Today, as | pen this chronicle in the warm light of the Royal 
Foundation's study, | find it growingly inconceivable that Rosyth 
could not have foreseen the events of that night. | remember that he 
left the room with a certain kind of gravitas, as an actor would have 
departed the stage, or Judas before the Pharisees. Our purpose of 
visit was painfully clear; yet he invited us with open, albeit grudging, 
arms. Neither did he do anything to prevent our eventual discovery 
of his affairs, nor did he dissuade us from trying with his temptingly 
mysterious demeanour, which seemed to conceal multitudes. | now 
believe that Rosyth's behaviour at the dinner table that evening was 
not intended to be that of one who kept secrets; rather, they were 
the actions of a man who wanted them to be found. 


The housekeeper led us to our rooms, which appeared to be 
similarly refurbished quarters situated a few rooms before the dining 
room. This unorthodox placement of accommodations further stoked 
our Curiosity, as we realised that in the course of our admittedly 
prosaic conversation, Rosyth had not mentioned, nor gave nary a 
hint of, the interior of his house at all - of what lay behind the locked 
black door. We quietly agreed to investigate this at a later hour. 


| slept uneasily, and dreamt of mad things; of mazes that twisted into 
themselves, yet contained but one single unbroken path; of 
fearsome tigers that sprung from doorways rich in history; and of a 
singular, mournful voice, singing again and again of things long past, 
in whose repetition | discerned infinity. With a start | awoke, and 
found that | had drenched myself in a cold sweat. It was two-thirty in 
the morning. 


At that moment, there began a soft tapping at my door. A crack of 
dark, a candle flame, and the conspiratorial face of Mrs. Barton 
peeked in. She whispered to me that it was time to go. 


We had but one candle between the three of us, which cast its 
meagre light along the walls as we made our way to the entrance 
hall where we had seen the black door. Dr. Barton approached first, 


warily - and found to our surprise that the heavy lock had been 
removed. The door swung open on oiled hinges with a single push, 
and Mrs. Barton and | scrambled to hold it before it hit the wall. We 
elected to leave it open as we proceeded through the unusually long 
threshold into the room within. 


What awaited us inside defies description, but | will try nonetheless. 


Beyond the black door was madness. A corridor led to many small, 
cloistered spaces, each at strange angles to each other. Protrusions 
jutted from the walls in a medley of strange materials: at a glance | 
saw green soapstone, Corsican marble, the jagged inside of a 
geode, and dark obsidian. The ceiling was dizzyingly high, and, in 
places, the floor rose to meet it. An enormous spiked sphere, the 
colour of bone; half-formed stairs that led to nowhere; hallways that 
twisted and doors that met each other sideways. At some point, Mrs. 
Barton nodded to her husband, who produced a pair of dowsing 
rods and led the way towards the source of spiritual disturbance. My 
vision blurred, and | began to see shadows within shadows; in an 
instinctive act of self-preservation, | invoked the Names of God 
under my breath. A glance at the Bartons showed that they, too, 
were similarly on their guard. We located the stairs - the real ones, 
this time - and ascended them, as the floor reeled away behind us. 


The dowsing rods swivelled wildly as we reached the second floor. 
At that point, | saw that my breath had fogged up my spectacles, 
and | shivered, suddenly aware that we were surrounded by an 
immense chill. My reaction was not due to the cold, for | had long 
been accustomed to the London winters at this point in my career. 
Rather, many a spiritual manifestation has been known to feed off 
the energy latent in the air, inadvertently or not, dropping it by no 
more than a handful of degrees - and the fact that it was near- 
freezing inside the heart of Rosyth Hall indicated to me that this was 
no ordinary problem we were called to resolve. 


We were in the process of navigating our way through the 
convoluted hallway when it struck. At first, Dr. Barton's rods 
sparked, then blew out in a flash. The candle went out. Suddenly, | 
found myself gripped by an immense nausea, and as | reeled, | saw 
two glowing points of light in the distance - or were they close? Mrs. 
Barton dropped to her knees, a ward gleaming madly in each hand. 


There was the smell of burnt paper. Then the entity descended onto 
us in its full, terrifying glory. 


It was as if | had plunged over the edge of a great precipice. 
Stretching before me, and inexplicably, all around us, was the 
vastness of memory... No, a single individual. | was keenly aware of 
a childhood, years, a courtship, love, death, and birth. Our memories 
are finite, but the infinite subdivision of it into slices of the individual's 
perception, such that each moment can be seen in more than three 
different ways at two different times produces an illusion of 
experience akin to infinity. From this, | was able to ascertain the 
identity of the entity, despite it not speaking a word - that of the 
deceased Clara Rosyth, grotesquely remanifested into not a 
spectre, not a ghoul, but something even less substantial, and 
pitifully so. The air screamed with her very name, and | felt it with 
every bone in my body. The two glowing points of light, which | now 
took to be the eyes of the sad woman, stood still in front of us, with 
an expression of fearsome melancholy. 


Somehow | found the strength to roll up my sleeves and bare the 
Marks imprinted upon my skin. The familiar sight calmed my mind, 
and | gathered all my faculties to begin the incantation that would 
bound the summoned entity to my will. "Na hi kascit ksanam api, 
jatu..." Yet the words faltered, as if swallowed by the void; every 
attempt | made to contain the massive energies released by the 
entity was met with an equal, if not stronger, backlash. Soon, | would 
not even have the strength left to maintain the wards of self- 
protection that were surely the only thing between me and the raging 
torrent that surrounded us. Through the corners of my eyes, | could 
see Dr. Barton convulsing. Blood streamed from the edges of Mrs. 
Barton's mouth. 


Then, from a great distance away, the torrent ebbed. Words arced 
above the din, a low, clear chant that peeled away at the air. The 
eyes of the being that was Clara Rosyth shimmered, then appeared 
to fade in intensity. | instantly fell to the floor, gasping for breath, with 
the Marks on my forearms burning white-hot into my bones. In my 
exhausted mental state, | paid little heed to what was about to 
transpire in front of me, and can only testify to the events that 
followed afterward with no great degree of clarity. What | can 


conjecture now, in the safety of the study, is that the points of light 
did not fade. Instead, they had simply turned around. 


There were flashes of light, and fragments of phrases - | caught 
hints of high Enochian, Hebrew, and church Latin - delivered so 
quickly and so fast that | cannot recall their exact contents even 
now. There was the firecracker sound of several wards discharging 
in unison as the walls exploded into a series of rapidly-shifting sigils. 
Silhouetted against the chaos, | discerned the shape of a tall, thin 
man flanked on his left and right by two, smaller figures. Then the 
figures flickered, the man screamed, and all was silent. 


| know not how | carried the Bartons out through the black door and 
into the relative sanity of the entrance hall. The housekeeper asked 
no questions; she seemed to intuit what had occurred within the 
inner walls of the house, and took to seeing to the well-being of the 
unconscious Bartons. The remainder of the events of that night has 
already been well-documented, so | shall be brief: after tending to 
us, the housekeeper was instructed to ride to Hayfield and contact 
the Royal Foundation via telegram as soon as possible; | myself 
managed to return to my room, wherein | collapsed on my bed and 
remained so until the arrival of the secondary investigating team the 
next day. 


Of the eventual fate of Henry Percival Rosyth, not much is known. 
What conclusions remain can only be arrived through conjecture, 
and not through objective testimony. The secondary investigating 
team found no trace of the man, but discovered instead a number of 
anomalous phenomena that have already been accounted for and 
documented in the archives of the Royal Foundation, that paint a 
picture of Rosyth before his death as a mentally unhinged and 
obsessively deranged individual driven by the death of his wife to 
commit monstrous acts. However, as | have been led to believe from 
the facts present, it was also Rosyth who defended us from the 
onslaught of his tragic creation, and who sacrificed his life in return 
for our sanity. A man cannot be defined in his darkest moments, nor 
can he be defined in his proudest. 


| still cannot forget the entity in the house, or her lighted eyes that 
wept fire. Even now, three months after the events of that fateful 
night, | dream of her when | sleep, and wake up surprised that | am 


even able to remain myself at all. Clara Rosyth may be dead - but 
she refuses to be forgotten. 


Signed, 

Jitinder Jaishankar 

Exorcist for the Royal Foundation of the Secure Containment of the 
Paranormal 

31st December 1876 


SCP-2697: Fire Season 


Item #: SCP-2697 
Object Class: Euclid 


Special Containment Procedures: A partial security fence has 
been constructed 50 m from the edge of SCP-2697. The entire 
watershed is to remain closed to the public on the pretext of being a 
former live-fire range for the nearby Mountain Home Air Force Base. 
Intruders are to be apprehended by Foundation agents disguised as 
U.S. Bureau of Land Management personnel, warned of the dangers 
of unexploded ordnance, and turned away. If necessary, class-C 
amnestics may be used to deter persistent exploration attempts. 


When a wildfire begins inside SCP-2697, all personnel are to leave 
the area immediately. Non-portable equipment and structures are to 
be abandoned, and rebuilt only after the fire. No firefighting attempt 
is to last longer than 12 hours: any persons or objects left inside 
SCP-2697 after this period must be considered lost and allowed to 
burn. (See Incident Report 2697-433 for explanation.) Agents 
embedded in the National Interagency Fire Center are to ensure that 
SCP-2697 fires are not targeted for civilian firefighting. These 
personnel are also to assist the ongoing information-suppression 
and disinformation campaigns that prevent public discovery of the 
anomaly. 


In the event of any SCP-2697-1 activity, the project lead is to be 
notified immediately. Should SCP-2697's response fail to quell the 
activity, Procedure 98-Miramichi is to be enacted at the project 
lead's discretion. 


Description: SCP-2697 is the watershed of Upper Creek, a minor 
tributary of the River located in the Jarbidge Mountains of 
north-central Nevada. The drainage's land area is approximately 

150 square kilometers; its vegetation consists largely of mixed shrub 
steppe and sparse juniper forest, with scattered aspen groves on 


north-facing slopes. All organisms and structures native to the 
watershed! are considered members of SCP-2697. 


As is typical of the area, SCP-2697 is at high risk of wildfires in late 
summer. However, the fire regime in SCP-2697 is anomalous in 
several respects. First, the entirety of SCP-2697 invariably burns 
each year: 100% of its land surface has been subject to active 
surface and crown fires every year since at least 1952, and soil 
core samples suggest comprehensive annual fires for at least the 
past 10,000 years. The majority of these fires are attributable to 
natural causes such as lightning strikes, but 30% (+/- 6%) begin with 
catastrophic autoignition by an individual native organism. Neither 
wet weather, active fire suppression, nor anoxic conditions inhibit 
this effect, and firefighting is largely ineffective.3 


Secondly, wildfires in SCP-2697 have minimal effects on its native 
organisms and structures. These objects catch fire and burn, but 
suffer relatively minimal injury, losing no more than 10% of their total 
mass to burn damage. Living organisms show no sign of distress 
while burning; animals ignore the flames completely. Damage that 
would ordinarily impair an organism's bodily functions or an object's 
structural integrity does not cause any apparent disability or 
instability.4 Furthermore, over a period of three to twenty days after 
the fire subsides, all damage caused to native organisms and 
structures is anomalously repaired: living organisms heal with 
abnormal speed, while nonliving objects revert gradually to their pre- 
fire condition. 


Thirdly, these same wildfires are disproportionately destructive to 
nonnative influences. SCP-2697 wildfires ignite all objects not native 
to SCP-2697 and quickly destroy them. Any and every entity 
originating outside SCP-2697 is affected, including those composed 
of ordinarily-nonflammable materials such as metal, asbestos, and 
fire-retardant foam. Nonnative objects and organisms that avoid 
ignition become unusually attractive to the local wildlife: the longer 
an unburned nonnative object persists inside the anomaly's 
boundaries, the more the native fauna will tend to approach it, 
attempting to touch it and thereby spread the fire already affecting 
them. 100% of these encounters have so far ended either in the 
nonnative object's destruction or its withdrawal from SCP-2697. 


SCP-308: Aztec Burial Sarcophagus 


Item #: SCP-308 
Object Class: Safe 


Special Containment Procedures: SCP-308 is stored in a sterile 
containment room under armed guard. Personnel entering the room 
must be decontaminated and fitted with Level A encapsulation suits, 
and remotely observed for the duration of their visit. No organic 
material may be placed in SCP-308 without Level 4 authorization. 
SCP-308 will remain open unless being studied. 


Description: SCP-308 is an ornate funerary casing of Aztec origin, 
dated ~500 years old with dimensions 1.8 m x 0.9 m x 1.2 m. It was 
found at the archaeological excavation among similar (though 
mundane) artifacts in a temple complex. SCP-308 is covered in 
Nahuatl pictographs consistent with ceremonial practices of its time, 
though unusual in the care and expense devoted to them. Under 
normal conditions the artifact is inert, but it exerts an animating 
effect on organisms when they are placed inside it. The effect was 
first observed in the original inhabitant of the coffin, [DATA 
EXPUNGED] The poor condition of the individual has been 
attributed to its 500 year incarceration in the casing without 
nourishment or stimulation. 


Healthy, injured, or even deceased subjects are transformed by the 
artifact. Regardless of the condition of an organism prior to 
placement in the coffin (with one exception, see below), the creature 
will exhibit certain traits upon removal. Superficially subjects remain 
unchanged, retaining injuries and conditions sustained prior to 
exposure. Despite the nature and seriousness of such trauma, 
however, subjects appear alive and responsive to the extent the 
injuries allow. For example, a subject exposed to a fatal dose of 
cyanide (in excess of 100x fatal dosage) conversed normally, 
respired, and displayed vital signs such as heartbeat and brain 
activity. The subject also presented classical symptoms of acute 


(See Incident Report 2697-433.)