The Outsider

She had done as she was told. The doors and windows were closed and locked, the curtains had been shut and all of the lights in the house had been turned off. All of the lights, except that of her room; She could not sleep, no matter how much she tried, for the sound of the woods outside of her house were too weird and haunting. The eerie feeling of being watched crept into her mind whenever she closed her eyes, it was simply impossible. A light flickered outside her window, flashing briefly around the corners of the heavy curtains, and she stared at it until the roll of distant thunder reached her ears. She could hear the whistling of the breeze outside grow more intense, the approaching storm making itself known, and for a few moments she felt comfort in the idea of rain and thunder. Hopefully they would be louder than the whispers within.  The wooden boards creaked beneath her as she sat up and got out of bed, she couldn't take it anymore. The signal was awful this deep in the woods, but the tv downstairs could still pick up a few stations rather well, and any voice would be better than the silence. She walked out onto the corridor and tapped the lightswitch, the corridor's single ceiling lamp dimly lighting her way. Gods, she hated those damned old boob lights... As she turned her own room's lights off, a light knocking sound crept into her ears. Knock, knock, knock. Suddenly it got louder and faster, there was someone knocking at her window. Something. She stared at the closed curtains, primal fear rolling through her body in a wave of anxiety and adrenaline, and when she finally broke from the freeze instinct and her muscles spazzed into both fight and flight, the knocking stopped. She had been warned. Lock the doors at night, cover the windows, do not look at them, do not call for help. With her heart pumeling in her chest and her ears, she turned the lights on her room on again and snuck back in to grab the hatchet she kept beneath her pillow. She winced with every creak from the boards she stepped upon, hoping that whatever was outside could not hear them. It probably would've broken in if it did... Whatever it was. There was some level of safety to be felt in holding a weapon, her fingers wrapping around the hatchet's handle so tightly that she felt the fingertips grow numb. She breathed, and slowly her nerves would calm down. Back unto the corridor, she continued to step as lightly as she could, tip-toeing down the stairs so that the steps would not creek loudly as they usually do. As she did, she felt like there was something.. Wrong. The feeling of being watched intensified tenfold. And that's when she noticed that the front door was open, not wide but just enough to know that she was not alone in her house anymore. She slowly turned her head, glimpsing into the living room, and there it was. Her mother was staring at her from around the corner, a wide smile dawned from one side of her face to other. Empty eye sockets filled with hunger, the knife her father used to kill her still stuck in her neck, yet her voice was clear as day. "Sunshine!" The thing spoke without its lips ever moving, and its wretched voice shall forever haunt her. She burst into a sprint back up the stairs, she could hear its breathing down her neck as she ran into her room and slammed the door shut.  Immediately, the thing began to knock at her door, at first lightly and quickly it switched to pounding against it, all the while calling her name. "Where did you go? I have a gift for you! A surprise!" The thing called outside of the door as she pressed her whole body against it in an attempt of keeping the thing out, and finally after excruciatingly long moments, it stopped knocking. "You need to open the door. I am not going away." A scream. First it was distant and weak but rapidly grew in intensity until it was coming from every direction. She tried to cover her ears as she pressed her body against the door, but it was to no avail, it was as though the screams could pass right through her hands like they were nothing. They were screams of pain, agony, not from one but several people, a cacophony from the seven hells themselves. The light in her room flickered off and the screaming stopped. For a second, she could hear heavy breathing outside of the door. And then, the lights flickered back on, this time dimmer than before and with an eerie dark green hue. Silence befell the house, the sounds of the forest outside stopped in their entirety, distant thunder rolled. The tv downstairs turned on to the sound of a preacher praising The Gravekeeper, hymns and hums from the pastor's flock rolling out into the depths of the quiet house. Shaking and hyperventilating, she slowly pulled herself away from the door. Stepping away from it, she raised the hatchet and prepared to strike as her eyes watched in horror the door's handle swivel and open with a click. There was no one on the other side of the door. No creature, just the empty corridor, covered in the same dim green light that lit her room. She could see that the lights in other rooms were also on, all of them in the same green hue. Her breathing slowed and was caught in a hiccup, her eyes filling with tears while her heart still pounded full of adrenaline. She made her way over to the stairs and looked down to the front door, it was closed and locked as she had left it before. The tv was still on, she could hear the preacher's words but not understand them. She walked into the living room, and there it was. Sitting on the couch, watching tv as though nothing had ever happened, was the rotten carcass of a young man, his grey skin stretched over the wooden frame beneath, lively blue eyes focused entirely on the religious program. The Evergrowing laid back against the couch and casually crossed one of its legs over the other as she walked by it and sat on the opposite side of the couch. She curled up and cried silently, her hands still gripping tightly around the hatchet. She woke up in the morning alone with the sound of birds outside, the storm never came. 

Dr. Lindsley's Report 29th entry. 04/05/1056 A.N. 08:00 PM I was right all along, the statue was the epicenter of the enchantment. However, looking back now I understand that simply calling it an enchantment is an understatement. It is far more than that, older and perhaps at least as powerful as Celestia herself. We arrived yesterday's afternoon. As we explored, the environment around the graveyard seemed to remain stable, no change in temperature nor humidity in the air. Then, it was presumed by us that this entire area has been locked away in a bubble where time wouldn't pass, guarded by the paranormal phenomena that extended travel time greatly were one to try and approach. This hypothesis was backed up by the fact that our biological needs have "paused" whilst in here. However, what that hypothesis did not explain was the fact that we still felt thirst for water, and that not only did we feel rested, but reinvigorated. I've spoken with the others, and apparently I wasn't the only one to've been freed from my back pains. Most notable was Sergeant Willow, one of the Guards who've accompanied us in this journey, who has completely lost the scar that ran right across his chest. He always proudly presented that scar as a proof of service during the Changeling Raid of Canterlot. Needless to say, he wasn't very happy to lose it. As the hours passed, we completed the survey of the area and started clearing the moss from the tombstones. Thankfully, each tombstone has the name of whoever it was that was entombed beneath, but not only that, the dates in which they were born and also the date of their death. What's surprising about this find is that we realized that all of the graves on the outer edges of the circle have been quite recent, the newest we've found so far being only a couple of days old. Closer to the center of the graveyard, the tombstones are much older, some of them listing dates before the Nightmare Moon. If we conduct a deeper search, it wouldn't surprise me to find at least a few dating back to The Age of Chaos. Dr Quill was visibly in bliss as we cleared the stones from the moss that covered them, undoubtedly an archeologist's dream to hopefully have access to so many possibly historical remains. As the others spread out onto their many tasks, most of them uncovering the tombstones while some checked around the perimeter for other passages or trails that led into the graveyard, I put myself into work with decyphering the machinations behind the area's enchantment. As stated in my previous entry, I heavily suspected that the statue was its focal point, and so would spend several hours carefully syphoning tiny strands from the power that emanated from it. I've worked with relics of the past before. Syphoning from their power to transcribe their enchantments into paper and usable spells is my specialty. Certain relics, such as the Crystal Heart from the Crystal Empire, nearly lost me with their complexity. So carefully woven, they were, that their very nature was artistic. So, in artistic terms, I would describe the enchantments flowing from the statue as a sea of ink and paint, constantly twirling and mixing within itself and creating hundreds of new colors never before seen and never again remade. It's gone The statue's gone I was just staring at it, and it's no longer t

Dr. Lindsley's Report 28th entry. 02/05/1056 A.N. 04:35 PM We have walked for three days without pause. I haven't had anything to eat in two days. And yet, I don't feel tired nor hungry, neither do the others. In fact, it feels as though our biological needs have ceased to exist, everything aside from the need to drink remains as though we only just departed on this last leg of the journey. This is an entirely new phenomena, none of the expeditionary groups before us have documented something alike. Something didn't want them to find that which sits in the middle of this forest, but now it wanted to be found. Well, not exactly sure if that is indeed the case, but it certainly feels like it. During our march, the feeling that we were being watched spread to all the remaining members of the expedition. Only then did I understand why Dr. Quill did not answer our question, for there is no single entity watching us: It's the forest, every tree, bush and blade of grass. I felt their gaze following our every step. Speaking of Dr. Quill, her demeanor changed drastically as our journey reached its conclusion. Throughout the first couple of weeks she remained a skeptic, swearing on those High Above that these enchanted grounds probably hold nothing of importance and that it's most likely the result of some mage's experiment gone wrong. Now... She's the most enthusiastic of us all, specially with what we've found here in the anomaly's epicenter. It's a graveyard. Hundreds of rows of tombstones covered in moss, perfectly lined up in a circle, all of them facing a tree. The Tree. This enormous oak has to be at least two hundred meters tall, and its canopy shrouds the entirety of the area. Its roots spread outwards and seem to connect to the rest of the forest. We've reached the heart. The road continues through the graveyard and goes directly through the tree, where a large passage has been carved. This passage leads all the way to the other side, where the road continues back into the woods. In the middle of this passage is a statue about three meters tall, the statue of a stallion sat on a stone pedestal. He is slumped to the side and has his eyes closed, appears to be either asleep or peacefully dead, considering the surrounding graveyard. I suspect it might be the focal point for this forest's enchantment. We have set up camp just outside the graveyard. We still don't feel tired nor hungry, but we'll need a base of operations to start identifying the graves. I'll be working on decyphering the enchantments used here, if there are any within the realm of the normal rather than the paranormal.