Testing consumed approximately one third of this supply before a 
functional minimum was determined. As of this writing, several 
fragments of roughly 18 CCs have been separated from the main 
mass, and are set aside for testing purposes. Because the amount 
of stone available is sharply limited, all testing must be approved by 
the head researcher assigned to SCP-888, Dr. __, or his superiors. 


Special Note: Research into the content of the ‘filled’ stones used to 
construct the library is ongoing. There appears to be a rough 
chronological order in the layout of the building, with newer stones 
near the south entrance, proceeding top-to-bottom, south-to-north 
toward older memories. As more information becomes available, it 
will be logged in file SCP-888 Archive. 


« SCP-887 | SCP-888 | SCP-889 » 


Woods used to be? Black-eyed men being seen in the remnants?" 


"Then why could you see it?" Clark looked at her, worried. "You said 
your gift only works on ghosts." 


"I'm not— oh." Ana's balance failed, and she leaned against the 
chancel. "...oh god." 


"What is it?” Humphrey rushed to her side, supporting her. 


"Someone... someone's underneath. Screaming. Screaming. 
They're dead and they're screaming. Oh..." She sat down in the 
rubble, and started crying. Her voice changed, distorted, into first a 
child's, then a man's, speaking in German. 


"Vater, vater, bitte, es heiB! Es schmerzt! Vater!" 


"Alec, schlieBe deine Augen, mein Barchen... schleiBe deine 
Augen..." She broke down crying in a masculine voice. "That's what 
they're saying. They burned to death, in the chapel. They were 
seeking solace. And they died." She began bleeding from the 
mouth. 


"God in Heaven..." Humphrey looked back at the truck, at Clark, and 
at the half-a-dozen agents that had stayed there. He said, in 
English, then Ukranian, "Don't just stand there! Let's dig this up!" 


The various agents — all men, all soldiers of some form, whether 
under the New Dawn or the Foundation — all took up pickaxes 
meant for removing the rubble. "Where do we dig?” Humphrey 
asked Ana, holding onto her. 


"Crypt... they burnt in the crypt..." She looked skyward, at the 
setting sun. The heat from the freshly-bombed city had made her 
forget it was winter. The sun was setting so fast. 


"Petros!" — Humphrey was addressing Clark here, in Ukranian — 
"Get on the radio and check with the other teams. See if any of the 
other mediums are having a reaction like this." 


"Yes, sir." Clark ran back to the transport, speaking into the radio. 


Ana, eventually, was able to stand. "...give me a pick." 


"Are you sure?" Humprhey asked. "You look like you could fall at 
any moment." 


"| have to see them," she growled. "It is the only way | can put them 
to rest and get them to stop screaming." 


The rubble beneath their feet shifted in a motion violent enough to 
knock one of the diggers on his front. Everyone stopped to look at it, 
suddenly afraid of what they would find under the ruins of the church 
should they continue digging. For something dead to move rubble 
that extremely required a lot of pain, and a lot of anger. 


Ana had taken a break after they had set up the work lights. A few 
civilians had stopped by and offered their services in the excavation; 
while grateful, they were turned away with emergency food, water, 
and supplies. They were masquerading as an aid organization, so 
they had pitched some tents for those who could find them to sleep 
under. 


The church, as it turned out, was a landmark. A younger couple who 
had survived the blasts had come by for food and mourned how they 
were to be wed in it in March. Humphrey — being a New Dawn 
Initiative pastor — had offered to wed them on the spot, so he was 
off doing that. Something good could come of this, at least. 


They were sitting in the cool of the night air, winter suddenly 
creeping back into the devastated Dresden. They hoped that snow 
would not come, or else it would mask the cold spots that the 
mediums in B66 often relied on to detect spirit activity. 


The rubble shifted again. It kept getting closer to the altar, and the 
vestments on it were starting to shake. It was a miracle that it had 
managed to survive when the rest of it had been burned to the 
ground. The stone didn't melt, but it was hot enough that everything 
supporting it broke down. 


"| hate Americans," Ana concluded, muttering in Czech so that the 
Americans from the Foundation wouldn't hear it. "| hate that they can 


destroy a city like this for no reason." 


The rubble shifted once more. Ana jumped, as she was at the back 
of the chancel, and it had come almost at her feet. She carefully 
walked around it, and called to Humphrey, "It's gotten to the back!" 


"What has?" he called in return. 


"The..." she knew he didn't know the Czech word, so she managed, 
in English, "Ah-nom-ah-li!" 


Humphrey directed his crew to dig towards the back; while they had 
unearthed several pews, no evidence of the crypt was found. They 
were moving from the front of the church to the chancel, 
methodically; in hindsight, they should have done it the opposite 
way. 


The picks and shovels came down, lifting away the rubble and 
beginning to reveal a depression underneath. Ana swooned again. 
"It's... down there." 


"There?" 


"Yes," she gritted her teeth. "| hear them. Their eyes are black... 
they were burnt by fire. All of their eyes. Their skin was covered in 
ash as it was burned through, and their eyes... they boiled. Oh god 
alive, they boiled as they died." She ran toward the rubble, and 
began digging through it with her bare hands. "Let me in!" 


"Ana!" Humphrey tried restraining her. "What the devil—" 


"| can only put them to rest if | can see their bodies! Let me in! 
Please!" 


"Ana, let the men work—" 


They did not need to work much further. The debris exploded 
outwards, a small chunk of stone grazing the medium's temple as 
she recoiled from the blast. She clutched the wound on her head 
and stared at the dust and stone going down a set of stairs; 
fragments of wood were around it, no doubt the doorway that led 
into the crypt. 


"I'm going down," Ana declared. Before there could be any protests, 
she had vanished down the stairs. 


The crypt was quiet enough that Ana could hear her bones creak, 
and the blood going through her veins. She could hear the little sacs 
in her lungs expand and contract as she continued down the tunnel. 


She could almost hear the men of B66 behind her, protesting her 
descent, but she kept onward. She forced her mind to open; the 
amount of psychic force in this city had made it seal itself like a door 
welded shut. She destroyed the welds, and leaned against a wall, 
shocked by what she had seen around her. 


There were 432 souls here. She could feel every single one in her 
head, and she counted them in an instant. Men, women, children, all 
of them German. "Where are your bodies?" she asked. "Please, | 
have to put you to rest." 


432 pale hands pointed in different, nonsensical directions; some up 
to the ceiling, some into the walls, others through themselves. She 
walked on the floor of the crypt, forward, towards the spirit of a child. 
She expected her foot to hit something; a burned chunk of flesh, 
some incinerated clothing, a brooch, a toy, anything. Any clue to tell 
her where the bodies were. 


Instead, she found nothing. She groped along the floor, feeling for 
any sign of human life. Eventually, she found something: a ticket to 
a play, dated February 10th. Five days ago. It was unburned. 


Ana's eyes widened. There were no remains, just debris, from 
survivors, people who had evacuated the structure. She looked up 
at the spirits, tears in her eyes. "I'm so sorry," she said, standing 
against the wall. "I can't help you. You never existed. | can't put you 
to rest." 


There was a mass of confusion from the spirits, a murmur, a 
mumble. How could they not exist? They remembered their lives, 
their names, their... 


.. their... 


The spirits screamed as Ana sprinted up the steps, echoing their 
pitiful wail. They never lived, so how could they ever die, ever pass 
on? 


"They didn't exist?" Humphrey asked as he set up his cot. They had 
made some sort of camp among the rubble, and refugees were 
coming in to seek warmth, food, and shelter. "That doesn't make 
sense." 


"...Hitler is inflating the figures, you said?" Ana swallowed. "If... if 
enough Germans — no, if enough people believe that two-hundred 
thousand souls died here, then... two-hundred thousand souls, who 
lack bodies, who have always lacked bodies, are going to exist." 


"That's insane," Humphrey frowned. "That would mean that, every 
time a death is falsified, every time a statistic is hyperbolic..." 


"...more ghosts exist than the dead." Ana curled up on her cot. "And 
it's going to get worse. Even if the war is ending, if Germany will 
soon surrender... Dresden, and the world, will be left with scars for 
generations." She looked back at Humphrey. "This is the New Dawn 
you people are facing. This is what is creeping over the horizon. A 
world where three, maybe four ghosts exist for every body. Not just 
here. In Russia, the Ukraine, Spain, England, France, Poland... 
even America. The world will be haunted by the actions of all. Axis 
and Ally, Foundation and fiend." She pulled a blanket over herself. 


"Can humanity live with that, Bernard?" 


Bernard Kostyshyn looked towards the horizon, where the moon 
was rising over the rubble. He would never be able to answer this 
question. 


kit Always Used to Think She Was Cool 


Kit told the story the same, every time he told the story, every time 
he thought about her. He heard the click of heels in his head, 
determinedly strutting on the linoleum of the school corridors. 
Teachers looking down their nose at her even as she towered at six 
feet; dismissively putting on mascara as they spoke about standards 
and responsibilities and expectations. That attitude when teachers 
confronted her somewhat disappeared in the face of her peers — 
they were mean to her, to say the least. 


But Kit always used to think she was cool. 


They were young, and that was good, but it was far from the best 
years of their lives, for both of them. Kit was the awkward weedy kid 
who looked like an Alsatian puppy — big hands, big feet, gangly 
limbs that made him clumsy and ragdoll when he was punched into 
the lockers. She was taller than him, trying harder than him, with 
expensive make-up and long hair and tights that covered the hair on 
the legs she wasn’t yet allowed to shave. People used to challenge 
her all the time. They called her a queer, a fag, Dr. Frank N. Furter, 
other names too gross and hateful to say out loud. 


But Kit always used to think she was cool. 


Kit went home left school for the day and went to the graveyard. He 
sat amongst the dandelions and thought of everything and nothing. 
He thought of the monster that was waiting for him at home. He 
thought about explaining bruises in PE. He thought about her. He 
stood, touched a familiar gravestone for luck as he passed it, 
pressed his hand hard to the material and let it dig into his palm so it 
was bleeding slightly. Punishment, maybe, for thinking of her. He 
paused under a familiar tree to speak to a spirit he had hugged 
many moons ago, before he knew this was all wrong and he 
sincerely thought love would protect him, when he thought love 
made the world go around. The people at school offered no love. 
Not to him, especially not to her. She was the weirdo, the outcast. 


Not a girl, not a boy. Not fitting in anywhere. 
But Kit always used to think she was cool. 


As if some telepathic power summoned her as her familiar form 
passed through his thoughts, she appeared at the gate of the 
graveyard. And that was the most amazing thing about her — that it 
was her, and that she was standing at the gate. Kit approached her 
slowly, blood oozing from his newest split lip, eyes fixed on her as 
she stood, quiet, expectant, maybe of insults. He had only seen her 
in the corridors and some classes, after all — they weren’t friends. 
Yet. 


But Kit always used to think she was cool. 


He reached her, and held out his hand, the one that wasn’t gravel- 
burnt. He meant it as a greeting, shaking hands as if they were 
stuffy adults in a meeting, but she took his hand and held it, instead, 
her manicured nails gently pressed into his skin as their fingers 
interlocked, and she finally fit in somewhere. They fit, palm to palm, 
eye to eye, shyly questioning — ‘Is this okay?’ and when neither said 
anything, both concluded that yes, yes it was. Kit came close to her 
side, gently brushed aside a tangle of hair to whisper in an ear that 
was perfected with a large hoop earring. 


“| always used to think you were cool, Dawn.” 


« Hands Under the Water | Hub | Table Salt » 


kit's Bloomin' Adventure 


Kit found himself enjoying the brick wall in the alleyway as two large 
men with identical looks on their identical faces strolled past him. 
For a moment, he nuzzled his cheek against the wall, liking the way 
it felt so rough and sore and, if he tried enough, he would break his 
skin open — like a chrysalis. He would emerge from his human husk 
and become a beautiful butterfly, a thing that was above hanging out 
in dimly lit alleyways to get what they wanted. 


Kit pressed his face into the wall and breathed hard before groaning 
out loud. He was wanting and withdrawing. He was up and down. 
He was sweaty, but cold. He felt like he could mug and stab 
someone, then break down and cry because how fucked up the 
world was. 


This alleyway only led to more fucked-upness. He knew that. But he 
also knew his cure was down here. He finally pulled his face away 
from the wall, unbroken, just slightly scratched, and adjusted the 
sleeping bag under his arm. A woman walked past him, holding 
hands with something he couldn't see. 


His hand tried to fumble for a knife slickly, subtly, but his hands were 
shaking and he was clumsy at the best of times. The folding knife 
was freed from his belt, but slid across the cement before he could 
correct himself and grab it. 


A very tall man smoking a very small cigarette caught it under a 
heavily booted foot and sneered at Kit. 


"You snatchin' for skop, skiet en donder?" The voice growled from a 
mouth trailing smoke. 


"Nope, nope, no lock," Kit shook his head, not agreeing to any deal. 
Not that he was sure what the man was saying — the unique slang in 
this alleyway puzzled him, with its mix of English, London Patois, 
German, Afrikaans, and occasional Dutch. But never French. French 


was a weird language, in French, the numbers even got fucked up 
and - 


Shit. He had chased a thought again. He needed his knife back. It 
would be unwise to transverse the seven kilometre alleyway 
unarmed. Although, unlike some, at least he actually had arms. And 
he had a stunker, a billy club, pressed against his ankle, but it would 
be an arse to get to if a scout found him. The knife, the knife would 
be easier. 


With a heavy sigh, he searched his equally heavy head for the slang 
that the dark-coloured man would understand the best. 


"The knife. Quote me the sun." He may have gotten that slightly 
wrong, but the man's thin eyes lit up. Literally. Like flashlights, 
focusing on Kit, who lifted his arm to protect his eyes. 


"The sun..." His voice drawled over the term. "It is the stars | want." 
He teased the fact that Kit was obviously unused to the area, and 
still stumbling over their natural slang. His eyes scanned Kit and saw 
nothing that appealed to him in honesty. His lip curled in disgust at 
the fact Kit was more than a little dirty, and the brick-burn on his face 
did nothing for his unkempt beard.