File photo of event 4924-1919.

Item #: SCP-4924

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: Due to the actions of unknown parties some time following the initial discovery of SCP-4924-A in 1924, containment largely consists of maintaining the walls constructed over the entrances to SCP-4924, and is to be presented as civil maintenance. Infrared surveillance cameras have been installed throughout the lengths of SCP-49241 in an effort to identify any and all breaches into surrounding plumbing, subway and sewer networks, and any other subterranean cavities, along with observing the activities of SCP-4924-A. Upon the discovery of an attempted breach, MTF Zeta-9 ("Mole Rats") will attempt to dig to the breach from the closest accessible location and seal it using a standard steel cap, concrete and silicone sealant. Should this prove impossible, a team will be required to enter SCP-4924 via the closest access point and seal the breach internally. In the event of a successful breach, the affected area is to be sealed in the same manner as attempted breaches.

Civilian complaints of the sounds of movement underground, hearing voices from locations close to SCP-4924 and witnesses of breaches are to be administered class-B amnestics, and any reports or articles on the subject are to be suppressed and discredited as per Cover-Story 1919-B (Faulty pipes). Disappearances due to breaches are to be attributed to transience, kidnapping or accidental death.

Human testing on samples collected from SCP-4924 have been discontinued by order of the Ethics Committee as of the 19/10/2018

Description: SCP-4924 is an extensive network of tunnels located beneath the surface of Boston’s North End district, believed to have been initially constructed by T█████ G█████ in the 18th century. The tunnels are composed largely of brick passages, though sections of sewer tunnels, cisterns, basements, disused subway tunnels and water pipes have been incorporated into SCP-4924 following the beginning of anomalous activity in the early 20th century. All known entrances to SCP-4924 have been sealed, many by unknown persons prior to the Foundation's acquisition of the tunnels. The entirety of SCP-4924's interior constantly secretes and absorbs molasses from its walls and ceiling in a fashion similar to respiration, with levels of molasses varying at any given time. At minimum there is 40cm of molasses covering the floor, though this has never exceeded a depth of 70cm reached depths of 1.5 metres. SCP-4924's primary anomalous property manifests in attempts to breach into other subterranean spaces, such as tunnels, pipes, sewers and basements. This is a slow process, where sections of the tunnels surface appear to soften and liquefy under the molasses coating, sloughing off in layers heading towards other subterranean structures until it is able to breach through to the other side, at which point the breached structure is converted to be part of SCP-4924 at a rate of 3cm2 per hour. It is estimated that 76% of SCP-4924's current area was assimilated in this fashion, with the remainder being the initial structure.

Extensive testing has shown that sealing a breached structure off from SCP-4924 will stop any anomalous phenomena occurring in the affected area, rendering it safe within a month. Similarly, any material recovered from within SCP-4924 and removed from the area does not exhibit any anomalous properties. This is with the exception of the anomalous molasses secreted by the walls of SCP-4924 and SCP-4924-A, which displays unusual life preserving qualities inside and outside of SCP-4924. Any time an animal organism is fully submerged within this molasses, alive, dead or injured, the specimen will remain alive, or re-animate and proceed to struggle within the molasses in attempts to escape. Regardless of time spent submerged subjects will not expire, nor will they cease attempts to exit the molasses. If allowed to remain within the molasses for a period of three weeks, the subject’s skin and flesh will fuse with any surface they rest upon, typically the floor or wall of the testing chamber or the interior of SCP-4924. At this stage, specimens secrete molasses from their orifices constantly, but will attempt to communicate should their mouths breach the surface of the molasses, and in most cases voice a desire to be terminated.

Due to a lack of available photographic references dating to the suspected origin of SCP-4924, there is only anecdotal evidence hinting at the identity of the bulk of SCP-4924-A's human remains. Some, such as Pasquale Iantosca and Maria Di Stasio, have been identified due to both individuals' young ages, whereas James McMullen was identified by the name tag on the remnants of clothing worn at the time of his death. The remaining human portions of SCP-4924-A have largely been identified. Notable individuals include Cprl. Edward ████████, a member of the initial containment team, along with Travis, Francis, Jackson, Brendan and Kyle Aspen, a family believed to have been killed following a breach into the sub-basement of their home in 1994. A complete list of persons incorporated into SCP-4924-A can be seen in document:4924-1919-V.

SCP-4924-A is believed to have formed at some point in the decade following Event-4924-1919, where a storage tank containing 8.7 million litres of molasses is believed to have burst, causing significant damage to surrounding buildings, sweeping vehicles, people and animals with it, resulting in 21 deaths. It appears as an organism composed mainly of dozens of desiccated human, equine, canine and feline remains, connected via grafting with visible unidentified organs running between some bodies via orifices and wounds. Despite the presence of these connecting tissues, even significant damage to the subject does not seem to hinder its movements or functioning in any way, nor does it show biological signs of life such as respiration, a pulse, feeding or defecation. SCP-4924-A is mobile, constantly roaming SCP-4924 in no discernible pattern, and will react to changes in SCP-4924, being particularly interested in breaches into other structures. Should a breach occur, SCP-4924-A will almost always attempt to exit SCP-4924 through said breach.

Due to its size, strength and apparent indifference to significant damage, SCP-4924-A has proven to be extremely dangerous when encountered. In all cases of animals or humans entering SCP-4924, SCP-4924-A has attempted to incapacitate them and in most cases incorporate them into its mass, typically by vocalising distress calls from the orifices of the bodies comprising its mass in order to lure the individual further inside SCP-4924. These vocalisations have been confirmed to belong to the people within it, and possess knowledge possessed by said individuals. Once an individual has been lured sufficiently deep into SCP-4924, SCP-4924-A will generally maneuver itself between the victim and their method of entry and attack. This behaviour is not limited to times when animal life enters SCP-4924, and there are multiple cases of SCP-4924-A calling into pipes, through sealed sections of SCP-4924 impersonating a trapped person or animal, or even using a breach to cause blockages or disturbances in subterranean infrastructure in an effort to capture those sent to investigate and repair the damages.

Research into learning just why SCP-4924-A seems to reject some captured victims rather than assimilate them into its mass is ongoing, but given its behaviour towards these individuals it is assumed to be motivated out of cruelty.

Addendum 4924-1:

Level 2 Clearance Required

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The following are recovered civilian documents pertaining to SCP-4924 and SCP-4924-A. A full list can be seen in Document:4924-1919-RCA

Recovered Documentation SCP-4924-19: Journal of Francis Aspen, dated June 1994

Date Recovered: July 1st, 1994

Foreword: This journal was recovered following a breach event into the basement of the Aspen family home in Boston's North end resulting the families disappearance in July of 1994. Irrelevant sections have been removed from this copy.

Relevant Text:

June 29

… After lunch with Margaret, I heard the strangest noises coming from the basement. I swear it sounded like a herd of elephants was running around down there, as well as horse noises and people shouting. Didn’t find anything when I looked though. Definitely coming from behind that bricked up archway. I wish the zoning office would let us knock it down, I'm dying to see what's in there.

June 30

The noises just won't stop. It's so much louder now, and what's worse is that there's a hole down in that archway that reeks. Travis found it coming home from work last night, locked it up and told the boys not to go down there until we can get someone to come fix it.

Jackson's gone! We can't find him, but I heard his little voice calling for help from the pipes! He says he got lost down in the basement, Travis is down there looking for him now.

It's been too long, Travis isn't back and the police won't be here for another hour at least. I need to go find them, I've tucked Brendan and Kyle into bed and I'm going to look for them. Please, let them be ok.

Recovered Documentation SCP-4924-33: Video recording of an attempt to rescue a cat trapped in a storm drain, dated January 15 2019

Date Recovered: January 15, 2019

Foreword: This recording was confiscated when Foundation personnel arrived at the scene to intervene in the rescue attempt upon discovering that SCP-4924 had breached into the storm drain in question. Recording lasts for approximately 90 seconds and involves Peter G██████, here referred to as PG, Grace V█████████, referred to as GV, and the voices of Pvt. Jesse Mortlock and Sgt Elaine Stirling.

Recording begins, shows a young man, PG, crouched beside a manhole cover, meowing can be heard from within:

GV: Ok, recording. What have we got here Pete? .

PG: Well, looks like we got a little kitten stuck down there, let’s see if we can't rescue him?

PG proceeds to lift the manhole cover with effort. After 9 seconds, the cover is lifted

PG: What is tha-. PG is cut off when SCP-4924-A partially emerges from the manhole, grabbing PG with 4 arms and attempting to pull him into the manhole. Half a cat can be seen grafted to one arm, and is biting PG.

GV proceeds to drop the camera and rush to PG's aid. Upon reaching him, a desiccated horse head emerges violently from the manhole and bites her leg.

GV and PG: Screaming

Foundation Agents arrive

Sgt Elaine Stirling: Mortlock, secure the camera, everyone else on me!

Pvt Jesse Mortlock: On it!

End recording

Note: No agents were lost in this event. GV was successfully rescued by responding agents and had her wounds treated on the scene. SCP-4924-A retreated within the manhole with PG, and MTF Zeta-9 ("Mole Rats") sealed the storm drain as per Standard Containment Procedures. Class B Amnestics were administered and GV has been informed that the loss of PG and her leg occurred in an urban exploration incident.

Recovered Documentation SCP-4924-40: Journal of an unknown subject, dated October 1926

Date Recovered: August 31, 2019

Foreword: This journal was recovered within SCP-4924 in a sealed off sub-basement used as an art studio in Boston's North End. Due to age and wear, very little of it is legible save for a passage on the last used page.

Relevant Text:

October 27, 1926

How glad I am that inspiration has visited me! It was in the late hours of the night that I ventured down to the gallery, desiring to jot down a quick sketch for a new painting that would have been sure to have stirred superficial interest in the community, but of course been ultimately ignored, when I did spy a most curious thing! There is a hole in the wall of my basement! I pondered how such a thing could be possible, there being empty space beyond the wall of a basement, when I saw movement! I raised my lantern, and there, in the dark was the most curious creature I have ever seen! All twisted limbs, with many equine heads glaring balefully at me. I must confess, I was scared witless, and immediately pushed my bookcase over the breach into my domicile. Now, though, I cannot get that image out of my head. Surely such a vivid recollection deserves to be immortalized on canvas. Tomorrow when I wake, I will begin work on what is sure to be the talk of the town!

Note: Upon the discovery of this journal and the room containing it, a canvas was discovered with a sketch reminiscent of a smaller SCP-4924-A drawn upon it. No sign of the journal's author was found.

Addendum 4924-2:

Level 3 Clearance Required

Close

The following is a recording taken from Agent Riley Freisian’s therapy session where they were asked to describe what happened inside SCP-4924

On ██-██-████ at ████:██:██ hours, word came from Boston that they wanted us2 to head up there to go into these tunnels, SCP-4924, to install some infrared cameras to help with containment. We all got given the papers explaining what was up with the tunnels and the thing that was living down there and everything like that. When we got there and the eggheads explained some more about it, how shooting the thing didn't do shit, the molasses slowing us down, that sort of thing. We came up with the idea to make three teams of three. My team was team three, and was made up me, Pvt. Williams and Dave, uh Cprl. Toki. He and I had been friends for ages. Ours and team two's job was to distract the monster from Team 1 while they installed the cameras in a quadrant of the tunnel systems. We were all entering through different entrances, and we were all in radio contact with each other. We were nervous but pretty confident we would be able to keep it off our backs.

My team went in through south entrance 4b, team two 3a, and team one through north entrance 5a. First thing that hit us was the smell. Being a mole rat, you get used to that sort of thing, but I have to admit that this was just such a sickly stink, different to the shit we normally have to deal with. The molasses wasn't that deep to start with, a little over a foot, but that was enough to make the going pretty slow. We had our lights pointed everywhere, and we left flashpoints3 at every corner to mark our way. The rookie Williams is jumpy as hell and looking around everywhere, but he calmed down some when he found all these gold coins on a shelf in one of the walls. Looked like doubloons or some shit. Anyway, we're moving with team two to sort of herd the monster away from team one. We could hear it pretty clearly now, it sounded like an elephant or something, real big and heavy, making these scraping noises and calling out to us to come find it, using this old timey lingo. Must have been some of the original victims calling out. Then those noises got more urgent, and team two starts screaming over the radio.

The three of us just jumped right into action mode, you know? We ran towards team two, we're shouting and hollering, trying to get it to come after us instead and to get there to save McQuinn and his men, but that fucking goop was so thick we couldn't get there with any kind of speed. We could… Fucking hell… The screaming was everywhere in the tunnels, it's all we could hear. I don't know what was worse, the screaming or when it stopped. Team one's on the radio asking what’s going on, saying that they've made good progress and can come help if we need it but they're too far away to do anything in time. We're just fucking screaming McQuinns name over the radio and not getting anything. We eventually go round a corner and there's all these bullet holes in the walls, casings floating on the goo and McQuinns radio with those stupid stickers his daughter put on it was sitting on a shelf on the wall. We weren't getting a reply and now Team One was defenseless, we had to go help them… I didn't have a choice but to make that call. If I'd known, maybe… Maybe I would've kept looking. I don't know.

I made the call to go head for team one so we could escort them out. Williams was freaking out again but I kept him busy putting up flashpoints. We're getting close and then Dave just stops in his tracks, shuts Williams up. He says he can hear McQuinn, so we follow his lead and head down this passage into some old infected access tunnels from some factory or another. Dave was right, soon Williams and I could hear McQuinn too. We knew the monster was a mimic, but if anyone could survive down here it'd be that old bastard. He was a tunnel rat in Vietnam, I once saw him eat an apple with a knife, he was such a hard bastard… But then we round a bend in the hallway. There was… There was a room at the end of the hall, and that thing was in there. We couldn't see much of it, but McQuinn was fused into it. It… His face… It had fused hands all over him and he was just dangling from it and he wouldn't stop screaming! He was so angry, and he was holding something under that fucking ooze. At first for some reason I thought it was a doll, but then I realised it was Bird, Team two's demolitions expert. He was fucking drowning him, man. He was drowning his best friend! Then it saw us too. It fucking screamed at us like nothing I've ever heard. So many voices, just screaming at us with so much hate and pain. I didn't even need to tell the guys to run, we just took off. I don't know how we got away, but we did. We ran as hard as we could, the ooze wasn't that deep and the thing didn't seem very fast. It kept screaming after us, I could hear McQuinn raving about how "They" had lost everything and they were going to make us suffer too. That really rattled Williams, I had to give him a smack to shut him up.

By now we’re this close to all out panic. We knew we had to get to team one, but we'd run out of flashpoints by then, the fucking maze didn't seem to ever stop, and the going was slower now with me taking point. Dave was walking backwards to cover our rear and Williams was useless, crying and jumping at shadows. Team one have started shouting for us to hear them and find our way to them, which helped. We could hear the fucking monster lurking around, it sounded like it was everywhere at once. It was laughing and screaming at the same time, wouldn't stop going on about how it's suffered. Sometimes we could hear hooves and horses screaming too. We couldn't do anything but just… Just keep going. Eventually we could hear team one, couldn't hear the monster as well. Should have fucking known it was using us to find them, fucking stupid of me. So fucking stupid.

So… So we actually managed to get to team one. We were so relieved for all of about two seconds before that… Fucking monster jumped out behind them. Their lights were on us, our lights were on it, and I just… You know the documents they give you don't describe it properly? Not even close, it's the worst thing I've ever seen. It's this fucking worm, this giant fuck off worm the size of a train, but made of people and horses and dogs and leaking that shit all over. it's got people and dogs and shit hanging off it, some were just dragging along the ground, and they're all laughing and screaming and ranting… Never even says about how those arms… How they're like telephone poles made of meat, with those fucking rats in its hands ripping apart whoever they grab. I don't even think Sarkists deserve to die like that, grabbed and thrown into that giant mouth, melting into it… We weren't even brave enough to try help, we just ran and ran and ran.4

Okay, I think I'm good now. We were lost, but we couldn't hear the monster anymore. The tunnels were looking super old, like hundreds of years old, and big like old sewers. All of us are panicking, we're angry at ourselves for not helping team one and for getting lost. We're trying to radio base for help but they can't figure out where we've ended up either so they're useless. We basically just picked a direction and went with it. That's how we found the cistern. It was huge, one of those round kinds with an arched roof and all these supports. We must have been on a walkway ringing the inside, and it was all flooded with molasses I don't know how deep. It was full of people. Everywhere, they were stuck to the walls, the roof, the supports and the pipes. it was like their skin had turned to wax and melted onto everything to stick them there. They were leaking ooze, covered in it like bugs in tree sap but we could still hear them. Crying and whimpering and struggling. I couldn't imagine anything worse than that cistern. Williams just burst into tears, Dave starts swearing nonstop and I'm just frozen. I'm standing there and all I can think is to grab my gun, stop them from moaning like that. Then the monster came… It was like an eruption, bursting out of the molasses and going right for us. Dave and I just sprinted for the closest tunnel, but Williams… He wasn't fast enough. He called out to me when it got him. Saying he wants to go home and begging me to save him. I tried, I really did try, but my first shot missed him and Dave screamed at me to run so I did.

It was like trying to wade upriver. The molasses was flowing against us, and it kept getting deeper and deeper. We could hear it after us, squeezing through the tunnels. We'd look behind us and see it slowly gaining on us, McQuinn suspended inside that mouth by all those fucking arms and trying to talk us into coming and helping him… It was just luck that Dave found the flashpont. He grabbed me so I didn't miss the turn, pushed me ahead. We ran for it, and soon we could hear the containment specialists calling for us. We were close, but it was close too. We got to the point where we could see the door, and the people inside were calling us, screaming at us to run, to hurry, but the molasses was above my waist by then and Dave had emptied his gun into the thing and it didn't give a shit and it was laughing like a maniac. I saw the people behind the doors faces change. They knew we weren't going to make it, and they hit the button to seal the door. Couldn't risk it getting out. Dave got to the door first, and instead of going in, he held it open. Why would he do that? He should have saved himself, he was out! He held the door for me, got me inside. He… He nearly made it too, but when it grabbed him, I wasn't strong enough to pull him in. Not with that fucking thing pulling on his legs. He… He slipped away, and someone grabbed me, pulled me in more as the door closed. Fuck, I can still hear him screaming.

Every night I hear it, in the pipes. It doesn't stop, Dave calling me to come be with him. Crying, asking why I didn't pull him in, Williams crying for his mother and wanting to go home. The shrink says it's just trauma, but what if it isn't?

Psychologist's Note: Agent Friesian has always been a dedicated, hard working agent, and has shown real courage many times in the service of the Foundation. Following several months of counselling, it is my recommendation that Agent Friesian be administered Class-B Amnestics and transferred. They've suffered enough and I do not see them recovering in any significant way with the memory of these events weighing them down.

Footnotes

1. The installation of this camera network by MTF Zeta-9 ("Mole Rats") resulted in the loss of ██ agents, whose contribution and names are inscribed on the Wall of Valor in Site-19.

2. MTF Zeta-9 ("Mole Rats")

3. Adhesive mounted LED lights shaped as arrows

4. at this point Agent Friesian requests to take a break. Request is granted, and recording is halted for 20 minutes.