//------------------------------// // Devil In The Doll // Story: CMC Watch Bedtime Stories // by Lord Blundergosh //------------------------------// Wednesday Afternoon In contrast to her surroundings, Rarity giddily cantered to her shop’s entrance, the pleased grin on her face signifying the first time in days that she felt content. She paid no mind to the sounds of distant thunderclaps, her door’s bell nor the three sets of hooves trotting just behind her. After figuring how the mask would work last night, the next thing Rarity had to do was figure how to translate the sleek, skin-tight outfit that inspired her design into a practical evolution of the phantom’s iconic costume, one that fit Stage Craft’s vision. She quickly realized that a trench coat was a natural substitute for his cape, though that still wasn’t enough; she understood that when Stage Craft said that the costume should like it was created in a poisonous world, he wanted something that at least appeared to be designed for hazardous environments. She thankfully got the inspiration she needed when she saw a story in the morning newspaper about one of Manehattan’s schools burning to the ground, though miraculously nopony died as a result. After getting over her initial shock, her eyes landed onto the photo of one of the firefighters carrying a foal out of the rubble; it was right then she got the perfect idea. She could count herself lucky that “Quills, Sofas & Fabrics” actually had just the materials she needed. Who would’ve thought they had nomex in stock? With how quickly she was in and out of there, she even had time to pick the girls up from school. One of the Crusaders, her sister, called out to her as she went up the stairs, “Hey Rarity, I got your mail for you. Do you want me to give them to you now?” “Oh, thank you Sweetie Belle. I almost forgot.”, the mare replied from her spot on the steps. After having the mail levitated out of her magical grasp, Sweetie wasted no time dashing to wherever her friends had gone. Humming a merry tune to herself, Rarity set the mail on a nearby counter upon entering her room; she’ll have time to read those later. Right now though, everything had fallen into place. Courtesy of Stage Craft, she started with only the actor’s measurements and a general directive. Just a few days ago she finally got the vision she had been seeking. And now, with the bag of fabric she’d just gently dropped on the floor, the sewing machine, her toolkit and the ponnequin standing in the center of the room, she was finally ready to start making the magic happen. Putting on her glasses, Rarity took a deep breath as she eyed up the ponnequin before her. “Together, you and I are going to blow Stage Craft away.” “Grk!” The walls of the newly made guest room echoed Apple Bloom’s grunts. “Will you hold still down there?”, she heard above her. “I-ayyy! can’t get it if I’m too busy trying to keep myself from f-falling.” Apple Bloom didn’t bother looking all the way up at her friend, not even opening her tightly shut eyes as she spoke back though gritted teeth, “Oh, sorry. Ah would hate ta be a burden!” “Ugh! Just hurry up already and work your magic!”, another voice could be heard griping. After steadying herself, Sweetie Belle looked straight at her target. With a simple shine of her horn, the crystal ball was levitated off the shelf. Wasting no time, Sweetie Belle looked down and dropped off the top of the totem she and her friends had formed, landing safely on her hooves. “Wah! Shit-“ Sadly, the same could not be said for Scootaloo, who lost her balance and crashed to the floor as soon as Sweetie had jumped off her. “Ow…” Thankfully, the boutique was just big enough that Rarity probably couldn’t sense the impact from upstairs. “Phew! Glad that’s finally over. Gave me a headache and back pain ta boot.” After watching the farm filly walk past her and out the door, Sweetie Belle sensed her other friend come next to her and begin stretching her back as hard as she could until finally something could be heard popping back into place. Scootaloo took no notice of Sweetie’s wince before she began following the earth pony out the door, massaging the back of her neck and grumbling all the while. “Tell me about it.” The two fillies immediately joined their friend in the kitchen, placing the orb right on the table. While Apple Bloom took her time getting her daily aspirin and gathering the snacks and drinks, Scootaloo sat down with Sweetie Belle. Patiently scrolling through the story list, the pegasus waited for a bit before Sweetie finally gave the word. Uncovering her eyes, the unicorn filly for once was stumped by the first word in the title. “Devil in the Doll…?”, she read. She heard Apple Bloom pop open a bottle and saw her down the pills with huge, sloshy gulps of soda from behind her. “What is a devil, anyway?”, Scootaloo expectantly asked. Sweetie tilted her head. “I actually don’t know.” “That’s a first.”, Apple Bloom commented after unleashing a loud sigh of satisfaction, proceeding to take a seat of her own. Wanting to get one video in before they had to begin what would be hours of studying, Scootaloo wasted no more time getting the story started. Though, she’d soon find herself wondering if just skipping straight to the studying wouldn’t be so bad. She and her friends were all unfortunately graced with the sight of three toy dolls. Each of them were seated in a chairs, sitting in a row facing the viewer’s direction. Scootaloo especially hated how every doll felt they were sitting across the room, waiting expectantly for them. The narrator practically confirming her worst suspicions that these dolls were actually haunted. “Why did it have to be a ghost story?”, she asked privately. When the intro began, one of the girls finally had something to say. “Why did the doll to the right look so sinister?” With an incredulous sideways glance at Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo wondered to herself, “Only the one on the right?” Waiting silently for the intro to play out, what they saw next was a bedroom; a nice-looking one too. But what really caught their attention was the human boy sitting on the bed, Robert Eugene Otto or “Gene” as he preferred to be called. He smiled at his friend sitting in a chair on the other side of the room. It was one of the dolls the Crusaders saw at the beginning, hand-stitched, beady-eyed and dressed in a sailor’s uniform. Sweetie Belle squinted her eyes. “Is it me or is that doll bigger than any toy I’ve ever had?” By the looks of it, the puppet was indeed the same size as Gene. “Why does the idea of a life-size doll feel kinda creepy?”, Scootaloo asked aloud. While Sweetie Belle cracked open her own bottle of pop, Apple Bloom answered, “Sounds like a you problem, ah woulda loved ta get a doll that big when ah was young.” Sweetie Belle cocked an eyebrow after taking the first sip of her drink. “Um, you know we’re all technically still kids, right?” “Maybe y’all still are, but I’ve had ta do some real growin’ up for my family’s sake.”, she said with an uncharacteristic air of pretension. “Besides, with how much grownups say I’m so mature for my age, ah must be almost eighteen mentally.” Apple Bloom took a gulp of her drink then smacked her lips with a content sigh, unaware of the way her friend stared at her like she just grew a horn from her neck. Scootaloo normally would’ve seized the opportunity to join in the conversation so that she could forget about the ghost story for a second. But the narrator caught her attention when he mentioned that a nursemaid gave this to Gene as a parting gift after she got fired from her position for supposedly trivial reasons. While it was likely that she did this to ease the heartache of the boy she had grown attached to, Scootaloo had a sinking feeling that there was a more sinister purpose. Still, Gene instantly fell in love with his newest companion who he, funnily enough, named after himself: Robert. While he spent hours in his bedroom with his new friend, servants on the job swore they could hear him to talking to another boy from behind the door. Of course, most of them assumed it was just Gene who was providing the slightly gruffer voice for his inanimate companion. Others swear that the two voices they heard could not have come from the same boy. The narrator then recounted how Gene’s parents immediately rushed upstairs to his room as soon as soon as they heard him screaming; it only got more disturbing as his door inexplicably would not open, with “devilish” laughter being heard from the other side. Scootaloo reached into the nearest bag for a comforting hooful of cheese balls; she’d been wary of dolls ever since that one time Twilight had a mental breakdown and cast a spell that made the Crusaders obsess over her “Smarty Pants” doll. Through the sound of their friend’s incessant crunching, the other two continued listening in. Like the parents who had finally forced their way in, they looked in awe at the wreck the room had become. What drew their eyes the most was the decapitated rocking horse, the sight of it causing their fur to frazzle and stick up the more they looked at it. When his mom and dad questioned him about why all of his toys were broken and his furniture turned over, Gene could only whimper about how it was all Robert’s doing. They appeared perplexed by the way their son shakily pointed at the doll which now sat quietly at the windowsill. The Crusaders knew better than the parents probably did, though; its motionless state would not fool them. They were relieved when the story cut to the next illustration, fearing that vision of that headless rocking horse being burned into their brains. Scootaloo personally flip-flopped on whether this was an ominous threat somehow directed at her and her friends or a manifestation of theHeadless Horse’s spirit returning to haunt her. The windows around her shielded Scootaloo from the groaning winds picking up speed outside, yet she still felt a minor chill come over her if only for a brief moment. Other incidents like this would crop up over time. This included Gene’s other dolls being found torn apart in different spots of the house as well as silverware discovered bent out of shape. “Huh. I would’ve guessed that breaking the other dolls was a sign that Robert’s just jealous. But what’s he got against the silverware?”, Scootaloo observed privately. There were also incidents where servants working in a particular room suddenly found themselves locked inside, with no one else to be found in the house. This lead to some of them to openly state that they believed the doll was cursed with some sort of black magic, namely voodoo. “Wow, they didn’t immediately blame Gene for what was happening?” Apple Bloom turned to her friend to ask, “What makes ya think Gene’s doin’ all this?” “I don’t. I’ve just gotten so used to being blamed for every stupid thing Opal does, that I’d figured they’d give Gene the same treatment with Robert.”, Sweetie answered. “Seriously, why does Rarity never believe me? Like, so what if that cat’s paws aren’t capable of picking the lock to your bucking wine cabinet? I don’t even know how we even use our hooves for anything besides walking! Hasn’t stopped us though!” Scootaloo, meanwhile, tensed up as a question of her own came to mind. “Hold on, so this thing is a voodoo doll? Does that mean it’s gonna try to take Gene out of the picture? You know, so that Robert can take over his life instead?” “That ain’t how voodoo dolls work.” “How would you know?” Scootaloo wouldn’t get an explanation once Apple Bloom’s full-attention was snatched up by what came next in the story. Gene ended up inheriting the Otto family home after his parents died. Her ears flopped down slowly as it slowly dawned on her how similar her family’s whole situation was right now. Sure, Applejack had been gradually taking on more of granny’s responsibilities over the years, but Apple Bloom could tell that still wasn’t totally prepared for the realization that this was what it had all been building up to. Apple Bloom also realized that with how often her sister gets whisked off to another adventure or the frequency that Ponyville faces life-threatening disasters, she could suddenly wind up in the same position as AJ but with no one around to help her this time. She wondered how lonely Gene felt with his family out of the picture. She personally couldn’t think of many things more lonely than living in an empty Sweet Apple Acres, handling the family business all by herself. Little did Apple Bloom know that her friend sitting next to her was having similar fears; unlike her though, for Scootaloo it didn’t just start with this story. As it turned out, Gene would not be alone in Otto manor. Not only had he kept Robert for all these years, but he decided to build the doll its own personal room. If that wasn’t bizarre enough, he still kept Robert around even after he got married. Though, his insistence on treating the toy like an actual person would put an early strain on their marriage. Visibly cringing, Apple Bloom had no clue what to say other than, “That is… so weird!” “You know what’s even weirder? The fact that she didn’t leave the second he asked her if she’d be okay with letting a doll sit at the table with them.”, Scootaloo observed. “Oh, come on! He’s not that bad!” Turning to face Sweetie, Apple Bloom asked, “Really?” “Yeah.”, she reasserted. “That might even be what this Anne lady liked about him.” “That he’s creepy?” “And possibly delusional?”, Apple Bloom added. “He still has childhood wonder.” Noticing that her friends only grew more perplexed, Sweetie elaborated, “Remember that time my sister dated Cheese Sandwich a couple months ago?” “Yeah.”, they answered simultaneously. “She told me how she envies our ‘childlike wonder’. She thought maybe the kind of stallion she needs is one that brings more uh… what was the word?”, she muttered before the word suddenly came back to her. “Whimsy! She wanted somepony who could bring more ‘whimsy’ into her life.” As this conversation continued, the narrator explained how the situation became worse after Gene caved in to his wife’s demands to leave Robert in the attic and to stop talking to it altogether. “Ah wonder what mah sister would think of this?” Applejack did once tell her that someone’s true love would never make you choose between them and your friends. “…oh, who am ah kiddin’? There ain’t no way she’d apply that to a toy.” Scootaloo quirked a brow at her friend, “And that didn’t work out becaaauuse…?” “Rarity said the dates he took her on were ‘overwhelming in all the ways I didn’t care for’”, Sweetie quoted while resting the back of her hoof against her forehead. “She also told me that’s when she realized that her life is already pretty busy and ‘exciting’ as it is. So, she broke up with him.” “I still can’t believe how badly Cheese Sandwitch took that break up. I couldn’t go to Sugarcube Corner for a couple weeks cause his sulking bummed me out so damn much.”, Scootaloo recounted. “He sure is lucky that Pinkie was there to offer him a place to stay and a shoulder to cry on though.” Apple Bloom immediately followed up Sweetie’s statement by asking her, “Ain’t he still stayin’ over at her place?” Pausing for only a moment to think it over, Sweetie soon responded, “Actually, yeah.” “Hmmm. Wonder what that’s about?”, the unicorn filly then asked herself. Before they could get further off track, the other two focused back on the story. The sounds of the storm grew closer only to fall deaf on the fillies’ ears. The only sound that had their attention was the narrator explaining how things escalated after Robert was put in the attic. Their eyes fell onto the two children standing outside the gate and staring upward at the Otto house. Following the boys’ gaze, the girls were taken aback slightly upon spotting Robert staring out the window. Apparently, the doll would supposedly be seen pointing and gesturing at people from the attic window. This drew several complaints from parents in the neighborhood about the doll terrorizing their children. Scootaloo let loose an involuntary shudder as she imagined Smarty Pants doing the same thing. As an up-close, off-putting view of Robert sitting in his chair materialized on screen, it was explained how there were countless strange occurrences around the home. Namely, Anne would hear the sounds of footsteps coming from the ceiling above her and her husband’s room only to find nobody up there besides the doll whenever they checked. Experiences like these would force her into a mental breakdown and she had to be committed to an asylum. That last detail worried Sweetie Belle. With the last episode still fresh in her mind, mental hospitals didn’t have a good track record in her eyes when it comes to taking care of older ladies with good hearts. When Gene passed away in 1974, the Otto would soon gain new occupants. Robert wouldn’t stay in the house for too long, especially after the new owners’ daughter had nightmares of Robert trying to kill her. The aging doll would be donated to the nearby East Martello Museum where he remains to this day, safely kept inside a protective glass case. “I knew the Otto’s were rich, but were they that important?”, questioned Sweetie. “Cause I’m pretty sure they’d only want to display a dusty old doll if it belonged to a noble or someone like that.” After giving it some thought, Scootaloo suggested, “You think they might’ve been told it was haunted and that’s why they wanted it?” “Ah can see that. There’s museums out there that specialize in spooky cursed items like that.” Apple Bloom learned this first-hoof when she spotted one on the side of the road during one of her family’s cross-country roadtrips. Try as she might though, she couldn’t convince her sister to make a stop at the tourist trap. She didn’t care if Applejack probably would’ve turned out to be right and it was a big scam, anything would’ve been worth a break from the insufferable tedium of the road. Meanwhile, the unicorn filly wondered to herself if the same thing will happen to Diamond Tiara’s stuff in the far future. Being contained did not stop Robert’s supernatural shenanigans. It’s said that people regularly try to take photos of him only for their cameras to inexplicably malfunction. Visitors have also reported seeing the doll’s facial expressions change, with its hands twitching down by its sides in the display case. Despite how much this doll terrorized the Otto family, Sweetie Belle wondered if she should feel a slight tinge of pity for the toy stuck in a glass box for the rest of its existence. “It probably gets lonely in that glass box.” The faint echoes of wind chimes emerged through the now moaning winds outside, just in time for the next story to start. In a glass case of its own sat another doll seen in the opening, a presumably life-like babydoll clad in a hooded sleeping gown and with a baby lamb in its lap. Identified as Mandy, this doll likely terrorized it’s previous owners in a similar fashion before being donated to Quensel City Museum. Though, with the person who donated Mandy to the museum back in 1991 insisting on remaining anonymous, this doll’s history remains unclear and lesser known than Robert’s. Scootaloo narrowed her eyes, “Somehow, I just know that doll did something to convince its owner to go into hiding after giving it up. Probably changed her name and moved out of town just so it wouldn’t get her.” This drew odd looks from both her friends, unsure where the pegasus got all of that from. “Does she think these dolls are really that powerful?”, Apple Bloom privately asked herself. “You don’t think she probably just wanted to avoid the attention?” Scootaloo shooed away Sweetie’s doubt, “Please, everypony who isn’t Fluttershy wants to be on the news at least once… in a good context, at least!” After thinking it over for a moment, they had to cede the point to Scootaloo. They personally couldn’t imagine not relishing the spotlight so long it wasn’t coming from a gossip column like the one they used to write for. They’d want to tell every creature in Equestria if they had a cursed doll in their possession. As far as they were concerned, a little publicity never hurt anypony… at least, most of the time. Right? Since the day Mandy was brought in, the staff members who were tasked with preparing the doll for display would be plagued by haunting events. For example, when Mandy’s garments were taken away to be clean, the doll had to be sealed into a plastic bag for its protection. Almost immediately, staff in the immediate vicinity began to hear faint rustling noises; some even reported seeing the plastic twitching and moving on its own. When investigating the bag, they found no mechanism or power source that could’ve possibly caused the movement, just the doll. It was hoped that once Mandy and her clothing were restored to prime condition and she was put in her display case, incidents like this would never happen again. Unfortunately, as more strange occurrences cropped up to disprove that notion, staff would begin to lose their nerve. All three fillies jolted at the crack-boom they heard outside and all turned to see the flashing sky. However, an even bigger scare was waiting for them on the orb’s projection. They all jumped in surprise again after turning back around to see Mandy’s face had changed. Scootaloo even let out an uncharacteristic yelp, only to have her mouth covered by her friend as she checked to see if that caught her sister’s attention from upstairs. The doll’s head was titled to its right. The face showed a few cracks in its porcelain skin, the biggest one running through one of the two empty, dark sockets in place of where its eyes had been. Audible gulps could be heard as it was described how there was tapping that could be heard from the glass case as visitors passed by. This set the Crusaders up to start shivering a little as they heard the rain begin tapping the window. They all reached for their snacks and drinks as they listened to more incidents that emerged around this doll spawned from Tartarus. The time Mandy’s lamb was found standing outside her case was creepy, but it didn’t hold a candle to the incident where staff opened the museum one morning to find all the exhibits had been opened overnight with a number of them appearing to have been thrown across the room. Mandy’s display case was the only that had gone untouched. The way the narrator compared the scene to the aftermath of a tantrum is what most got the girls’s attention. “What’s got these dolls so sore ta begin with?” Sweetie replied to her farm girl pal with, “I don’t know. I want to say that they’re upset that they’re stuck as a museum piece. But if they don’t want to be there, then why did they scare their owners away and why don’t they just leave?” They were surprisingly unprepared for the answer despite the directions all signs were pointing to. It was at this point that the staff decided the time had come to invite a medium assess the toy, to which the museum’s curator approved without a second thought. After conducting a psychic reading of the doll, the one they had hired deduced that Mandy used to belong to a little girl. Unfortunately, when the owner died at a young age, the child’s spirit transferred into the doll she had been holding at the time she died. It was speculated that all of the doll’s actions were that of kid in search of excitement and attention. Before the Crusaders had the chance their sympathy for the poor girl’s spirit, they narrator then announced that, when asked, the woman who donated the doll to the museum had a very different tale to tell. “Wait, does this mean they’re about to need a refund from that psychic they hired?” “They totally got scammed!”, Sweetie grimaced as she echoed out loud exactly what Scootaloo had been thinking. “Now ah have ta wonder if Pinkie’s spazzy, psychic precog-whatever powers coulda helped in a situation like this?” In Apple Bloom’s eyes, if the Pinkie Sense could tell when something bad is about to happen, who’s to say it can’t do anything else, like talk to the dead or see in the past? “Actually, maybe we could tell Wind Trot ta try pursuin’ a cutie mark in fortune tellin’. See where that leads her.” Sure, it was out of the box, but it was still worth a shot. As the donor’s story began to be told, the screen transitioned to an illustration of her silhouetted form standing at the bottom step of her basement stairs. While it was explained how it all started when she came downstairs to investigate the inexplicable sounds of a crying baby she heard down there, that exact sound began playing from the orb; all the while, the image slowly panned down to reveal Mandy the doll lying in the middle of the cellar floor. Her first instinct was to dispose of it, but no matter what method she tried, the crying would come back and the doll would be found back right where she first discovered it. If Sweetie had merely wondered if she should feel bad for Robert, she definitely felt bad for Mandy. Being tossed away and rejected like that must have stung. At her wit’s end, the owner offered the toy to the museum, in the hopes it would satiate its desire for attention through the regular human contact the staff and visitors could give it. “Then again, if they’re right, maybe Mandy’s now the happiest she’s been since death?” However, Mandy seems to have the same aversion to being photographed as Robert, even cameras and devices often unexpectedly malfunction in a similar fashion. “Hold on, I thought this doll’s whole deal was that it wanted attention. How can anypony be an attention hog that also hates getting their picture taken?”, Scootaloo questioned. This primed her be even more skeptical when she was told that the museum that owns Mandy insists to this day that the doll isn’t evil at all, reiterating that it was merely childish and sometimes prone to tantrum. Still, she didn’t linger on it and instead just took some swigs from her soda bottle as the story cut away to a simple image of a wooden floor. “Ah’m startin’ ta think it might be a good thing that all those fantasies ah used ta have of my toys comin’ ta life and bein’ my friends never came true.”, Apple Bloom confessed. “Ah would hate ta find out my favorite stuffed animals were real nasty pieces of work once ya got ta know ‘em.” Sweetie privately shook her head. “My stuffed toys would never be like that. They’ve learned a lot of good things with me as their friend, right?” Of course, not all haunted dolls reside in museums as the narrator rightfully pointed out. One such example was presumably the final doll from the beginning. This one was still in the possession of its family/owners in Queensland, Australia. Though its origins are also not entirely known (much like Mandy), what could be said for certain was that it was discovered in the 1970’s by two brothers while they were exploring an abandoned house in the suburbs of “Wagga Wagga”. Every filly either snickered or tittered at that name; for the first time in her life, Scootaloo actually wanted to take a crack at making a dad joke, if only she could think of one right now. “All I know is that a ‘Wocka Wocka’ at the end would be a real cherry on top!” As the pair had made their way through the shattered husk of the premises, the younger of the two had suddenly cried out in terror. The Crusaders’ moment of joviality was cut short when it was shown what scared the younger brother so much. What appeared to be a human face stared up at them through a gap in the floorboards. Some of the girls might have bit their lip in fearful anticipation if it weren’t for the reveal in the very next sentence that the boys had pealed back the floorboards to reveal a crudely carved wooden doll dressed in boy’s clothing. The brothers rationalized that since the owner decided to abandon this doll with the rest of the house, nobody would mind if they took it home with them. “Nnnope!”, Scootaloo uttered as a gut reaction. “This is what I mean when I say I got good survival instincts, you’d never see me make a rookie mistake like that.” The other two rolled their eyes, of course; for as long as they’d known this pegasus, she’s been the type to do dumber stuff than this just so she wouldn’t look like a fraidy-cat. The doll was given the name “Letta Me Outta Here”, or Letta for short. Apple Bloom grimaced, “Oh boy. It’s probably gonna kill them just for that name alone.” The first strange incident attached to this doll was the period of time where it strangely disappeared. It wouldn’t reappear until Kerry Walton, the older brother, found it while he was cleaning out the attic of his home in Warwick. The moment he brought the doll back down from the attic has been marked as the point where its alleged supernatural powers began to manifest. As the next illustration gave a more complete look at Letta and its sinister smirk, the narrator described how the family dogs always had to be removed from whatever room the doll was in because of how agitated they became in its presence. On numerous occasions, the doll would be found in a different position than when it had been left, even though nobody was awake to fiddle with it. There was also a series of scuff marks that Kerry found around the house turned out to be a match for the soles on Letta’s shoes. When he took the doll to a toy expert, it was deduced that it was of European origin. The expert speculated that it was hand-carved by gypsies and even suggested that the thick black hair woven into the top of its head was real. “Ewww!” Sweetie’s disgust would go unacknowledged by the other two. Scootaloo was too busy lamenting how she suddenly felt out of the loop; like, what are gypsies? Apple Bloom for her part was couldn’t help but notice how quickly this was sounding like voodoo magic. Were these “gypsies” actually the human world versions of Zebra shamans? They wouldn’t get to dwell on this much longer though as Walton returned home with Letta that night. He parked his car in the driveway and recoiled in horror when he noticed the doll outside of the sack he put it in, laying on the rear seat of the car. However, it wasn’t until his children came to him crying and screaming about how Letta threatened to kill them in their dreams that Walton decided to call for a spiritualist. This left dispelled doubt in the the filly’s minds, Letta was the scariest doll by far. According to the medium he hired, Letta was possessed by the spirit of a young boy who drowned many years before. Going off this information, Walton assumed that the toy was not malicious or evil, but merely lonely. “I feel like these dolls are getting too much benefit of the doubt.”, Scootaloo said before finishing her soda-pop. Sweetie was about to take a hooful’s worth of chips from her magic aura when she added, “I could understand with the last two, but this one threatened to kill his kids. How does loneliness explain that?” “Ah thought we learned from Diamond Tiara that bad circumstances can bring out the worst in anypony?” “Yeah, well… Diamond and Silver Spoon never threatened our lives!”, Scootaloo hastily countered her frowning farmer friend. Ever since Walton sold his story to the local media, the supernatural occurrences have mostly ceased. Only manifesting when visitors come to have a look at the doll. Interviewers who’ve sat down with Walton to ask about Letta’s story reported incidents such as feeling the doll adjust itself into a more comfortable position while sitting on their laps. Or a clock being violently flung off the wall and smashing on the floor after one of them asked about the boy’s inhabiting the toy. With Letta’s story wrapped up, the narrator finally got to his familiar rhetorical spiel. He offered the many similarities between these cases as possible evidence that supernatural possession of inanimate objects might be possible. Though, psychologists beg to differ; the alternative theory they offer can be traced back centuries all through the evolution of children’s toys. “So, there’s psychologists that get to study toys as their specialty? I wish we tried that before we got our cutiemarks!”, Sweetie said, even though she obviously wasn’t dissatisfied with the cutie mark she has now. “It would’ve turned out to be boring somehow. I know it.”, Scootaloo gruffed. Though if she were being honest, she was just jealous she didn’t come up with that idea herself. While the oldest dolls that could be found from the 17th and 18th centuries possessed angelic and exaggerated human features, later dolls would be designed to look more and more realistic overtime. While the end result is closer in appearance to an actual than what they used, it’s still noticeably not quite perfect. Consequently, such dolls come across as unnerving due to their subtle differences to a genuine human child. This mean that while people do accept these fake humans into their homes, their uncanny appearance subconsciously forces those same people to be instinctively wary of them. This can lead to them misinterpreting situations and mistakenly attributing to them to the dolls if they happen to be nearby, instead of just recognizing these as coincidences. This got mixed reactions from the trio. Apple Bloom felt like this wasn’t a sufficient explanation as a pony with some personal experience with voodoo and the supernatural. Sweetie Belle was getting over her “believer” phase and was now looking at these stories with a bit more skepticism. Scootaloo wanted to accept that explanation wholeheartedly, but the idea that paranoia could play that level of tricks on one’s mind was proving too big of a pill for her to swallow right now. While the narrator continued, Scootaloo snapped out of her thoughts when she noticed one of the dolls, Letta, had turned its head to look straight at her and her friends. Actually, Mandy also seemed to be staring right at her too. Was she always looking in her direction? This happened again as the narrator was giving his closing line, with Robert adjusting himself in his seat to look straight at her with its dead, beady eyes while the story faded to a close. Frustrated yet creeped out beyond belief, she almost blurted out, “Stop screwing with me!” “Somepony rattled?” Scootaloo turned to face Apple Bloom, tensing up as she was confronted with her friend’s smug expression. “N-no, I was just-“, she stammered out her reply before taking a moment to pause. A smirk growing more prominent on her face with each word she said next. “Just feeling sorry for your brother.” “Huh?” “I’m just thinking about how devastating it’d be for him to see this.”, she snickered. “Might never look at lil’ Smartypants the same way again.” While she watched her friend humorously choke on her words and tinge of pink appear on her cheeks, Sweetie asked, “Bloom, does Big Mac really still have that doll?” She assumed that the grown stallion would have been over that toy after he got together with Sugar Belle. “He’s just keepin’ that thing around just so he can give it ta his kid when they’re born.”, the farm filly explained. Scootaloo let out a “pfft” as she stepped out of her chair, “I saw him tucking that thing into bed last week!” “Aw, bite me!”, the farm filly said as she hopped out of her seat. “Let’s just put the crystal ball back up on the shelf before Ms. Rarity finds out. Without anymore banter, they all trotted out of the kitchen for the guest room, orb following in tow within Sweetie’s magical grasp; meanwhile, Rarity continued her project up in her room, none the wiser that the fillies downstairs had decided to slack off for a moment with the device she hadn’t even permitted them to use yet. Two O’Clock, Thursday Morning The door to Sweetie’s room slowly creaked open, disturbing the boutique’s silence for a brief moment before pausing its movement. It continued on like this, opening slightly more and more with pauses in between each and every movement. The pegasus behind the door kept checking to see if the shrill creaking sounds had disturbed her roommates’ slumber. Once the door was barely wide enough, Scootaloo squeezed her way through, as mindful of her hoofsteps as she was of the door’s noises. She dare not reach for a light, instead trusting that her eyes had sufficiently adjusted to the blackness as she made her for the stairs. Tonight’s bedtime had been a rough one for her, to say the least. It was bad enough trying to get to sleep in the first place when every side of the room had at least one of Sweetie’s dolls looking in her direction; the last thing she needed with stories about haunted toys still fresh in her mind. She couldn’t even find solace once she’d started dreaming, either. As she cautiously went down the steps, Scootaloo’s mind kept fixating on the last moment of her nightmare before she woke up. That overgrown moth dangling her Aunt Holiday over a pit filled with dolls of all shapes, sizes and materials, none of which were cute or cuddly in the slightest. The pegasus filly felt like she was really there, watching helplessly when that monster dropped her aunt into the pit and the middle-aged mare desperately cried out for help as those dolls piled onto her and pulled her underneath. Try as she might, the way her sleeping bag now seemed to smother and restrain her just wouldn’t allow her to get the rest she fruitlessly craved. Luckily, she knew exactly what would cheer her up at a time like this. The filly pulled herself out of the fridge with a milk carton, just the right thing to go with the cookies she took out of the kitchen pantry. She wasn’t sure if these store-bought goodies would do the trick quite as well as Aunt Lofty’s homemade chocolate chip, but it was worth a shot. Scootaloo let loose a deep sigh after downing her first cookie with some milk. It was right then she realized that she hadn’t heard any rain or wind outside. A clear night sky could make for a neat view right now. The filly then stepped up to the window to get a look at the stars, only to be met with the disappointing sight of a pitch black, clouded sky. “Just my luck.” She lowered her line of sight away from the sky’s direction, settling on a tree just outside the boutique. She was really just looking for something to zone out on as there wasn’t anything eye-catching about it… at first. Scootaloo didn’t notice it initially, but there was some movement going on in the branches. And it had finally snapped her out of her sleep-deprived stupor. The only source of illumination she had was the fridge she left open and there was no light source outside to speak of. Yet, she swore that she was seeing some animal fidgeting in the foliage. Focusing her eyes a little harder, Scootaloo could actually make out one distinct feature on this thing. Wings. Big ones. Whether it was getting ready for take off or just taking a stretch, this creature was still showing off an impressive wingspan. It may have been too far away for her to be able tell exactly how big it is, but she was sure that it looked way too big to be an average birdie. She was even willing to say its wingspan looks closer to a grown pegasus than any bird she’s seen. The filly stood there stone-still as she witnessed the thing retract its wings and presumably settle in and make itself comfortable. She couldn’t help but keep watching this creature for a little longer just to see what it might do next. Oddly, Scootaloo was anticipating and dreading the chance that it might turn around. She wasn’t sure if she was just scared of finding out what it looks like or it was a different fear entirely. “Why does it feel like something’s telling me I don’t wanna find out what happens if it turns around and sees me?” Her attention was so preoccupied with what she was seeing out there, that she was unable to notice another presence before it made physical contact with her. Out of nowhere, the feeling of three taps upon her shoulder sent a jolt of panic coursing through her spine like an electrical current. She straightened up and the yelp she let loose was cut short with a hoof to her mouth, stifling the noise. Scootaloo spun around into a vicious back hoof, but narrowly missed and ended up hitting nothing but air. “Wha-“ She heard somepony cry out behind her. “Shucks, Scoots! Ya want my head wound ta open back up!?” That accent was unmistakable, but the second she saw Apple Bloom standing right in front of her is when it became undeniable. “Shhh!” The one who made the “shush” quickly stepped into view from behind the doorway, revealing herself to be Sweetie Belle. She then walked into the kitchen with her horn lighting the way for her, an illumination spell. Scootaloo could finally see both of her friends’ dazed and irritated expressions. “Are you two trying to wake my sister up?”, she whispered, before turning her light to the counter where she spotted the milk carton and cookie pack sitting out. “Please tell me you didn’t drink straight from the carton.” Awkwardly, Scootaloo wiped her mouth of any crumbs as she averted from Sweetie’s gaze, “Uhh, no.” “Can’t sleep?”, Apple Bloom asked through a yawn, “Why else would I be down here?”, she asked before following up with another question. “I didn’t wake you up, did I?” “Nah. Ah couldn’t get enough winks of sleep either, woke up from a nightmare and accidentally woke Sweetie up too.” “We might have gone back to sleep if we hadn’t noticed you were gone.”, the unicorn added. Scootaloo sighed, “You want to join me for cookies?” “Sounds swell.”, Apple Bloom answered. As though a lightbulb popped over her head, Sweetie halted her initial and instead said, “Wait, let me get something first!” While the other two sat at the table munching away at their snacks, Sweetie Belle eventually came back from the guest room with a very familiar orb. This got her some surprised looks from both her friends. “Woah, yer not actually sayin’ ya wanna watch another story at this hour?” “Seriously, why do you keep looking for more chances to watch these?” A part of Sweetie wanted to say “tis the season”, but there was another reason why she brought out the story ball this time. “Just hear me out.”, she started. “I think a story might actually be what we need right now.” Apple Bloom quirked an eyebrow, “Come again?” Scootaloo was ready to ask Sweetie if she realized that the title “Bedtime Stories” was tongue-in-cheek, but the unicorn spoke first. “You know any ponies that have one of those voices that somehow just lull you into sleep?” “Umm, Miss Tally?” Despite what she just said, Scootaloo actually doubted her math teacher’s voice was the reason she kept falling asleep in her classes. “Well, I don’t know about you girls but, for me, that narrator guy has one of those voices.”, Sweetie explained, before taking a moment to yawn. “I could see myself falling asleep if we have this guy set as background noise.” Even if there hadn’t been merit to what she was saying, neither Scootaloo or Apple Bloom had the energy to argue against it right now. The latter let out a groan, “Alright. If ya want this ta work though, ya got ta find the most boring lookin’ story in that entire list.” With those instructions made crystal clear to her, Sweetie immediately set the crystal ball onto the table and scrolled through the list until she finally settled on a seemingly perfect one. Eleven As unassuming as this title was, if anypony had actually took notice of it’s thumbnail, they’d have realized what they were truly in for; and they wouldn’t have liked it.