Cursed Be He That Moves My Bones

by Lucky Dreams

Cursed Be He That Moves My Bones

It was half past bedtime, but the feel of midnight had arrived early: that tremblesome feeling when the world lies silent, and monsters lurk beneath hospital beds. Sweetie Belle couldn’t sleep. She was too ghostweary to sleep, and so kept glancing at the medicine closet, where a pack of shadows had gathered to escape the moonlight.

“But you know,” said the closet in a voice fit for knarred trees in a winters storm. “It’s not bad being a ghost, not once you get used to it. Oh, the fun you’ll have! You can scare ponies you don’t like. You get to visit your own funeral and then haunt your gravestone. ‘Here lies Little Miss Horn Skull,’ your parents will say. ‘Our Darling Disease Death, our late Skeleton-in-the-Earth. How we miss her.’ ”

Sweetie shivered under the blankets, reminding herself that closets didn’t speak. Closets were dead wood, brass bolts, and steel screws, and whoever had heard of screws that talked?

Even so, she gulped and said, “Wh-why would I go to my own funeral? Isn’t that weird?”

“Weird?” replied the closet in a groanful voice. “Why would you not go? Why would you not want to see how loved you were? Going to my own funeral was the best decision I ever made, make no mistake.”

Sweetie stared at the closet. The closet stared right back, unblinking.

“Closets don’t go to funerals,” Sweetie said at last, though her voice was only half sure and a quarter certain. “And they know when to be quiet and quit lying.”

The closet shook its head. Or rather, with no head to shake, the doors opened and shut, ever so slightly; and it said, “Hah! You honestly think that I'm the closet? Oh, that is precious. I died right in that bed of yours. Such a gruesome, ghastsome death it was too – a dozen doctors by my side, and not a single one of them could save me...

“But I digress. I merely haunt this closet, because the bed is strictly for patients. It’s for the most terminal of foals. The no-hopers. The final-stops. The end-of-the-lines.”

“No it’s not. You’re lying.”

“I saw the doctors in here earlier, tap-tapping against your horn. I heard the surgeons muttering. It sounded serious.”

"I don’t care. Leave me alone.”

“You ought to think of something to carve on your tombstone, Sickly Belle, while you have time. Here! Something like this. It’s a work in progress, but you get the idea.”

The ghost-in-the-closet cackle-chortled, then began to chant. Its voice was that of tombs and graveyards, and maggot-stinking coffins buried in the dirt.

“Cursed be he that moves my bones,
Cursed be she that digs.”

Sweetie clambered from bed onto the moon soaked tiles. Her horn – her throbbing, pounding horn which was the reason she was in hospital in the first place – ached with every step, a pain like hammers, like mallets. Yet she fixed her eyes upon the closet, and marched towards it.

The ghost continued.

“Cursed be they who crack this stone,
Be boiled alive
Like pigs, young pigs!
Be boiled, be broiled
Like pigs!”

“Why would you even say that?” Sweetie snapped. “Go away!”

And she opened the closet to shout at the ghost, and get it to leave her once and for all.

The closet was empty.

A shoal of shadows nipped at her hooves, and the little hospital room seemed bigger than before, larger, huger, vaster, greater, grander. She was alone. Her eyes watered, and with her heart and soul, blood, bile, bones, she wished she was home again. Yet though the sky star-sparkled through the window, the stars weren’t in a wish granting mood that night. Wishes wouldn’t help her. Magic wouldn’t soothe her. It was up to Sweetie herself to spin the feel of home there and then in the hospital.

“R-Rarity,” she whispered. “I need you...”

There was a moon gleaming pause. Behind her, Sweetie imagined the sound of her sister's hoofsteps. She didn't turn to look. It made it easier to pretend that Rarity was really in the room with her, and not fast asleep in the boutique.

“Whatever is the matter, darling?” she imagined Rarity saying.

Sweetie gulped. “I’m…”

“Come along, dear. Spit it out.”

Sweetie answered in a mouse-voice. “I'm scared. I’m scared that something’s going to go wrong tomorrow, and I’m not going to see you again.”

Still she didn't turn. And still she pretended that Rarity was whispering in her ear. “That’s O.K, Sweetie darling,” she imagined Rarity saying. “Everypony gets scared, every filly, every foal, every mare and stallion. Everypony. What matters is the manner in which we face our fears, and how we conduct ourselves when chilled by the shadow of fright. You are Sweetie Belle. You are kind, and loved, and you are not alone: you are brave. Don’t forget that. Don’t you ever.”

Sweetie shiver-shook on the cold tiles. Finally, she turned, and in the light of the moon she climbed back into bed, lonesome and home-yearning, yet warm. Rarity wasn't there of course, not really – yet, despite the fact that she wasn't there, Sweetie felt her presence. She felt it in her heart.

“I’m not alone,” she told herself. “I’m scared, but that’s alright, ’cause I’m not alone, I’m not alone, I’m not alone…”

And because she wasn’t alone, she found the courage to confront her nightmares, and sing them away.

“C-cursed be he that moves my bones,
Cursed be she that digs.”

There was a whisper of nightmares, a voice in the gloom. “What are you doing, Sickly Belle?” said the ghost-in-the-closet. “Those are my words. I didn’t give you the say-so that you could steal them.”

There was an edge to its voice, as though it sensed that no more was it the captain of Sweetie Belle’s fears. Sweetie sang louder.

“Cursed be they who tease—
Oh please!
Gimme a break,
Oh please!

Fiend in the dark,
You nasty ghost.
A coward at least,
A bully at most.”

“You think I’m teasing you?” said the ghost. “You think I’m a bully? A pester-nuisance? A hassle hound? I’m simply telling you the truth, my luckless ghost-to-be. I’m merely getting you set-up for the next life.”

Still Sweetie refused to listen, instead singing louder, louder, and LOUDER.

“Loved be they who sing,
Who play,
Who laugh,
Who kiss,
Who hug,
Who wish,
Who share their bliss,
Who – listen to this:
Fathers, brothers,
Sisters and mothers,
Friends so loved by me, you see,
My friends so loved by me!
They dwell in my heart,
Then in my dreams,
Best friends so dear to me, to me!
My friends so dear to me!”

Sweetie closed her eyes, and she felt so loved, so exceptionally, exceedingly, extraordinarily loved. And now she imagined that it wasn’t just herself snuggle-wrapped in the sheets, but her mother and father as well, her sister, and her dearest friends.

As long as she kept her eyes shut, nothing could prove otherwise. So long as she kept her eyes shut, she could imagine that they were really with her, and their love thundered in her heart.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Sweetie hissed at the ghost-in-the-closet. “You’re just a big old meanie-head, and I’m not afraid. Anyway, if I was a no-hoper, Rarity would be here. If I was a final-stop, my friends would be here. If I was an end-of-the-line, everypony would be here, because they wouldn’t leave me alone when I needed them the most.”

The truth of it blossomed in her heart. The fires of friendship blazed through her little body, setting alight her legs and hooves, belly and lungs, her horn. Sweetie Belle opened her eyes.

She gasped.

There stood the ghost.

When she had first heard the terrible voice in the gloom, Sweetie had pictured something dread-terrible, a shadow wrapped in darkness, with fangs of midnight. But now that the ghost had revealed itself, it was nothing of the sort. The ghost was a nightshine filly, a stardust pony: a foal made from the stuff of moonlight, with wide eyes and a trembling lip. The ghost looked younger than her. She was shaking, and her eyes watered with glowshine tears.

When the ghost spoke again, she sounded different, like another pony entirely. The foul tones were dropped. Her voice was as soft as the falling snow on a calm December night.

“But how do you know you’re loved so?” she said to Sweetie. “So what if you’re not dying? How do you know somepony loves you if they don’t visit you when it counts?”

A gulpworthy thought came to Sweetie Belle. Her voice was scarcely half a step above breathing. “Did you really visit your own funeral?" she asked the ghost. "Did you really listen to everypony talk about you?”

The ghost answered with hush-shush, then shook her head. “I didn't go,” she whispered at last. "I was too scared to."

“Then why lie? Why were you teasing me?”

Now the ghost tapped the tiles with a hoof and blushed the colour of moondust. “I dunno. Seeing you there all alone in the bed... it made me feel... it made me feel—"

Sweetie interrupted her. "Lonely?" she said.

The ghost gulped. "I’m sorry I fright-terrored you," she said. "I don't know what came over me. But you didn’t deserve that.”

It was an hour past bedtime, yet the feel of midnight had arrived early: that special feeling of sister hugs, and of facing the darkness with bravery and courage.

There were other forces at work that night, besides those of darkness and terror and lonlieness. They worked inside of Sweetie’s heart, drawing strength from the fires of her friendship.

What matters, she had imagined Rarity saying, is the manner in which we face our fears, and how we conduct ourselves when chilled by the shadow of fright.

The ghost was tiny, and lonesome, and shaking. Her tears glowed brighter.

Sweetie shuffled under the sheets. “Um… this is kind of a big bed here. I don’t know if maybe—”

There was no need to finish. The little ghost smiled, and her smile transformed her from a creature of tombstones to a spirit of pure day-shine. Her fur glowed bright: brighter than the stars, brighter than planets, brighter than the moon! And then she laughed and climbed under the covers. Sweetie wrapped her forelegs around her, ghostweary no more, but peaceful.

“I lied, you know,” whispered the ghost. “It’s not fun, being a ghost. Ponies don’t notice you, even when you need them to.”

“Ponies don’t always notice you,” Sweetie answered. “That doesn’t mean they don’t care. It doesn’t mean they’re not there, or that they don’t love you. Anyway, I noticed you.”

“Only because I teased you.”

But what the ghost had done in her loneliness didn’t matter to Sweetie Belle, not anymore: the two of them were together, now, and that’s what counted. They closed their eyes, and sang in the darkness.

“Lost be those who fear, who hate:
Oh lonely lonesome ghosts.

Forgotten.
Mislaid.
Missing.
Astray.
It’s what we fear the most, you hear?
It’s what we fear the most.

Yet in the dark, in this room,
In this dreary frigid gloom,
We found new love! New love! New love!
We let new love take bloom.

Blessed be they who love, my dears.
Blessed by they who love.”

Author's Note:

November 2017: Made a few light edits here and there, in order to clarify some of the more needlessly obtuse elements this story previously had. Hopefully it reads more clearly now.

Comments

[Night Of The Roses]

Cute! I loved it!

[Catalysts Cradle]

Great hook! The magical and fantastical elements if the story fit right in with the world of Equestria as does the overall message of the story.

[CatStar The Fourth]

OMG That was awesome!

[Lakeguy]

Such a sweet story

[Geminii]

Love the poetic language. It really enhances the atmosphere of the story.

[Admiral Biscuit]

D'aww even ghosts need hugs

[TechnoPagan9]

'Cursed Be He That Moves My Bones'

The last line of Shakespeare's epitaph. Fits the poetic nature of this story :)

[Tide Hunter]

I looked at the comments. They were positive.
I looked at the like ratings. They were excellent.
I looked at the description. It was not interesting, but not bad.
I looked at the story.
It was flawless. More than flawless.
Perfect.

I don't know why I wrote that in that manner.

[Scarlet Cinder]

There is more than a handful of quaintiloquent words in here.

[GroaningGreyAgony]

7088834
Watch for the prequel, “Blest be he that spares these stones,” starring Maud Pie.

[TechnoPagan9]

7095466 kk

[PresentPerfect]

Dashitall, you've got a real way with words.

“Only ’cause I was teased you.”

But I think you missed something here. :B

[Sypher]

How are your stories always this cute and sweet?

[Ellington]

https://youtu.be/jEDBFUBUc2A

For some reason this fic reminds me of this.

[Lurks-no-More]

A suitably spooky and cute story. Sweetie's defiance is awesome, yet it just sets up the reveal of the ghost's loneliness and what follows. A wonderful little read!

[Alondro]

Ghosts are that which is left behind by those to frightened to move ahead.

Or at least that's the poetic theme for them.

In fact, they're ectoplasmic imprints created by tenser field anomalies within the aural fields of the decoherent fluxions decaying within the long-term potentiated gated channels of dying CNS neurons.

s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/lg/public/2014/02/24/harold-ramis.png

Why yes, I do collect spores molds and fungus.

[Ardashir]

This is sweet and wonderfully written and so very true to the tone of the show and to Sweetie Belle's character.

[TheJediMasterEd]

Have you seen this movie? I recommend it:

"All I got was a rock."

[TheZouave]

7853650
...Is it bad that I looked at your explanation for less than a minute before it started to make sense?

Here's what I got from that sentence:
CNS neurons are probably the neurons involved in magical activity and/or storage, possibly including the magical signature.
The long-term potentiated gate channels are definitely magical storage.
Fluxions are excited during moments of emotional stress, making it easier to channel magic through them - however if no magic is channeled, and the emotion is intense/prolonged enough, then the fluxions become decoherent, leading to anomalous magical activity.
Aural Fields - synonym for magic field, notably distinct from electromagnetic fields.
Ectoplasm - a 100% magical substance, notable for it's inherent coherence and ability to interact with physical matter as though it was physical. It is what Ursa Majors and Minors are made of.

The scenario is that the filly was dying and in extreme emotional distress, and probably a unicorn. Her excited emotional state led to the stated chain reaction that left an imprint of her (magical signature?) in the ectoplasm. This imprint would have decayed had she not died, and possibly left behind a memory of what she went through. However she did die, and her consciousness was somehow transferred to the ectoplasm.

Excited fluxions may be an evolved survival trait. Also, the ectoplasm may be as well, because we don't know what happens to a magical brain at heart death. At this point in pony evolution it's conceivable that unicorns and pegasi can actively harness their magic to fight predators and possibly restart hearts with a shock or spell. At this point the ectoplasm might be useful for, in order of increasing severity, remembering what happened during "death", what happened before "death", restoring a magical signature, and restoring magical function.

What a fun bit of baseless supposition! Thank you.

[Alondro]

8650663 Well, I just thought if we were going to make ghosts 'scientific', I could do much better than the crappy 2016 Ghostbusters, with something I pulled out of my plot in 30 seconds.

Even spewing a mixture of BS, neuroscience, and random quantum principles; I managed to come up with a compelling notion for the 'science' of ghosts in a fantasy setting. That's speaks to how lazy the writing of 'Failbusters 2016' truly is.

[Alondro]

8641814 Yes I did. On a plane. I had to watch it twice... because I thought I must have missed something.

Several minutes of nothing but the wife stuffing her face with pie til she barfed. Uhm... I have seen people grieving over a lost spouse. It never looks like that. There was no symbolism or metaphor to it. And then there was all the weird time-travelly nonsense. Was it saying the universe repeated, or was the ghost in a time-loop? Either way, the movie contradicted the evidence of both, meaning neither could be true and creating an internal writing paradox! And then we have the glowy door near the beginning. What was that supposed to be? Did it mean there was an afterlife? But if so, how could the universe be a series of restarts? And when the ghost took the message from the door frame... does that mean his duplicate could never find it now? We saw in his particular loop that the message was in there until the house was knocked down... which means the PREVIOUS incarnation didn't dig out the message after making the noise on the piano, which was meant to symbolize, I suppose, that the universe was looping... which this other evidence indicated it DOES NOT since the presence of note in the crack of the prime ghost's timeline indicated those events DID NOT MIRROR EXACTLY.

Add to that the drugged out moron blathering on about pseudo-philosophical nonsense which also contradicted everything shown visually... and think from a narrative perspective that the monologue by the 'grunge prophet' in such films as these is supposed to be the one who has the 'truth'... well, from both the film's perspective and reality, he was completely wrong. In the real sense, light carrying information bears the imprint of what emitted it forever, so long as it is not absorbed by hitting matter, hence we see the light of stars that died billions of years ago. It is a quality of physics that 'information' cannot be destroyed anymore than can energy itself.

So, the movie's story was dull as all get out, and the pseudo-intellectual ramblings were nonsense. Only the modern artsy-fartsy crowd think the movie is anything special, primarily because they have no idea how anything actually works, nor possess the capability to construct a meaningful narrative; hence why they find piles of dirt and balls of randomly tangled strings count as 'art'.

It and "Boyhood" tie for #3 on my Overrated Movies list. "The Last Ledi" clinched the #1 spot recently, sending "James Cameron's Avatar" to #2.

[TheZouave]

8650711
Honestly, what were they thinking? That movie looked so bad even in the trailers that I knew it was a lost cause as soon as I knew of it's existence.

Anyway, since I have your attention, how often does one of your old comments get a reply like this? I've seen you comment in a lot of places.

[TheJediMasterEd]

8650730

You missed the point. That's okay, so did almost everyone else.

It's not about time. It's about territoriality and possession. A long sequence of time is used to illustrate the impermanence (but not futility) of both.

When you have lived long enough to see the edgy slang of your youth become the new twennythree-skidoo, you may have some idea of what I mean.

[TheJediMasterEd]

8650738

It's funny: although this was a movie full of young people, the theater was full of old people like me.

But then when I was younger I never had the patience for art house movies full of long silences and obscure themes. I still mostly don't. But the trailer interested me as it seemed to resonate with a passage in Walt Whitman's poem "To Think of Time:"

To think how eager we are in building our houses!
To think others shall be just as eager, and we quite indifferent!

(I see one building the house that serves him a few years, or seventy
   or eighty years at most,
I see one building the house that serves him longer than that.)

Not my favorite poem, but one whose oddness...well, haunts me.

[TheZouave]

8650890
I do not think it that odd. The first couplet seems to me to speak about antipathy. The second seems to reference religion, specifically Christianity and the parable about building a house on a strong foundation where your house -> your relationship with God.

...Hold while I go read that poem.

Okay, I didn't make it all the way through, but it seems to have overarching themes of perspective and duality. The trailer I saw of Ghostbusters seemed to make it out to be a crude action-drama with not a lot of action and way too much girl-drama (which, for me, is anything more than one or two scenes denoting that it happened, because that's the only way I've ever really experienced it. I just have no context for girl-drama.)

Clearly I don't understand how these two things could be related unless you saw the original Ghostbusters a long time ago, and you went to go see this one in order to see how the culture of ghost-busting has evolved. You did mention you were an "old person" (your words).

Also, I got confused. I thought both of TheJediMasterEd's comments were about Ghostbusters. After looking back over the comments, I now realize that your second most recent comment was discussion on "A Ghost Story".

[TheJediMasterEd]

8650992

Wait, you were talking about Ghostbusters?

Oh man, I thought we were talking about A Ghost Story!

"Don't cross the genres." "Why?" "It--would be bad."

[TheZouave]

8651022
More sense is made.

[Alondro]

8650738 I had a comment from 4 years ago a few months back. I didn't even remember the story I'd commented on.

[Alondro]

8650859 I'm in my 40's. I'm also a research biologist who's also studied history, cosmology, and physics in my spare time.

And I've been a fan of Doctor Who since 1980. I have seen fiction of all forms and all types.

Arthouse schlock doesn't interest me because the points of most of those movies I can dissect into little pieces with very little effort. I find most of them outrageously pretentious and/or outlandish.

"Ghost Story", if it indeed was meant to portray what you say it did, failed to do so effectively and instead focused far more on temporal and existential topics, including the blathering of the grunge philosopher. I can see the 'ownership aspect' superficially, but it doesn't fit with most of the 'topical' scenes of the film.

[TheJediMasterEd]

8653571

I'm in my 40's. I'm also a research biologist who's also studied history, cosmology, and physics in my spare time.

That's...very interesting, but I wonder what bearing it has on the matter at hand. We were discussing a minor art-house film, and I said that old age might lead one to judge it less dismissively. You riposted with your academic credentials.

Which were not in philosophy or cinematography or any field related to the the problem of interpreting a work of art which is (I admit) rather coquettish about its meaning.

Hm, coquette. Maybe that's the word that's wanted here. Because some art is flirtatious. It makes you think it means one thing, and then another, and maybe it means something you didn't want it to. Or nothing at all. That's alright. We're supposed to enjoy being flirted with. And some of us do.

And for some of us it's fuck or walk. That's alright too.

[Alondro]

8654567 Well, I expect that a movie's story will actually SAY SOMETHING, even if it's something totally silly. This movie didn't even appear to have made up its own mind on anything. A nonchalant shrug is meaningless no matter who's doing the shoulder movement.

[TheOneAJ]

read by midnight

[Loganberry]

Hello! Have a review. I've read enough of your fics in this mode by now to feel very optimistic that reading a new one will be a pleasure -- and so it was here. You really do have a wonderful way with words.

[Lucky Dreams]

11642589
Gosh, I haven't thought about this story in absolutely years. But thanks so much for the nice review! Honestly, it makes me really happy people are still reading + enjoying this so long after it was published

(Also, yikes, I thought I already followed you! I'm barely active here anymore, so I'm not sure it's worth much -- but have a very belated follow all the same!)

[Loganberry]

11642903
You're very welcome. Your stories have given me a lot of happiness over the years. Thank you for sharing them with us.

And thank you too for the follow! Regardless of how often you pass this way these days, it's still really nice of you.

[Ghost Mike]

An oddball ghost happened across your fic and read it. Have a review!

[Rune Soldier Dan]

Also a fun story. :) The little songs and brief length in particular make it feel right for being a spooky bedtime story that adults can also enjoy.

[Lucky Dreams]

11682963
I'm so sorry, I only just saw this somehow! But thanks so much, and I'm glad you enjoyed it