Range of valid entrance vectors to SCP-7842.

ITEM #:

7842

CONTAINMENT CLASS:

SAFE

Special Containment Procedures: As the approach vector to SCP-7842 is currently a driveway, accidental discovery has been deemed highly unlikely. Any civilians who discover SCP-7842 are to be amnesticized should they return.

No additional resources are to be allocated to SCP-7842 research projects.

Description: SCP-7842 is the site of the January 1955 Sutton Coldfield rail crash. The anomalous properties of SCP-7842 only become apparent when it is approached on foot at an angle of 20 degrees from geographical north, with a permissible margin of error of about 50 minutes.1

The vicinity of SCP-7842 is geographically distinct from the entrance point. Upon entering SCP-7842, personnel report seeing a landscape made of overturned and damaged LMS Black Five train cars. The train cars do not appear furnished; there is no evidence of prior human occupation such as seats, other furnishings, or corpses. While the ground level of SCP-7842 appears to follow the natural geography of Sutton Coldfield, the terrain is composed of train cars in various states of disrepair. Ground-penetrating RADAR scans suggest the underground is composed of more train cars. The terrain is largely unnavigable; the cracks between the train cars have no measurable depth. Any material that falls within these cracks should be considered lost.

Approximately one in every twenty train cars is on fire. The fire is cool to the touch and has no apparent fuel source, though when metal is separated from a train car it ceases to burn. Testing has shown that the fire burns and melts materials including metal, wood, and cloth, and can be quenched with water, but does not harm living biological matter. Personnel uniformly report a "deep and instinctual dread" when they view the fire.

There does not appear to be a celestial light source. Despite this, the sky appears a dull orange from the diffusion of the aforementioned burning train cars.

The only meaningful landmark is a sculpture of a male lion that appears made of the same material as the landscape. The sculpture is an estimated 70 km due east of the entry point to SCP-7842. All personnel exposed to SCP-7842 have expressed a desire to investigate the sculpture further, though it remains unclear whether there is a compulsive effect or if this is natural curiosity. Despite the distance of the lion sculpture, personnel have uniformly questioned why its eyes are not alight.

Addendum I:

Dr. S. P., Civilian Literature Professor, approx. 90 years old, details redacted for privacy.

Dr. P. was admitted to Good Hope Hospital after being discovered, delirious, in Sutton Park after being missing for two weeks. She was remanded to Foundation custody after a psychological assessment of the following recurring dream flagged several alert systems.2

I used to love the Dark Lion.

We used to play together, my siblings and I. We imagined a paradise away from the mundane world, a place where we were knights and heroes, beneath the burning eyes of the Dark Lion. Our savior and guardian.

I always think I wake up there. The place where they died.

I've felt myself burning for the past seventy years. Wondering if it could have been me. Wondering why I was still here.

In my dream, the lion comes to us and offers me eternity — take that as you will — and they come for us as we play petty kings and queens, rulers of the public parks. And one by one my siblings take his offer. He's sitting there, watching me with his scarlet eyes, and I hesitate. I keep hesitating.

I've thought it's my punishment, but really it was just an accident. There was nothing I could have done.

I know I love him.

Then my youngest sister takes his paw and vanishes into the darkness.

I'm told she didn't wouldn't have felt any pain, in the crash. That she would have died instantly.

And I ask where they've gone, but the Dark Lion doesn't answer. He wants me to trust him. And I stare into the darkness, but all I can see is a dim firelight.

When I look back at him he's no longer by me. He's endlessly far away, and his hide has turned from flesh to twisted metal.

I scream at him. I ask him where they've gone. What's happened to him.

I had to identify my brothers from their clothing, you know. There wasn't enough left of their faces.

He doesn't answer. How can he? He's just just a lion, and he's so, so far away.

And I fling myself into the earth, into those thin cracks between the train cars, hoping that I can find the mercy of being with my family again, but always, always, I wake up on the surface.

I see him in the distance, through the cold firelight. Watching me. Guarding me. Mocking me.

His eyes aren't red anymore. They're hollow.

I wish I knew why.

Footnotes

1. Roughly 0.83 degrees

2. Department of Purgatorial Spaces Detection Protocols, Tactical Theology Eschatological Monitoring, Multi-U Unsupervised Crossover