Christopher Hastings had no right to wake up, but he might, some 
day. 


The researcher had been lifted out of the cavern and rushed, not to 
Site-87's trauma center, but to the recently commandeered St. 
Francis Memorial Hospital. Standing outside his room were Dr. 
Partridge and Dr. Claude Mattings, fresh out of psychological 
evaluation. 


"How'd you find him?" Claude asked. "You said his tracker went 
dark." 


"Whatever he did down there made every plant on the Hubble estate 
die out, and left a huge line of dead plant life from there to the 
cavern we found him in. Seems like it tapped into hundreds of root 
systems, and when it died, it all went..." he mimed a 'poof'. 


"You said you had something for me?" Mattings asked. 


Partridge nodded, taking the Polaroid out of his pocket. "We found 
Hastings clutching it." He gave a brief explanation as to the contents 
of the video he had recorded, as well as the wallet found by him. "I 
finished sending this information to Site-87's mailing list about forty 
minutes ago. We're seeing what we can piece together." 


Mattings looked over the Polaroid. "Yeah. That Ferris wheel was in 
the anomaly Pickman and | encountered. I'm positive." 


Partridge rubbed his face. He rubbed his face. "So, to recap..." 


"Hubble's gone the way of Dracula, and Carter's body is beneath 
Sloth's Pit, filled with rotting plants. That leaves Z. Allen and R. 
Gideon, plus the photographer, M. Isimeria. We don't even know 
their gender." He handed the Polaroid back to Partridge. "Pickman... 
something happened to him over a photograph that showed 
evidence of Foundation presence in Sloth's Pit a full seven years 
before we officially knew it existed. Something doesn't want us 
finding out about what it was they did." 


"You think it's something from within the Foundation?" Partridge 
asked. 


"Of course not," Mattings frowned. "If it was, they'd have no reason 
to let me live. They could have had me trip and fall in the psych 
ward, or cut the brakes of my car on the way over here." He looked 
into Hasting's room and sighed. "Christ, he got beat badly." 


"He'll live," Partridge sighed. "I finally got in touch with Hennessy. 
She's meeting with me tomorrow." 


Mattings nodded. "That's good. I'm going to talk to Reese, see if she 
can fast-track botany's research into those vampire pumpkins. I—" 
Matting's phone began to ring. He fished it out, and smiled. "It's 
Cassandra. Do you mind?" he asked. 


"Be my guest," Partridge waved at him and nodded. 
Claude answered the phone. "Hello, hon. What's up?" 


"Claude?" Cassandra's voice was quiet. "| need— | need help. Call 
the task force." 


"What's wrong?" He straightened up. 


"J-Jules said that she wanted to check something out at Equinox 
Ridge, a-and she dragged me and Fred along. When we got there, 
w-we were jumped. Jules got grabbed, b-but she's fine, we're in the 
van." 


"Something jumped you? What?" 
"|-It was something that was all b-black, wearing a black veil, and—" 
"Did it have rotten teeth?" Claude's skin went cold. 


"Yeah. Looked like dead leaves." There was a loud thunk from the 
other end. "Shit! Fred, can't this go any faster?" 


A muffled response came from the other end. 


"Hon, t-the van's breaking down. |..." she swallowed. "I think we're 
gonna have to run." 


"I-I'm gonna help you, Cass. | promise." Claude yelled at Partridge 
"Get Sigma-10 on the horn now! We have personnel in danger at 
Equinox Ridge!" 


Partridge fumbled with his phone, and started up a conversation with 
Harold March, the commander of Sigma-10. 


There was a loud bang from the other side of Claude's phone call. 
"Holy SHIT!" a voice in the background called. Female; Juliette 
Hobb. 


"The whole side of the van just buckled. Something's trying to get 
in," Cassie whispered. "We're going to run." 


"Come back to me." Claude swallowed. "Please." 


"| will." Cassie kept the call on, and there was the sound of a door 
opening, followed by the cry of "RUN!" 


Hundreds of footsteps and thousands of minutes seemed to pass. 
Claude's phone was glued to his head as he heard the steps retreat. 


SCP-814: Pure Tones 


Item #: SCP-814 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-814-1 is to be kept ina 
sprung, evacuated anechoic chamber within the Quiet Area of a 
Type IV acoustic containment facility. SCP-814-2 is to be stored ina 
climate-controlled locker outside the facility's Quiet Area. As its 
mechanisms are very fragile, SCP-814-1 is not to be accessed 
under any circumstances without the authorization of its Senior 
Researcher or HMCL. In the event of a Site emergency, SCP-814 is 
to be remotely destroyed. 


Description: SCP-814-1 is an ornate mahogany enclosure housing 
an antique wax-cylinder type phonograph (c. 1900 CE) of unique 
design. The internal mechanism, which is completely functional, is 
capable of holding up to four music cylinders; notably, it is capable 
of the replay of multiple cylinders simultaneously. The 
manufacturer's mark "SYNCOPE" is etched on several of the 
phonograph's components. 


SCP-814-2 is a set of four phonograph cylinders recovered from 
SCP-814-1's four cylinder slots. These cylinders are of 
approximately the same age as SCP-814-1, albeit made of 
hardened steel rather than wax. Each cylinder has the phrase 
"PURE TONE" engraved on each end, followed by a number 
indicating the frequency, in Hz, of a sine-wave tone produced by 
playing the cylinder.’ The cylinders' audio grooves are engraved 
with extreme precision; even under confocal microscopy, the 
grooves show no apparent deviation from the pattern required to 
produce a pure tone of precisely the given frequency. 


Significant effects: SCP-814-2 
When SCP-814-2 cylinders are played via SCP-814-1, 


Then, a scream. The sound of plastic and glass hitting the forest 
floor. The call disconnecting. 


Claude Mattings stood in the hallway of an almost-empty hospital, 
paralyzed. The soundtrack to his life turned into the 
electrocardiogram of a mercifully unconscious man, beeping away in 
the dark. 


«Chapter 5| Black Autumn Hub | Chapter 7» 


Unshelved 


October 25th 


Claude Mattings sat with his head in his hands in one of Site-87's 
break rooms. He had a bottle of hard cider in front of him, sealed. 
He'd found it in Cassandra's quarters, with a note: 


Claude, 


Sorry | didn't get this to you earlier! It's hard getting mail 
into this town, and | had to look everywhere for this cider. 
Consider it a belated birthday present. Let's pop it open 
together. 


Cassie <3 


She had gotten it in before the evacuation, but with everything that 
had happened, she never managed to get it to him. He considered 
downing half the bottle then and there. Next to the cider was a radio, 
and on the other side, Seren Pryce of Squad 25. She'd been quiet 
for about twenty minutes, and he sat, alone, waiting for any 
response, any update. 


The radio beeped to life. «Mattings, you there?» 
Claude picked up the receiver. "I'm here." 


«We found Pike's phone. It's busted. No sign of any of them, 
besides that. Wait, hold on.» The radio went silent for several 
seconds. «Just got word that they found Hobb's phone in the river. 
That leaves Englehardt with some form of communication. We're 
activating phone tracking.» 


"Thanks. Stay safe, Pryce." Claude rubbed his head. "God dammit." 


«Hey.» The radio crackled. «She's strong. She can get kicked while 
she's down and punch back twice as hard. She's gonna be fine.» 


Claude didn't respond, but he smiled. He got up and took the cider 
back to his quarters, placing it on an empty shelf in the fridge. 


Malcolm Guillard sat alone in a dark room with a folder full of 
newspaper clippings that had been dropped by a possibly-dead 
archivist. He was a forensic analyst, that much was true, but he also 
fancied himself an investigative agent. 


The blood bugged Guillard for several reasons; firstly, it was AB-, 
and Pickman was O-. Secondly, it had genetic markers suggesting 
that the blood came from an individual no more than ten years old. 
Thirdly, the blood showed presence of the Salk polio vaccine. It 
couldn't have been Pickman's; it was from a child from the 50's or 
60's. So what was it doing on this folder? 


He shook his head, and put down a story about a little league game 
being cancelled due to all the balls for the Sloth's Pit Bookworms 
being stolen and replaced by balls of chalk by the Superior 
Cornsnakes. Nothing relevant there. This one was heavily 
bloodstained to the point of almost being illegible. 


Local Author Z_ y IlnCelebrates Re of new 
Uncl Za _ Book 

As the Douglas — y ai approaches, Slot ‘sown 
Zachar has released a new Hallowee h _ d book. 
Entitled "Uncle Z = and the Great Pumpkin" 


A good part of the article was splattered in blood, but the rest was 
soaked in it. There was only one other place in town where the 
newspaper archive could be accessed: the Sloth's Pit Public Library. 
He grabbed his jacket, and headed out the door. The " II n" stuck out 
in his mind; it had to be Allen. Z. Allen. A kid's author? Might be at 
the library too, two-for-one deal. 


He left a note on his door saying where he was going, and headed 
outside, where thunder rumbled overhead. The weather had been 
slowly turning worse, and it looked like it would break soon. 


Malcolm Guillard was sometimes called a "maverick", which is just a 
very, very polite way of saying "self-destructive dumbass". He had a 
tendency to go off and follow leads on his own, despite the fact that 

it was not his job. He found the doors to the library unlocked, anda 

familiar face within. 


Sleeping in a chair in the reading room was Dr. Tristan Bailey. His 
car had been parked out front, and he had a laptop on the table next 
to him, with the screensaver running. Resting around his neck was a 
large digital camera on a strap. 


Above him, hanging from the ceiling, was an approximation of the 
dread visage of Cthulhu. The bookends on top of the shelves also 
resembled the classic squatting Cthulhu statue from the stories, and 
various dioramas of scenes from the works of various mythos 
authors, all surrounding a scale model of Miskatonic University, built 
from Lego, with figures of Derleth, Lovecraft, Frank Long, and others 
standing in the windows. 


Malcolm walked past all of these and jostled Bailey awake. 


He jumped, and blinked. "Nuhwuzhauh? What universe am | in?" He 
looked around, eyes wide. "Am | in the Library?" 


"Yeah. Sloth's Pit Public Library." Malcolm shook his head. "What 
the hell are you doing?" 


"This place has the best internet in town," Tristan explained with a 
yawn and stretch. "And since Multi-U's not running experiments for 
the time being, | figured I'd come here and do some independent 
study." He rubbed his eyes. "You?" 


"Need to find the microfiche archive. Most of the documents 
Pickman died for are covered in blood and impossible to read." 


Tristan raised a brow, and moved to one of the library's computers. 
"Microfiche is, as the kids say, so last millennium." He clicked away 
as thunder began to grumble outside. With a few clicks, he pulled up 
a page that proudly proclaimed 'Sloth's Pit Public Library Digital 
Microfiche Project’. "They're converting all of their microfiche to 
online text. They have it up through about 1975, for right now." 


"Exactly what | need." Guillard cracked his knuckles, and typed in 
the search term ‘Allen, Zachary’. A few articles popped up, and he 
clicked on the most relevant-looking one, which read: 


Local Author Zachary Allen Celebrates Release of 
new Uncle Zadok Book 

As the Douglas County Fair approaches, Sloth's Pit's 
own Zachary Allen has released a new Halloween- 
themed book. Entitled "Uncle Zadok and the Great 
Pumpkin", the book will be premiering at the Bell, Book 
and Candle bookstore on October 25th. Allen (pictured) 
will be there signing new copies of his book. 


Guillard's eyes went to the picture, and a grin broke across his face. 
Staring back at him was one of the four men from the photograph. 
"Hello, Z. Allen." 


"Bit slow on the uptake there, Mal." Bailey turned his laptop towards 
the forensic specialist. "Check this out." 


Guillard looked at the article Bailey had pulled up, eyes wide. 


LOCAL AUTHOR FOUND, GUILTY OF ABDUCTION 
OF NINETEEN CHILDREN, SHOT OUTSIDE 
COURTHOUSE 


"What the fuck?" 


"They found... partial remains of about six kids in his house." Tristan 
swallowed. "He admitted to thirteen more, claimed he acted with 
then-mayor Clive Carter. Who— shocker— went missing two weeks 
before." He scratched his head. "So, we have a pair of child 
abductors connected to both Hubble and the county fair." 


"Add in the pumpkin motif... hmm." Malcolm pulled up the library's 
card catalog on his terminal, and typed in 'Uncle Zadok’. His eyes 

went wide. "The fuck? All of his books are listed under 'restricted’." 
"Why?" Tristan frowned. 


"I... don't know. They usually save that listing for harmful reading 
material." 


"Anarchist's Cookbook?" Bailey hazarded. 


"| mean anomalously harmful. Like Quantum Accelerators for 
Dummies, or a Cliffs Notes for Cardenio." He pulled away from the 
computer. "We need to see those books. If they're anomalous, then 
Allen might have used them to take those kids." 


With a bright flash of lightning illuminating a third figure in the room 
and a sound of thunder, the power died. "Ah, nuts." Bailey pulled a 
glowstick from his pocket and cracked it, lighting the area around 
him. 


Guillard pulled out his flashlight. "Restricted section's down in the 
basement." He aimed it at the floor and made his way to the stairs. 


Lightning illuminated the floor once more, and Tristan saw a shadow 
at the bottom of the stairs, before Malcolm. "Hey, Mal?" 


"What?" 
"Is... this place haunted?" 


"It's Sloth's Pit. Every building on Main Street is haunted." He 
sighed. "C'mon. This way." 


The power stayed out on the whole descent to the lowest level. At 
some point, it stopped feeling like a library, and felt more like a bank. 
The basement was where the archives were kept, and where the 
majority of the library's digitization project was taking place; dozens 
of boxes of microfiche slides were on the tables, ready go be copied 
onto computers. 


An actual, physical card catalog existed down here, along with some 
items that they considered too valuable to be checked out, such as a 
first draft of an August Derleth story. Tristan stopped in front of the 
story, and started reading it. "The Memoirs of Solar Pons? The hell 
is this doing here?" 


"Derleth's from Wisconsin," Malcolm explained. "Why do you think 
the library has Cthulhu-themed decor at Halloween?" 


"Huh." Tristan turned away, keeping his glowstick held high. "You 
ever been to the restricted section before?" 


"Once or twice. They have some interesting stuff down here, and not 
all of it will kill you if you read it." He looked at Bailey's camera. 
"What kind of filter do you have on that?" 


"If you're asking whether or not | can use it to photograph memetic 
anomalies safely, the answer's yes. Not sure about coghazes, 
though." He aimed his glowstick up high, illuminating the sign for the 
section. "Through here, | guess." 


Tristan was met with shelves upon shelves of books that were 
marked with various symbols indicating that they were somehow 
hazardous, all locked behind sturdy-looking metal cages; he 
recognized a couple of spellbooks from Sinclair toting copies of 
them around the site, as well as several scripts for The Hanged 
King's Tragedy, which Jackson Sloth Memorial's drama club had 
somehow got their hands on back in the 80's. The Foundation 
stopped them from doing something really stupid, thank god.