudder. “See, you can touch them.”
“Oh my goodness.” Dinky let out a whoosh of air. “Was there really a witch here?”
“You bet. A really evil one, too.” Even as she spoke the words, Sparkler thought she heard a hoof step up above. Immediately, her ears swivelled towards the sound. It was nothing, of course — rationally, she knew it must be nothing — but she could have sworn she had heard a noise.
Slowly, she turned back to face the stairwell and looked up to the lighter patch of darkness where the doorway was. Then she saw them — two little figures, black on black, looking down at them, eyes glimmering with malice. Her mouth opened to shout a protest, but she caught only a glimpse of a muzzle split into a wicked grin before the door slammed shut. The lock clunked, and the sisters were plunged into absolute darkness.