Nightmare Night

by Ninjadeadbeard

Nightmare Night

Nightmare Night,
What a fright!
Give me something good to bite.

But if you don't,
By morning light,
Then this will be your last good night...

---

A pale moon hung low in the skies over Ponyville, draped in an eerie fog that seemed to seep down out of the heavens like the claws of some gargantuan beast searching for a few scrumptious ponies to snack upon. The streets of the town were heavy with this midnight mist, buffeted around only by the cold, moaning sigh of the autumn wind that blew across the land.

And all this lit by the haunting, waning glow of a few jack-o-lanterns lurking in the dark.

What else would one expect from Nightmare Night?

Well… the night before Nightmare Night.

But while the town sat in the expectant gloom of its most precious and beloved holiday, just on the outskirts there stood a singular tree-house where this story truly begins.

For you see, twas the night before Nightmare Night, and somewhere in that tree, slept the dastardly Cozy Glow, and her warden Princess Anarchy. The two were in Anarchy’s mother’s old room, having moved in there for the duration of Cozy’s parole. Ann’s usual abode was the Realm of Chaos, and Ann’s father Discord thought bringing Cozy Glow into that dimension of madness, insanity, and cotton candy, given their own past history together, might be “super awk-weird”.

There was a whole story about this. Go read that. Stop being lazy.

Ann was tucked deeply into a rather normal bed, and despite this being the least normal thing she could possibly imagine, the little Ponequus was soundly asleep. Sometimes having a bed made out of fluffy things and not literal clouds, ocean spray, and metaphysical objects (such as the sense of irony, the platonic ideal of the word ‘papaya’, or the laughter of sugar-rushing pixies) could be quite nice indeed.

Cozy Glow, meanwhile, slept a little less soundly in her own bed, a tiny little pink mattress set into the corner of the room. She grumbled, and grunted, and groaned in her sleep.

And, on occasion, chuckled wickedly.

“Thank you Tirek,” she sleepfully said. “My dearest and bestest friend… Bring me another prisoner… I wanna torture Yona next…”

The moon was, as always, perfectly aesthetically framed in the nearby window, shining its silvery light into the room. And as Cozy dreamt her darkened dreams, the shaft of moonlight began to creep along the floor in an unusual manner.

A manner as though somepony were moving it.

“Heh, Professor Shy,” Cozy muttered. “Won’t you look better without those wings? Chrysalis? My shears. Your Empress commands it…”

The moonbeam neatly bent around Anarchy’s own bed, seemingly dipped past and around a few haphazardly discarded costumes lying on the floor, and made a beeline for Cozy Glow.

As it fell across her face, the oddly cherubic little despot frowned.

“Wait… you’re not Flutter…”

She squirmed.

“Tirek? Chrysalis? Where… where are you?”

Sweat broke out over Cozy’s brow, and she bunched her covers up around her forehooves.

“No, you… get back!”

Cozy turned over in her sleep in almost a vain attempt to turn away from the blazing moonlight still falling down upon her.

“I… I said I was sorry…” she whimpered. “Please, anypony… help… help me…

“Grampa…”

The mewling cries went on for only another moment. As Cozy’s distress peaked, a strange sound began to echo in the House of Shy. The ticking of an old clock somewhere in the rooms below. This, despite the fact that there were no clocks in the house after Ann’s little siblings had turned the old grandfather clock into a moody teenager clock and it moved out in a huff the week before.

But tick the nonexistent clock did.

At least, until it finally struck Midnight.

And before there could be even the first singular chime of that strange, possibly imaginary bell… Anarchy broke loose.

With a single, mighty leap, the Princess of Chaos was up and out of her bed, firing into the air like a launching rocket.

She drew in one breath, and shouted…

“IT’S NIGHTMARE NIIIIIIIIGHT!!!!!”

Instantly, spinning alarm lights of orange, black, and green dropped from the ceiling and whirred to life. The shriek of mareiachi music cut the air as the nearby closets burst, and a troop of sombrero-wearing skeleton ponies stormed into the house. Bats and owls and candy-corn spewing jack-o-lanterns leapt out from their hiding places, adding to the madness as the shadows themselves came to life and started to dance upon the floor.

Ann spun about in the air, and let out another cheer as cotton candy spider webs draped themselves down from the sky and a pair of tiny Nightmare Moons started doing the hopak across the floor in time with the music.

“IT’S NIGHTMARE NIIIIIIIIGHT!!!!!” she screamed again.

Cozy Glow, amidst all the sudden screaming and shrieking and shaking…

Was nowhere to be seen.

The Princess of Chaos blinked, then gave a sharp whistle by placing the tips of her bat-like wings into her mouth and blowing. The skeletons scattered, and the jack-o-lanterns jack-o-left the way they’d come in. The music and lights shut off with a heavy, mechanical thud, and the shadows, bats, and other spooky things slunk off for parts unknown, taking their banners and confetti with them.

And yet, even with two tiny Nightmare Moons helping her, Ann couldn’t seem to see Cozy anywhere. Even her bed was empty, missing both occupant and blanket.

This was overall alarming to Ann. She was Cozy’s parole officer and best friend, for one thing. And for the other, Cozy had been magically bound to not be able to move more than a few yards away from her, so a complete lack of Cozy Glow was indeed cause for concern.

“Uh… Cozy?” Ann asked the darkness of her room.

Nopony answered. Though, oddly, Ann could hear a distinct rattling sound coming from above her.

She looked up, and instead of one of the mareiachi skeletons still hanging around, it was Cozy Glow. Hanging, as it were. In that she had somehow leapt straight out of bed and embedded her hooves into the wooden ceiling of the tree-house.

It looked like a very tight grip, considering the little cracks spreading out from her hooves.

A death grip, in fact.

Anarchy frowned, and drifted up towards the ceiling.

“Cozy?” she asked as she came up alongside her ward. Cozy’s eyes were slammed shut, and it looked like she was gritting her teeth. “You okay?”

The pink pegasus said nothing. Her teeth stopped grinding up against each other, and she slowly opened her eyes.

And then, as her gaze met Ann’s, she screamed.

Ann flew back at the sound, while Cozy Glow dropped through the air, landing solidly on Ann’s bed, rebounding off their springs onto the floor with a little oof as the wind was knocked out of her.

The Princess blinked a few times in rapid succession. Cozy didn’t seem to rise from her crash landing, but she also didn’t continue screaming.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no’, then?” she offered, if lamely. Ann flew down quickly to Cozy’s side, and carefully lifted some of Cozy’s blue bangs out of her eyes with the tip of a wing.

Cozy didn’t open her eyes again, but she did give a little snort with her nose.

“I hate you,” she groaned.

Ann blushed. “Sorry, I might’ve gotten a little excited there.”

“A little…” Cozy seethed. Without opening her eyes, she slowly got up on her hooves, and turned back towards her bed. “What time is it?”

At this, Ann’s eyes flashed. “It’s twelve-oh-one!”

Cozy, one hoof halfway to picking up her fallen blanket, paused.

She drew in a long, slow breath.

“Why?” she asked, wearily aware of the answer.

“Why?” Ann repeated. She threw her forelegs out, and a few mareiachi skeletons peeked back into the room waiting for their que.

Perhaps thinking better of that… Ann put her legs down, and coughed. “Uh, I mean… why not? It’s the bestest, most wonderful holiday ever! Officially!”

The disappointed skeletons nodded, and left for the final time.

Cozy didn’t turn around. She slowly breathed out through her nose, and sighed.

“It’s just past midnight… on the morning of Nightmare Night.”

“Yeah!” Ann cheered, and tapped her hooves excitedly against the floor. “The bestest holiday of them all…!”

“The… Morning…” Cozy emphasized her words by slapping her pillow once, propping it back into shape, “… of Nightmare… Night.”

Ann frowned.

“Y-yeah, didn’t you…”

Her eyes widened, and her pupils shrank.

“Oooooh…”

Cozy wrapped her blanket up around her shoulders, and crawled back into bed.

“Eyup,” she said, before rolling over a few times until she’d become a tiny cocoon. “There you go.”

Ann covered her face with her wings, and her ears flattened back down. Sadly, she said, “Oh, Cozy… I’m so sorry! I was just excited, and didn’t think about...”

“Yeah, whatever,” said Cozy, hunkering down in her bedding. “Not a big deal. Just go back to sleep.”

Ann’s ears perked up. She dropped her wings, and stared at the trying-to-sleep Cozy.

“Uh… really?” she asked.

“Really.”

Ann bit her lip.

“You’re not just saying that?”

Cozy said nothing.

“Cozy?” Ann prodded. “Cozy, is everything okay?”

Again, Cozy said nothing. A soft sigh, and the sound of gentle snoring was all that came from the little filly.

The Princess frowned… but knew it was probably pointless (if not slightly suicidal) to keep Cozy awake any longer with questions.

“Well,” she whispered as she wrapped her tail up in the rafters and tried to sleep upside down, “I guess we can talk about it in the… uh, the real morning…”

Silence returned to the house. Mostly. Ann’s eventual soft snores were all that could be heard for the next several hours.

At least, so long as one didn’t listen too closely to Cozy Glow, who didn’t get a wink of sleep the rest of the night.

“Eyes…” she muttered to herself, and tried in vain to shake the image of those yellow and crimson eyes from her mind. Those haunting, baleful eyes, which stalked her through dreams and reality both.

“Those eyes…”

Comments

[Bookeater_otaku]

Oh oh! A Halloween story in time for the season. How nice! Can't wait to see where this is going. What could be haunting Cozy nightmare?

[Ninjadeadbeard]

11031899
I guess you'll have to read the next chapter when it comes out (soon!).