“Excuse me, Mr. Diamond,” Dr. Lovejoy said, “I was hoping if you could do me a small favor?”
The pale pony stopped for a moment in the middle of the street, “What favor? Starlight needs me-”
“It will only take less than a minute,” the old unicorn pulled out a pencil and a piece of parchment. “Could you please just copy that sentence there? It’s all I’d need.”
Raising an eyebrow, Diamond took the parchment and saw that in various hoof-writings, each one of them was numbered. The same sentence that repeated itself over and over:
I put a tag on the jar of cookies from the shelf.
“What’s this for?”
“It’s for an art project that I’ve read about and decided that I should give it a try.”
“Uh… okay,” putting the parchment on the ground, the dusty ground, and with the pencil in his mouth, scribbled out the sentence before returning it to him. The doctor thanked him, and Diamond went on his way while the old stallion went another. The pale earth pony followed the trail towards the cave where the vault was kept. He wasn’t sure why Starlight had asked him to come this way out for since she could talk with him at her home.
At the entrance of the cave, Starlight was pacing, her neck craned down in deep thought, “You sent for me?” Diamond inquired.
“Yes, for something very important and I want to be absolutely sure that nopony hears us.” The pale pony tilted his head in confusion, asking what she meant by that. “Come inside, it’ll make things easier for you to comprehend.”
Mystified, the stallion followed her into the dim cave towards the only other light source. At the other end of the cavern stood an impressive translucent wall where every villager’s cutie mark resides frozen within its panels. “Tell me, Double Diamond, what is wrong with this vault?”
The Earth pony looked at it for a moment, “I don’t understand, is something broken?”
“No. I mean, do you notice something missing?”
He looked at it again, “Not as far as I can see.”
“Really, then do you see Lilly Garden’s or Finishing Line’s cutie marks?”
“Well… wait…” Diamond scanned the glass vault once more, “Where are their cutie marks?”
“Bingo,” Starlight nodded, “do you know what this means?”
He turned his attention towards her, “You’re not saying that… they’re dead?”
She solemnly nodded, “I’m afraid so.”
“How long have you known this?”
“About a week after Finishing was reported missing. I did withhold this knowledge because I think the parents would be better off if they thought he was missing rather than dead. To be honest, for a while, I assumed that he and Lilly had perished in the desert. But recently… I’m beginning to have doubts.”
“It’s about the doctor, is it?”
She nodded, “Of course. Remember after Check Mate’s death that I went to see the doctor?”
“I do, you had doubts about my suspicions. Are you saying that something’s changed your mind?”
“Yes and no. Apparently, the old doc came here because he tested his drugs illegally and is hiding from the law. He told me that Check’s suicide was an accident on his part and promised that he’d be more careful from here on out.”
“Mm-hum... that settles that, doesn’t it? He’s a criminal.”
“Not quite, truth be told, he’s blackmailing me.”
Diamond’s eyes widen, “What! He’s blackmailing you! For what?”
“I better not say. What’s important now is that he has something on me that would disgrace me and this whole town if he talks. However, I need something on him that’s so big that it will either convince him who’s in charge or have him banished. I’m beginning to wonder if you’re right, there’s something off about that doctor and I don’t like it.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“For one, when he’s out of his house, go search it. See if you could find anything that might relate to Lilly and Finishing, or something incriminating that we could use for the sake of security.”
“Do you know what he’s doing now?”
“Well, Party Favor is taking him to the Opal Farm this afternoon, so you should have some time. I think they should be heading off there by now. So if you find something, tell me immediately.”
“Of course Starlight,” he saluted, “I won’t let you down.”
“Doctor,” Diamond knocked on the door, “Are you there?” There was nothing from the other side. He gave another knock, waited, then deciding that it was empty; he pulled out a ring of keys to unlock the door.
Once he was inside, he closed the door behind it and locked it. Now turning to the living room, it didn’t take long for him to contemplate which part of the house he should start searching. Going up the stairs, he headed towards the bedroom on the top floor.
Pushing through the door, he first scanned the room. There were plenty of books in piles in one corner of the room, a candlestick resting on a nightstand, a bed, an old trunk, and several photographs hanging up on the walls. Diamond noticed something from the photos, even with the ones downstairs; there wasn’t a single picture of another pony.
First, the pale pony took a closer look at his personal library. Flipping through the texts to see if something was stuck between the pages, only he found none. Nevertheless, he looked at the titles of both fiction and nonfiction. “The Art of the Marionette,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “Ancient Coltypt: Everyday Life and Death on the Nile,” “Spyglass and the Bygone Bayou,” “Post-Impressionist Gallery,” “The Monster of the Luna Sea,” “Equestrian Psychology,” “History of the Sunset Circus,” “Pony Anatomy Vol. 24” and so on. Double Diamond was puzzled at this, for there seemed to be little if no relation from one book to the next.
When he found nothing between the pages, Diamond’s attention turned to the bed. He felt through the sheets, the pillow, lifted the mattress and looked underneath the bed – but once again, nothing.
Then, his attention turned towards the trunk. Surely, if an old unicorn was hiding something so shameful from the rest of the world, it could be in there. The white earth pony went up to the steam-roller trunk and opened it. At first, all he found was a first-aid kit, some trinkets, a couple of medical posters, and a few other things that he removed from it and placed them on the bed.
Diamond thought that his search proved fruitless until he came to the book at the very bottom. It was a thick volume; the cover was made out of black fabric with a gray vine pattern as if it were part of a curtain once. The spine was hoof stitched together by a white piece of crushed velvet. On the center of the cover was an oval made out of yellowed paper that in fancy calligraphy was the words,
Book of Memories.
“Why would you want this at the bottom of your trunk?” the stallion asked aloud. Closing the lid, he used the trunk as a reading desk as he set the book down, and open up to the first page.
The first picture he saw, in black-and-white, was a picture of a tiny, innocent little colt in diapers looking up at the camera. Underneath it was a family photo; Diamond saw three ponies posing in front of a window with richly looking curtains and the castle in Canterlot. In that photo standing on the right was a stallion in a graduation gown, showing his Law degree in his aura. On the left was a mare in a gray dress, a jeweled necklace, and her main was tied up perfectly. She looked down with a smile at the third pony in the picture of the foal playing with a stack of blocks.
Turning the next few pages, Diamond looked at Lovejoy’s old baby photos until he got to the childhood pictures which some of them were in color. One of them showed the very young doctor with watercolors, painting away at a picture. Another showed the family in a museum somewhere where he was looking up at a statue of a knight. Many of which, the colt was smiling or looking in wonder at the art around him, that was until he got to the photo where it showed his cutie mark for the first time.
In it in black-and-white was Lovejoy in a party setting. The room was filled with other ponies (Diamond assumed to be his relatives) all had the look of congratulations on their faces. Even his parents were smiling, all of them were grinning except for Lovejoy himself. The colt was looking straight into the camera, showing his flank that had the cross and two snakes, but there was no joy in his expression. Rather, there was a sense of uncertainty, sadness, even a hint of betrayal.
From there, every picture featuring the doctor, there was absolutely no smile from him. From school to vacation photos as he grew up, Lovejoy showed no sign of happiness. Diamond noticed too that he didn’t see one photo where he was with anypony else other than his family – as if he never made an attempt to make a friend in his life.
But then, when he flipped open to another page, he stopped. It was in the part of the doctor’s life where he had graduated medical school and it started to show pictures of a mare which he assumed to be his marefriend, he came to a page that made his blood ran cold. One photo showed their engagement, while the other showed that same happy mare lifeless in a lake. With the title underneath it: “Angle in the Water, Ops. 1.”
Diamond turned the page and found that on one page, there was a stallion in a wheelchair. In the black-and-white picture, he was wearing a paper gown like the ones that one would wear in a hospital. Underneath that in color was the same stallion, only this time he’s bawling his eyes out as chair was chained to a pipe in the wall, and underneath the photo was an unfinished brick wall. Underneath that, it was entitled: “Trapped in Darkness, Ops. 2.”
Next to that was a filly, once again in a paper gown that was similar to the stallion in the wheelchair. In the black-and-white photo, she was bouncing a ball against a wall. While underneath that one was the same filly in full color, only she appeared to have been crushed underneath a bookshelf of children’s books. This one was titled: “A Reading Accident, Ops. 3.”
“What is this?” Diamond asked to himself as he flipped page after page to see the same pattern. Where in the black-and-white photos, he saw ponies of all ages and genders, and underneath each was a color photograph of them being dead or about to die. The further he went on, the more disturbed he got. He saw one photo of a couple that was surgically sewn together, leaving a bloody mess, “Together Forever, Ops 14.” There was a picture of a mare whose neck was not only hung by a nose, but her hooves also as if she was a string puppet, “The Marionette, Ops. 28.” He even found a picture of a green filly that looked like she was stabbed to death on a cold dissecting table, “Relieving of Pain, Ops. 52.”
He came across a group photo of a smiling doctor, a Changeling, and three other teenagers that were strapped down to some old wheeling tables and a wheelchair. All three of the teens looked terrified of their gags. Diamond saw one whose body floated in an old bathtub face down, “Bath Time, Ops. 74.” Another that lied against a corner in an impossibly tight straitjacket, “Solitary Confinement, Ops. 75.” A mare in a smoky room where she had burn marks on the side of her head, blood flowing down from her mouth and nose, “Electroshock Therapy, Ops. 76.” And finally, the Changeling who lay on a clean bed, who had his forehooves strapped down, looked away from the camera, eyes wide, and his mouth in an eternal scream, “Scared to Death, Ops. 77.”
When Double Diamond turned the next page, he gasped as he found what he was looking for. There he found Lilly Garden and Finished Line, one on the wooden floor with a puddle of a spilled cup, “Teatime, Ops. 78,” while the pale colt that lay on his back, with painted blood wings that was spread open on a canvas, “Free at Last, Ops 79.”
“Beautiful, aren’t they?”
Diamond screamed, he turned quickly around, and there behind him was Dr. Lovejoy, who had a gentle smile on his face.