The Tombstone Tourist: Chapter 3
Like many of Dash’s pursuits, it became apparent after a certain amount of time that she was becoming bored with the activity. Although initially pumped up with the idea of espionage and the excitement associated with it, several days of continual disappointment was beginning to show on Rainbow’s face.
Fluttershy fervently hoped that this would lead her to abandon what seemed to her to be a hopeless quest for a mystery... graveyard... person. But no such luck. Every morning at school, Rainbow Dash would tell Fluttershy to meet her back at the graveyard for another night’s scouting, because every night would show signs that someone was doing... whatever they were doing, all over the graveyard. They no longer seemed to keep themselves confined to Fluttershy’s animal graves either; used charcoal sticks were found lying everywhere, next to almost every tomb at seemingly random positions so that it was impossible to predict which one was next.
“Shouldn’t we just call the police, or something?” Fluttershy asked hopefully.
“I don’t see that conversation being too fruitful,” Rainbow said. “We tell them someone’s going into the graveyard at night and leaving charcoal sticks lying around?”
Fluttershy had to admit that she had a point there.
“Fluttershy, you don’t look well.”
“Sorry.”
“No, I... Fluttershy, that’s not something you have to apologise for.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
Sunset repressed a sigh. In the lazy atmosphere of the cafe, she seemed to fight to gather her thoughts. “You just look kind of tired.”
“I haven’t been getting much sleep,” Fluttershy said, fighting a yawn. “Rainbow insists we go to the graveyard every night. The two of us only get any sleep whilst we’re there.
“I suppose it’s no surprise that Rainbow’s holding up better,” Sunset said, tilting her head to the side. “Her energy is indomitable.”
“I don’t think I can last much longer,” Fluttershy groaned, repressing another yawn.
“Perhaps you’re going about it the wrong way,” Sunset said.
“The wrong way?” Fluttershy asked, tentatively.
Sunset sat back in her seat, staring at the slice of lemon cake on her plate. Fluttershy had asked her to come privately to Sugarcube Corner to discuss the matter, but feared that her hesitancy was going to interfere with her search for advice. Fortunately, Sunset was a different sort from Rainbow Dash; she regarded Fluttershy appraisingly, her thumb rubbing one side of her chin.
“I get the feeling that Rainbow isn’t going to stop this until she’s found out who it is. From the sounds of it, she’s got it into her head that this is important to you, and it’s easy to see why since it’s about your animal friends.”
“Well, I suppose so,” Fluttershy mumbled over the rim of her coffee cup. “But I can tell that she’s getting bored of it.”
“I don’t think she wants to let you down. And lets face it, either you’re going to tell her that she doesn’t have to do this, or else she’s going to keep going until she catches someone.” Sunset gave her a knowing look. “No offense, Fluttershy, but I think the latter is the more probable outcome.”
Fluttershy blushed. “How do I stop it? Whoever is going to the graveyard, we can’t see them from the mausoleum, and Edgar insists that he can’t see anyone going around with charcoal sticks during the day.”
Edgar, the sombre raven who lived in the gnarled yew tree at the graveyard’s centre, had informed Fluttershy when she’d questioned him about it. A thoughtful bird, Edgar was nevertheless a rather morose individual – possibly a result of living in a graveyard – and so the questioning had taken some time. Given the fact that he spent near-enough all of his time staring around at the surrounding landscape like some grim premonition of desolation, Fluttershy at least found him to be a reliable source.
“Isn’t the mausoleum behind the hill just in front of the entrance?” Sunset asked.
“Yes,” Fluttershy answered. “It’s close enough to the willow tree to see if anyone went that way.”
“But you can’t see the entrance from there, right?” Sunset asked. “Or the southern side of the fence.”
“Oh,” Fluttershy said uncertainly. “Well, I suppose not, no.”
“Well, since you can see the other three sections of gate, it stands to reason that whoever it is coming into the graveyard is either coming in from the main entrance, or—“ Sunset cut herself off, as though a thought were just occurring to her.
“Or?” Fluttershy prompted.
“Or, it’s someone already there.” Sunset gave Fluttershy a meaningful look.
Fluttershy stared back, nonplussed. And then it came to her.
“Y-Y-You mean me!?” Fluttershy stammered, feeling a hot, prickly sensation run over her scalp and over her face.
Sunset snorted. “I’m just teasing you, Fluttershy. You don’t have a motive, nor the disposition.”
“Well, if not me, then—“ Fluttershy paused as she realised what Sunset was implying. “You’re not talking about Rainbow Dash!”
Sunset hesitated, apparently considering what to say. “I don’t think she’d do anything to be mean about it. Definitely not to you. But Rainbow Dash is a prankster. I could see jerking someone around being funny to her.”
“I don’t think she would do something like desecrating grave stones,” Fluttershy said, a little stubbornly.
Sunset spread her arms a little. “Maybe. But by process of elimination, she’s the most likely suspect as far as I can see. Even if you don’t suspect her, you might just keep an eye on her.”
Fluttershy didn’t like that idea at all. She loved all of her friends near-enough equally, but Rainbow Dash was her oldest friend, whom she’d known since childhood. If she knew any of them intimately, it was Rainbow Dash.
Despite this, she knew that there were a few things that Sunset had said that were definitely true. Rainbow Dash was a prankster, and certainly could let her humour edge dangerously close to cruelty, usually without realising it. Was it possible that Rainbow was doing it as some sort of prolonged prank? Even though Fluttershy had called it ‘desecrating’, she knew full well that whatever was being done to the grave markers was little more than small signs and minor interferences, barely even noticeable to anyone not explicitly looking for them.
It all seemed – in Fluttershy’s mind at least – to be too convoluted, too subliminal to be a prank. It was leaving a lot to chance that Fluttershy would have even noticed the charcoal sticks and slight variants in the stone’s positioning, let alone the rest of the graveyard. Rainbow was certainly capable of elaborate tricks, but they were almost always showy.
But the idea was now firmly lodged in Fluttershy’s mind, and to her deep discomfort and personal sense of shame, she couldn’t get the idea out of her head that Rainbow Dash might be responsible. After all, Rainbow knew about the animal graves, whereas most people didn’t notice them. Rainbow Dash had the only (if not kind of weak) viable motive. Rainbow was present in the graveyard at night, the most likely time for the vandalism? to take place. Rainbow could easily get up whilst Fluttershy was sleeping against the mausoleum and perpetrate everything under the cover of dark.
Much as she disliked it, she thought it prudent to keep a better eye on her. As such, she suggested a difference in their plans.
“Aw, yeah,” Rainbow said, putting her feet on the dashboard. “This is way better than the sleeping bags. Great idea, Fluttershy.”
“O-Oh,” Fluttershy started guiltily. “Yes. It um... thanks.”
“Thanks for helping us out, dad,” Rainbow went on, grinning at the driver. “Hopefully tonight, we’ll get whoever it is.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it, kiddo,” Rainbow Dash’s father said, giving Fluttershy a brief smile over his shoulder. “If I get a call on the radio though, I’m not leaving you here.”
“Oh, don’t worry dad,” Rainbow said easily. “Pinkie’s house is just up the street; I already told her we might be coming over.”
Rainbow’s father didn’t seem to be entirely sold on this plan, but he nodded and went back to his police laptop.
Fluttershy had never been in a cop car before, but found the backseat to be roomier than she’d imagined it would have been. The metal grate was a little disconcerting though. But then—
“So many things are,” she muttered.
“Huh?” Rainbow asked.
“Nothing.”
As an undercover police vehicle, the car they were in was generally indistinguishable from a regular car unless one got a look inside. The three silver nubs on the rear might give the game away, but in the dark, Fluttershy thought they were well camouflaged. They were lucky that Rainbow’s father agreed to alter his rounds a little to bring them to the cemetery.
A few times over the next hour, various persons moved briskly by the cemetery gate, huddled against the cold and not even glancing at the silent car. It wasn’t long before Rainbow Dash was snoring, and her father not far behind her. If it hadn’t been for her iPad, Fluttershy might have joined them, but staring at its dimmed screen, she pondered ever more on the likelihood of this all just being some elaborate hoax.
No matter how many times she went over it in her head, she couldn’t come to any solid conclusion. She didn’t have any actual cause to believe it was Rainbow, but on the other hand, she had no cause to believe it was anyone else either. Rainbow was simply the most likely suspect, because she was the only suspect. Fluttershy knew that that reasoning simply didn’t work. It proved nothing.
Staring out of the window, she was so caught up in her thoughts that she found herself simply watching anything that moved: A small cluster of leaves blowing about in the slight wind, like shadows moving across the road. The sign on the cemetery gate that had a bolt loose, and so had a tendency to wobble a little. The people walking by, all of them looking secretive and uneasy.
It took her a moment or two to realise, breaking from her train of thought, that the person currently walking by looked familiar. Blinking a few times, she scrutinised the figure walking by more closely.
“Hey, Rainbow Dash?”
Rainbow snuffled a little and turned in her seat.
“Rainbow!” Fluttershy whispered more insistently, giving her shoulder a little shake.
“Don’t you worry, Firefly,” Rainbow slurred. “I’ll keep you warm.”
“Rainbow. Dash!” Fluttershy hissed.
“Uh!” she snorted, waking up and looking around at Fluttershy with an aggrieved eye. “What? What?”
“Have you seen that person before?” Fluttershy asked.
Rainbow rubbed her eyes and squinted out of the window. Just outside of the spotlight of a street lamp, the person stood, looking left and right a few times. Fluttershy just had time to take in the plum-coloured hoodie, the black backpack, and the pink converse shoes. With the hoodie pulled up and the bagginess of the clothes, it was hard to tell who it was.
“I don’t know,” Rainbow said. “I can’t tell who it is.”
“No, I mean,” Fluttershy began, hesitating a little as she tried to remember. “I think I’ve seen them walk by before.”
“You think this is the—“ Rainbow stopped and let out a sound like a moan of pleasure mixed with a sound of disgust.
The person outside had taken one last look around, and then moved quickly to the fence. Moving stealthily towards the bars to the left of the locked gate, the figure put both hands to one of the vertical bars, and gave it a sharp push. The lower part of the bar turned, still bolted at the top, allowing a diagonal opening in the fence that the figure was able to slip through no problem.
“Did you know that was there?” Rainbow asked, her nose up against the window.
Fluttershy shook her head.
“Come on, this is our chance!” Rainbow hissed gleefully, reaching for the door handle.
“Um, shouldn’t we wake your father?” Fluttershy asked quickly, a sudden panic seizing her.
Rainbow smirked and made a dismissive noise. “He’s not going to fit through that gap. Come on!”
“But! But—“ Fluttershy hesitated, looking between Rainbow through the window, and her father sleeping in his chair. “But that’s not the point, Rainbow!”
Resigning herself to the worst, she opened the back door and, making sure to close it as quietly as she could, sped after Rainbow Dash.
“Rainbow, wait!” she called, pulling herself through the gap in the fence as Rainbow sped as quietly as she could forward. The hooded individual was walking along the shady side of the cemetery, evidently out of earshot.
“Shh!” Rainbow shot back over her shoulder. “Don’t let them hear us! We’ve got this dirt-bag, this time!”
But Rainbow was too fast and too eager; Fluttershy simply couldn’t keep up and be quiet at the same time, and with her natural deference to everything and everyone around her keeping her from speeding up, it didn’t take long for her to lose Rainbow in the dark.
The mystery person was long since gone, and Fluttershy was disconcerted after a few minutes of trying to find Rainbow that she didn’t recognise the part of the graveyard she was in.
“Oh,” she said fearfully. “It all looks so different at night.”
The mausoleum was nowhere to be seen in the silky blackness in between the watery orbs of yellow light being given off by the cemetery’s old-fashioned lamps. She couldn’t see Edgar’s tree, nor did any of the nearby gravestones bear names that she recognised. The surrounding houses were just solid black walls, and the tree-lines a fixed in place cardiogram read-out against the starry sky. She might as well have been trapped in purgatory.
“No, no,” she told herself, as she felt her diaphragm strain her lungs into the opening stages of hyperventilation. “No, I just have to move in a straight line, and I’ll find the edge. Then I’ll follow it to the exit. Simple. Easy. Not in the least bit terrifying or lonely.”
She took a few assertive steps forward, bypassing a tombstone as she went in what she hoped was a confident, swaggering sort of way, just in case the darkness was watching.
“No, ma’am,” she went on. “Nothing scary, or frightening about a graveyard at night. You just keep walking, and ignore those scratching sounds behind you—“
Fluttershy froze. In the near silence of the night, she heard very distinctly, a small, scratchy-scratchy sound, somewhere off in the darkness. Her heart pushed its way slowly upwards into her throat as the feeling began to disappear in her limbs. With a great effort of will, she managed to turn her head slowly around, and stare wide-eyed into the night. The seemingly floating orbs of yellow light casting their insubstantial light over the graveyard made Fluttershy think of an underwater kingdom, although she’d yet to see the sub-aquatic city that could fill her with as much terror as the coldness surrounding her.
The scratching sound kept going, neither getting near, nor further away.
“I-It’s just an a-animal,” Fluttershy whispered to herself. “J-Just a c-c-cute, ad-dorable little animal, c-cleaning out its—“
Fluttershy screamed.
The scratching noise halted. Then it industriously resumed.
Fluttershy sat on her aching behind, her hands over her head, waiting for whoever had touched her leg to get her. After a few moments, she became curious enough to open her eyes and see why she wasn’t gotten yet. Then she nearly screamed again.
“M... Mr. Nizbit...?” she breathed. “I-It was just you.”
Mr. Nizbit tilted his head to one side, as though disappointed.
“What are you doing here?” Fluttershy whispered. “Your home is over in the park.”
Mr. Nizbit gave a low series of growls, scratching his chest a little with several prodigious claws as he did so.
Fluttershy frowned. “A drop-off point? What are you—“ She broke off as Mr. Nizbit turned abruptly and scampered away. “Wait! Mr. Nizbit!” Fluttershy hissed after him.
Standing as fast as her aching backside would allow, Fluttershy tiptoed rapidly after him, trying to keep up with his little waddling form and pleading for him to come back. She hadn’t passed by three headstones, when she noticed that the little scratching sound was getting closer, and closer. And then a light snapped on in front of her.
With the natural instincts born of the fraidy-cat, Fluttershy shot downwards behind a sizeable tombstone, all of her senses on edge. The scratching sound had stopped, and looking up, Fluttershy saw a narrow beam of light moving sideways above her hiding spot.
After a few seconds, the beam turned away, and the scratching sounds continued.
Fluttershy’s sense of terror vied with her curiosity. Beyond the gravestone behind which she hid was undoubtedly the hooded figure she and Rainbow had followed in, doing their nefarious... whatever they were doing. This might be her only chance to see who they were and what compelled them to come back to the graveyard at night.
This might have put Fluttershy in a state of perpetual indecision for a long while, had it not been for Mr. Nizbit having trotted off in the direction of the light-beam’s source. Towards the mysterious individual.
Fluttershy gulped, trying to moisten her dry throat. As carefully, and quietly as she could, she turned around behind her cover, and placed her fingers on the smooth top of the tombstone. Slowly as she could, she raised her head, and peered outwards.
At first, she could make nothing substantial out. Everything was, dark, grey, and still. Then the light reappeared, and Fluttershy nearly dived back down. When it became apparent that the light wasn’t focused upon her, however, she squinted towards it.
The hooded figure was standing in front of a smallish obelisk monument, holding what looked like a large piece of beige paper in one hand, and a pencil-torch in the other. As Fluttershy watched, the figure put the pencil torch between their teeth, knelt down, and held the paper up to the obelisk’s face, using their free hand to grope for something on the ground. In the pitiful glow of the pencil torch, Fluttershy could just make out something long and thin in between the person’s fingers as they raised it to the paper. And then the scratching sound started again, as the raised hand moved rapidly up and down across the paper with the little dark stick.
Fluttershy was just puzzling over this curious circumstance, unsure of what it was that she was watching, when she noticed a short, stubby patch of darkness shuffling up to the hooded figure from behind. Fluttershy’s heart nose-dived into her gut, and she leapt up without conscious thought.
“Mr. Nizbit!” she screamed.
The figure leapt back from the obelisk, the pencil torch falling from their mouth into the grass. Evidently alarmed by Flutterhsy’s presence, they turned and began to run, only to be sent sprawling into the grass with a shriek of surprise.
Fluttershy sprinted over, kneeling down over Mr. Nizbit as he groaned and growled at having been tripped upon.
“A-Are you okay?” Fluttershy asked, feeling for his stubby legs to check that they weren’t broken.
Mr. Nizbit snorted a few times, and then righted himself, and with all of the cantankerousness that his age afforded him, leapt forward onto the person still trying to pick themselves out of the grass.
“Hey! Ouch!” cried this person in a high, girlish voice. “Get off! They’re in the bag! The bag!”
Fluttershy stared, almost unaware of the backpack being flung away into the darkness, and Mr. Nizbit stumbling after it like an excitable hound. She knew that voice. But how could it be...
“Sonata?” she breathed.
The person on the ground stopped moving. After a few seconds, they gave a small cough.
“W-Who?” they asked, in an unconvincingly deep voice. “I don’t know anyone by that name.”
“Sonata, I can see your blue hair,” Fluttershy said, somewhat apologetically.
“No you can’t!” said the figure, sitting up properly and shoving the long strands of bright blue hair, unmistakable in the torchlight, back under the hood. “I mean... I don’t have blue hair! I—“
“Your hand is bandaged,” Fluttershy pointed out, noting the white gauze on the hand trying to tuck the hair back into place. “Sonata’s hand is bandaged in the same place.”
Instantly the hand flew down and out of sight. “No, it’s... I...”
The person sighed, and still sitting in the grass, pulled down the hood.
Sonata blushed, biting her lip and apparently unable to meet Fluttershy’s eye. Her hair was out of its usual ponytail, instead tied up into a loose work bun at the back of her head; several strands of it had come loose.
“Please don’t tell anyone,” she said quietly.
Fluttershy didn’t quite know what to say to that. Tell anyone what?
“If you don’t mind,” Fluttershy began. “Um. What exactly are you doing?”
For an answer, Sonata reached over to the piece of yellowish paper she’d been holding up to the obelisk, and motioned for Fluttershy to take it.
The paper was thick, rougher than what Fluttershy was used to, but being an amateur artist, she could tell it was not low quality. It felt more like parchment. Picking up the pencil torch on the floor, she slid the beam across the image, but even with the aid of light it took her a few moments to really grasp what it was she was seeing.
As soon as she made it out, everything seemed to fall into place, everything suddenly made perfect sense.
The charcoal sticks. Mr. Nizbit’s mysterious disappearance and reappearance. The little shifts and near-indistinguishable marks all over the graveyard. Sonata’s absence from school.
“You make copies of... gravestones?” Fluttershy asked slowly.
“It’s a stone rubbing,” Sonata said, unhappily. Standing up, she stuck her hands in her pockets whilst Mr. Nizbit rummaged around in her bag a few feet away. “I’m... I’m a taphophile.”
Fluttershy stared at her. The term explained nothing to her. But the wheel of discovery was turning in her head as she looked down at Mr. Nizbit’s protruding, furry rump.
“You’ve been giving Mr. Nizbit rotten apples,” she surmised.
“Who? Oh, you mean Bitey the Badger over here?” Sonata asked, giving Mr. Nizbit a cold look. “Yes, I have. He ambushes me every time I come here, and won’t leave me alone until I give him something to eat. The first time I came, he bit my hand.”
Fluttershy nodded, an ideal picture forming in her head. “You were making one of these things on the graves under the willow tree,” Fluttershy guessed.
Sonata’s face lit up. “Yeah!” she said eagerly. “I tried to do those the first time I got here. I’d never seen things like them. But I only got through a few before that badger attacked me.”
“Mm,” Fluttershy pursed her lips. “I think you might have – accidentally I’m sure – offended Mr. Nizbit. You see, his wife recently died, and I think that you might have, perhaps, maybe touched Mrs. Nizbit’s headstone.”
Sonata blinked, and then looked guiltily around at Mr. Nizbit, who was just emerging from the bag, munching loudly on a great chunk of soft-looking apple.
“Oh,” Sonata said uncomfortably. “Sorry. I don’t mean to offend anyone or anything. It’s just, like, a hobby, you know?”
Both girls seemed unsure of what to say next. Both had reached a point of awkwardness that made it difficult to know what to do. Until both of them were startled out of their wits by someone shouting:
“Fluttershy!”
The next thing that the eponym of this alarming cry knew, Sonata had disappeared in a blur of motion. Fluttershy instinctively seized the pencil torch; searching around rapidly, the beam eventually cast itself upon a head of multi-coloured hair.
“You think you can hurt my friend and get away with it?” Rainbow Dash growled, holding the front of Sonata’s hoodie with one hand. “Guess again, dirt-for-brains!”
“Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy shrieked, in quite possibly the loudest her voice had ever gone.
Rainbow Dash turned her head, her fist raised.
“What?” she asked, evidently surprised by Fluttershy’s interruption.
For answer, Fluttershy shone the pencil torch into Sonata’s face. Rainbow stared for a full six seconds into Sonata’s pale, terrified expression, the latter obviously expecting the fist still to fall.
Rainbow Dash lowered her fist, and let go of Sonata’s hoodie, as though in a daze.
“Does, um... does somebody maybe wanna... explain?” Rainbow asked, the complexities of the situation apparently overwhelming her mind.
Before anyone could reply to this, they all heard the sound of a window being raised, a small square of light blossomed into being in the solid shadows of the line of houses lining the graveyard’s perimeter.
“Whoever’s in that there cemetery,” bellowed a deep and gravely voice. “I’ve called the police!”
Rainbow gave a little snort. “Don’t worry guys. My dad’s the nearest cop, and he already knows we’re here.”
“And if you’re still in that graveyard by the time I get down there—“ the voice continued.
“But all the same, maybe we should go,” Rainbow added quickly.
- To be Continued