The bubble that surrounds this town is strong, but any bubble can 
break if one has a hard enough hammer, a sharp enough needle. | 
need power. | need to feed. 


Today, I make a phone call. 


« Chapter 9| Black Autumn Hub| Chapter 11 » 


internal structure. Results were inconclusive. 


Subsequent MRI testing has revealed that SCP-811 has a number 
of unusual glands and organs attached to its lymphatic system, 
which may assist in regulation of the viscosity and microbial flora of 
the material in its circulatory system. One such organ in the 
abdominal region appears to contain lighter-than-air gas. The 
possibility that SCP-811 was once [REDACTED] is being explored. 


Due to the impossibility of maintaining a sterile operating 
environment, limited understanding of SCP-811's biology, and 
difficulty in calculating the subject's mass, the risk of major 
complications or subject death has been deemed too high to 
authorise exploratory surgery. 


Interview Log 811-16 


Interviewers: Dr. Trebuchet, Junior Lab Assistant 
Wachtel 


[Dr. Trebuchet and Junior Lab Assistant Wachtel enter 
SCP-811's containment unit. Dr. Trebuchet is carrying a 
clip board with a document on it and a shoe box.] 


Dr. Trebuchet: Aé. 

SCP-811: Dockty. What want? 

Dr. Trebuchet: Questions. 

SCP-811: [points to shoe box] Food. 


[Dr. Trebuchet nods, opens the shoebox. A frog jumps 
out] 


[SCP-811 brings her foot down on the frog as it lands, 
and begins to digest it.] 


SCP-811: /grins] Dockty wants kestins? 


Dr. Trebuchet: Yes. [hands the clip board to Wachtel, 
points to something on it] 


Equinox’s Rise 


October 30th 


At 4:00 in the morning, Charlie Brotzman woke up at his home away 
from home. 


He was in a large apartment building in Duluth, within driving 
distance of Sloth's Pit, Wisconsin, his home. All of his friends were 
in Superior, he had to go to school in a grey, dull building, and he 
didn't even get to trick-or-treat at anywhere that gave out the big 
candy bars, because all the adults who gave them out were in 
Superior. This was the worst Halloween ever. 


"It doesn't have to be." 
Charlie sat bolt upright and looked around the room, his skin 


clammy. Someone had just whispered to him, in a soft, sweet voice, 
which felt like caramel on his ears. 


"Halloween's a fun holiday, Charlie. and you're not having fun, are you?" 


"Who are you?" He pulled his stuffed kangaroo close to him. 


"I'm Martha! I've come to give candy to the good boys and girls of your town. 
You've had such a rough time..." 


A caramel candy appeared over Charlie's bed, and landed in his lap. 
The boy picked it up and unwrapped it, chewing on the sweet, 
cooked sugar. 


"Good, isn't it?" 


"Y-yeah." He smiled. "I-I like it." 


"You can have more! As much as you want. And there's apple and pumpkin pies, 
and cider, and Hershey's Kisses..." 


The door to the boy's bedroom slowly swung open. 


"You want that, don't you, Charlie?" 
"Y-yes." 
"Follow my voice." The door creaked further open. 


Outside of this dream, Charlie Brotzman and eighteen others 
departed from their buildings in Duluth and Superior, and walked all 
the way to Sloth's Pit, Wiconsin in their sleep, guided by the 
honeyed words of a woman whose voice was stained with the sweet 
scent of rot. 


At 9:00 in the morning, half a dozen men and women convened in 
Site-87's briefing room. Several hours earlier, over a dozen 
perimeter alarms had been tripped, and surveillance had picked up 
nineteen children bound for the fairgrounds where SCP-097 was 
located. 


"Why the hell weren't they stopped?" Dr. Partridge snapped at the 
commander of Sigma-10, Harold March. "You said you had an 
airtight defense around the zone after the Scooby Gang rammed 
through!" 


"Partridge, you've read 097's file. You know that... that kids can 
show up on cameras and not be seen." He held his head in his 
hands. "But... we've confirmed all the kids are from Sloth's Pit. They 
vanished from the safehouses in Duluth and Superior last night." 


"Nineteen of them. Same number that were sacrificed to her in the 
sixties." Katherine Sinclair rubbed her face. "She's trying to... gain 
power. The Williamses said that she was trapped here, and after 
forty-eight years, | can only imagine how badly she wants out." 


"So, instead of eating kids to feed her cult, she's eating kids to feed 
herself. Fan-fucking-tastic!" Malcolm Guillard put his head in his 
hands. "I should have seen the connections. I'm a goddamn forensic 
analyst!" 


"Mal, you're not an investigator." Tristan Bailey patted him on the 
back. "I think the only reason Partridge figured it out as quickly as he 
did is because it's a botanical anomaly. But at the same time..." he 


sighed. "We need to get in there." 


"We can't." Claire Hennessy, acting director of Site-87, shook her 
head. "We'd be violating about nine dozen pieces of Foundation 
protocol—" 


"Fuck the protocol!" Partridge snapped. "Nineteen children are— are 
going to be eaten by a... thing that's going to turn them into 
pumpkins like some fucked-up version of Cinderella! I've got over 
five-thousand liters of the most potent herbicide developed by the 
GOC in storage. If | have to, I'm going to load it into a tanker truck 
and ram it into the pumpkin myself!" 


"Let me finish!" Hennessy snapped back. "We'd be violating 
protocol, but we have loopholes." 


"Like what?" Sinclair frowned. 


"Well, if a member of Foundation personnel — let's say, for the sake 
of example, Claude Mattings — were to be out on a drive near the 
north end of town, bound for Duluth to grab some candy for his ailing 
fiance, and just happened to see anomalous activity..." 


"He'd have to report it in." Partridge smirked. "And when he does..." 


"| can deploy as many members of any task force as | feel is 
necessary to contain this anomaly. Completely hypothetical, of 
course." She pulled her phone from her pocket. "He should be on 
his way back soon..." 


Claire Hennessy's phone rang. "Look who's calling. Ladies and 
gents, let's do this." 


At 1:00 in the afternoon, Seren Pryce loaded her rifle. She was a 
sniper, so her usefulness here was questionable, at best, but she, 
and most of Sigma-10, had come along for the ride. 


"Gotta give it to Hennessy," Ruby commented from the cab of the 
transport. "Woman knows how to find loopholes." 


"Probably half the reason she and Bailey haven't been reprimanded 


for being in an undeclared relationship." February shook his head. 


"Wait— what?" Nick Ewell said as he finished loading his grenade 
launcher. "Bailey and Hennessy— seriously?" 


"You didn't know?" Blake frowned. "Literally the entire site knows." 


"Keep in mind | try to avoid Multi-U as much a possible," Ewell 
frowned. "Three words: July 4th, 2011." 


"Oh god, right. The Ultra-Patriotic Universe." Pryce shuddered. "1 
heard about that. Was it really that bad?" 


"They still find chains of firecrackers in the vents," Blake affirmed. 


Pryce nodded as she loaded her pistol with beryllium-lead slugs. 
"Ruby, you see the zone yet?" 


"Not yet. Convoy ahead of us probably has, though." She got on the 
radio. "S10-L, this is 10-25, visual confirmation of the Zone?" 


«Affirmative.» 10-L responded. «It looks... uh. 10-25, you got the 
time?» 


Ruby looked at her watch. "Five past one." 
«Then why the fuck can | see stars?» 


Ruby looked up at the sky as they passed the outer perimeter of 
097's containment zone, and gasped. Above her, the stars in the 
autumn sky shone. She could see Orion's belt as clear as she could 
see her own face. "Holy shit." 


"Fuck me." Blake cocked his shotgun. "That's... really not good." 


«10-25, we're preparing to breach. Respirator on, and make sure 
your heavy has herbicide grenades loaded.» 


"Copy that." Ruby pulled alongside the rest of the convoy and kept 
her headlights trained on the wall. 


"It's now or never,” February checked his rifle. "We destroy that 


thing, or die trying." 


"First volley, fire!" 


Half a dozen grenadiers raised their launchers high. Balls of plastic 
filled with a deadly herbicide sailed through the air, over the walls of 
what had formerly been Zone-097. The exterior of the site had been 
covered by vines and gourds. Several of them were arranged in the 
shape of human bodies, no doubt growing over what had once been 
Foundation agents. Overhead, red alarm light flashed, barely visible 
through the plant matter growing over it. A weak klaxon sounded 
from vine-choked horns. 


As the grenades exploded, they could see clouds of green smoke 
over the walls, and plants withered. Some of them could swear they 
heard screaming. 


"Breaching team!" Commander Harold March yelled. "Tear down 
this wall!" 


Six men and women primed defective portable containment spheres 
— they had managed to get working ones from another universe, 
but the old models served a different purpose. They opened, and the 
vacuum created by them tore down the walls around the site, the 
sheer vacuum force seemingly deleting matter from existence. 


"Second volley, fire!" 


Six more herbicide grenades sailed through the air, and they saw 
the swaths of plant life before them wither and die through the hole 
in the wall. Vibrant orange pumpkins turned into black husks, and 
disgorged the skeletons of children as they shriveled and died. 


Katherine Sinclair and Montgomery Reynolds moved in through the 
wreckage, along with members of the task force. Sinclair hoped to 
god she wouldn't throw up in her mask. "Is that..." she asked. 


Reynolds knelt to look at the corpse, and shook his head. "Shows 
signs of polio. Not one of ours." 


"Good." Sinclair looked up at the fairgrounds, taking in the 


desolation. 


The most prominent feature, of course, was the rotting Ferris wheel, 
held up by vines and a prayer. One of the baskets had fallen off and 
crushed several others on the way down, and half of the wheel was 
carriageless. It once had a large, grinning Jack-O-Lantern face at 
the center of the wheel, but all that was visible now was the faded 
orange paint, behind a crucified scarecrow. 


Pryce looked through her scope, and saw that the scarecrow was 
wearing a Foundation uniform— not a lab coat or combat armor. A 
dark, blue jacket, reserved for those who worked in RAISA and other 
parts of the Foundation's archival administration. "That's Pickman," 
she sighed. "Guess we know what happened to him." 


Thunder rumbled overhead, and clouds starting blotting out the 
stars. As the task force made their way through the fairgrounds, they 
were met with various grisly sights; an agent whose torso had been 
replaced by a bundle of cornstalks. A series of little dolls, made from 
bones and skin, hung from strings which once held lightbulbs. A 
human head with a candle in each eye and the mouth, mounted 
over a Pepsi stand. 


What troubled the task force the most, by and large, were the stuffed 
animals. Hundreds of them, on the ground, most of them rotting 
away, covered in dirt and leaves and bugs. These had once had 
names, been cherished by children at night as shields to keep the 
monsters away, and held as protection until the monsters had finally 
gotten them. 


A pumpkin loomed in the distance, growing ever closer. 


The sky over Sloth's Pit was pitch black at three in the afternoon. 
The giant pumpkin at the center of the former Douglas County Fair 
Grounds had grown a beaming Jack-o-lantern face, and from within, 
hellish orange light glowed. 


Sitting atop the pumpkin was a woman in black, who had been set 
free by the unlucky gunman. Her eyes were the color of the last light 
of summer. She smelled of stagnant water and cold wind, and in her 


arms, she cradled a child, who whimpered for his mother. 


"I'm your mother," Mavra insisted, her cold, wooden hands raking 
through her hair. "And mother is hungry. Are you hungry?" 


"You're not mommy," Charlie insisted. He looked over the rest of the 
fairgrounds, which were littered with dead leaves and the forms of 
sleeping children. He didn't know what else they could possibly be 
doing, other than sleeping. They were lying still, some draped over 
pumpkins, others in odder positions. The boy let out a soft sob. "I 
want mommy." 


"| am mommy," the woman tugged at his hair, pulling a clump out of 
his scalp. She frowned as Charlie slipped from her grasp. The child 
screamed as he fell off the pumpkin, and with a sickening crack, 
slumped at the base of the gourd. He sobbed, and then laid still. 


The woman felt her strength grow. She could feel the barrier around 
the town starting to bend for her, the bars of the prison being eaten 
away by acid, the bubble giving way to the ever-sharpening needle 
she wielded. 


Eighteen remained to be consumed. She started to come down from 
the pumpkin— 


"Infernus sepulchrum dolores!" 


A voice cut through the park, and the Black Autumn found the right 
side of her face replaced by a gout of fire. She flinched in pain as it 
cut through her being and coiled around her. She wanted to scream, 
but it would give her attackers satisfaction. 


Three dozen people surrounded the pumpkin, popping from the 
shadows, aiming various weapons at her. At the forefront was a 
woman with her hands glowing with flames the same color as her 
hair, flanked by a man with a glowing sword that could cut through 
spells, and a pair of twins— ones that her followers had entrusted 
the traitorous fool Jeffery Hubble to dispose of so many years ago. 
They all had the same insignia on their armor, two circles with three 
arrows pointing in. The same cursed sigil of sealing. 


"Foundation," the Black Autumn hissed. 


Several of the agents began inspecting around the children, and 
muttering to themselves. The red-headed mage simply stood over 
the spirit, scowling, her brow furrowed in concentration as she kept it 
bound in flames. 


"What the hell?" one of them frowned— a woman, with blonde hair. 


"They're alive." The male one of a set of twins stood back. "They're 
alive." 


"That's a good thing, isn't it?” Another asked from the black mass of 
soldiers. 


"It's a weird thing." The mage glowered at Mavra Isimeria. 


Mavra laughed, and frost appeared on the guns pointed at her. "I've 
consumed hundreds of children when | slept, but | got nothing from 
it. | feed on their fear, not their death! Gideon ate of their flesh to 
regain his youth, but | have no need for that." 


With a flick of its wrist, the Black Autumn dismissed the flames, and 
the mage collapsed from the recoil of the spell breaking. She was 
caught by the arms of a portly man. "| suppose that when Hubble 
bound me here, | was... well, acting off of reflex more than anything. 
Muscle memory. Taking children, mutilating them for a cult which 
has long since gone." She laughed. "Death is fleeting. The fear of 
death is delicious. And you have all gorged me these past thirteen 
days! 


"Forty-eight years." Mavra Isimeria clenched its blackened hand into 
a fist. "| have been stuck in this town for forty-eight years. Tonight, it 
ends..." 


Harold March gritted his teeth as the task force finished moving the 
last of the children out of the line of fire. "Thank you for the 
monologue. Agents? Fire at will." 


« Chapter 10| Black Autumn Hub | Finale » 


Autumn's End 


October 30th 


A single beryllium-bronze bullet landed between the eyes of the 
Black Autumn, fired from a revolver. It staggered back slightly, and 
then glared at the shooter, the hole in its head healing. 


Ruby Williams stood there, with her revolver trained on its skull. She 
fired another shot, then another, Keeping her other hand on her arm 
to stop the kickback from dislocating her shoulder. Normally, a 
revolver had six shots, but Ruby had always been a fan of the 
LeMat. Nine bullets pierced its form before her revolver hit empty 
chambers.