Quicksands

by Dead Nation

Quicksands

I lived in a small town in a small clearing in the middle of a large, thick forest. It was a nice town, everything seeming nice. Ponies smiled as they walked down the bright streets. The sun always shines, it's always warm. Nothing goes amiss.

Of coarse, all small towns have their little secrets. The more perfect the community, the darker the secrets.

-Bess

I hadn't seen my family in many years. My parents had died. My foal had died. My husband had disappeared. I'd been left alone. Scared and with nowhere left to gallop. I was truly alone.

Most ponies wanted me to stay home. The loss of my family supposedly driving me to extremes. So I went to the swamp on a summer night. The air was cool, thunder rumbled far off in the distance, and the swamp outside town was alive. I'd heard about things in the swamp that would kill a pony just for looking at them. Ghosts of the past. I never believed in anything like that.

I crept into the swamp, lighting my flashlight and shining it deep into the thick, muddy terrain. I took a deep breath and entered. Before long a thick fog settled over the area, and I could no longer see more than ten feet into the swamp. I continued deeper into the swamp regardless.

Deep in the swamps, the ground was unstable and slushy. Water seemed to be everywhere around me, shallow but still seeming uninviting. I wasn't scared, there wasn't anything out here as far as I cared. But I turned at that moment. Behind me stood another mare. She had a long white gown on, and her coat was a waterlogged white. Her long brown hair dripped swamp water. What was worse is when she looked up at me, her eyes were soulless. All black with only a small speck of white near the center. She screeched at me, a screech that chilled me to the bone. Her jaw seemed to unhinge as her mouth opened so wide it was unbelievable. I was frozen with terror as she screamed at me. Finally she began to slowly trot to me. I immediately turned and began to gallop as fast as possible. I wasn't sure where I was going, but it was going to be as far from her as possible.

I eventually stopped, out of breath and unable to breath. I stood and gasped for a moment before gaining the courage to look back. There, standing right in my flashlight beam she stood. Watching, waiting. She didn't seem to be trying to catch me now, so I walked a brisk pace deeper into the swamp. It was quite now. Only my hoof steps to keep me company. I continued to search, occasionally turning back to see she was just behind the fog curtain.

Nopony had been this deep in the swamp in many years. So it was untouched. I continued trotting, keeping an eye on the mare in the fog. It was around ten minutes after she first chased me when I came across a mountain in the swamp. A cave opened in the side, and I heard an echo from deep inside.

"I don't belong here!" Was all I could make out from the voice. It sounded young. Like my daughter. I entered the dark cave, shining a light deep inside. It went down. Descending deeper. I followed the tunnel, knowing if she followed I'd be trapped. But the voice called to me.

I followed the cave a good while before it opened into a chasm. In one end it fell to water. Deep water. I approached the lake and looked down into the crystal clear water. Down at the bottom I spotted a body. A body that resembled the ghost in the fog. Startled, I looked closer.

"You don't belong here." I heard an icy voice whisper behind me. My heart began to pound as I felt an icy hoof slide up my back. I felt a hard push against the back of my head. She was trying to push me into the water. She wanted me to join her. I pushed with all my might to stay out of the water, but she overpowered me and I stumbled. I tried to swim up with everything I had in me, but she held me down. My vision grew dark, and I dropped my flashlight. I was near drowning, but suddenly she let go. I was at the bottem of the deep, deep lake. I kicked up, and began to paddle with everything I had left to try and get to the surface. It became harder and harder to move, but I fought. With a large splash, I came up from the water. I coughed and sputtered as I held onto the ledge with all my might.

I had fallen into unconsciousness, because when I next was aware of my surroundings I was in the middle of the chasm. I looked around the darkness, unable to see more than a few feet.

"I will always be with you." I heard a voice whisper behind me. It was her. She began to whisper something, speaking so quickly I could not understand it. Over and over. She appeared in my vision. It was driving me insane. I had to get away. I began to wobble, more than trot, back to the tunnel I'd come in from. The whispers grew louder, her face more clear. I couldn't thing straight anymore. She was driving me insane. I curled up one the ground at the mouth of the cave and put my forehooves over my ears.

"Mom, stop!" I yelled. I knew who she was from the moment she appeared in the mist. It was denial, I think its called. We all try to block those truths we want to deny. Truth was she had disappeared when I was young. I never cared because she was abusive. I cursed her under my breath, wished for her to drown in the swamp alone. She did.

"I'm sorry!" I screamed as loud as I could. Then everything was still. Still and quiet. I opened my eyes to the calm swamp. The fog had lifted. The first rays of morning light shone down. I looked up to the east and saw the church bell tower. I wasn't far from home. Perhaps I had imagined it all. I stood back up, and looked back into the cave. There mother stood. Her soulless expression fixed on me.

"I will always be there with you." She said before disappearing completely. I gulped and began the short trot home.

She was always in the corner of my vision. Never leaving me alone. If I tried to look at her she disappeared. Ponies said I was insane. That there wasn't anypony there. I knew what I saw though. She was there. Still the small community rejected me. My small motel room became less and less cozy as mom slowly drove me to insanity.

One morning I woke up to see written in blood across my wall, 'The Warehouse'. I knew of one warehouse in town. It was old and abandoned since the disappearance of several workers. The first disappearance was my fathers. After that workers disappeared into thin air. I was sure that's what it meant, but I was hesitant to go there. The electricity had been cut, it had flooded a few times, and water damage had weakened the concrete in many different places. It was also multistory, going down three levels. It was huge. What was I even trying to find there?

I ignored it for as long as I could. After a couple days the messages appeared more often and in different places. After a week I couldn't ignore it anymore. Mainly because I woke up at the entrance of the warehouse. I sighed, looking at the large door.

It swung open with a squeal, and I looked into the darkness that was cut into by the moonlight in the doorway. A small lantern sat on a crate by the door, and a bottle of oil as well. I lit the lantern, which illuminated a fair piece of the large room. I began looking for, well I hadn't a clue what I was searching for. I assumed I would know when I saw it. Maybe a dress, or necklace.

I wondered about the first floor for awhile longer before descending down further into the ground. I noticed mother hadn't shown herself yet, but immediately upon noticing this I saw a shadowy figure. He was a stallion, pitch black and sort of transparent. He looked like a shadow. I looked right at him, and he assaulted my senses. I heard an overwhelming scream, and black seeped into my vision. I turned and began to gallop away from the shadow and his effects ceased to affect me. I knew now I was looking for my father. His body needed to be found. I caught my breath and stood up tall.

"Leave me alone dad." I whispered as I began to search the floor more attentively. Father had died when I was young, leaving me with mother. Mother was never the same after that, always taking her anger out on me. So while I cursed her under my breath I cursed my father as well.

"Wake up to reality. Find yourself again." I heard him whisper behind me. I didn't dare turn to look at him, or dwell to long on his words. I kept up a brisk pace as I searched every nook and cranny for any signs of his body. He wasn't on the second floor.

The third floor was the largest, with multiple rooms and corridors. There were also pipes everywhere. I saw dads shadowy figure everywhere in the corner of my eye. He was following me. I was getting close. It was good that I was near, because I was starting to go insane. He wouldn't leave me alone, and I heard a constant buzzing in my ears. I held the lantern handle firmly in my teeth, knowing if I dropped it and it busted I'd be stranded in the darkness. Dead in a matter of moments.

I searched much of the third floor before coming to a hallway with a flashing red light that I assumed worked off the backup generators. The pipes in that hall were broke, sharp edges posing danger for the unwary. I carefully walked down the hallway, wary to not impale myself on a pipe. At the end of the hallway, a light flickered on and off, making the room hard to make out. Laying there before me, impaled on a pipe with steam pouring out of it was my fathers decaying body. He was burned, from the steam, and a large pool of dried blood surrounded him and was splattered across the wall besides him. How he came to die like this was beyond me, but now that I had found his body I thought I could leave.

I turned to be face to face with the shadowy figure. Instantly the screams intruded my head and my vision went completely black. I felt myself drop to the ground hard as well.

"You shouldn't have cursed my soul to the damned." He whispered to me in a voice that sounded old and cracked.

"I'm sorry, I'd blamed you for something you hadn't any control over!" I screamed, only wanting this nightmare to end. "I didn't know!"

"Sorry doesn't make it okay. I can't rest, neither can your momma." He yelled. For a moment the darkness, and world around me, melted away to reveal a white room. Just for a moment.

I was laying on the ground in front of my fathers corpse, tears streaming from my eyes. The room was still. The warehouse was quiet. My mind was gone. All I could hear, see, feel, was my parents. Their burdens, their curses, put upon my shoulders. I left the warehouse, them watching me. Their voices following me. Whispering behind me, when they aren't there.

I could no longer function in society. Many of the town inhabitants ignoring me, or acting like I was just a simpleminded foal. I'd gone weeks, living with a cloud of whispers. It almost became manageable. Then, several months after the warehouse, the whispers became one short sentence.

"Where's the foal?" They asked over and over. It drove me mad.

When I was younger, my husband and I had a foal. She died exactly three hours after birth. Poor Silk Touch never even got a chance at life. I secluded myself away after that. Not wanting to be aware of anything any longer. I never got over it.

Silk Touch had died in an old hospital down the roads, near the city of Las Pegasus. It closed a few years back after a large disease outbreak. It had fallen into sever decay since then.

It also would have been just my luck that she died on the third floor. She had been buried, but for some reason I felt drawn here. The old glass doors were shattered and busted, so I entered effortlessly. The old building was dark, and smelled of decayed flesh. I heard what sounded like a child's laughter from all around me, saw shadows dancing across the walls. I gulped and begun the trot towards the middle of the old hospital, where the staircase was most likely to be found.

The first floor was made up of mostly receptionist desks, break rooms, and a large cafeteria. The laughter around me continued, giving me chills. The shadows that danced around me seeming ready to jump at me at the slightest reproach. I soon found the staircase, relived to get away from the hellish nightmares on the first floor.

The nightmares were just getting started.

The second floor was made of the patients rooms. So the halls had an occasional table with some kind of flower pot or other glass decoration sitting upon it. When ever I walked past one, it would smash to the ground and shatter. Likewise, the intact lights above me busted occasionally, raining glass upon my head. The laughter here was louder, more intense. The shadows seeming to slide away from the walls to swipe at me often.

It took me longer than eternity, at least it felt like it had, before I found a hole in the side of a wall opening into a room. This room opened to a reception area near the stairway. I took a deep breath, knowing the third floor would probably kill me. I stepped one hoof on the staircase before I heard a child speak from upstairs.

"You shouldn't follow me mommy. I don't want to break your heart." Was all she said. A tear formed in my eyes as I stepped another hoof up the staircase.

"It's okay baby, a mothers job is to protect her foal." I responded, continuing upstairs.

The third floor was the worst. The laughter turned from playful to insanity. The shadows dancing became aggressive, reaching out and leaving long scratches all over my body. I screamed out in pain, each cut feeling like fire. The broken glass shot out at me more violently, embedding deep in my flesh. I continued on anyway. I didn't know where I was going, I just felt myself being drawn to a certain room. The room she died in. I was led down hall after hall. Through room after room. Being hurt for fighting for her.

Finally, I reached the room. A soft lullaby replaced the laughter. In the center of the room sat a single object. A teddy bear. What happened next made me feel like reality had slipped away from me. The Teddy Bear sat up and looked at me.

"Mommy, why didn't you do something?" It spoke softly.

"I couldn't do anything..." I whispered as I hung my head. I looked up again to see the toy jump at me. It hit me with unbelievable force, kicking me over. It grabbed one of my legs and begun to pull. I felt the strain of my muscles as they were being pulled away from my bones. I swung a hoof at the teddy bear, knocking him away from me. My left foreleg hurt badly now, and I began to limp. Again the toy jumped at me viscously. I smacked it away with a hoof again and quickly stood over it. With all the strength I had I ripped the head away from the bear. I felt a pain in my heart, I didn't stop tearing fluff away from the beaten rags for longer than I'd needed to.

I sat crying. All the ghosts from my past had come and gotten me. They would forever whisper in my mind. I'd searched for them without thought. Now I heard my parents whisper, my little fillys laugh maniacal.

I sat there, not knowing what to do next. I was lost, I was scared. I had nowhere else to gallop. Nowhere else to hide. I went home eventually, locking myself away in my home. I never left it again.