In the end I think it’s the smell that I’ll always remember. That horrible, awful smell. Not of blood, although there was plenty, and not of viscera or assorted… bits… though there was plenty of those things too. It smelled clean. It wasn’t the refreshing clean of a freshly swept and dusted home though. No, it was the smell of formaldehyde. It was alcohol, vinegar, and other cleaning agents. It was the smell of a hospital.

Or in this case, the smell of an asylum.

The Cakes left on the same week the horror was found. They just packed up their belongings and left quietly without a word to anypony. No pony blamed them but still I wasn’t terribly surprised by their decision, I don’t think anypony was really. Not after what happened in the basement of Sugarcube Corner.

I feel partially at fault since I was the one who found them. It had been almost three days since I had seen Rainbow Dash or Pinkie Pie, and although Rainbow Dash disappearing for a few days wasn’t really all that strange since her weather patrols were needed in more places than Ponyville, not seeing Pinkie Pie was like the sun not showing up. The bright pink party pony was more of a fixture of Ponyville than any of the actual fixtures. So I cast a spell to find her, innocent enough. Or so I thought.

****

I grimaced as I focused my native energies through my horn, shaking a few dark, night-colored strands of hair from my eyes as I concentrated. There was a flash of light and a feeling of ‘knowing’ that entered my mind telling me that I had cast the spell correctly. That was good, I reflected wryly, since miscasting a locator spell can take you to some really weird places. I had to make sure I used Pinkie Pie’s full name too otherwise I might’ve ended up looking for oddly colored baked goods no matter how correct the spell was, although in retrospect that probably would’ve landed me at Sugarcube Corner anyway. The spell took me to the Corner, it was in the later at night so I figured Pinkie must’ve come home from wherever it was she had gone. The door was locked and the light in Pinkie’s upstairs room was out, I felt a little bad trying to wake her up but I levitated a few pebbles against the window anyways, I knew she’d understand. There was no response. I felt a little uneasy at that point… but I decided to go inside anyway. The door was locked for the night but that was no barrier to a crafty enough unicorn. I concentrated on the door and a quick glimmer of light from my horn along with the tell-tale sound of clicking told me the lock had come undone. A useful little spell I made up when I while I was Celestia’s apprentice in the Castle. Mostly for nicking sweets after dark than for anything else. There are times I wish I had never made that spell.

The room inside was dark and smelled a little musty, which was strange since it was the main foyer where the Cakes did all their business. I started up towards Pinkie’s room when I felt the spell tug me down. She was in the basement? I shrugged, I hadn’t even realized Sugarcube Corner HAD a basement. Maybe the Cakes used it for storage or inventory? Was Pinkie Pie doing inventory? At this time of night? I shrugged again at the questions, maybe she had eaten too many sweets and couldn’t get to sleep, that certainly sounded like Pinkie. I focused on the locater spell. It pointed me towards the back corner, it wasn’t used for anything but extra space occasionally when the Cakes needed another table put out. I looked around but couldn’t see an obvious door or entrance to the basement, I was about to give up, go home, and recast the spell, figuring I was in fact in search of oddly colored baked goods after all, when my light glanced off an almost invisible metal rung set into the floor, it was so old and dull it hadn’t even shown up in the night-time dimness. Smiling to myself at my own clever discovery I trotted over and levitated the trap door open.

I instantly knew something was wrong.

That smell, the smell of terrible sins and the kind of soul-deep darkness that drives ponies mad wafted out. Panic welled up instinctively as revulsion filled my heart, something was wrong, very very wrong, and whatever it was that was wrong was down in that basement. I moved gingerly forward and my legs began to tremble a little, even though I didn’t know why at the time.

“P-p-pinkie?” I whispered softly, my voice weak as a filly’s, “Are y-you in here?” I continued down the stairs, they were short and only a single level down, ten steps at most. It felt like a hundred. “P-pinkie, come out, y-you know I don’t like scary pranks…” I called out, my voice a trifle louder this time.

I caught glimpse of a pink mane and started to take a breath of relief.

It turned into a full throated scream.

Pinkamena Diane Pie hung lifelessly from a rafter, swinging to and fro with a steady pendulum-like balance. I barely registered anything for a few minutes, my mind trying to convince itself that it was some kind of horrible cauchemar come to laugh at me until I woke up safe in my own bed. Then I started to notice things. That analytical part of my brain which Celestia so praised during my apprenticeship kick-started and began feeding me information. Her mane was thin and drooping, her normally vivaciously pink coat was dull and patched; she had been gone for days.

Then I started to register the room.

There were some kind of rubbery streamers hanging from the ceiling, vile looking cupcakes that stank to Canterlot and gone, something else on a slanted medical slab in the corner. Something with cyan fur and a multicolored…

“Oh. Oh no. Oh no no no no no no no no…” I whispered over and over as I was inexorably drawn over to what little remained of one of my precious friends. I emptied the contents of my stomach right there on the floor, hot steaming tears spilling out into the sick that now stained the already irrevocably stained stones. “Oh Dash… What in Equestria happened to you… what…” Then I saw the rest, I saw the tools.

The scalpels and razor knives, the hacksaw and the nails. I saw them all. I turned back to stare dumbly at what was left of Pinkie Pie, just as her interminable swing brought her around into view. Her face was stretched into a horrible rictus, eyes stretched open with a dead-pony’s gaze, and the flayed skin, wings, and horns of the dead hanging festively from her corpse. It was then, I think, that I put it all together. Pinkie Pie hanging herself… Rainbow Dash…. the… the streamers…

It had been Pinkie Pie all along.

The disappearances, it was Pinkie Pie, it had been her. Somewhere along the line my friend had utterly lost her mind and whatever it was that was left quite simply hadn’t been Pinkie Pie anymore; it hadn’t even been a pony.

I fell down.

And while I’m being honest I think that… just for a moment as I wept and vomited down there in that nightmarish place… I think lost my mind.

I don’t know how long I laid there, my knees had given out completely, my body couldn’t even keep me upright anymore after I’d realized what Pinkie Pie had done to all those ponies, what she had done to Rainbow Dash. Truthfully it couldn’t have been long before somepony came, it must’ve only been a few minutes. It felt like so much longer. I was carried to Ponyville General Care; despite being a small town Ponyville had good medical facilities, just ask Applejack, farm accidents were nothing to shake your hoof at. I don’t even remember the trip to be honest; there were faces, sounds and screams. They all blurred together as they took me to in, I remember seeing two black bags being wheeled past me at one point. I think I saw a strand of pink sticking out of one of them.

I was there when my friends came, what was left of them. Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Spike were all clamoring around me, asking me what had happened. I remember telling them. I know Applejack fainted when I got to the part about Rainbow Dash, Rarity kept making this odd squeaking sound like she was trying to scream and couldn’t, Fluttershy just stood there staring, her eyes wide and her complexion going whiter and whiter in shock. Someone made Spike leave the room near the beginning, but he heard the part about Pinkie Pie. After I finished we all just sat there, me in my bed, the other on the floor or on the few chairs the room had. What else could we do?

****

I laid there in the hospital bed, it was late, Doctor Trotson said he wanted me to stay overnight. My friends all stayed with me. I’m glad of that, I don’t think I would’ve made it through the night without them. Applejack was asleep next to me, after she came to she begged me to tell her she had dreamed it, that I was a nightmare and Rainbow wasn’t really… Applejack cried herself into a fitful sleep after that. Fluttershy and Rarity were no more peacefully asleep on small cots that had been brought in by the nurses, and Spike was curled up loyally at the foot of the bed. I couldn’t sleep though, despite my mind being so worn and exhausted, I simply couldn’t sleep. My eyes burned from the exhaustion and I couldn’t focus, and the silence wasn’t helping. I kept imagining sounds in the shadows, bad sounds. I tried focusing on my friends, the sound of Applejack breathing; I smiled sadly as I realized that for once she wasn’t snoring.

The smile vanished as a thought entered my mind, ‘She must’ve cried so hard she lost the energy to even do that…’ I turned, lifting myself weakly to rest on my front hooves staring forward at the sterile metal head board and the white washed walls. The movement helped a little, my mind wasn’t so foggy, it’s probably the reason I noticed the creaking sound in the first place. A slow and almost measured sound, like metal being bent ever so slightly this way and that.

Creak…

Creak…

Creak…

Something in the back of my head screamed at me to ignore it, just ignore it, just let it be, just ignore the sound and go to sleep.

Creak…

Creak…

Creak…

It was no use. I turned my head slowly and caught a slight glimpse of something hanging from the ceiling, something pink and drab, clad in a ‘homemade’ party dress. I snapped my head back around to stare feverishly at the metal of the bed frame and the bland white walls, trying to ignore the image my mind had fed me.

Creak…

…

…

I felt something move up across the bed from the foot and settle next to me in my blind spot just behind my ear, I felt it rustle my mane softly as it moved closer to whisper…

“Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye… teeheehehee…”

I quaked beneath the covers before laying my head down on my hooves, my eyes wide and tears spilling silently out of them as I waited for morning to come.