Pinkie Pie walked into the main hall of the farm's common bunkhouse: a big cafeteria with lots of long wooden tables. A small crowd of young fillies followed behind her, talking and laughing. They were all the same age, and all carried the same style of book bags. Some of them were also carrying bags of snack food or pulling little wagons loaded with blankets and pillows. Flicker Flash and Emberleaf stayed near the front of the pack, next to Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie Pie's mother waved at them from across the room. The crowd of children wound its way over to a bunch of small tables that had been set up for the occasion, and Pinkie's mother hovered over them constantly.

"Over here, everypony! We have oatmeal, cream of broccoli soup, fresh vegetables, lots of bread and milk... Is anyone allergic to milk? We have goat's milk if anyone's allergic."

"It's okay," Pinkie Pie said, "everypony brought snacks and stuff."

"Snacks are one thing. Dinner is quite another."

"It'll be fine, mom. Really."

"Well, if there's anyth—" Her eyes widened as one of the fillies took out a large plastic bottle covered with a brightly colored label. "Is that carbonated!?"

"It's fine, mom!"

"It's nothing but sugar water!" She pointed at the filly from across the table and raised her voice. "You'd better not drink that whole thing yourself, young filly, or I'll tell your parents!"

Pinkie Pie clenched her teeth."Moooom!"

"Well you'd better not have any yourself. Not even one sip, you hear?"

"You know I hate sweets."

Inky Pie wandered in from the side door, walking with her nose in a journal. She looked up and flinched as she saw the crowded table. "What the...?! What's going on? How am I supposed to write with all this noise?"

Pinkie rolled her eyes. "Can't you make your dumb old poems somewhere else?"

Inky's eyes locked on her mother's. "Mom!"

Her mother cleared her throat. "Pinkie Pie is having a sleepover with her friends."

"Actually," said Pinkie,"They're Cloud Kicker's friends from the music club. It was her idea."

Inky Pie pursed her lips. "You better not ask me to babysit for free again. It's not happening."

Mother pulled Inky aside and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Dear, please don't be difficult about this. It's the first time Pinkie's ever brought friends over, and we should do everything possible to make them welcome. You know how important it is to be nei—"

Inky rolled her eyes."Neighborly, yeah. I get it already. I'm still not babysitting for free."

"They'll be staying in the den of the guest cottage. All you have to do is stay in the master bedroom with the door open a crack. Thats all I'm asking."

Inky lifted an eyebrow. "The master bedroom? All to myself?"

"All you have to do is listen. And none of that loud music. And if they get cold, you're in charge of the fireplace. You know how to take care of it."

"Fine. Fine!" Inky glared at the table of bright, cheerful children. She snapped her writing journal shut and stormed off.

Flicker Flash leaned close to Pinkie Pie. "What's her problem, anyway?"

Pinkie stared at her bowl of oatmeal. "Dunno."

"Was she always like this?"

"Sorta. She was always kinda grumpy, but not like this... she never used to talk back. Now all she talks about is moving to the city. And she says 'whatever' a lot."

"Did your mom and dad talk to her about it?"

"They tried, but it only made things worse. It's like no matter what they say, she won't listen. She just gets angry right away."

They looked up as Inky walked out of the hall.

"Why? Did something happen to her?"

"She, uh..." Pinkie stroked her hair over her eye. "She started going to school."

Flicker Flash and Emberleaf both looked at her, then at each other. Pinkie Pie focused on her oatmeal.

Sunny Daze took a lantern full of fireflies and held it up, casting a flickering glow across the faces of the fillies gathered in front of her. They were all lying on the floor of the cottage's living room, bundled up in quilts and blankets. Every last one of them was staring at her, wide eyed and slackjawed.

"...And when she turned around she saw words painted on the bathroom mirror... smeared in gooey red blood... and the words said 'axe murderers lick hooves too'!"

The semicircle of fillies gasped in horror and hugged their blankets and sleeping bags tight.

"You mean the killer was under her bed the whole time?!"

"That's exactly right," said Sunny Daze. "She was hiding under there all night, lurking in the shadows."

"Then what happened to the filly?"

Sunny Daze frowned at her. "Nopony knows. Because she was never seen again... ever."

There was another round of gasps.

Pinkie Pie arched an eyebrow. "If nopony knows what happened, where'd you hear the story from?"

"Hey yeah," said Emberleaf. "How do you know the story?"

Sunny Daze took up the lantern and held it under her chin, casting an eerie glow across her face. Her eyes glinted with a demented light."Because," she said, "I was that axe murderer!"

The fillies all screamed at the top of their lungs. Some of them bolted out from under their blankets and ran around the room in circles, desperate to find hiding places.

Pinkie Pie sat where she was, calmly watching the chaos. She let out a quiet little sigh.

Emberleaf ran back over to her sleeping bag and flopped down. "That was the bestest scariest story I've ever heard!"

Sunny Daze grinned. "Thanks. I heard it when my family went camping... my uncle came along, and he knew a million stories. I had nightmares for a whole month. It was awesome."

"So cool!"

"What's the big deal?" said Pinkie Pie. "It wasn't that scary."

Sunny Daze pouted at her. "What's up with you, anyways? You haven't screamed or jumped all night. Not even once."

Flicker Flash leaned over. "Maybe she's heard 'em already."

"What about the story about the filly with the yellow neckerchief? Or the one about Mister Jiggles? Nopony's heard those ones."

"I'm not tryin' to be rude or anything," Pinkie Pie said, "honest. I just don't think stories are very scary."

Emberleaf jumped forward and stamped a hoof. "Well I've got a story for ya! It's gonna scare you so bad, your mane will turn white!"

Pinkie Pie slumped on the floor. "Fine, fine. Let's hear it."

Emberleaf picked up the lantern and waved it around. "Once upon a time, there was a really old pony... and every night, at midnight, he walked from his house all the way to the well in the middle of town. Every... single... night."'

"And?"

"And... one of his ears was really big!"

Pinkie arched an eyebrow. "A big ear?"

"It was huge! Bigger than a bedsheet! And whenever he walked, he'd draaag it behind him..." Emberleaf pushed her blanket back and forth, rustling it softly against the floor. "And it sounded just... like... this."

Everypony let out a soft 'oooh' noise.

"His ear was so big that, one day, he folded it over and used it like a bag. And he filled it all up with... nose hair clippings!"

Pinkie Pie giggled. The rest of the fillies quickly joined in.

Emberleaf stamped her hoof. "Hey, cut it out!"

"Sorry," said Pinkie, "but it's not very scary. It's just kind of icky."

She stared at her hooves. "Well I think it's scary."

Flicker Flash stood up and took the lantern. "Here, I'll show you how it's done. This one'll give you nightmares for years."

Emberleaf backed away a step. "Really? Whoa!"

"Oh yeah. And you know the scariest part? It's all true."

The fillies murmured amongst themselves.

"True?" Emberleaf said, "but scary stories are never real. They're all just made up."

"Oh, most of 'em are. But this one isn't." Flicker Flash sat down in front of them. "Get ready for the story... of Old Mare Bramble."

The fillies all looked at each other, puzzled. "Old Mare Bramble? Who's that?"

"Most ponies never heard of her..." Flicker Flash's eyes settled on Pinkie Pie. "But I know one pony here who knows about her. She just doesn't know the whole story."

Everypony looked at Pinkie Pie.

"Oh, her? She owns the farm up the road."

One of the fillies gasped. "You mean Old Mare Bramble is really real!?"

Pinkie frowned at her. "Would you relax? It's no big deal."

"No big deal, huh?" said Flicker Flash. "How much do you know about her, then?"

"Well, nothing. She's quiet. Keeps to herself."

Flicker Flash gazed up at the ceiling in contemplation. "Quiet, huh? Keeps to herself? I remember hearing those same words in a lot of the stories Sunny Daze told. 'She seemed like such a nice pony', people would say."

Pinkie frowned at her. "And how do we know you're not lying? It's not like you were there."

"Of course I wasn't there... this all started before any of us were born, over thirty years ago...thirty six years, in fact. On October sixteenth. At six-thirty four in the morning."

The crowd gasped.

Pinkie Pie waved her hoof in the air "She coulda just made that up!"

"I'll be honest with you. I don't know the whole story for certain. All I found were some newspaper clippings about little kids that went missing, and some pages from a moldy old diary." Flicker opened her bookbag and took out a spiral-bound notebook with dog-eared pages. "I went to the public library and read a bunch of books in the reference section. That's where they keep all the true books."

"Oh, come on."

Emberleaf shook her head. "She's not kidding, Pinkie! I went in there once, and there were all kind of books about real things. Some of 'em didn't even have pictures!"

Pinkie gave her a disturbed look.

"Anyways." Flicker Flash opened the dog-eared notebook and flipped through the pages. "I took some notes. It turns out that Old Mare Bramble used to be a normal, everyday farmer. She had a whole family: a husband, and a whole bunch of little fillies of her own. To everypony else, they seemed like normal folks... quiet. Kept to themselves. Until one day..."

Emberleaf leaned closer. "Yeah? Yeah?"

"Nothing."

Pinkie furrowed her brow. "Nothing?"

"Nothing. At first nopony noticed anything wrong. Over the years the Bramble farm sold less and less crops, until finally they weren't selling anything at all. They stopped going into town, and then they stopped checking their mail. One year, they didn't even go to the harvest festival."

Pinkie Pie's bottom lip quivered. "No farmer would ever miss that!"

"That's when the other farmers really started to worry. So they sent somepony to visit the farm. The whole place was overgrown... the place was chilly and foggy, even for october, and the buildings were all grey and covered in dust and cobwebs. And the only pony they found was Old Mare Bramble, sitting in her rocking chair on the front porch, like nothing was wrong. She told 'em to go away and mind their own business."

Emberleaf shuffled closer. "What happened then, huh? What happened?"

"Well, the other farmers decided to look around. All the buildings were empty. The only thing they found was the moldy old diary of the youngest daughter, hidden under a mattress. Most of the pages were ripped out..."

"Can we do something else?" said Pinkie Pie, "I don't like this story."

"I wanna hear the end," said Emberleaf. "Go on."

"Well, the daughter wrote in the diary about her mom... how she was starting to act all weird. She got really strict with rules and stuff, and she'd start punishing her kids real bad. Sometimes for little stuff, or even stuff they never did. Some of it didn't even make any sense: she once gave her oldest daughter a spanking because 'the trees were too loud'."

Pinkie Pie scowled at her. "That never happened! None of it's real!"

Flicker Flash shrugged. "I never said it was real. But it was in the diary. Somepony wrote about it."

Pinkie Pie stared at her for a moment.

"...And then, one day when the dad was away, Old Mare Bramble told the oldest daughter to meet her out in the woods behind the back yard. She told her to bring the axe... the big one. Said she needed help cutting firewood. She couldn't do it alone, because dad was out. Every day after that, she'd ask another of her daughters to do the same thing. Go get the big axe. Meet her in the woods. One by one. And eventually, the youngest daughter was the only one left... all alone..."

Pinkie Pie jumped to her feet and shouted "How could you say such things about poor Missus Bramble?! She's a real life pony!!"

Emberleaf leapt away, screaming. "Old Mare Bramble is real!! I knew it, I knew it!!"

All the fillies screamed and ran around the room, blind with panic. They scattered their pillows and blankets across the floor and bumped into end tables and chairs. One of them crashed into a shelf and knocked several books onto the floor. One of the pillows was torn open and the air filled with a flurry of fluffy white feathers.

Inky Pie threw open the door and held up a bright oil lantern. "What's going on!? Is anypony hurt?"

The riot continued at full force. Pinkie Pie sprinted towards her older sister in a straight line and hugged her front leg tight, pressing her face against her shoulder.

"SETTLE DOWN!!"

The chaos immediately came to a halt. The screaming stopped, and the fillies froze in place. They turned to look at Inky Pie and watched as she knelt down to look at her sister. Pinkie's eyes were scrunched shut and puffy with tears. Her lower lip trembled.

Inky looked back at the rest of the fillies. "Tell me what happened right now."

Flicker Flash stepped forward. "I-I-It's my fault. I was telling a scary story. I... I didn't mean to..."

Emberleaf jumped ahead of her. "No, it's my fault!"

"Ember, no!"

"But it is! Pinkie wanted her to stop the story, but I told her to keep going. I wanted to know what happened to Missus Bramble, thas' all."

"Missus Bramble?" said Inky Pie. "Wait. You were making up stories about a real pony?"

"I was just—"

Inky pointed at her. "That's not stories. That's gossip, and good neighbors don't gossip about each other. It's mean and hurtful!"

Flicker Flash looked at the floor. "I'm sorry. I really am."

Inky knelt back down and gave Pinkie Pie a hug. "What about you? Are you okay?"

Pinkie Pie sniffled once and opened her eyes."I'm fine."

"Really?"

"Yeah. The story wasn't scary at all. I just thought..."

"You thought what?"

"I thought Flicker was bein' mean to me. I never had friends before... I didn't want 'em to turn out mean."

Flicker Flash tiptoed over. She and Pinkie watched each other for awhile. Eventually, they both began to smile. They stepped close and hugged each other tight, and the rest of the fillies cheered and rushed close.

"Still friends?" said Pinkie Pie.

"Definitely," said Flicker Flash. "And please don't be scared. I just made it all up, I swear."

"Forget about it. The story wasn't scary."

"Really? Well... good then. I'm glad."

There was a quiet moment.

"Not even a little?"

Pinkie Pie reached up and tousled Flicker's mane, grinning.

"All right you two," Inky Pie said, "why don't we think of something else you fillies can do tonight? Something fun."

Sunny Daze waved a hoof. "What about hide and seek? This cottage has all sorts of secret places!"

"It's too dark for that," said Inky. "Somepony might get lost for real."

"Aw..."

"This is Cloud Kicker's sleepover, right? Why don't we let her pick?"

Everyone turned to look at Cloud Kicker. She glanced about, nervously. "We're all in the music club, right? I kinda wanna sing some songs. Is that okay?"

Everypony nodded in agreement and began rummaging in their book bags, searching for songbooks. Pinkie Pie started back towards her own pile of quilts, but Inky Pie caught her at the last second.

"Hey," she whispered, "are you okay?"

"Sure," Pinkie said.

"Sure you're sure?"

Pinkie rolled her eyes. "Sure I'm sure."

"Okay. You go have fun now. And if you need anything, just let me know."

Pinkie smiled at her, then ran to join her friends.