Beyond My Grave: Exhumed

by AnnEldest

An Unexpected Arrival

Luna hurried out to the balcony and helped the guest who had suddenly appeared on her front step inside. Tiberius had to jump away when the guest was thrown onto the bed with a forceful shove.

“Ow! You wanna take it easy? I feel like I just went through a spin cycle.”

“You’re lucky I don’t turn you into a pair of socks and put you through one myself! Where have you been, Discord?” Luna demanded.

“Was it wrong that I took a vacation without telling anypony?” Discord asked.

A pillow was pulled out from under his head and slammed onto his face. Discord pulled it down just enough to peer out at Luna’s angry glare.

“Give me none of your runaround, you ass! You’ve been gone for days! Fluttershy has been worried sick over your disappearance since you didn’t come home that night you left!” Luna scolded.

“Would you believe that I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed and ended up in the wrong place?” Discord innocently asked.

He grunted as Tiberius crawled across him and jumped off the bed. The possum then ran for cover inside one of Luna’s drawers, just as the mattress lit up with Luna’s magic aura.

“Hey! What’re you–”

Discord never got to finish as the mattress folded in half with him inside of it. Then it was twisted and wrung like a rag, squeezed like an accordion and finally cracked like a rug. Discord landed back on the mattress with a pained smile.

“You know, that’s really bad for the springs…” he groaned, holding his aching back.

“You’re bad for everypony! Now, tell me what you were doing this whole time? Or do you have to go home and tell Fluttershy by yourself?”

Discord was silent, thinking about what it would be like if he had to face Fluttershy by himself after what he had just done. Perhaps, for what mercy she had, Luna would go with him and help to fudge the truth of what happened.

“Alright. You better grab a seat, ‘cause this is gonna be a loooong story,” Discord said.

Luna nodded and magically retrieved a chair to sit on. Tiberius, not about to pass up a long sit, scampered out of the drawer he had hidden in and hopped onto Luna’s lap.

---

“I’m going out,” Discord said, slithering his way to Fluttershy’s front door.

“Alright. But, to where? If it’s okay to ask,” Fluttershy answered.

“I just got me a hankering for some fish and chips. I’ll be back from Trottingham before morning. Toodle-pip!”

And with a click of his heels, Discord was gone. Except that he had not gone very far. Instead of going to some portside eatery filled with dock workers and the smell of fried potatoes, Discord went to the entrance of the Everfree Forest. There was something that had been troubling him for the last few nights. Something that he knew was troubling Fluttershy as well, though she refused to admit it. For the past several nights, they both had heard it. But, whenever it was brought up, Fluttershy denied hearing anything. Now, after so long, Discord was going to put an end to it.

He walked brazenly into the Everfree Forest, completely without heed or caution. Whatever was in there, he would be able to take care of it, no matter what it was. After all, how could even the scariest thing in the Everfree stand up to the god of chaos?

Discord peered out from around one tree, looking for any sign what could have been out there. He retreated, then peered out from behind a completely different tree. There was still nothing that he could find that was the source of the troubles at the cottage. He retreated and peered out from another tree one final time, before stepping back out into the open, pondering how he could possibly track down those unseen voices. A difficult task for him. For the first time, he had to make sense of something, instead of the opposite.

What if there was something that made it happen? Some kind of signal or a trigger that would make the strange things occur? As he floated through the trees, Discord tried to think about all of the different times that he had heard that filly crying from somewhere in the forest. Somehow, every time that he would investigate, the sounds always ended up stopping. As if for some reason they didn’t want to be found by him. Like a bird that stopped chirping whenever it knew a hungry fox was near.

Deeper he went into the forest, hoping more than anything that he would find the answer he sought. The night around him became misty, which Discord marked as unusual because mist was not in the weather forecast. Then again, nothing went according to plan in the Everfree Forest. The mist swirled around Discord’s body as he drifted through the trees. Above him, he could see the eyes of the nighttime animals peering from the unseen canopy, glowing like a hundred tiny beacons to light his way forward. He had seen the same thing at Fluttershy’s house almost every night, but it had never made him so uneasy.

“Imagine me, Discord, afraid of a few birds and rodents!” he said incredulously to himself.

But, it wasn’t if they were birds and rodents that made him anxious. It was if they were anything else. That was when he heard the screaming. A loud, horrifying, painful scream that came from some unseen filly. A scream so loud that it echoed through the trees and washed over Discord like a horrible wave.

“Hey! Who’s doing that!?” he called out.

The trees all became a blur as Discord wove through them, determined to find the phantom filly. The fog started growing thinner, and he became aware of a shape up ahead. One that was too large to dodge around, and too near to stop. With a sound of screeching brakes, Discord dug his four appendages into the ground, finding that it had suddenly become hard and splintered. There was a terrible crash and he saw stars flashing in his vision.

“Aw… What’s the idea putting a wall like this in the forest!? A guy could kill himself like that!” Discord said, as he twisted his head back the right way. “Hey, filly! Little filly! Where are–”

It was then that he noticed he was no longer in the forest. Through no reason or passage that he could think of, he was in a very old, very worn room where everything was made of wood. The wardrobe against the paneled wall. The bed by the window. And even the window itself was boarded up with old wooden planks that looked liable to fall off their nails at any moment.

“This is a new one,” Discord muttered, before calling out, “Okay! We’re all very amused! Trying to beat me at my own game? Well, see how you like this!”

Whatever Discord was expecting to happen when he snapped his fingers never did. He snapped them again and again. He snapped each finger individually, but nothing happened.

“Shit on a shingle… not again,” he said.

This was what he lived for. Even though he wished for nothing of sense, reason or logic to present itself, he felt that a little logos was needed at the moment. That in mind, he climbed over the bed to look through the spaces between the boarded up window. What he saw was a vast expanse of forest, which went on for miles in all directions, until the view terminated with a tall mountain that towered imposingly in the background.

“Okay… If I were (ugh) Twilight, I’d try to recognize where I was from something I read in a book once,” Discord said to himself, before his face fell. “Crap! I wish I bothered to read anything.”

There came a giggle from the door beyond.

“And, what’s so funny about that?” Discord wondered.

The giggling continued, and Discord felt a pang of nerves. Whenever he had his magic, he was always the one in control, getting his daily amusement from the befuddlement of others. Now, he was at the mercy of whoever wanted to take advantage. He walked to the door, opened it and peered out to find the source of the laughter. Nopony was there. He could see five more doors down the hall, with him at the farthest end. He stepped out into the hall, wishing he had some kind of light, instead of the dim light of the evening, which was slowly darkening into night. On the wall next to him, he spotted several pictures. All in grainy sepia with many foals standing in rows, while adults stood to either side.

“So, what? Somepony’s idea of a joke is to drop me in an abandoned boarding school?” he asked aloud.

There was a creak nearby. One that came from the stairs, where a light flickered from the floor below. Discord walked as carefully as he could, hoping that the boards beneath him wouldn’t make any noise. He looked down the flight, and saw only the bare landing. He took each step slowly, gently placing his weight over each step and shifting it at the first sign of a creak. After what felt like many minutes, he was on the ground floor, and the flickering light disappeared, leaving him with only the last few scraps of daylight. Much like the rest of the place, everything there was made of old, broken, rotted wood. Only here, the furniture was charred and warped, as if it had been set ablaze and left unattended. The floor, the tables and even the nearby curtains were burned. Past the billowing curtains was another window.

Discord approached the window as the curtains began to waft and billow, their blackened ends shivering toward him. He peered through the boards on the window, and saw a different view than he did on the other side of the house. It was a village. A small, quaint hamlet that was lined with roads made of pebbles, and buildings that looked centuries old. At the far end of the road, Discord could make out a high gate that looked like it was hundreds of years old. What once looked like gold was now streaked with black smears, and covered in as much grime as the wall around it.

“Vwee-hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!”

There was that laughter again. Now high, grating and purely malicious. And it was coming from the next room over. Discord ran into the room, ready to catch the unseen chatterbox. What he found instead was a scene from not even his own nightmares. Everything was broken, splintered and covered in blood. Cabinet doors were smashed in with blood smearing the impacted parts. A cleaver was jammed into a wooden countertop, which had some severed digits long decomposed around it. The bricks around an oven were charred, and the door was broken, as if something too large to fit had been jammed in there. And the sink was filled with bones that floated in a pool of blood.

“Hello.”

“HOLY HELL!!” Discord yelled. He turned around, and saw a small pegasus filly with a white coat and a silver mane. On her flank was the image of a shooting star, which was surrounded by swirls and sparkles. “You– Y– Where the hell did you come from!?”

“I’ve always been here,” the foal simply answered.

Discord didn’t dare look back over his shoulder, but he had to know if what he saw was real.

“Did you do this?” he asked, pointing to the kitchen behind himself.

“No. It’s always been that way.”

“How about a little cleanup!? The cops might have some serious questions to ask you if they ever saw this!” Discord said.

“Nopony ever comes here,” the foal answered.

Discord studied the foal’s blank, emotionless face, which seemed more mask-like by the second.

“Who are you? Were you the one that was laughing at me this whole time?” he asked.

“I’m called Silver Blitz. And I wasn’t the one laughing,” she answered.

“Oh. Great. What a load off my mind that is,” Discord sarcastically said, stepping away from that horrible kitchen. “Whatever. You can do what you want, kid. But, I’m hauling my heiney home.”

“You can’t go home. The laughing man won’t let you,” Silver Blitz said.

Outside, the very last of the daylight had gone.

Discord stopped walking suddenly, when his way was blocked. Something hung like a bat from the ceiling, and it stared directly at Discord with bulging, mismatched eyes that looked in every direction. There was no mouth at first, but the eyes shrunk into nothingness as a gigantic, malicious, crooked-toothed smile spread from one side of its head to the next. And it laughed that shrill, maniacal laugh from before.

The room seemed to spin as Discord fell over backwards. He watched as the thing stepped down from the ceiling with impossibly long legs that protruded from a tattered, brown cloak. The arms of the thing reached out from inside the cloak, stretching far across the room with a rubbery, boneless motion.

Discord scrambled out of the way of the thing’s arms, and watched as it seemed to grow taller, until it’s shadowy form reached the ceiling. He reached a paw to Silver Blitz behind him.

“Let’s get the hell outta Dodge, kid!” he said.

“Nopony leaves. They all end up like me.”

Discord looked down and saw that Silver Blitz’s eyes had become hollow, bloody sockets, and that blood cascaded from inside her mouth where her tongue used to be. The skin on her body was partly flayed, and her back leg hung limply on only the last few shreds of flesh that held it to her body. She then dropped dead to the floor. The body of the filly slithered like a slug across the splintered wood, into the waiting hand of the laughing man. The foul creature held up the corpse, and laughed maniacally, showing off its gruesome prize.

The furniture blazed suddenly with flames next to Discord. Beneath his mismatched feet, the floorboards started to break, threatening to impale anything on top of them with their sharp splinters. Discord had to dance his way backwards to avoid the jagged floor. All the while, the laughing man cackled madly, waving its tubular arms like a maestro conducting a horrid orchestra.

Discord was forced back into the kitchen, where he bumped into the countertop. Beside the bloody cleaver was Discord’s own severed head, which was wearing that same, monstrous grin as the laughing man. Something grabbed his tail, and he jerked it away to see the arms of the monster reaching out from the broken cabinets. And they were followed by dozens more, all flailing to reach for Discord.

He took the cleaver in his paw and sliced at the reaching arms. The blade passed right through them all, as if he held nothing. For just a moment, Discord saw his reflection in the blade. But, it wasn’t his own. It was the smile of that thing. He dropped the cleaver from his paw, and to his horror watched as it morphed into a simple, plain hoof.

Sweat poured down Discord’s forehead as he ran from the coiling arms of the monster. Before he exited the kitchen, something grabbed him by the back leg. The bones from the sink had all linked together to form a single, long arm, dripping with the blood they floated in. And they were joined by another that dug their fingers into Discord’s back. He shouted in pain and felt his body force itself to lower. Another skeletal hand grabbed his ear and pulled hard, feeling as if it meant to yank it from his head.

As if he had always meant to do it, Discord raised his back legs and bucked the bony arms, which scattered into the disparate bones onto the floor. Discord rolled forward and hit the nearby wall. He looked back and saw that his entire back had become shorter, bulkier, and with two hoofed legs. At the end, he sported a long, gray tail. It was too much to bear. He ran out of the kitchen, and into some dark hallway.

The walls began to shake as the laughing man’s cackle echoed all up and down the length of the hall. The pictures there began to change, showing the monstrous smile on each of the faces that stared out from their frames. Discord could take no more of the torment. He lowered his head and charged down the hallway, into the dark abyss that awaited him. The smile of the thing surrounded him, until it too was swallowed by the dark.

And so, Discord ran. And he would always be running from his tormentor. With no rest. With no hope of escape. Not until it was all ended.

Suddenly, somewhere in the darkness, he fell.

Author's Note:

Till Next Time!!!