The Hole

by Unwhole Hole

Chapter 6

She stood on the stage and looked out- -out at empty rows of seats, silent in the cooling air. This had been her last hope, her last vision of everything turning out alright. If they would have come to her show. Maybe still sick (but in her mind, they were all better; somehow, through some means, the problem had been solved). Starlight would be standing beside her, and the ponies would be cheering for her as she performed the tricks she had painstakingly planned for months.

Except now there would be no show. At the start, Trixie had tried- -she had really tried- -to make it go on, but it was not the same. There was just no way to perform without an audience. There was no point in it. And now, as she sat on the splintery but well-polished wood of her stage, she looked out and realized that this was all real. That things were not going to get better.

She stayed for an hour, still clinging to the last threads of hope that somepony would come. Even just one, solitary pony. On a normal night Trixie would have considered that a grave insult, if just one pony came to a show, but now she would have considered it a miracle- -but none came. Not even one.

So she left the stage and walked the town. That, she quickly realized, was a mistake. Perhaps she could have found some way to justify why there were no ponies at her show. Maybe she had promoted poorly, or they simply did not like her. She could have convinced herself of that eventually, and driven away the realization that she was no forced to face head-on.

The town was empty. No ponies walked the streets. No shops or stalls were occupied, and no ponies looked down from their windows. Doors stood open, shifting in the wind, and uneaten food still sat on the tables of the outdoor cafés. Near Carousel Boutique, Trixie had even for a moment thought she had seen a pony- -and her eyes had lit up with hope- -only for her to realize that it was a display mannequin, one placed outside in the morning but that had now come unmoored. It had drifted, the rack that held it bumping into the wall of the building repeatedly. The clothes it wore had mostly blown away in the wind, and were strewn across the street.

“H…hello?” asked Trixie. As if the mannequin might answer. Or as if there was another pony to answer- -but there were none. And Trixie knew why.

Slowly, Trixie turned her head. Toward the west. She did not know where it was, exactly, as she had never been there- -but she knew that it was where they would be. At the hole. Doing what, she had no idea, but she knew that something had to be done.

It was a question of who- -and it was a question that was answered as Trixie slowly began walking in that direction. She was at first surprised, but knew of nothing else that she could do. There was no one to call for help. All the friends she had in all of Equestria were in this town, and by now they were all at the hole. There was no one left to help. Thoughts occurred to her that maybe she could find some way to contact Celestia, or Luna, or some other pony- -but she had no idea how. Spike was gone, and the post office stood empty. And if she ran, she would not know where to go- -and might come back too late.

Yet she did start to run. Not to get help, and not away. But toward the west. She only stopped as she crossed the last buildings of the town and entered the narrow paths through the fields that bordered the EverFree Forest- -and only stopped because she heard a voice.

Trixie screamed, more out of surprise than outright fear. She jumped, her horn sparkling and flashing with some useless spell that would do very little to help her in a fight. Fighting, though, would not be necessary. Trixie knew that as soon as she saw the pony standing behind her, waiting in the shadow of a building.

She was a Pegasus. A pale one. But she did not look like the others had. Although her mane had become somewhat disheveled, and her eyes were strangely bloodshot, as though she had been crying. Her expression was strong and hard, though, and her gaze intense. There were no tears now.

“Fluttershy!” cried Trixie. “You almost gave Trixie a heart-attack!”

Fluttershy stared at her. She just stood there.

Then she spoke. “Trixie,” she said, her voice clear. “Don’t go that way. Please.”

Trixie looked at her, and then down the path. “They’re out there,” she said.

“I know. At the hole.”

Trixie looked back. “But you’re not.”

Fluttershy shook her head. “No.”

“But why? Why aren’t you like them?”

Fluttershy stared past Trixie, into the Forest. “Because I KNOW.”

“How? Why?”

Fluttershy slowly turned toward Trixie, and their eyes met. “Because the animals. The animals that went there…THEY NEVER CAME BACK.”

Trixie stared back. Fluttershy’s eyes seemed distant, but not like Starlight’s had. Her mind was not able to wander. She was not able to escape the reality that surrounded her. She had never seen the hole.

“We have to help them,” said Trixie.

Fluttershy shook her head. “If you go there, you won’t come back either. I don’t know how I know that, but I know it.”

“Well what else am I supposed to do?!” screamed Trixie, her voice cracking. Yet even then, Fluttershy did not react.

Fluttershy did not answer. She did not need to. Her choice was already evident. It was a choice that Trixie wished so dearly she could follow- -to stand here with Fluttershy, to dwell safe in an empty town, or perhaps to escape entirely. To go to some far-off place like Cloudsdale or Detrot, Canterlot or maybe even Manehattan, to forget a little town called Ponyville ever even existed.

Fluttershy could do that. Perhaps because she was afraid, or perhaps because her sense of survival was far more keen than Trixie’s would ever be. In either case, because she had already given up hope.

Trixie had not.

Clouds began to gather in the sky. Approaching the EverFree, the weather ceased to belong to the domain of Pegasus control- -but further, that uncontrolled nature was beginning to seep into Ponyville. There was no longer anypony to control the flow of clouds, or which ones would bring rain or cold breezes. Trixie pulled her collar close to her as the temperature began to drop, hoping that it would not rain.

The path from the fields led uphill, and soon trees were visible. Trees that no longer looked quite green. Wind blew slowly through their trunks, coming out from the place where they grew thick and dense. It carried with it the scent of the swamp and the forest, and something else. Like the perfume of several of the townsfolk, mixed with something darker.

Trixie only hesitated for a moment before forcing herself to walk down the well-worn path into the woods. Trees loomed on every side, nearly silent save for the slight rustle of their leafs against the wind. High above, the sky was gray, and the clouds were rolling by quickly, driven by a powerful wind that did not reach the ground. All around her was the scent of dying leafs.

The path sloped upward, but only slightly. It was rocky, but not exceptionally so, and not at all overgrown. Not anymore. Yet, the whole way, Trixie felt herself breathing harder, to the point where the only sound she could hear was the rush of her breath in her own ears.

Then she saw them. There was no time to prepare for it, to think about what might be there: she simply came to a clearing. A clearing that only days before had been filled with foliage and underbrush, although both of those had now collapsed into gray and crumbled, with the rest having either been trampled or pulled out to make way for ponies. The trees that had shaded the hole and overlooked it had likewise undergone changes, losing parts of their bark and all of their foliage- -as if they had been poisoned, or perhaps drained.

This was where the entire town now stood. They were silent. Each and every one of them. They stood, all in a group, all staring in the same direction but no longer necessarily west. They were staring at the hole. At it, and down it. All of them were pale, and not one of them moved. The expression in their eyes was no longer distant- -but neither was it joyful. It was simply horribly, terribly intense.

Trixie stared at them from a distance, not knowing what to do. Some dark instinct had frozen her: that she must not get near them. That they were diseased and broken, that Fluttershy had been right- -that it was too late and that the only option was to escape before she too was infected.

The hole was beyond them. Surrounded by them. Above them ran an endless stream of gray clouds, and a chilly breeze ran silently through the clearing. No pony moved, and there were no leafs left to fall from the diseased trees. No animal made a sound. Neither did any pony.

Then it began. The most horrible thing possible. As if they had been waiting.

It started with one of the mares closest to the hole, one who Trixie could barely see through the crowd. Trixie barely knew her, but her name was Daisy. A flower pony, one of barely any consequence- -but still the one who went first. It was as if the slight, frigid breeze that came through the trees had caught her as it passed, giving her just the slightest push she needed.

There was no sound. She simply tilted and fell forward, and then vanished down the hole.

It moved like a wave, and there was no way for Trixie to stop it. Those that were closest seemed to lean, fell, and were gone. Those that were Pegasi did not open their wings or attempt to fly. They just fell. The rest began to move forward, moving closer to the hole now that they were given a chance- -and they fell too, dropping silently into its depths.

“NO!” cried Trixie. “NO! WAIT!”

None even turned. Applebloom, the last remaining of the fillies who had first found the hole, struggled to her hooves and dropped in. Behind her was Applejack, then Rarity. Then more. And more.

Trixie rushed forward, silently and desperately praying to every Princess she knew that the hole would fill, that the ponies would not drop very far, that there would be too many and that soon it would be packed with sleepy ponies in a great heap. That they would be close enough that she could maybe find somepony to help pull them out. That they were not gone for good.

Except the hole did not fill. Nor was there any sound from it. No sound of ponies hitting the bottom. No thump or vibration, and no screams of descent. Only silence.

“Twilight! Help them!” Trixie tried to force her way through the crowd toward the deathly thin alicorn Princess. It was not hard. The ponies all felt light and weak- -except that their forward progression could not be stopped. It was already too late.

And it was already too late for Twilight. She reached the edge and never looked back. She fell to her side and plummeted like a stone, turning as she fell, looking up one last time at the sky. Perhaps wishing she could see the sun one last time- -except that it was obscured, and her blind eyes would not have seen it anyway.

“No! NO!”

Trixie tried to grab the nearest pony. He was a stallion, a blue one, and he had a name that Trixie had never learned. He was of no consequence to her, but he was nearest. Trixie grabbed onto him, trying to slow him with every ounce of physical strength she had- -but he did not slow. He pulled her forward, toward the hole, until she eventually had to let go for fear of being drawn in with him. Then she watched him enter the hole, dropping off its edge and falling into the inky darkness with ten other ponies. All sinking silently, not looking at anything in particular.

Trixie looked up, tears in her eyes, and looked at the dwindling numbers. There were so few left. Then her eyes spied a color that might once have been pale lavender.

“Starlight! STARLIGHT!”

Starlight actually stopped, just on the edge of the hole. Trixie ran to her, and Starlight turned. For a moment, their eyes met, and there was recognition in Starlight’s gaze. Recognition and sadness as she slowly tilted. As her hooves ceased to hold the earth at the edge of the hole. Trixie was not fast enough to pull her back, and those eyes stayed locked on hers, staring with profound sadness the whole way, until they disappeared into darkness and Starlight was forever gone.

Then and only then did Trixie collapse. Not that it mattered. Starlight had been one of the last, and now there were none. No more ponies save for a blue unicorn with a long, white mane. A mare who wept bitterly in an empty clearing, alone save for a deep and empty hole.

She cursed it. Cursed it even though she did not understand it, and through her tears, she looked into it. What she saw in that darkness, none would know. She alone was immune to it, as she had come too late. As she understood, and saw the sadness it had brought. That sadness insulated her from the false-joy that it had brought the others. She was not as fortunate as they would be.

And yet she stood. Though it had no pull on her, she walked to the edge, weeping. Weeping because there was nothing left. Then she fell silent. Tears streaming down her face, she held her breath- -and leaned forward. Her hooves lost their grip, and she fell. Toward the only friends she had ever had.

None would know what had happened in those woods. None dared approach it. Neither the forest, nor the abandoned village that stood just beyond it, overgrown with vines, with plates still sitting on the tables. As if the entire population had simply gotten up and walked away, leaving behind the happy lives they had once lived. A castle filled with decaying books, a rotting magician’s stage in the courtyard, endless fields of dying apple trees surrounding a crumbling farmhouse, a group of skeletal mannequins that looked as though they had lost their skin and silken flesh trying to flee a collapsed boutique. These and hundreds of other things. Things that ponies feared, even though in truth, their fear was misplaced.

Only one had survived. A hermit, left alone and broken. Ponies feared her like they feared the cursed village, but she remembered what had been there. Sometimes, on very rare occasions, explorers would come to her- -never to the village, of course, but to her cottage on its outskirts, surrounded by stranger gardens and many stranger animals- -and they would ask her to tell them what had happened. From the look in her eyes, they knew that she remembered- -but would never say.

Yet, many of these explorers would note how she would sometimes drift off and look toward the west. She would never go that way, but would stare. Longingly. As if she were expecting an old friend to return from that way. But none ever did.

It was not until the latter years of her long life, many decades later, where she overcame the fear. Where she felt the longing for the friends she had once known, and the ones she had been too afraid- -too cowardly- -to even try to save. It was on that day that she ventured to the forest that no longer had a name.

And what she found was nothing. Nothing at all. There was no hole, and no clearing surrounding it. Perhaps because it had been filled in, or had collapsed long ago, washed in by the random and unstable rain of the forest. Gone and erased as easily as the population of the town whose name had by then been long forgotten.

That was what she would say, had any pony bothered to ask her in those last months of her life. Had she herself not been forgotten, save by the animals that kept her company. Yet, late at night, she would lay awake at night with one thought running through her mind. An insane, impossible thought, one that she feared would drive her insane if she even paused to acknowledge it.

The thought that, perhaps, somehow, the hole had never even existed at all.

Comments

[sailing101]

I was more worried about the space octopus.

[Chaosreverent]

"There was a hole here, but now it's gone"

[Adan Druego]

Makes you wonder about those unexplained mass disappearance throughout human history.

[Legioner8]

i.pinimg.com/originals/50/7c/fb/507cfb3d8aa1528025eaee9f4283ecc9.png

Also, reminds me of this
i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/001/480/Screenshot_168.jpg

[DoctorTHUNDER]

Was this in any way inspired by the Tom Ska skit? Just curious

[Unwhole Hole]

9344199
Not that I am aware of. I do not know this thing.

[Silver Hoof]

Junji Ito meets H. P. Lovecraft with ponies. This fucking terrified me. I'd kind of like to know what happened to Trixie since she was immune to the hole . Would she end up wherever everypony else went after dropping into the hole ?

[Scarborough]

This was seriously poignantly disturbing.
Brava.

[GaPJaxie]

9463562

I second this review. Good stuff.

[Imaginedom]

Reminds me of Roanoke. Anyways, I enjoyed this fic but it relies on plot holes to work. For example, why didn't Trixie head to the train station for help? Why didn't Fluttershy fly to Cloudsdale? And the ending makes no sense, the princesses would've intervened, hell, where was Discord?

[Fiddlebottoms]

Or maybe Trixie doesn't save the world.
It has a rough start, but once it gets going it is an excellent Weird story. Somethings happened, everyone disappeared, the world moved on.

[StubobNumbers]

9148865
"Phantoms" by Dean Koontz has a similar plotline involving a town's population disappearing.

[FarmFreshAppleTarts]

10064451
This hole...it's made for me

[Prometheushunter2]

I think I know what the hole is. The hole wasn’t just some supernatural hole, it was a predator, it was like a Venus flytrap, unmoving but instead just waiting for prey to be lured in, Except instead of using enticing smells it used a powerful memetic agent that slowly took over the minds of the infected, until all that they could think about was the hole. It came, it fed, and it moved on, uncaring and probably not even aware of the horror and suffering it has wrought

[TheJacksonFive]

This reads like an SCP tale. Incredible.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

[LeylaQuartz]

10215925
I was thinking the same thing!!

[LeylaQuartz]

Wow, that was really good and heart breaking. My pulse is racing as I felt quite uneasy, even though you had already made it clear in the beginning it was too late.

[PresentPerfect]

wow

[Moosetasm]

I think this is a spectacular take on a blend of several horror conventions. I can also appreciate any horror that results in everyone having absolutely no idea what happened.

[overdue]

I love the irreverent tone where there's humor and bluntness earlier on mixed in with the horror. it makes the story feel sincere

[TheArchive]

Eh, it was alright but I just couldn't get into it. Even now having finished it the whole thing still feels like a parody thanks to the characters and the way everyone acted.