SCP-4702

3/4702 LEVEL 3/4702

CLASSIFIED

Item #: SCP-4702

Safe

Manor exterior of SCP-4702-A

Special Containment Procedures: The building containing SCP-4702-A and its associated grounds have been purchased by the Foundation and enclosed within perimeter fencing. The interior parlor room containing SCP-4702-A has been walled off with the exception of one pneumatically sealed door to facilitate Foundation access.

Description: SCP-4702 is an extradimensional anomaly composed of two primary components. SCP-4702-A is a fireplace and accompanying facade, both constructed from multiple porous layers of beryllium bronze. The outermost layer of the casing is an upper-body effigy with a bovine head and outstretched arms. Numerous intricate filigree patterns are visible on all layers of the casing and demonstrate a highly advanced level of artistic complexity including occult, alchemical, and religious iconography.

The fireplace interior is accessed via a narrow slotted opening on the abdomen which allows for the deposit of combustible materials and the tending of the fire. Once a fire has been ignited within SCP-4702-A, associated layers of the casing react in order to project a shadow play upon the walls of the parlor. Despite the unpredictable nature of the flames, the corresponding shadow play includes clearly defined humanoid entities that carry out complicated actions including the use of shadowed 'props' and scenery in order to complete its tale. For the duration of the play, objects in the room such as people or furniture do not cast shadows with respect to the fireplace.

Passage accessed via SCP-4702-A.

If the shadow play is allowed to complete (approximate run-time of 18-minutes) mechanisms within the casing of SCP-4702-A will reconfigure to allow for access to an interior passageway, designated as SCP-4702-B.

SCP-4702-B opens into an extradimensional space approximating a river valley, although it does not appear to correspond to any known geography. Upon transition into SCP-4702-B, subjects report having all personal belongings vanish including clothing with the exception of a stone mask which superficially resembles a Canaanite ritual mask and which cannot be removed. Upon exiting SCP-4702-B, subjects will appear as they did prior to entry.

Approximation of the masks worn by MTF.

The sky within SCP-4702-B is predominantly black but is separated into two major regions. The area posterior to SCP-4702-B gradually lightens into a pale yellow and the area anterior to SCP-4702-B continues to darken until it becomes devoid of all apparent light. Due to the nature of SCP-4702-B and the demanifestation of recording equipment, encounters within the anomaly have been transcribed as part of the debriefing. Despite best attempts to document the details of reconnaissance as close to the mission's conclusion as possible, most operatives subjected to SCP-4702-B had substantial difficulty accounting for the passage of time and the recall of objective sensory information from within the anomaly.

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Exploration Mission Codename: Umbra

The following log was transcribed during a debriefing with MTF Zeta-9 ("Mole Rats") Agent Michelle Wilkes. A team of four operatives was fitted with standard extradimensional exploration gear including a remote reconnaissance drone. Upon passing through SCP-4702-B all contact with the MTF was lost however the anomaly itself remained open. Approximately 42 hours passed before a single agent, Michelle Wilkes, re-emerged from SCP-4702-B with all of her personal equipment. During the debriefing, the complications with exploring SCP-4702-B were made clear and Agent Wilkes was allowed to pen her own report about her experiences.

When I was a child, I nearly drowned in a riptide. Thankfully I was able to break out and reach the shore, exhausted and coughing up water, otherwise, I would not be here to give this accounting. That same night and many other nights after my scare I was accosted by nightmares of brackish water filling my nose, mouth, and lungs as I was pulled deep into the ocean. The very weight of the water crushed me and drowned me, as I sank further into the hopeless blackness of that abyss. I'd shoot up awake just as soon as the last of the light finally faded.

It was that feeling, that crushing blackness that I could not escape, that wrapped itself around me once again as I approached the tunnel we call SCP-4702-B. The tunnel constricted and twisted, turning over on itself just enough to force me to crouch low then crawl on my hands and knees, then on my belly, for several meters until it just…ended and gave way to the river valley.

We barely had time to process what was going on; our faces were covered in some heavy, uncomfortable, clammy mask and our bodies were stripped of all clothing and equipment. Almost as soon as we began to run our hands over the surface of the masks, we were all struck by an acrid, fetid aroma that stung our eyes and lungs with each breath and brought us to our knees; The kind of sour, horrific rot that makes your gut retch and heave. It took us nearly twenty minutes to clean off our vomit and become accustomed enough to the smell to carry on, although it never quite went away. It wasn't easy to expel all of that vomit through the mouth of the mask but we had little choice.

The disappearance of our equipment was unexpected but we resolved to carry out our mission all the same. Before us, the sky seemed to deepen and darken even as we sat, trying to make sense of it and what we might do without any sort of flashlights or ropes. Large monoliths shot up at uneven angles like a petrified forest, made from some sort of black stone like schist or soapstone, and they provided a sort of natural path to exploring deeper. The monoliths themselves were rounded, twisted things that radiated a strange heat. Warm without being hot, but uncomfortable to the touch.

We stepped carefully, each of us one arm's length away from the next person in the chain at all times and checking in verbally every thirty seconds or so. At first, we moved well and carefully and obeyed these rules fastidiously. But as the meters dragged on and one minute slipped into the next which slipped into hours, maybe longer, we stopped talking to each other. The heat from the rocks had made us sweat and dirt was caking onto our bodies. We should have been worried about water, should have been worried about turning back with no supplies, but no one raised concern. No one said anything.

The soft burble of water broke the monotony. The monoliths had narrowed significantly and it was a difficult route to the water's edge, but we arrived at a bank all the same. Several meters short of the water, the huge stones stopped and gave way to the faint glow of soft, flickering orange and red light on the opposite bank. As invasive and unpleasant as the stench had been to this point, it was three-fold worse at the water's edge. So thick and pungent that I found myself unable to get within arm's reach of the water, even if I had wanted to. Writhing just beneath the oily surface, I could see shapes forming, surfacing, and being subsumed once again into the river. Faces, hands and arms, entire corpses, insects, vermin, and I'm not sure what else. A river of disease and filth so vile that recalling it now falls so flat, so trite by comparison to what I felt.

All around us, up and down the bank, we could see people just like us, caked in dirt and grime and naked save for their Canaanite masks. Some of them knelt prostrate with their foreheads touching the ground, others wrenched their heads back with arms outstretched toward the sky above, screaming wordlessly at the indifferent void. Others just wept, sobbing in a heap with their head in their hands.

Some among the waiting had a thick, oily sludge on their bodies as if they had submerged themselves in the river. Most only part of the way up their calves, or up their forearms. But a brave, or perhaps foolish, few were covered up to their torsos or necks. What would possess someone to go into that fetid murk? Why would they do that?

My colleagues looked on in stunned silence as they tried to process the vast number of entities waiting on the bank. I approached what looked to be a woman, white-haired and ravaged by age with sludge coating her hands and arms about halfway up her bicep. I knelt beside her and asked her to tell me her name and she lifted her frail body from its prostration. I saw her lips move beneath her mask and she spoke in a cold, raspy tone as her gnarled hand wrapped around my ankle. I shot up and tried to pull back but her grip was firm with a strength beyond anything I could have assumed.

"We must wait", she bade me. There was hopelessness beneath her words that would have drained the color from my face if the shock of her grip had not done so already.

I nodded to her slowly in the affirmative, hoping that would be enough to get her to let go, and it was. My ankle smeared with that goop, I was otherwise unharmed. And then, I ran.

I always run.

She didn't try to stop me. I didn't even think of the others until I had returned to the portal but I somehow knew no one else would be coming back. They had found their place where they were meant to wait, just as I had been shown mine. I was the only one gutless enough to run away from it and now I have to live.

Exploration Mission Codename: Far Bank

A second exploration was approved with the primary objective of extracting the MTF Zeta-9 agents left behind during the previous mission, and the acquisition of additional, low-risk information about SCP-4702-B. Agent Wilkes was permitted to return to the anomaly due to her familiarity with its internal topology, and her potential value as an asset for extracting marooned personnel.

My request to return to SCP-4702-B was granted. Despite my insistence on completing the mission and redeeming myself to the memory of my colleagues, I could not obtain the psychological endorsements necessary to allow my participation. But I am nothing if not persistent. A lack of denial is tacit approval and they eventually saw things my way; I am the best chance we have at extracting those left behind and I have at least seen their masks. I know where they wait.

When we re-entered SCP-4702-B, crawling on our bellies until that rotten air filled my lungs once more, I felt that familiar tingle in my spine: dread. That all-consuming blackness that haunted my childhood nightmares surrounded me in that tunnel, and I felt a strange comfort in its presence as if it urged me on toward validation. What waited for me was akin to an old friend, eager to welcome me back. Something felt right about it in a way I still don't understand and I never truly may.

Once everyone got oriented, once we cleaned off the vomit, we proceeded into the darkness. I lead the way even though I had no operational command; turns out the squad commander felt a good deal less brave with no gun, naked, stranded in the dark. I don't blame her.

They tried to follow the same protocols we did the first time—everyone an arm's length apart, everyone checking in verbally in cascading order every thirty seconds. And like before, as the darkness closed in and we meandered between monoliths, they grew silent. I wasn't really sure what to call it before but I think now it was reverence; A sort of hushed self-moderation like our voices and our imposed order was out of place in this valley. I tried to count distinct footfalls every once in a while to make sure our full crew was still present, but that was it. Nothing else was said until we reached the river.

Like I did the first time I came upon its shores, the others doubled over and threw up, choking on the miasma and putrefaction, but I was no longer so challenged by my senses or so frail in spirit. This place felt more familiar now and that faint orange-yellow glow coming from somewhere on the other side of the river provided me with a welcoming warmth I never expected to find down there. I began stepping between the prostrate, trying to single out those that came with me. Our colleagues were still here. I was sure of it.

It was surprisingly easy to find those that I left behind. They were in the same place that they had dropped to their knees, rivulets of tears still streaming down their masks, forced to wail and sob through tiny slits over the nose and mouth for what must have been days until we returned. It was exquisite that this place could make them feel so keenly, but there would be time to wax about that later.

As I pointed out those I had marooned, the MTF commanding officer pulled herself together long enough to organize the extraction. The six of them were ready to leave and I told them to go. I would follow right behind. The commander had to have seen it in my eyes that I was lying but she let me go through with it all the same. I suppose she blamed me for having to come in here at all. The others slipped into the darkness, arm around arm carrying each other, and headed back toward the portal. I listened to their footsteps until the river drowned them out and then I approached its bank.

The old woman with the scraggly hair and raspy voice craned her head away from supplication and stared into the very core of me, that I might freeze to death from her cold judgment. I needed to cross the river. I needed to see the other shore and understand this light. With every fiber of my soul I needed to know. And it's only because of such great conviction that I was able to force myself to climb down the bank.

I waded into the murk until I could no longer touch the bottom and then began to swim. Thick and viscous as the river was, swimming was taxing and my arms tired quickly. I lost sight of the bank from which I had left but the shore I was destined for did not come into view. Things under the water bumped against me. Not fish, not plants, but things with anatomy I dare not imagine with my waking mind. Long bony fingers brushing against me, caressing me, supporting me. Or at least I felt like they were until my strength wavered too far and I began to sink beneath the surface. Black, briny muck climbing further and further up my mask as I bobbed beneath the waves in a panic. Into my mouth, my nose, covering my eyes…

The air…I could still feel the last biting touch of the air on my skin before my hand disappeared beneath. It was warm and quiet, a thrumming heartbeat instead of a rushing current that wanted to welcome me to an eternity in that blackness. And I wanted to say yes; I wanted to curl up and drift away and swallow all of my sins so they could carry me to the bottom where I belonged.

But before I could rest, I had to know just one more thing. I pulled myself up toward the surface with one last, desperate lunge and my fingernails dug deeply into chalky earth. I pulled myself onto the shore, chest heaving as I panted and gasped, burping and coughing up that tar that I had nearly drowned in. Somehow I had crossed, but I can offer no explanation as to how I covered that much distance while trying my best to drown.

Before me, everything was different. The desolation, the grimy loneliness of the other shore was gone and this far bank was alive and writhing. Cancerous and grotesque, ropes of flesh and trees of sinew and meat stretched up toward the sky, lit at their base as shallow pits of fire burned, belching smoke and the sickly sweet scent of some kind of incense. There was nothing else for me there. Just an empty shore and hellfire. It's what awaits us all: desolation.

I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry that I caused all of this. I'll accept whatever reprimand. I deserve it and so much more.

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LEVEL 4 ACCESS CREDENTIALS REQUIRED

Following the events of Exploratory Mission Codename: "Far Bank", an interview was requested of Agent Michelle Wilkes and was carried out by Research Lead Dr. Addison Baus. The following is a transcript of that interview.

[BEGIN LOG]

Dr. Baus: Agent Wilkes, you've been tough to bring in. I'm sorry to have to resort to flexing my authority in order to get some face time but you've left me with few options.

Agent Wilkes: I understand, Doctor. You don't have anything to apologize for.

Dr. Baus: That's it? Not going to offer me an explanation as to why you've been trying to dodge these requests? Why you've been putting your superior officers in my path to stop me from talking to you?

Agent Wilkes: I'm going to assume you didn't request an interview so you can ask why I am tough to interview. Can you please get to the material you came here for?

Dr. Baus: You'll have no such luxury when I sit you in front of a professional ethics committee, but we'll get to that another time. Agent Wilkes, your report from the 'Far Bank' feels incomplete. I wanted to ask you if you deliberately omitted material or intentionally truncated your log. It's not your decision as to what materials are or are not relevant, and we cannot make that determination safely unless we have the full picture.

Agent Wilkes: I'm not sure why you would think that, Doctor.

Dr. Baus: Well for starters you have no problems waxing poetic about your journey every step of the way until you touched the far bank. You use dramatic language, you share vivid imagery, and then your entire experience on the far shore is boiled down to one paragraph of 'there was nothing and then I left', to paraphrase.

Agent Wilkes: You're asking me to prove a negative.

Dr. Baus: That's the rub though, I don't believe you that it's a negative. I don't buy it at all and I am running out of patience for you to set the record straight. You know damn well that we have probative measures that can extract the information we need but I'd really rather not risk the permanent damage to your cognition. You have a bright future, Michelle, and I don't want to torpedo both your career and your brain on the same day.

Agent Wilkes: I want to, it's just…

Dr. Baus: Then help me, Michelle. I know it's cliche, but help me help you.

Agent Wilkes: [Pause] I thought if I made up something that fit this would all go away. That I would never have to go back there or talk about this again, and if you ever did send someone else then they might be brave enough or stupid enough to get you the info you need. It was a lie, but a good-intentioned one. I hope you know that.

Dr. Baus: [Places a hand on her arm] I want to believe you but I can't until I hear the whole story and understand why you falsified the report.

Agent Wilkes: [Nods] I crossed the river as I described, it's all true until I clawed my way onshore. But there wasn't anything so simple and comprehensible as flesh and fire. There was…an empty space, and then a Christmas tree.

Dr. Baus: A Christmas tree?

Agent Wilkes: Yes. A tree we had at my childhood home in Boulder; I'd recognize the angel on the top anywhere. It was so cheap but we all picked it out together and it was so very unique. It was alone, under a shaft of light, and as I walked closer more things came into focus and appeared alongside; the fireplace, the wood floor, that chintzy wallpaper, dad's ratty La-z-boy, it was all there just as I remember it. Something came over me as I fell into the scene; I was overcome with the warm smell of mom's baking, the soft crackle of the wood in the fireplace, the smell of the pine needs. Overcome with happiness to be back there again. It was Christmas morning! I…I was back there, completely, just as I had been. It was all so real and then I…I did it again.

Dr. Baus: Did what, Michelle?

Agent Wilkes: I did what I always did from a very young age; fuck things up for the people I love and disappoint them.

I climbed on dad's recliner and to fix the angel, it was sitting crooked, but my wooly socks were to-…I slipped. I fell off the side and came down hard, pulling the angel off of the tree and crushing it into a broken heap. My little brother was the first to run in and he came right up to me, then my Mom entered. 'Jonathan, what did you do' I feigned, acted, lied. My brother's eyes teared up and I'll never forget how he…he just incomprehensibly stared at me, completely incapable of processing my betrayal or how or why his sister could do that to him. Mom scooped him up and took him into the kitchen and I heard more than one smack. Dad could get really mean, and he had a real problem back then.

I sat there in the recliner real quiet while the yelling got louder, then quieter, and then Dad and my little brother came in. Dad asked me if I did it. I shook my head no. Then he asked me again in that voice, that voice all dad's get when you know they're ready to put the fear of God into you if you say the wrong thing. This time I nodded yes.

He put my brother down then grabbed me by the arm and hauled me through the kitchen. He opened the cellar door, took me downstairs and ordered me on one of the shop chairs he kept down there. 'Shelly, I'm disappointed in you beyond words. And so is your brother. You've ruined Christmas. Stay put till I come and get you, you hear?'

I nodded back and he went upstairs. I heard them eating. I heard my brothers ask where I was, and Dad told em I had been real mean and naughty and Santa had to make some changes to his list. I heard the sadness turn to chatter, turn to laughter. Then after dinner they opened presents and…and I guess Jonathan got most of mine. Some of them confused him real good I'm sure, but that's what Dad said: they were his now.

I'll never, as long as I live, forget how alien I felt in my own home. Can you imagine being ten and being told you ruined Christmas? Do you know how unloved and forgotten and worthless I was made to feel and what a shitty thing I did to deserve that punishment. To my own brother. From my own Dad. Hours and hours passed and it was completely dark in that basement save for the dim light from the kitchen at the top of the steps. Finally, Dad trudged down to come and get me. He stood next to the chair and just pointed upstairs, didn't say a word. I went straight to bed where I cried myself to sleep. And the next morning I woke up and I did it all again.

Dr. Baus: Could you clarify that?

Agent Wilkes: I did it all over again. That day, that Christmas, it looped. I woke up, went down the steps, and went right up to the Christmas tree and started it all over again.

Dr. Baus: And you were forced to go through it again?

Agent Wilkes: I was. Indefinitely. I started counting at first, I was aware the loop was going on but I couldn't stop myself. I needed to feel that guilt, at least on some level. I started counting the loops and I got to nearly thirty before I broke down and couldn't remind myself anymore, but I still kept waking up to Christmas. At some point, I started counting again after a while but I don't know how many days I missed in between. It was my own personal groundhog's day. I got to one-thousand one-hundred and fourteen before it stopped.

Dr. Baus: How did it stop? Did you do something different, did you break the loop?

Agent Wilkes: I wish I could tell you that it was some clever scheme I used to save myself but the truth is I was dragged out of the river. That decrepit old woman from before, the one that nearly crushed my ankle, she had ahold of me again and was dragging me out. I can't be sure if I ever even crossed the river at all; perhaps it's for the best I don't know. So then I rolled over, puking my guts up and spilling that blackened bile and putrid tar all over the chalky dirt, and I asked her 'Why. Why did you save me?'

Without the slightest change in her expression she glared down at me. 'We wait. We wait for judgment.'

When I felt strong enough, I got up and came back to the portal. She let me go without a fuss. I think she knew I'd be back.

Dr. Baus: You intend to return to the anomaly?

Agent Wilkes: Not in this lifetime, if I have any say in it. What I felt in that tunnel as I entered the anomaly, that crushing blackness that enveloped me and cut me off from all light and all hope, I felt that same thing again in the river. It was as if everything good and right and pure was ten million miles away and lost to me forever, denied to me completely. For the simple cruelties that I've maliciously and willfully inflicted on my brothers, my family, my friends, my self. For everything that I've done up to this point, I…I know that there's a circle of stone on that river bank where I'll be waiting. I deserve nothing less. I did this to myself.

Dr. Baus: I understand this is a lot. Take your time, but I do have to ask if there's anything else you can tell us.

Agent Wilkes: No. I just want to be alone for a while. I have some thinking to do.

[END LOG]

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