The Haunting
Admiral Biscuit
She must have come back after I’d gone to bed, because after work and before laying down for my afternoon nap, I checked the attic and the trowel was gone.
I should have gone to bed; that would have been the sensible thing to do. After all, surely she’d be back after dark, and I could watch her some more. But I did want to know where she’d taken the trowel.
Obviously, it was meant to be used in the garden, so that was the logical place to look for it.
It had been kind of in the open before. That wasn’t something that had registered right away, but it should have. I’d always had a bad habit of not rolling up my garden hose, and it didn’t take all that long for the grass to grow up over it if I was lazy with the lawn mowing.
Had the trowel been left there since before I moved it, it would have been covered by something, which led me to believe that she had been using it in the garden. To what end, I had no idea. There weren’t any mysterious holes or missing plants.
It wasn’t in the garden. I suppose it could have been buried in the garden, but then it could have been buried anywhere.
My next thought was that it was on the roof. A thatched roof would be a pretty good hiding spot; she could have tucked it alongside one of the dormer windows or really anywhere, and I’d never find it.
She hadn’t done that. Instead, it was in the crotch of a tree, at nearly eye-level for me. That would have been a decent enough hiding place against an earth pony or a unicorn, but once I’d started to look around and consider other places to check, it was quite obvious.
I should have cleaned it off before; that way I would have known if there was fresh dirt on it now. I thought that there was, but I couldn’t be sure.
Wiping it off on my pants wasn’t really the best idea. Ponies were lacking in washing machines and laundromats, and it was kind of a pain to get my clothes cleaned, but old habits die hard and I did it without even thinking.
As I was putting it back in the tree, I thought about her toys. She must have known that they were being tampered with, so she hid them where I wouldn’t find them.
They weren’t well-hidden, but then kids often didn’t think things through as much as adults would.
Why would she want the trowel? Obviously, since I’d seen her in the garden before, it was to work with the plants. It had been fine to leave it out, but then she’d discovered it wasn’t where she’d put it before—she might have looked in the garden for it before coming to the attic, or she might have immediately recognized it when she saw it on the attic floor. Either way, she knew that someone had found and moved it, and so now she was trying to hide it so it wouldn’t get taken again.
That suggested that it was entirely possible that she had other things hidden other places.
I didn’t know where else in my house she went. While I’d only seen her in the attic, it was possible that there was a rubber duck hidden somewhere in the vicinity of the bathroom, or a dollhouse jammed up the chimney. There could be any number of secrets in the house that I hadn’t found yet.
I cast my mind back to my first days in the house, trying to tease out a memory of finding something else weird, something that I’d maybe just pushed back into my mind because I hadn’t considered supernatural explanations. I didn’t come up with anything of significance.
Would she have known that the house was being sold? Would she know what a sign out in the front yard meant? Did she even ever go out in the front yard?
Is a pony dollhouse actually a stable?
•••••
While I could have torn the house apart looking for mysterious things, I didn’t. I had a vague notion that that way lay madness. Pretty soon I’d be tearing off wallpaper looking for things behind it, I’d be bashing in the ceiling looking for toys hidden in little voids up there, in a place where a ghost could get it out but a human couldn’t.
I did wonder if she had some kind of supernatural sense for where her things were, and I considered going back outside and moving the trowel somewhere else, just to see if she could find it again. I didn’t have a good hiding place where I could watch the backyard, though.
That wasn’t an unsolvable problem; I just needed more boxes. Before too long, I’d have to start naming my box-forts so I could keep them all straight. One on each level of the house; two in the backyard, and one in the front yard would give me decent coverage.
After all, if a ghost hadn’t been interesting enough for my neighbors to mention, maybe they’d ignore my box-forts, too.
Did ponies have zoning regulations or HOAs? Too many box-forts might net me a fine.
•••••
She hadn’t stolen any of my stuff. Maybe she was honest, and knew what was hers and what wasn’t. Or maybe I just didn’t have anything that was appealing to a filly. There was no reason that she couldn’t have come and looked through my clothes, but what would she want with a pair of pants? Maybe cups would be worth taking for tea parties, and maybe she had in the past. That could be why she was frustrated that the attic stairs were blocked, since I now knew that she couldn’t take objects through the roof.
The office had some paperwork in it, nothing terribly important since ponies in general didn’t really see the appeal. In that way, they were much wiser than humans.
It was hard to imagine a ghost reading through paperwork, anyway. I’d never seen a ghost reading anything.
That did raise an interesting question in my mind. If I found a kid’s book, would it interest her? There was a bookstore in town. That was a possibility.
What I’d do with it when I had it was another question. I could put it in the center of the attic floor, and see if she’d fall for the bait again, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that she might not. The trowel was something that was hers, but a new book might make her suspicious. It would be more natural to put it in a place that such a book might naturally be found—a bookshelf or a table. But then how would I know if she’d found it? If it was gone, that would be obvious, but if it wasn’t? Was she conscientious enough that she’d put things that weren’t hers back when she was done with them? If she was having tea parties with my dishes, she was.
Still, there was of course no harm in finding a book first and then figuring out what to do with it later, so the next day after work I went book shopping.
•••••
We humans had lost our way with stores. They were almost all the same, and while people often thought of that as a good thing—that there was some advantage to getting the same double mocha grande latte with soy milk at every Starbucks, it took some of the fun out of buying. The stores all looked the same, and they all felt the same. There was no fun in going to a store and discovering something new and unexpected.
Ponies generally sold whatever they felt like in their stores. While that was in some ways a disadvantage, thus far I hadn’t found a bad shopkeeper. Maybe it had something to do with their cutie marks, or maybe it was because virtually all of them owned the store, were related to the owner, or were an apprentice.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that on Earth bookstores were either new bookstores or used bookstores and there generally wasn’t overlap. In Haywards Heath, the pony who ran the bookstore—who was named Bradel—had decided that a book was a book and its provenance didn’t matter, so he stocked both brand-new and well-used books all intermixed.
That shouldn’t have seemed all that strange to me; Amazon worked the same way, and as often as not a link for a book would give both new and used prices. It was still weird to see them arranged on the shelf like that, though.
After muddling around for far too long trying to figure out what kind of book a filly might like, I just asked him.
Of course, he wanted more specific details, ones that I couldn’t provide. But I said that she liked playing with dolls and also enjoyed gardening, and was both inquisitive and shy, and I also admitted that I wasn’t all that good at estimating pony ages and it was kind of embarrassing to not be able to be more specific but surely he could understand.
He didn’t, but he nodded politely anyway and showed me a section of children’s books. I picked Bathtime for Biscuit, since it was lavishly illustrated and starred a puppy. Surely a filly would like that.
Plus, it was gently used, which I thought would make it seem less suspicious.
Your autobiography?
Provenance is the word for reference to something's origin.
(Though there may be a case for a supernatural provision joke given this story's [adorable] subject!)
9297491
Well done, sir/madam.
I cannot wait for later in the story for other ponies to finally be brought into the insanity of the protagonist's evolving ghost observatory and habitat. With all the changes he'll make to either properly observe or manipulate the ghost to act in certain ways. I have a feeling it'll get as extravagant as those people who modify their homes to be cat playgrounds.
I see our hero subscribes to the Solid Snake school of paranormal investigation. One can never have too many boxes.
And now I'm nostalgic...
This next experiment should be quite interesting indeed. Looking forward to the results.
I demand another
I name this Bookfort, StoreBooks.
And this one, Storebooks.
And this book store. Freds Plaice.
9297697
I figured Bradel must've been some sort of reference, but I'm clueless as to what it's referencing. Would you mind explaining this one for me?
9297768
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradel_binding
>A thatched roof
>one of the dormer windows
I was more willing to believe in ghosts than the possibility of these things existing together, but Google has proved me wrong.
9297909
Plus it's canonical
derpicdn.net/img/2018/1/22/1637999/large.png
Dormers, dormers everywhere
9297697
i.chzbgr.com/full/8494839296/hAA46101B/
2.bp.blogspot.com/-nJ3pzmVSXh0/UcVqkUA42QI/AAAAAAAANhU/SA74Ijl_y34/s1600/IMG_0044.JPG
My sister loved these books.
9297768
In addition to the binding method, there was also an excellent Fimfic author by the name.
Awwww, he's buying her a book, how sweet!
9297768
Likely a reference to the book binding technique. I would have said a reference to an old second hand bookstore but I do not expect the Admiral was ever over in Melbourne, Australia before the early 90's when that bookshop closed. ;-)
Don't worry about tearing the house apart. It is here the path to madness begins. Just look around you.
So many connotations that it's disorienting.
9301615
Well, you can't sue for anything, but for just about anything, yes.
Think of if like a contract. You need three major things: and offer (follow these rules and we promise to enforce them), acceptance (you're living here and paying taxes... you better!), and compensation (we actually hold people accountable for these things, thus protecting you while the government upholds its bargain).
It's not a perfect analogy, but it's close. So, the basic rule is that to claim suit, you must show that your opposition broke some rule and thus impoverished you in some fashion. It's one of the reasons that most cities have strange ordinances, like Lansing making it illegal to be annoying, or Quebec making it illegal to eat garlic on public transportation.
9297491
Maybe. . .
9297538
Correction made; thank you!
There probably is, honestly.
9297653
And there’s so many ways that can go, from his various modifications to his neighbors seeing him creeping about at night doing weird things to who knows what? How far can he go before the ponies think he’s crazy? Will he solve the mystery before it gets to that point, or will a few nice ponies with butterfly nets and strait-jackets come give him a visit?
9297697
It’s true. You can never have too many boxes.
As I was researching for a name (as one does), I discovered bradel binding, and that was what I had to use for a name.
Hopefully they’re positive, and he’s not barking up the wrong tree.
9297746
Okay, I just published another.
9297751
Once he’s got multiple box-forts, he’s of course going to have to have other observers, and maybe some kind of soup can and string communication network between all the box-forts.
9297768
Yes, as others have observed, it’s both a reference to the book binding technique and the fimfic author.
9297909
Out of curiosity, why would you think that you couldn’t put dormers in a house that had a thatched roof?
9297995
Really, when you look at pony houses, dormer windows are by far one of the less interesting architectural features. The weird overhangs and strange cobbled together multistory designs are far weirder, IMHO.
9298337
I’ve never read one, although I’ve seen it for sale in the store.
9298841
9299356
Agreed. His own house is plenty of proof that a pony dollhouse is probably not a stable.
9301951
Eh, you can sue for anything, but there are a lot of things where your case will be dismissed quite quickly.
One other factor that is overlooked is that in order for a suit to be successful, there needs to be some kind of relief or remedy that the court can grant. There’s a particular term for that, but I’m blanking on it right now. In the case of our protagonist’s house, the court could order that the bank take back the house and refund him all he’s spent on it thus far, plus possibly a penalty if they knew it was haunted and purposefully hid that information--assuming that that was in Equestrian contract law. The court could also rule that the bank has to send in a ghost remover, if such a thing exists. However, it could also be known to any reasonable pony that part of a proper home inspection was to have the house checked for spirits, and if the protagonist failed to do that, that’s on him, not the bank.
Finally diving back into this fic. Hopefully there will be dialogue by the end.
9323838
There is some, but there won’t be a lot. Just the nature of the writing style on this particular story, not to mention that if our protagonist started talking to the ghost from his box-fort, he’d give his position away.
Besides naming bases he really should be keeping a log...
9330000
He really should be. But he’s not that smart.
9338819
Or is he other
DONT ASSUME HE/SHE GENDER!!!!!!!!!¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡
Make a custom gender mary sue
"Bathtime for Biscuit."
I've seen that one in the workplace many times.
9331297
Sure he is. We're reading it!
9338821
The protagonist in this story is male. I suppose I could write a story with a custom gender protagonist, but this ain’t the one.
9339000
I came across it in Target, myself. Quite by accident, but for obvious reasons the title stuck with me.
Well, that’s a fair point.
And these, my friends, are the important questions to be asked!
...
Biscuit...my dear author...what are you doing?
9344889
I know, right? The show doesn’t answer it, as far as I know.
It’s a real book. and it’s popular with kids, or so I’ve heard.
9347019
I would assume that they would not be stables, since I don't think I've actually seen a stable in MLP.
Though maybe the word "stable" would be the term for a dollhouse.
Was there actually ever any real description of her size or apparent age? I mean, she was described as playing with toys, but that's about it...
Yes, you do. Your cupboards were left open the first days
I kind of doubt it
So... she is a kid, then?
Remarks and corrections:
> and before laying down
again, "lying down".
9984984
I don’t think by this point in the story it was specifically stated, no. She is (was) a filly, if that’s what you’re wondering, and I think at the point the protagonist looks around the cemetery to try and figure out who she was, he’s specifically looking for foals.
Although he doesn’t know for sure that she’s the one doing it.
Yeah, he’s probably safe on that.
Yes, she is.
A pox on paperwork
11285655
Agreed. Paperwork is evil.
Bathtime for who?