Synchronicity, Act I – ‘Children’
“...But when she looked back, she saw it stuck there in the wagon’s side, shinin’ in the moonlight. It was…” Applejack angled herself over the flickering light below her, making unnatural shadows grow over her face. “…A hook!”
Not even the appropriately-timed thunder from outside could save the reveal. Five other ponies sat in front of her in silence.
“Ooooh,” she intoned, aiming for ghoulish but clearly falling short, based upon her audience. Outside, rain drummed against the window in a sudden gust of wind.
“I, um…” Fluttershy fidgeted with her hooves and glanced down at her pillow. “I’m sorry Applejack, but I don’t see why a hook is scary.”
“Because the escaped madmare had a hook, in place of a hoof. Remember?” She slashed one of her legs over the candle flame, demonstrating.
“Was she a pirate?” Pinkie asked. She held a hoof over one eye to mimic an eyepatch, and nearly stepped in a mostly-empty bowl of multi-colored popcorn sitting in her blind spot.
“Huh? No! That doctor gave it to her, after she was all burned from the fire that sent her crazy.”
“You never said anything about a hook,” Rainbow Dash said. She glanced at Twilight for confirmation, who shook her head in agreement.
Applejack blinked. “I didn’t?”
“I remember there was a long and gruesome description of just what a pony looks like after being trapped in a barn fire,” Rarity said as she adjusted one of the curlers in her mane, “but I do not recall anything about a hook.”
“I…” Applejack searched for words. “No hooks?”
“No hooks,” Rarity confirmed with an air of finality.
“Dang it.” She sunk to the floor. “I knew I was forgettin’ something.”
“I liked it,” Fluttershy said, smiling at Applejack. “But I guess the end doesn’t make that much sense if there’s pieces missing,” she added.
“My story was the best,” Rainbow crowed. Applejack stuck her tongue out at her.
“Why would she need a hook, anyway?” Twilight asked. She had been following the story with a quiet interest.
“For hooking ponies out on dates in the forest,” Rainbow said, and demonstrated a couple of grisly maneuvers a pony might be able to perform were she to have a hook in place of a hoof. She grimaced over the flickering light at Pinkie, who dissolved into a burst of giggles. “Duh.”
“No, I mean,” Twilight clarified, “why did the doctor give her a hook? It doesn’t seem very practical.”
“Well, he was a mad doctor,” Applejack said.
“Wouldn’t that make it difficult for her to creep around quietly in the forest?”
“I guess, but… uh…”
“And why was she tapping on the back of the wagon for so long anyway, if she was in the forest looking for ponies to kill? It’s not like anypony would have heard anything that far out in the woods.”
“Twilight, it’s just a dumb scary story,” Applejack said, visibly exasperated. “It don’t have to make sense!”
Twilight considered this for a moment as the rain continued to pour. “No,” she said at last, “no, I suppose it doesn’t have to be completely realistic, but it should be…” She tapped her hoof against the floor, thinking.
“Scary?” Fluttershy suggested.
“Good?” Rainbow offered. Applejack shot her a look, which Rainbow pretended to ignore by flicking her mane out of her eyes.
“Internally consistent,” Twilight settled on. “The story has to make some sense, logically.”
“You know mad killers with hooks for hooves ain’t real, right?” Applejack asked. “Any story ‘bout ‘em won’t be especially logical.”
“Well, I meant more that the world inside the story has to all make sense, not that it’s something that could actually happen.” Twilight laughed a little. “So, anypony else have a scary story?”
“Ooh, ooh, I know a story.” Rarity leapt to her hooves and cleared her throat with a soft ‘ahem’. “A story of love gone tragically awry, of passion twisted to murder, and terrible revenge from beyond the grave,” she intoned, and dramatically paused before adding: “…and every word of what I am about to tell you that happened at Maresdon Manor is completely true.”
“Maresdon Manor?” Twilight interrupted. “As in, Winthrop Maresdon?”
“The very same!”
“I know her! Well, I’ve read about her. But she wasn’t part of some ghost story, she developed the theories about the side-effects of concurrent magic that are still in use today.”
“Well, nopony would print anything as ghastly as the murders at Maresdon Manor in a stuffy old textbook,” Rarity explained.
“They would in the newspapers though,” Applejack said. “When I was a little filly I asked Granny Smith once if it all really happened, and she said she could remember all the headlines. Don’t think I slept with the lights off for the rest of that week.”
“So what did happen?” Twilight asked, propping herself up.
“Winthrop Maresdon was the last daughter of the Maresdon family,” Rarity began. “She was a brilliant scholar but did very poorly around other ponies, so she locked herself away in the family house, communicating with the outside world only through letters for decades. The gardens at the Manor grew wild and untamed from years of neglect-“
“That’s not the way I heard things,” Applejack interjected. “The way I know the story, the gardens were kept all neat but nopony ever saw anypony tending to ‘em.”
“Then why would Winthrop Maresdon have hired a gardener just before she was killed?” Rarity asked.
“That’s part of the mystery,” Applejack said smugly.
“I don’t want to say you’re wrong, or anything…” Fluttershy spoke up; she had crawled underneath her blanket to the point that her head was hooded, as if this might cause any lurking ghosts to overlook her. “But the way I was told, the gardener worked at the Manor for years, but had never been inside to see Lady Maresdon.”
“But all three versions have a gardener?” Twilight asked, to general assent. “Any other variations? Rainbow, Pinkie?”
“Nope,” said Pinkie, “I only know the one with the freaky frozen foliage.”
“I know Fluttershy’s,” Rainbow said, “with the family gardener. He’s meant to have seen weird stuff in the garden over the years.”
“Like the trees moving just before the sunset when there was no wind,” Fluttershy said in a small voice.
“And digging up things in the flowerbeds,” Rainbow said. “Horseshoes and old saddlebags.”
“Interesting,” Twilight said. “Maybe it’s a regional variation on the story.”
“Anyway,” Rarity said, slightly louder than was required, “regardless of the manner in which he was employed, the gardener grew more and more curious about what went on inside the Manor. All the windows always had the curtains drawn so nopony could ever see inside, but as he worked in the garden-”
“Or didn’t,” Applejack said.
“As he went about his business in the garden,” Rarity continued, “he would always feel like there was something watching him from the topmost window. Day in, day out, he would feel the invisible gaze upon him, until he could stand it no more. He-”
“I thought it was sounds coming from the house,” Rainbow Dash said. “Like wood scraping together, branches cracking, that kinda stuff.”
“And breathing,” Fluttershy added from under her blanket.
“Yeah, long deep breaths.” She leaned close to Twilight and demonstrated with her hooves cupped over her mouth. Twilight laughed and playfully pushed her away. “All day. That’s what made him go knock on the door.”
Rarity sighed at Rainbow. “He marched up to the door and knocked-” She stomped her hoof three times, the knocks loud enough to echo faintly. “-And to his surprise, the door opened. Standing in the shadows was a mare. He couldn’t see her properly, but it had to be Lady Maresdon. And he asked her if it had been her watching him every day-”
“Or making the-” Rainbow began.
“Or making the noises!” Rarity snapped. She took a breath. “And she stepped out from the shadows… and she was beautiful! The gardener had never seen a pony quite like her before, and it was in that moment that he fell in love with her.”
Twilight snorted.
“What?” Rarity asked.
“Come on, Rarity, it takes more than just one look for a pony to fall in love.”
“She’s making that part up,” Rainbow said. “She’s supposed to have looked way younger than she should have been.”
“The gardener goes inside with her because he’s getting older, and she tells him she can make him young again,” Fluttershy added.
“Nopony knows why he went into Maresdon Manor,” Applejack said, “’cause he didn’t get to live long enough to tell anypony.”
“So what happened?” Twilight asked.
“He went to the tavern a little way down the road just after sunset and stayed there into the night,” Rarity said, “never saying a word to anypony, just drinking cider and looking pale, staring into the distance.”
“He found out why she had lived alone in such a big house for so many years,” Applejack said. “One of her spells went wrong-”
“She became a monster!” Pinkie exclaimed with relish, “who had to eat other ponies to stay alive.” Pinkie let out a low moan and let her mouth droop open slightly. The effect in the candlelight was more unnerving than it should have been.
“And she was usin’ her magic to make herself look normal, but she let the spell slip for a second. He had to pretend she was still, y’know, normal for the rest of their dinner, until she turned away and he stabbed her with his knife.”
“Nah,” Rainbow said, “he found out how Winthrop Maresdon was staying young. She would use her magic to teleport ponies to the Manor and feed them to her mutant plants growing in the basement, and eat the fruit. He tore the plant out of the ground and she fell dead to the floor.”
“She rejected the gardener’s advances, laughing that somepony with her lineage would never be associated with a gardener,” Rarity said, looking mildly queasy, “and passion turned him momentarily mad. He pushed her down a flight of stairs and she broke her neck.” She eyed Rainbow and Applejack. “I don’t know where you get these positively gruesome stories from.”
“Wait, so the gardener killed Winthrop Maresdon?” Twilight asked. “I thought she killed him.”
“That’s the ‘ghost’ part of the story,” Applejack said plainly, “she did.”
“The gardener left the tavern in the dead of night,” Pinkie intoned. Rarity made a motion as if she was about to object to Pinkie picking up the retelling, then (perhaps deciding she had no desire to be interrupted any more) stifled herself. “He was found in the morning in the gardens of Maresdon Manor, lying beneath a tree.” She told the story with a suppressed manic energy; Pinkie thoroughly enjoyed everything she did, including scaring her friends. “All the blood had been drained from his body, leaving him pale as a ghost. And his eyes… his eyes had been turned completely white. He went blind just before he died. Some ponies say it was Winthrop Maresdon’s price for him seeing her, others say that her ghost took his eyes to watch over Maresdon Manor now that she no longer could. But other ponies claim that the sight of Winthrop Maresdon’s ghost was so furious and terrible that the gardener went blind out of terror, so he couldn’t see what she was going to do as revenge for killing her.” Pinkie glanced down at the candle below her face, then looked up with a feverish intensity.
“These ponies say that, in the middle of the night, if you walk down the road that passes Maresdon Manor, you might see a strange light coming from behind the curtain in the highest room, but you should never stop to look at that light. If you do, after a moment the whole world will go black, and then…”
She took a deep breath as if preparing to say something. Instead, she puffed out the candle. In the following second a flash of lightning lit the room, revealing Pinkie’s glassy blank eyes to the other five ponies. This time the thunderclap outside had a dramatic and drastic effect on the slumber party. Fluttershy darted behind her pillow and Rarity let out an undignified high-pitched squeal. Rainbow launched into a coughing fit and a noisy effort to clear her throat, but it was difficult for her to hide how close she had suddenly leapt towards Twilight. Applejack made a sudden jerk away from Pinkie and collided with a stack of unshelved books, causing the books to spill across the floor and Pinkie to break into a fresh round of giggles. Twilight let out a nervous laugh and turned the lights up, revealing Pinkie had done nothing more than roll her eyes back in her head.
“You planned that,” Applejack accused.
“Who,” Pinkie asked, “me? How could I have known the exact perfect moment there would be a lightning strike right outside the window to blow the candle out so you’d think the ghost of Winthrop Maresdon got me?”
“If anypony could, it’d be you, Pinkie.”
“Wait,” Rarity said, “it’s not Winthrop Maresdon who gets anypony.”
“Then, um,” Fluttershy asked, “who does?”
“The gardener,” Rarity said, flustered. “Taking vengeance for his terrible death.” Nopony appeared to agree with her.
“I got all of you, though,” Pinkie said, grinning, “especially you, Rainbow!”
Rainbow’s eyes darted left and right. “No, I just have a thing with loud noises. I wasn’t scared, or anything.” She ran a hoof through her mane.
“Oh yeah?” Applejack asked, a mischievous note in her voice.
“Yeah. Scared of ghosts, that’s dumb. Pfft.”
“So you wouldn’t be afraid to go for a walk past Maresdon Manor tonight?” Pinkie added.
“Of course not!”
“Why don’t we go?” Twilight said suddenly.
Rainbow Dash turned to her. “Seriously? There’s a huge storm right outside.”
“Only in Ponyville,” Fluttershy pointed out. “You said that when you arrived.”
“Twilight could teleport us,” Rarity suggested. “Couldn’t you?”
“I suppose I could,” Twilight said, “but I’d need somepony to describe where it is, roughly.”
“I’ve gone past that way a few times to make deliveries with Big Macintosh,” Applejack said. “You just start headin’ north from Sweet Apple Acres, then about halfway to Canterlot there’s a road that branches off and hook back ‘round-”
“Wait, you don’t all actually want to go out there, do you?” Rainbow said, unbelieving. “In the middle of the night?”
“What’s going to be more fun after telling spooky stories than visiting a seriously spooky house?” Pinkie said, and then cocked her head to consider. “Well, I suppose we could see a spook or a spectre or a spirit! That would be super-scary.”
“I want to see the Manor,” Twilight said matter-of-factly. “Maybe there’s a basis for all the different legends about it.”
“But-” Rainbow tried to say.
“Come on, Rainbow.” Twilight looked right at her. “Are you braver than me or not?” she said with a smile.
“I…” Rainbow looked among the expectant faces of her friends, then finally back to Twilight. “I’m not scared. Let’s do this.”
Then the world went dark as Twilight teleported them off into the night.