Vinyl stood in the middle of a forest, squinting her eyes in the sunlight. Some freak had kidnapped her friend, and she was getting them back.
She looked down at the piece of paper she’d just found attached to a tree. Big sketchy writing saying “FIND ME” was scrawled onto the page, and the lower corner labeled it as one of eight. She tossed it off to the side and continued walking. She wouldn’t be part of some scavenger hunt, and she knew where the offender lived.
“He doesn’t talk, he thinks. When he thinks to you, you hear him.”
She found the run-down house in the middle of the woods within minutes. The front door was open, and when she walked inside she found a thick layer of dust on everything, like nopony had been here in years. Without thinking, she traced an arrow in the dust on the floor with her hoof pointing in from the door before turning and walking right.
He’d seemed so friendly at a distance, but then she came home to find a note daring her to try saving her friend.
Passing the staircase that rose to the left, Vinyl entered the kitchen, scanning the room to find nothing of value before subconsciously tracing an arrow pointing out the doorway. She checked and traced arrows for the other rooms, taking a second glance in the living room mirror, before climbing the stairs, leaving an arrow at the top pointing back down. Up here, she inspected and arrowed three bedrooms, including ones for a filly and a colt. Finding nothing, she made her way back down to the only room left.
“Do not hear him, whatever you do. Once you’ve heard him, he looks at you. Look at him, and he takes you.”
She traced an arrow pointing left past the front door in the open area of the floor before following it to the only closed door in the house: the basement. She dropped a horseshoe by the door before opening it and slowly making her way down into the darkness.
A lone light dimly lit the featureless basement from the center of the ceiling, but in its light, she saw Octavia standing by the wall. Octavia looked up at her silently, but didn’t seem relieved. Vinyl started over to her.
You didn’t bring my pages.
Startled, Vinyl looked around for the source of the soft hissing voice that had suddenly spoke inside her head. “Who’s there?” she demanded. Something in the darkness began to move.
They always bring my pages.
Octavia looked above her, and Vinyl now saw four ghostly pillars reaching up from Octavia’s hooves toward a shape slowly descending from the darkness covering the ceiling. The shape was that of pony’s body hanging by an array of black tendrils on its back, the pillars its elongated legs, wearing a sleek black suit and red tie, and with a pale white head without a face, like one of those shop window dummies but made of albino skin. The thing pulled its legs to step forward, the ghostly pillars separating from Octavia and solidifying as they hit the ground. Its tendrils released the ceiling and its stilt legs shortened until it stood just over twice the height of a pony. It looked at Vinyl as its tendrils fanned out behind it.
“He doesn’t see you, he knows you because you know you. If you don’t know you, then he can’t know you.”
Surprise and fear had locked Vinyl in place, staring helplessly at the unnatural entity slowly approaching her. Her heart was racing, but her mind was blanked out. Except for one stray thought floating through.
Sunglasses.
The figure halted, having heard her mind, and tilted its head. What was that?
Sun-glass-es.
Vinyl reached into her saddlebag and pulled out an object.
What do you have there?
“Uh…s-sunglasses…,” she said.
What are you doing?
“I…I feel like I need to put these on…” Her hoof shaking, Vinyl raised the neon purple sunglasses up to her face.
Wait… The figure probed deeper into her mind, suddenly realizing things were not as they seemed. No. Stop!
It reached out a hoof at her, its arm quickly stretching across the distance, but when Vinyl set the sunglasses onto her face, a storm of images flashed before her eyes…