The Ghost Company

by Count Doofus

Investigation

"What in the wide world of Equestria have we gotten ourselves into? This place's like a nuthouse!" Applejack exclaimed.

"And I'm beginning to feel like belonging in one." Rarity said.

"We need to get the hay outta here, stat!"

"We can't," Twilight reasoned, "Pennywell locked the door."

"Can't you do anything, Twilight?" Spike asked. "Like, use a scrying spell or something?"

"Well... Maybe I could... But I only know the most basic of scrying spells. I haven't really looked into them that much." Twilight made a mental note to further educate herself in that area of spellcasting... assuming she'd get back to her precious library someday. "I can only keep it active for a short distance. If I guide it too far away from me, it disintegrates."

"Well, that means we'll have to sneak up on the heirs downstairs, right?"

"Yes it does, Spike," Twilight said as she carefully opened the door, and started creeping down the stairs and lowered her voice to a whisper, "though I do not condone sneaking around like this. But given the circumstances, I admit, I'm curious as well."

She halted in the middle of the staircase, figuring there was a reasonable distance between her and the salon. Recollecting her thoughts, she guided power to her horn, and a luminescent, purple orb visible only to herself manifested in front of her. She guided the orb down the rest of the stairs and around the corner, where Thunder Thorn's lawyer was unfurling a piece of parchment.

"I shall now proceed with reading out Mr. Thorn's will."

Before he could speak another word, the room went pitch black. Panic settled in among the heirs.

Lady Solitaire simply yelled.

"Who extinguished the lights?!" Majestic exclaimed.

In the darkness, a series of loud banging noises were heard, their origins unknown.

"What was that noise?!" Darkly Bristle demanded to know.

"Pennywell! Quickly, make some light!" Agate Wreath requested.

Part of the sudden darkness was broken, as the wrinkled face of Pennywell appeared in the light of a freshly-lit candle. He quickly moved to relight the other candles, which somehow had extinguished all at once.

"The noise came from the hallway." Majestic said, as he and the heirs went to check out the origin or the disturbance. They found Twilight laying at the base of the staircase.

"Twilight Sparkle?" Darkly Bristle said. "Did you fall down the stairs?"

"No, this is my way of descending." she groaned. The sudden collapse of illumination caused her to get thrown off-balance, which in turn caused her to tumble down.

As she got up, Barley Brew burst into the hallway. "Mr. Lavaliere has disappeared!"

"Please. You're constantly drunk." Solace said as she rolled her eyes.

"That's because I'm constantly thirsty." Barley Brew grinned back.

Darkly Bristle wasn't smiling, though. "He's right! Where did the lawyer go?!"

Out of nowhere, Pennywell took charge of the situation. "Strange things happen in the manor. Especially after midnight. I advice you all retreat to your rooms."

---

"A lawyer that disappears without a trace... Never thought I'd say this, but I'm inclined to think this place might be haunted after all." Twilight said, as the three ponies and the dragon sat on the edge of the largest bed in their room.

"I know one thing: I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight. I'm certain of it." She pouted. "This will definitely not be good for my complexion..."

"Shush... Ya'll hear that?" Applejack said, effectively silencing the room's occupants. Sure enough, strange noises could be heard, coming from somewhere above them.

"I hear it too. Sounds like it's coming from the attic."

"I don't know 'bout ya'll, but I wanna know what it is."

"Me too," Twilight said, "let's check it out. But let's all go together this time."

They walked out their room, and turned to the opposite side of the hallway to climb the next set of stairs. But just as they stepped out, the walls around them turned black, and in merely a moment, it looked like they were standing in an infinite void.

"Dear sweet Celestia! What's happening?!" Rarity nearly panicked.

In the darkness in front of them, a tiny speck manifested and moved towards them at an exceptionally fast rate. It was inconspicuous at first, but at the rate of speed it was moving, it grew in size rather quickly.

They all saw it coming towards them, and moved to the side as much as they were able, trying to avoid this apparition from colliding with them. As it swooshed past them, they got a good look at what it was.

It was a maneless pony, all white and transparent like a mild fog, its front hooves resting on the handles of a high wheel bike. It had no hind legs to speak of, since the lower part of its body trailed off into nothingness. It had an unsettling smile on its face as it didn't even slow down to pay any heed to the ponies and dragon it barely missed.

"Did... Did I just see..." Applejack began, at a loss for further words.

"Was that... a ghost? But... that's impossible!"

"We're hallucinating. We got to be!" Rarity exclaimed. "That's what you get from drinking too much wine! I wish I didn't have any!"

"I didn't drink any wine, and I saw it too." Spike countered.

Suddenly, Rarity yelped and jumped into Applejack's forelegs. "EEEK! Here comes another one!"

"What are you doing here?" This apparition asked. There was a familiarity to its voice that made the ponies somewhat at ease, and even more so when the "apparition" stepped closer. It turned out to be Pennywell, clad in a white night attire, on his way to his own room further down the hallway. Which, they noticed now, had restored itself to its original state.

"I advise you to remain in your quarters," he said as he walked into his own. "The manor spirits do not like to be disturbed."

Nopony dared to speak until Pennywell had removed himself from view.

"I say we do as he says." Rarity suggested.

"I second that." Applejack concurred.

"Come on, you guys," Spike said, "remember what Pinkie taught you? There's no such thing as ghosts!"

"Spike's right," Twilight said as she continued her way up the stairs leading towards the attic door, "together, we'll get to the bottom of this."

"Shh... hear that?" Spike said as they came up to the door. "Those are definitely hoofsteps."

"Rarity, watch out!" Applejack yelled suddenly.

Before Rarity could react, she could feel a presence tossing and turning around in her mane. Glimpses of leathery wings threw gusts of air in her face.

"Eeeek! A bat! Get if off, get it off!"

As if on command, the bat dispersed, and joined the rest of its kin suspended on the wooden beams which lined the ceiling. Only for some reason, this particular bat decided to stand up instead of hanging down.

"Maybe it's practicing yoga?" Spike asked jokingly.

Twilight had already opened the attic door, and lit up her horn to serve as a flashlight. "Not important right now, you guys. We gotta keep moving. Rarity's yelling surely alerted our presence to whomever is lurking around in here."

Rarity pouted immediately as she was busy trying to fix her mane. "But... but... bats!"

As the ponies, with Spike on Twilight's back, crept through the darkened attic, a pair of eyes followed them from the shadows. The light emanating from Twilight's horn hit it straight in the face as the presence shuffled into a better position, giving away its location.

"Who's ther... Lady Solitaire?"

"Uh... I was looking for Darkly Bristle, but he wasn't in his room. That's when I heard hoofsteps up here and got curious, so I came to investigate."

"Uh-huh... And what were you looking for in Bristle's room?"

Solitaire ignored the question. "Why don't we split up, and look in separate directions to find out what's going on?" Without another word, Solitaire turned around and walked off.

Twilight turned to face her friends. "Is it me, or does Lady Solitaire seem to be hiding something?"

"Hey, look over here," Spike said suddenly. "Do you think this was a hobby of Thunder Thorn?"

Spike pointed at a table, lined with bottles and laboratory equipment. Shelves attached to the outer wall were stuffed with books, and many bottles contained liquids of varying colors and densities.

"A laboratory?" Twilight stated. "Perhaps Thorn was an alchemist of some kind?"

A blood-curling scream filled the air.

"That was Solitaire!" Applejack shouted.

---

"Who... What are you?!" Solitaire asked, panicking.

Before her stood a pony, but there was several things wrong with it. The most obvious was its face. The muzzle was more pointy, and whiskers grew from the sides of it. Its eyes were sharper than a pony's, and yellow. Small fangs poked out of its mouth. And while its coat had doubled in length and had turned to a darker shade of its original color, its mane and tail appeared unkempt, as if a wild animal just tossed around in it.

Despite the changes, Solitaire still recognized the pony underneath the wolfish appearance.

"It's just me, Solitaire... Darkly Bristle," he said in a growling tone. "Every full moon, I turn into this... A lycanequus."

Solitaire screamed again, and fainted for the second time that evening. Twilight and the others simply gawked at the scene in front of them, as Bristle walked down the stairs leading away from the attic, the unconscious form of Solitaire hoisted on his back. He turned his head, and smiled a toothy grin at them.

"Darkly Bristle is a lycanequus? But... that's madness!" Applejack exclaimed.

Suddenly, the shattering of glass sounded from somewhere behind them.

"Now what?!" Rarity said as the investigating team went over to the source of the disturbance. What they found was a sizable pony laying in a sea of shards, having knocked down a shelf full of empty bottles meant for alchemical purposes.

"Barley Brew?"

"I saw two support beams... *hiccup* but I guess I supported against the wrong one." Despite his intoxication, he managed to stand up rather quickly. "But I made a remarkable discovery!" he said as he corked a nearby bottle, and offered it to Applejack. "Smell this."

"Is that... brandy?" Applejack said as she identified the smell.

"Yup! Seemed like *hiccup* uncle Thorn had a little white lie going on *hiccup* in here. I always knew it ran in the family, heh..."

"WATCH OUT! BEHIND YOU!" Rarity shrieked. Behind Twilight and Spike, the face of a demon appeared, moving in to swallow the unicorn and baby dragon whole with one gluttonous snatch. Twilight and Spike turned around, only to face a brick wall.

"What? There's nothing to see." Spike said incredulously.

Rarity started to fume. "Ugh! Then there's a ghost. Then there isn't a ghost! I've had it! I'm leaving! Right now! Immediately! This instant!" She started to walk forcefully towards the exit of the attic, leaving the inebriated pony to his drinking.

"But how, Rarity? We can't get out!" Applejack wondered.

"We'll see about that!"

For the umpteenth time that evening, a scream filled the air. This time though, there were two of them.

"More screaming?" Twilight asked.

"Sounds like it came from Solace and Majestic's room!" Spike pointed out.

As Twilight opened the door with her magic, she shut it again within a second or two. Solace and Majestic were standing on the bed, batting away dozen of tiny monsters of different sizes and shapes. Hairy monsters with multiple eyes, naked monsters with claws for hands, a bat with an impossibly wide smile, a monster with a trunk for a nose with an eye at the end, and many more variations Twilight didn't bother to discern.

"Okay, I'm convinced," she said. "We gotta leave. But how? You heard Thunder Thorn, magic gets nullified as soon as we step outside."

"Simple," Rarity deadpanned. "We just use our heads and some bedsheets."