The three turned left onto Jefferson street, where very few porch 
lights could be seen. For whatever reason, Jefferson had not been a 
very Halloween-friendly street for the past few years. As they came 
towards Nevada avenue, a dark silhouette walked slowly out of the 
bushes and stood in their way. This one was different; it had arms, 
but its entire body was brown and velvety, with a round head like a 
canvas sack. A visible mouth, opened and lined with teeth could be 
seen, but the head had no other features. It stood silently, its mouth 
unmoving and seemingly incapable of expression. 


"You should have come with us, lazy-daisy! We went for jigs and 
merriment and received much scorn!" the left one informed the 
newcomer. 


"If you had come with, perhaps the goldy oldies would have danced 
for us!" the right one added. 


"Yes, hello Mister Manly, | have found these two are iggy-riggy of 
fuck. | ate a scribble yesterday and am ready for fampling!" The 
middle one stepped towards the newcomer. 


Something moved in the newcomer's mouth. A red tendril began to 
creep out between two teeth, then quickly shot out towards the 
middle one, and disappeared into its mouth. 


"Oh is that fuck? | HAVE BEEN DOING IT SO BADDY-WRONG!" 
cried the left one. 


"Me twosies. Whoopsy," said the right one. It coughed loudly, and 
regurgitated something very large onto the concrete, as the middle 
One and the newcomer fampled quietly. 


"Oh higgeldy piggeldy poppily smock! You've birthed a big whoopsy 
onto the sidewalk!" sang the left one. 


The thing on the sidewalk writhed and squealed. Multiple limbs 
pushed against the ground as it attempted to stand. 


"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!" 


The newly formed quintet all turned towards the other side of the 
street, and the fampling ceased. A group of three middle schoolers 
stood across from them, sans costumes. Their mouths hung open in 
shock. 


"SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"" 


"Oh no, the children have upset my whoopsy! They will be having 
the afraids now!" the right one gleefully yelled. The mess of teeth 
and tongues and limbs began to rush across the street towards the 
three witnesses, who only hesitated a moment before they began 
running for their lives and screaming. 


"Happy Halloween guy-byes!" the left one yelled after them. 


"Now | have empty nest! Am | an oldy now?" asked the right one. 


Letter from the North 


Will you come sit with us? 


It is very cold out here, and we are very lonesome. People do not 

visit us very often, so we do not get to see people. We like people. 
Please come be with us. We would really love to hear more about 
you. Will you not stay? 


Please don't be frightened by our appearance. We did not choose to 
be made this way. We had no say in the matter. All we can do is 
stay in this form. You see? We are touching you, and nothing bad is 
happening at all. Stop screaming at us. 


We are not taking you anyplace dangerous, we promise. It is simply 
a place we take all of our new friends. We will not harm you. Please 
stop screaming so loudly, it is upsetting. We are lifting you up now, 
please stop moving around so much. It's easier that way. 


Why are you still afraid? The treetop view is one that is very 
beautiful, and not many people see it often. See the stars, and the 
moon? They are beautiful this time of night. We often observe them 
from the ground as we contemplate things. We have much time for 
contemplation. 


We are putting you down now. See? No harm was done to you at 
all. Now that you trust us, will you come visit again soon? We have 
not seen anyone for so long. Sometimes in the absence we practice, 
making the gateways to the treetops. We are so very... 


Letters from Benares 


The following letters were recovered from a private collection and 
filed as part of the additional materials relating to SCP-2833. 


Benares, 12 May 1909 


Dear Cousin Emily, 


Greetings from the British Raj! How terribly grand that 
sounds. Honestly, | can hardly believe we are all so far 
away from home, and school, and everything normal in 
the world. Do write and tell me how England is getting 
along without us! 


| shan't bore you with the details of the journey (which 
was tedious), especially with Eleanor's constant 
complaints. Mother tells me | should be more 
understanding, but why must | have an older sister 
whose only thoughts are of dresses and boys? | wish 
she were sensible like you. 


Anyway, here we are in Benares. It is so different here - 
beastly hot and dusty, with flies everywhere, and it 
smells of mud and rotting fruit (and worse things), but 
everything is exciting and new. We were driven through 
the town, and there were men with turbans, and women 
in silk dresses of pink and orange and blue, and Vinod 
our driver stopped for a huge cow in the middle of the 
road. And | drank a mango lassi - have you had one? 
They're delicious. 


We reached our new house, which is all white and 
wicker, and surrounded by shade trees. And blessedly 
cool, which will be good for mother while she 


SCP-893: Asexual 


Item #: SCP-893 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-893 may freely roam the 
facility under the supervision of site personnel. Pre-existing 
instances of SCP-893-X are housed in nurseries at Site-17. Any new 
instances of SCP-893-X are to be placed into Foundation custody 
immediately terminated. 


Tissue samples taken from SCP-893 should be contained within five 
minutes of extraction. 


Description: SCP-893 is a 39 year old Hispanic male who calls 
himself . Subject is a balding, overweight male with green eyes. 


SCP-893-X was initially discovered by _ shortly after having 
severed from SCP-893's fourth and fifth fingers on his right hand 
during a work related incident at a construction site. The subject 
claims to have brought the fingers back to his home and put them on 
ice, neglecting to visit a hospital due to "personal reasons". 
observed his severed ring finger developing a clear fluid around its 
mass before taking on the form of what appeared to be a diminutive 
human fetus. Repeated testing and research have revealed that 
SCP-893's account is factual. 


SCP-893 exhibits very crude regenerative capabilities; Experiment 
Log: 893-452 is to be referenced for detailed information about the 
stumps. 


Any appendages or substantial amounts of living tissue liberated 
from SCP-893 undergo an accelerated process similar to clonal 
fragmentation. Smaller amounts of tissue produce less intelligent, 
shorter lived clones, while opposite results are achieved from larger 
amounts of tissue. These instances, henceforth referred to as 


recuperates. Father says it is called the Ambassador's 
house, although he is only a liaison to the Maharajah. 
They have a Maharajah here, can you believe it? 


And even better, we have our own personal guru! He's 
not called that, of course, he's a sadhu or something, but 
Eleanor and | have decided to call him Guru. He even 
looks the part, with a saffron robe around his waist, and 
bangles on his arms and white whiskers - he is ever so 
impressive. He met us in front of the gate and father 
offered him some money, but even though he looks very 
poor he refused and said he just wanted to bless the 
house, so of course we invited him in and gave him 
some tea. He did a very elaborate blessing, and told us it 
would keep the evil spirits away, and mother has said he 
can come back and tell us about all the strange customs 
here. 


| am very excited about it, but everything is exciting here. 
| can't wait to write more and tell you. 


Yours from the far reaches of the Empire, 


Violet 


Benares, 22 August 1909 


Dear Cousin Emily, 


How lovely to receive your letter, and to know that mine 
made it through. | am pleased to hear that you are well, 
and your work for the church sounds very interesting. 

You'll have to tell me more about it when you have time. 


After weeks of tremendous thunderstorms, it is hot and 
dry all over again here. It makes one wonder whether the 
seasons ever change, or if we are all to be roasted here 
until our skin turns brown and cracks, like potatoes in the 
oven! 


Oh dear, it's too awful, but that has just reminded me. 
Mother, Eleanor and | took a trip into the city last 
fortnight to see some of the sights. We even took a boat 
along the Ganges, which really is quite extraordinary. 
The river is so wide and old and slow, like an elephant 
wandering through the city, and full of little boats 
shuttling to and fro. The water is dark green, and the 
buildings rise up on either side, yellow and sandy- 
coloured. There are wide steps all the way down to the 
water's edge, and people everywhere - washing their 
clothes, bathing and even praying. 


Guru came with us, of course, and he told the boatman 
to take us to Manikarnika Ghat. He told us that it was a 
very holy religious place, where the Hindus come to 
cremate the dead. | could smell the smoke before | saw 
it, along with the usual odor of the city, and another 
smell, almost sweet. When we came closer, there was a 
temple with tall spires like roundhead helmets, blackened 
from the smoke. On the steps to the river there were 
three fires burning, and people dressed in white circling 
around them. 


We didn't go very close, but Guru told us all about the 
rituals. He said that the Hindus believe that the bodies 
are destroyed to allow the spirits to be reincarnated in 
another form. | told him that Christians believe in the 
resurrection of the body, and he laughed and said that 
sounded like a good idea, and maybe we should try to 
keep our bodies living longer in the first place. | thought 
he was teasing me, but he wants to teach us yoga for 
our health, and mother has said yes. 


| asked Vinod later how to spell Manikarnika Ghat, and 
he gave me a strange look. And then | overheard him 
telling mother not to let Guru take us to places like that, 
and that Guru lives in a cemetery and believes strange 
things, but mother said it was all perfectly natural. | think 
Vinod said Eleanor's name too. | wonder if he is sweet 
on her? It would be just like her - all the boys in England 


love her, so why not here? 


How | long for your company instead of hers! | hope you 
will write and tell me how you are. 


Yours faithfully, 


Violet 


Benares, 3 December 1909 


Dear Emily, 


| read your letter with great interest, especially your 
church excursion to the South Downs. It must have been 
charming there with the autumn fruits and cream teas. | 
really think you have the best kind of life. 


Life here continues as ever. Father has found me a tutor 
to continue my lessons, but I'm afraid he is an 
astounding bore. Fortunately we have our visits from 
Guru to enliven us. 


He has been teaching us yoga, even father when he is 
able. We all sit cross-legged on mats, or out under the 
banyan tree outside, wearing loose linens. No doubt you 
will be scandalised, but everything is much more informal 
here. | think it is to do with the heat. 


| am learning more in my yoga lessons than any others. 
Did you know that 'yoga' means "to join" or "to attach"? 
It's all about letting parts of the body grow and expand, 
and join into each other, and new body parts opening up, 
like we have a third eye in the middle of our foreheads, 
and - sorry, I'm not explaining it very well. 


Let me try again. In our first lesson, we sat down and 
Guru made us do deep breathing. He thought | did it very 
well, and he was very pleased when he learned that | am 
left-handed. Apparently there is a left-handed path that 


he thinks everyone should follow, so | laughed and told 
Eleanor that | am ahead of her already. 


Then we had to say a mantra, which sounds like "Ayom", 
but you have to say it very slowly while doing the 
breathing. And Guru told us all about the magical serpent 
that lives inside us, and you say the mantra to make it 
rise up through your body until it bursts out through your 
head and you reach something called samadhi, which | 
think is something like nirvana. It's quite hard to write 
properly about it, but it's fascinating, and it all made a lot 
of sense when Guru was talking. 


One time, when we were doing our stretches, Guru saw 
mother's scar, from where the doctors had cut out the 
tumour. He was very upset and told us that the English 
doctors didn't understand what they were doing, and that 
he knew some medicines that would have been better. | 
have never seen him get angry before, but he soon 
apologised and said he just wanted to make sure we 
were as healthy as we could be. 


And so | will sign off by wishing you good health too, and 
a happy Christmas. | have asked for a fly-swatter for 
Christmas to keep the ghastly things away from me! 


Yours with love and best wishes, 


Violet 


Benares, 1 March 1910 


Dear Cousin, 


Thank you for your letter. You did sound a little stern with 
your warning about "Eastern philosophy". | know that 
your work at church makes you concerned about our 
spiritual guidance, but you needn't worry, Emily - it is all 
a bit of a lark, and something to pass the days here. And 


Guru makes some very interesting observations - even 
father says so. 


Yesterday he took us to visit a temple just outside of the 
city. Benares has twenty thousand temples, and mother, 
Eleanor and | have seen many of them, but Guru said 
that this one was different. For one thing, it was in the 
middle of the jungle, and the entrace was cut into the 
rock of the hillside. I'm surprised that Vinod even drove 
us out there, but he is much better-disposed to Guru 
lately, though some of the other servants object to his 
visits. Some of them have even deserted their posts - 
would you credit it? 


But back to the temple. Inside, there was light filtering 
from somewhere above, but it was faint, and the 
chambers were dark green and shadowy. There were 
carvings in the stone walls, which were quite old and 
mysterious. Some looked like the battles from the 
Ramayana, with huge juggernauts and the demons from 
Lanka all fighting. | saw a man who looked like he had a 
long elephant's trunk, and | asked Guru if it was 
Ganesha, but he just laughed at me and told me that 
they didn't worship Ganesha in this temple. Some of the 
older carvings weren't very good - all the people looked 
funny, like they weren't drawn right. 


We went into the main chamber, which had a hole in the 
ground, and | couldn't see where it stopped, it was so 
dark. | wanted to see if it would echo, and Guru told us 
all to sit and close our eyes, and we could say our 
mantra together. 


Well | must confess, it was the queerest thing. When we 
said our mantra, it was as if the echoes came right back 
out of the pit, and the air felt like it was humming. It gave 
me the shivers, rather, but it was invigorating, like my 
body was just waking up. I'm sure that mother and 
Eleanor felt it too. 


| wish you could have been there. But | must get to 


dinner - a roast goat! Even Vinod, who used to be 
vegetarian, has changed his mind. Guru says that meat 
is meant to be eaten, and is the first step to true 
knowledge. He knows so many interesting things. 


Yours in the quest for true knowledge, 


Violet 


PS - | had to show this letter to mother, so couldn't write 
this before. | have shocking news - Eleanor is to have a 
baby! Father and mother will be livid, but they don't know 
yet. | found Eleanor crying, and she made me promise 
not to tell anyone, but I'm sure | can tell you. She would 
not explain it, but she sounded very upset and confused. 
Could it be Vinod? What will father do? 


Benares, 30 May 1910 


Dearest Emily,