So Rainbow Dash listened to Big Macintosh's story. It started with him coming back to town after a short hayride out in the countryside. Ever since he had been old enough to pull a plow, he'd given hayrides to the children of Ponyville and their parents at Nightmare Night. He had a special top hat and cloak just for the occasion, the very cloak he was wearing as he told the story, though it had seen better days. There hadn't been anything unusual about the hayride itself, winding through the darkened countryside and through a particularly gloomy stretch of forest just on the outskirts of town. A few friends of Big Mac had hung out along the trail, banging on pots and pans and making spooky noises to make it a little more exciting. It made the little fillies and colts jump, but mostly it just made their parents laugh. That had been alright with Big Mac, because the best fright of the night would come at the end of the hayride when he'd turn around with a skull where his face should've been and in his deepest voice say, "End of the Line". That usually got at least one of the parents and gave him a chance to have a laugh of his own. He'd hide his mask back under his hat and move on to pick up the next load of passengers after everypony had disembarked.
Only on the final hayride last Nightmare Night, when he got back to where he was supposed to pick up the next party, there was nopony around. The town had been dark and deserted on the outskirts, but he had figured that most ponies were either already in bed or still in the town square. Indeed he could still see the bright glow of lights from the town hall. Only as he looked closer, he could see that the light was hazier than usual. But it wasn't haze at all. It was smoke! As he looked closer he could see that there were lights all over town. The fire had spread quickly. Unhitching himself from his cart, Big Mac had run straight to the town hall, his hooves thundering in the unnaturally silent Ponyville. Where was everypony? As he drew closer to the center of town, he saw Nightmare Night decorations and costumes scattered around, and more than one house completely dark save for glowing grinning jack-o-lanterns. Was that what had started the fire? An untended candle in a carved pumpkin?
He didn't have time to think about that as a scream from a nearby house suddenly pierced the quiet. He swiveled his ears, trying to pin point where the sound had come from. Another shriek, this one suddenly cut off, aided this task. He rounded a nearby corner to come face to face with one of the burning buildings. The fire was mostly in the thatch, but he thought he could see somepony moving behind the darkened windows. Without giving it a second thought, he'd broken down the door and rushed into the living room of the small home. As he'd hoped, the fire was mainly in the floors above, and the smoke was only a thin haze on the lower floors. Even so, he could see where a few of the cross beams from above had smashed through the ceiling here and there, letting the fire spread downwards to lick through the ceiling. He didn't have much time before the whole top story would come crashing down into the bottom.
Fortunately he found what he was looking for right in the living room. A small blond maned pony, impossible to tell if it were a filly or a colt from behind, sat in the middle of the floor. He thought it was crying. He went to pick up the child and carry it outside, but when he leaned down to grab it, it suddenly spun around and caused him to jump backwards. The unicorn filly wasn't crying, it was laughing, and singing a little song over and over, "Nightmare Night, what a fright, give us something sweet to bite." As the fire spread into the living room, Big Mac could see by it's light that the filly was covered from it's mouth down to its belly in a dark, wet stain. In it's hooves it held a blond mares severed head, each bulging eye staring at an opposite wall. Big Mac didn't know why, but the thought occurred to him that the head belonged to the filly's mother. The child only laughed harder and took another bite from the stump of it's mothers neck. Big Mac had been reluctant to tell the next part of the story, and Rainbow Dash had to badger him a little bit before he admitted what happened next. He hadn't run away then and there but had instead kicked the thing, severed head and all, into the spreading fire. The flames didn't seem to bother the filly much, and she laughed and laughed as she twisted, melted, and blazed. That's what had caused Big Mac to run back into the night. That's what was burned into his mind as he ran out into what had been a deserted main street.
It wasn't deserted anymore.
From one end of the street to the other lurched crazed, dead, and dying ponies. It looked like every resident of Ponyville was pouring out of the town square. Some were laughing and singing like the filly he'd kicked into the fire. Others were screaming as they were drug along by the crowd. These Big Mac recognized as the families he had dropped off from the last hay ride. They were being passed back and forth between razor toothed mouths that bit off chunks of their flesh. As terrible as their screams were, the worst were those who took this silently, not yet dead but clearly resigned to their fate. They only whimpered when one of the creatures gnawed at slits in their bellies or chomped off a limb. Their eyes begged for a death that appeared to be long in the coming.
Big Mac froze.
To his horror these monstrous ponies were all around him, there was nowhere to run, and it seemed that all the houses on this block were now aflame. A sudden, mad thought occurred to him. He pulled down his mask and pulled his cloak tight around his body. Rainbow Dash didn't know if this made Big Mac a genius or an idiot, but he tried to pretend to be one of the monsters in that horrible parade. As he lurched along with them, trying to match their twitchy movements, he noticed that the cackling fiends weren't entirely flesh and blood. Bits and pieces of them gleamed in the firelight. Some were clearly half melted, while others sparkled as if they were frosted. It slowly dawned on him that beneath the stench of blood and death there was a sickeningly sweet smell not unlike that to be found at Sugarcube Corner. These creatures seemed to be largely composed of candy. He tried his best to double his speed, realizing his costume wasn't going to hold up for long when one of the creatures tried to pass a screaming, half eaten colt to him. Big Mac felt waves of nausea wash over him as he looked into the shredded face of one of the children that had been playing in the back of his wagon not but a few moments ago, so full of excitement for Nightmare Night. He had to fight down both his dinner and the urge to bolt. He forced himself to look away and pretend he hadn't noticed the 'snack' that was being offered.
Turning his head, he noticed that some of the creatures were carrying jack-o-lanterns. There was something strange about them. There were no marks where a lid could have been carved to place a candle inside the gourds. The faces that had been carved into the pumpkins were truly unsettling. They were ponies he new as townsfolk, each bearing expressions of fear, despair, and pain. He could've sworn that the carvings changed from moment to moment, but he didn't have long to dwell on what this might mean. Without realizing it, he had reached the front of the horde just as a clearing opened around the library. Twilight's library. Flames licked every branch, lighting it up like a Hearth's Warming tree. With a crack of thunder the door splintered outwards and Big Mac's eyes grew wide as he saw things moving through the inferno within.
The first to emerge was a monster made of pink cotton candy and bubblegum. Another came out that was clearly made of marshmallow, toasted here and there, blackened and still burning in other places. Behind them came a creature made of some kind of slick, purplish hard candy. With a start, Big Mac realized that these had once been three of his sisters friends; Pinkie Pie, Rarity, and Twilight Sparkle. Whatever madness had enveloped the town had gotten to them as well. Rainbow Dash made him stop and clarify what he meant, how could he tell that they had been her friends. He explained that he just knew, like he knew that the next thing that emerged from the flames was the cause. It was another candy pony, but unlike the others it was massive. Not only that, but it was composed of a chaotic assortment of candies all twisting and writhing on a frame that was covered in grinning mouths. It's long red liquorice hair twisted and writhed like a sack of maggots exposed to the sun. The other creatures eyes were blank slates of madness, but this monsters eyes were alive with insanity and something more. There was hatred, fear, and hunger in that baleful gaze, fomenting into an exultant evil that made Big Mac cringe. The monster's candy corn grin was so wide as she looked out on her 'subjects' it looked like the top of her head was going to come off. He didn't know it at the time but the ghoul he was looking at was the Candy Mare, the original, and the font from which all this terror had sprung.
She didn't say a word, she didn't have to. All she did was throw her head back in a chorus of laughter made up by the dozens of mouths all over her body. The other monstrosities bowed, some visibly prostrating themselves in terror, while others simply grinned darkly at the ground. Big Mac stood out like a sore hoof in the sea of kneeling candy ponies. The Candy Mare's eyes snapped immediately to him, long candy tendrils wrapping around his body before he had the chance to run. She lifted his bulky form off the ground as if it weighed nothing at all and pulled him close. She laughed like a little girl, giggling right in his face as she looked over his mask. He expected to be ripped apart at any moment. "What have we here?" she had said in many voices, "Aren't you a little old for Trick or Treat?"
Big Mac said in his deepest voice, "Nope." That actually made the Candy Mare's grip loosen, just a bit. She cackled again, the laughter high pitched like a filly's, sounding strange against the roar of the nearby flames. He thought he might have bought himself a chance to escape. Before he could so much as attempt to wriggle free, half his world went dark. The pain didn't register at first, but when it did it felt like a knife had been jammed into his eye socket. She had thrust one of her tendrils around the eye holes in his mask, and into his right eye in the process. She tore off his mask and ripped out his eye in one smooth motion that left Big Macintosh howling in pain as warm blood spilled down the side of his face. The Candy Mare made him watch as she put his eye between her candy corn teeth and slowly, savoring every second, popped the bloody orb. She chewed indelicately, mouth open so he could see exactly what was becoming of the soft organ that had so recently been inside his head. She swallowed the gory mess with a satisfied slurp.
"There's my treat," she said, and then lifted him high into the air, "to go along with your trick. Now here's a trick of my own! If you can escape, your treat is you get to live!" She flung him bodily into the flaming library. What followed was too chaotic for Big Mac to remember clearly. He remembered the stacks of flaming books, the smoke burning his lungs and stinging his one remaining eye. After the cool autumn air, the blaze he found himself in made his every nerve ending scream in agony. He'd stumbled through the fire, at first trying to find the door he'd been thrown through. He remembered slipping and sliding on pools of blood and pieces of dismembered ponies. He also remembered there being twin voices moaning and giggling in the flames. The pain might have caused him to hallucinate that bit, as well as the ball of dripping goo it belonged to. He didn't remember finding the window. All he knew was that he was already outside in the night air, covered in burns and shards of glass, when he realized that the unrelenting heat had abated. He didn't worry about the glass imbedded in his flesh, or the burns, or even his lost eye. All he knew was he had to run, as far and as fast as he could. That was the Candy Mare's game, and if he wanted to live he had to play.
Already he could hear the candy ponies coming around the sides of the library. "Nightmare Night," they sang, "What a fright! Give us something sweet to bite!" He ran as hard and fast as he could. As the smoke cleared from his lungs he was able to move faster, but still the laughter of the cannibalistic creatures dogged his hoof steps. He didn't have time to consider what direction he was fleeing in, or even time to consider hiding. Once or twice a candy pony would rear out of the darkness and Big Mac had no choice but to buck the thing like an apple tree. Some flew to pieces, while others splattered into thick puddles of ooze, bits and pieces of putrid meat bobbing in the candy slime. Big Mac found himself retching as he ran, but he had no time to stop and be sick. It took him a while to realize he was no longer running past darkened houses, but was instead bobbing and weaving through fog shrouded trees.
The singing seemed to echo in the distance now, "What a fright..." "Something sweet," fading in and out of the fog. Big Mac stopped long enough to be sick against a tree and almost had a heart attack when something leaped screaming out of the darkness. They ran away from each other, but bobbing between the trees, they only managed to crash into one another again. This time the pair gazed long enough at each other for Big Mac to realize this wasn't another candy pony he was looking at. Fluttershy shivered in the dark, clearly still terrified of Big Macintosh. Of course wrapped in his cloak, covered in burns, ripped up by broken glass, and missing an eye he probably looked like some terrifying monster out of a campfire story himself. Before she had a chance to flee, he had said, "Wait. It's just me. Big Mac." The yellow pegasus had hesitated, still looking like she was about to run for it when he took off his hat and tried to dust off some of the broken glass.
Fluttershy had flung herself around him in a huge hug, bawling her eyes out. She had been so scared, he didn't even bother to mention the excruciating pain this caused him as she ground some of the glass into his burned hide. It was hard to make heads or tails of what had happened with her at the time, but he'd heard the whole story in bits and pieces since then. Fluttershy hadn't been in town when the Candy Mare had come, but that hadn't stopped the candy ponies from coming to her. They had broken into her cottage, killed her pets, and almost gotten her as well. She had fled to Twilight's library, and must have just missed Big Mac and the army of undead, before fleeing into the Everfree Forest. She'd gotten off lucky, compared to Big Mac, but they both seemed to be the only ponies who had survived Nightmare Night in Ponyville that year. Together they had wandered deeper into the forest, at first to get as far away from Ponyville as possible and the maddening sound of screams and laughter on the wind. Later, as the night grew older, they began to find that they couldn't find the way back out again. They were moving deeper into the woods now, not by choice, but as if driven by the bizarre flora itself.
Worse, Fluttershy seemed to be falling ill, her stomach cramping horribly. Every few feet they had to stop for her to spit up a little blood. It was only a small amount at first, but it only got worse as time went on. That was when she started spitting out teeth. Rainbow Dash was pretty sure she knew what that meant. Between the cramps and the vomiting, Fluttershy woozily insisted that she was fine, that they just needed to keep moving. She swore she was just hungry, that she hadn't been able to eat all night and all the running around had made her sick. That was all. She wouldn't stop and rest no matter how much Big Macintosh begged her. When she finally did stop, against her will, she spat out a wad of something twitching and writhing in the grass. Teeth and claws had seemed to be growing from it. Big Mac had stomped it into the dirt, hoping that would be the end of it. His blood turned to ice as he heard Fluttershy's innocent little laugh close behind him.
Too close.
Her eyes glowed in the dark, though it may have just been starlight reflected by her dilated pupils. Where her teeth had once been were jagged fangs. "I'm hungry. So hungry. I just wish I had something sweet..." she had muttered. "Maybe a tender, juicy, red apple?" She had tottered toward him slowly on uncertain hooves. He ran. Rainbow Dash didn't blame him, but even he admitted that the sight of the little yellow pegasus chasing a huge stallion like himself through the forest must've made for a funny sight. It was fortunate for him that it was funny enough to attract Zecora's attention. She had seen them running passed her house and, using her knowledge of the surrounding forest, had managed to cut the pair off near a babbling brook. Big Mac tumbled and fell on the dark slippery rocks in the stream. Fluttershy had jumped on top of him and was just about to sink her fangs into his face when Zecora hit them both with a blue powder that knocked the pair of them out.
"And what happened after that?" asked Rainbow Dash, her tea long forgotten, cold beside her.
"Well, not much. Zecora did her best to patch me up," replied Big Mac. "It was the dead of winter 'afore Ah was back to anything like normal. Eventually Ah managed ta make it back out to Sweet Apple Acre's to grab a few supplies. From what Ah seen there, Ah reckon Ah'm the only Apple left 'round these parts," he hung his head low for a moment, a sadness washing over him that Dash found all too familiar. "Still, it was a good thing Ah recovered when Ah did, cause the star fruit ain't quite as potent in the winter time. See, Zecora could tell right away that Fluttershy had been cursed and worked up what she hoped would be an antidote. That's how she came across the potion that keeps that filly's condition under control. But a little before Hearth's Warming, that pegasus in there started having terrible episodes as the nights got longer. It took both my strength and Zecora's skills just to keep her in check. Ya see, we can just barely handle her, so we ain't never tried going after them other ones from town. Sides, messing with them hollow ones is dangerous. The Candy Mare, she can see ya through their eyes, and if she takes an interest in ya it's as good as a death sentence if she shows up in person."
Dash shivered, "I bet they don't just stay in Ponyville either though, do they?"
"No ma'am. In fact we're pretty sure they went up into Canterlot last Nightmare Night. That horde was moving north when Ah made my escape in the other direction." The huge pony rubbed sleep from his left eye. It was getting late, and though Dash had been enraptured by his story, she realized telling it had taken a lot out of him. "Ever since then they been popping up all around Ponyville and the Everfree Forest, where ever its dark or whenever night falls. They prattle on about how hungry they are, but they don't seem to need to eat much. They picked the forest clean of most critters over the winter, and since then they just seem to laugh and moan like that's all they need to be happy. We've been fortunate not to bump into their master in all that time, but Zecora thinks she might'a gone to ground over the summer months. She reckons the sun don't agree with her anymore than it does with her puppets." He got up from his chair, stretching his legs and popping his back. "Course they been a lot more active lately. Not a big surprise with Nightmare Night coming up. Zecora figures they're gonna do somethin' big tomorrow night, but she don't know quite what. The magics old, and while she's studied unicorn magic, she says this looks more like something earth ponies came up with. Can ya imagine that? Earth ponies using magic. Ah ain't never heard of that, but then Ah've seen a lot of things Ah'd never heard of in the past few months. These ain't times where it's healthy to be skeptical. But anyways, that's mah story."