Nightmare Vision
~~ ~~ ~~
“Nightmare Night! What a fright! Give us something sweet to bite!”
We all hear that on this night.
It is not common to hear it coming from a graveyard. I figured that it had to be a prank.
I went to look. Probably not the smartest decision that I ever made!
The gate creaked on its rusty hinges. Unkempt weeds hindered its opening.
I picked my way past the many headstones, a fair number of which were leaning crazily. Soon, I was getting into the older section. Moss covered many of the stones. Some were now fallen slabs or broken statuary.
The call still came from up ahead. Childish voices chanted, “Nightmare Night! What a fright! Give us something sweet to bite!”
Now, the beneficent light of the moon overhead was interrupted by crooked branches, trailing moss down like great webs into my face.
I have been to the graveyard on many occasions. I thought that I knew it really well. I had no recollection of this! There were ancient looking crypts and mausoleums looming on every hoof. I shuddered.
It was finally penetrating my thick skull that there was something very wrong here.
There was phosphorescence up ahead. It was moving. Bobbing a little as it did. Now I could see it. It was a skull, eyes glowing with a putrid light. It was held by a decaying hoof to light the way.
I stopped cold.
It was a small group of dead looking foals, guided by an older but very dead looking unicorn. They were all, apparently, undead, risen from the grave for this night. They knocked on the rotten wood door of a crypt. The opening gaped wide and another undead creature of nightmare held out a foal bowl filled with the earthly remains of what appeared to be a recently killed foal.
The ghastly group added bits of the corpse to their gore leaking loot bags. They passed the corner of that crypt and went to the mausoleum beyond.
Trying to contain my gorge, I sneaked as silently as I could, away from the horrid scene.
I was nearly to the gate and the safety of the town beyond the walls that separated the living from the dead, when I tripped on a low headstone.
I woke up, still inside the graveyard, to a bright dawn. My head ached. I gazed about but could see none of the unkempt, weedy, moss-grown place of the Nightmare Night just passed. Amused, I thought, “A bad dream, nothing more. I passed out or got knocked out when I fell, that is all.”
Reassured, I decided to try locating any of what I had seen. All was neat and well kept, as it should be.
Passing over a low hill, I came to a part of the cemetery that I had never found before. The ancient empty tombs and long abandoned crypts filled me with dread. Then I saw them. The sight that has haunted my days and nights ever since.
Small hoof marks, going from crypt to tomb to mausoleum.