| broke into sunlight, smashing aside the manhole cover. The sound 
of carriages reached my ear like beautiful music, as | lay on my side, 
across the cobblestones, heaving and retching, almost blacking out 

there and then. | heard the sound of an officer ringing his bell as he 

noticed me, and | realized, with a jolt — | had made it. 


Chatmers had not. We never found him. Nor did we ever find the 
figures again, or the Hall of Horrors, as we had that Halloween day. 
A particularly loud peal of thunder shook me from the half-dream, 


As DI1 and DI8 decide to act quickly in these hotter temperatures 
fearing the same fate, they proceed to the village center and 
encounter another previously unknown phenomenon. In the precise 
center of town rising above what was the community well is a sohere 
suspended by angled supports comprised of SCP-610 flesh. This 
ball is riddled with the features of humans in early stages of 
SCP-610 infection as well as a good number assumed to be in later 
stages. A number of specimens of non-human life forms such as 
deer and bears are also visible within the mass. The entire sphere of 
flesh pulses at roughly a five second interval and with each pulse 
emits a ring of spore-like material from its equator. This material 
floats to the ground and appears to be absorbed into the converted 
environment. 


DI3 begins to douse the sphere with the provided gasoline and when 
questioned by a panicking DI1 explains this looks like as good a 
thing to burn as any. At this point Perimeter Control has ceased 
giving commands due to the rapid deterioration of events. There is 
no reaction from anything within Site C to any of this activity until the 
precise moment at which a lit emergency flare is applied to the 
spherical mass, which immediately goes up in flames. The remote 
feed plays back a noise from an unknown location that seems to 
come from a location far outside of Site C but was reported as being 
heard even at Perimeter Control by both Sites C and A. This noise is 
described as both explosive ("as if multiple high yield charges were 
detonated on a mountain side") and alive ("like a large feral creature 
roaring"). Within fifteen seconds following this sound's dissipation 
Site A reported that a series of explosions had occurred within the 
village. Five seconds after this report, the spherical mass in the 
middle of Site C explodes. 


DI1 and DI3 are thrown by the blast. DI3 is confirmed deceased by 
Dl1 after regaining his footing, having suffered injury from stone 
shrapnel from the well. DI1 is able to report he has bruises and 
ringing ears but aside from the rapidly spreading SCP-610 infection 
he suffered no blast damage. During this recording of footage DI1 
had his video equipment removed and was looking into it. Due to the 
angle of recording it is unknown precisely what occurred in Site C 
but something draws DI1's attention back to the center of town 
where he stares for several moments then is pulled in the opposite 


half-memory. At this age, | could barely remember the details, yet | 
still remembered the face of Gilroy all too well, just before he had 
been shot — in mercy. | remembered the face of the trapped person, 
the one whose coffin | had peered into, the despair, the sheer 
despair of the un-life. 


And | remembered Chatmer’s face. Particularly well, in fact, for as | 
looked up, | stared into it, (there - outside my window!) just as | had 
remembered. In the rain outside my window, across from the 
armchair, there he stood, in a glass coffin. Terror took me, as | saw 
his writhing, struggling form, smashing weakly against the unbroken 
glass. To his left, in another coffin, was Gilroy, head somehow still 
intact, scratching feebly against the glass. And to his right — stood 
an empty coffin. Waiting. In the dimming darkness of All Hallow's 
Eve, the clock struck midnight, and | once again heard, interspersed 
with the ringing grandfather toll, something | had not heard for years. 


Pitter-patter. Step. Step. 


Play 


| was deposited to awareness with an abrupiness normally reserved 
for the newly born, and much like them, my first view of the world 
was enough to send me into wracking sobs. | attempted to recoil, to 
fall back to the nothing that | had come from, but found myself 
frozen, my body not my own, only able to watch and look in horror at 
the world | now found myself in. 


Cracked bricks and blocks formed an endless road before me, while 
behind laid only a flat mass of black more dark and empty then the 
place | had already come from. Stones and clumps of masonry 
floated here and there, as if frozen after being flung free by some 
massive explosion. Yawning tubes dotted this narrow, cyclopean 
highway, and the road had even crumbled away in sections, to 
reveal gaping maws of oblivion. 


It was not this alien landscape that filled with me horror. While it 
gnawed and gnashed at the edges of my strength of mind, it was the 
subtle... awareness of the place that cause me to recoil in my frozen 
body. Everywhere, half-perceived faces leered from the bricks, the 
ground, the clouds. Everywhere eyes, dull but gleaming with a 
mocking, predatory awareness, seemed to watch, their vapid 
emptiness vanishing when perceived too closely. 


Faced with the blank nothing behind me, or the unknown horror 
before, | forced my unresponsive limbs forward, each step a jerky 
ordeal. | kept my eyes locked ahead, seeing only the next step, the 
next stone, never looking at the impossible islands of floating, 
decayed brick that drifted over me, nor at the mocking faces 
laughing at my plight from every crevice. 


Merely steps in to my journey, | froze, nearly recoiling back to beat 
at the blank nothing-wall behind me rather than take another step. 
Where before had been naught but the crumbling road, there was 
now another traveler. It shambled forward, slouching low under its 
own rotten weight, pulpy black lumps of feet slowly dragging it along 


the road. Two staring, blank eyes floated in the bloated, fungoid 
mass of its body, fixed on me with the unseeing focus of a mind as 
alien to mine as a deep-sea worm. 


| stood, frozen and uncomprehending as it slowly strode forward, its 
wheezing body barely bigger then that of a child. Its glaring eyes 
were fixed on me, the pulpy thing slowly drawing closer. | could not 
move. To retreat would result only in eventual capture by the thing, 
but to advance would mean crossing it, and the thought of touching 
that... thing... 


The decision was made for me, for as the thing drew close, | was 
galvanized in to action. By horror or rage, | leapt forward, screaming 
nonsense, and struck at that bloated body. | kicked and stomped at 
it, crushing the flabby and far too soft flesh under me, sobbing in 
horror as | felt the flesh touch me, then melt away, rotting to 
nothingness in seconds, but leaving such an unclean memory in me 
that | knew | would feel that dull, soggy weight against me long after 
even the sweet, cold embrace of the beyond. 


After that, | ran. | ran and cursed whatever black fate had brought 
me here, and obliterated my memory, my life, and left only the road, 
the eternal road. | would have cried, have balled up and thrown 
myself down one of the endless pits that had broken open the road, 
but | was compelled to continue, legs continuing in a jerky rhythm 
that propelled me over the crumbling brick, leaping across the pits 
even as | secretly wished to fall in to their depths and obliterate the 
road, the faces, and myself. 


As | ran and jumped, | came to one of the thick, twisted tubes that 
dotted the claustrophobic landscape. | thought to look in for a 
moment, curiosity fighting to overcome my almost manic desire to 
be free of this place, but upon hearing a strange shuffling and 
gurgling, coupled with a deep, bass pulse from the bowels of the 
black pipe, | decide against it and squeezed around. As soon as | 
was past, there was a sudden rush of air behind me, followed by a 
sharp, oddly muffled snap, as if two iron bars wrapped in cotton had 
been thrown together behind me. | did not turn, merely using this to 
further galvanize my stuttering walk, ignoring the continued 
snapping and rustling as it faded behind me. 


Far ahead, | saw a long, glossy stair, leading up, and beyond it what 
looked like a squat dwelling made of the same crumbling brick as 
the road. While | feared what may lie inside, the idea of someone 
else, some other person with which to share this horrible place with 
filled me with the first hope | had felt in hours. | ran, eyes fixed on 
that stair, and soared across the final gap. It was mid-way across 
the abyss when | saw the thing waiting on the other side. 


It was a twisted parody of some kind of reptile. Its elongated face 
was filled with a dim sort of menace, and his mouth yawned in 
anticipation of my reaching the other side, the jagged edges glinting 
as it made a choking squeal. Its body balanced on two squat, 
shapeless legs, a shell of hard, cracked flesh encasing the bulbous 
torso. Two stunted limbs projected through the flaking shell, coated 
in fibrous growths, and slowly shifted in a sick mockery of wings. 


| screamed and twisted, trying in vain to return to the far edge, but it 
was too late, and my struggles were enough to bring me short, 
slamming in to the hard wall of the pit, the thing above me shrieking 
in frustration as | fell. Down, and down, spinning in to the endless 
blackness, | felt the dark enclose around me. However, seconds 
before the emptiness could provide me its final solace, | suddenly 
remembered. 


Endless roads, lakes of fire, crumbling tombs filled with the rotting, 
shambling bones of beasts, hazy forms of glowing slickly light 
following in the dark, floating networks of ancient wood drifting in a 
hot sky, it all came back to me in a flood, the remembrance of where 
| had been, what | had done, and knowing that it would continue. 


| do not know how long | have done this, nor what | have done to 
earn this. 


Only that | must walk the road. 


Forever. 


Progress 


| invented a car that runs on nightmare fuel. It’s kind of funny, 
actually. We invented fire to scare away the darkness, now we can 
use the darkness to power our lights. 


It's not like nightmare fuel is hard to find. People are afraid of a lot of 
things, they’re driven by it. | siphon that off, and | use it to drive an 
engine. It’s simple, really, though the instruments | use to gather the 
fuel are very sensitive and very complex, so much so that I’m the 
only one who can use them. But | don’t mind. I’ll fix that eventually. 
One thing at a time. 


Distilling and concentrating the fuel comes next. A man can be 
driven by fear very easily, but a machine can’t fear, not really. The 
fuel has to be stronger, and so | distill it, break it down into its 
essential elements, and then concentrate it. The process takes 
months, and is very easy to get wrong, but I'll fix that. One thing ata 
time. 


But after that, it’s good to use. No nasty greenhouse gases, just 
some steam and screams. Turn up the music loud enough and you 
won't notice anything at all. 


I'll probably get a Nobel for this. 


There are still some kinks that need working out though. Sometimes 
the engine leaks. Sometimes things happen. They’re just little 
things, little incidents here and there, nothing too big, nothing too 
big. Nothing more than a passing shadow, a monster under the bed, 
a freak happening. Nothing too big. 


I'll fix it, don’t you worry, but one thing at a time. 


Shy 


The sudden jolt of pain was enough to make him think, for a mad 
second, that he’d somehow jammed his pen through his hand. The 
boy just barely suppressed a shout, clenching his hand tightly shut 
and sitting up abruptly from what was a half doze. Eyes wide, he 
looked down at his fisted hand, then, seeing no obvious injury, tried 
to surreptitiously look around for some cause, or culprit. The room 
was silent, save for the mild drone of the teacher tapping out graph 
points. Everyone was hunched over their desk, hard at work or 
attempting to look as such. The pain started to ebb, not vanishing 
but smothering to a dull, pressing ache. He blinked, trying to affect 
an air of normalcy as one of his nearby classmates gave his wide- 
eyed, pale fidgeting a suspicious glare. 


One breath, two, in and out. There wasn’t any blood, but he was 
nearly too scared to look. His dad had told him pressure was the 
key, maybe if he let go it’d start gushing or something? His mind 
whirled around like a rabbit in a cage, scrabbling between fear, 
confusion, and embarrassment. Should he just look? What if he 
actually was hurt, somehow, it felt like he’d been stabbed or 
something. But if it turned out to be nothing, the embarrassment 
might actually kill him. The teacher turned, the class rapidly 
assuming poses of legitimate and mock attention. The boy started, 
sitting bolt upright in panicked reflex as the teacher’s eyes held his, 
eyebrow cocking at the behavior, but gliding on to the next 
bulletpoint. The boy slumped, released. He leaned forward, feigning 
a search for paper, covering his throbbing hand with an arm, slowly 
uncurled his fingers, and looked. 


The class was suddenly raked by a sharp, choking scream. 


Heads turned, mouths agape, a startled mumble of “what the fuck?” 
wafting from the rear of the class. The boy sat, one hand clamped 
over his mouth, the other thrust as far from himself as possible, eyes 
as wide and rolling as a spooked horse. The teacher, glaring a 


warning in the direction of the swearing, swung his gaze at the 
nearly comical figure of numb shock pinned in the middle of the 
room. 


“Is there something the matter, young man? Bad dream, perhaps?” 


A rill of laughter, snickering teeth, swapped gazes. Never mind the 
paleness of his face, the trembling of his hand. The teacher minded, 
eyes narrowing. Seemed a good sort, but drugs, maybe? Something 
was Off. 


“Are you alright? You seem a little-“ 
“MAY I...ahh...may | use the bathroom? Please?” 


The teacher’s eyebrows raised, a patronizing smile playing across 
his lips. The last resort of the put-upon student, the bathroom pass. 
Still, he did look a bit off, and if it came down to vomit or worse, he’d 
rather it in a designated facility. Still, something was off. Why was he 
staring at his fist so much? Why the shaking... 


“| suppose it could be arranged...what’s that you have there? Yes, 
there, in your hand. Come up here, let’s see it.” 


The boy’s eyes rolled, flickering between the staring, mocking eyes 
of his fellows and the accusatory gaze of the teacher. He rose, 
shivering, his eyes drawn unwillingly down to the fist clenched low, 
away from his body, trying to ignore the odd pressure inside, the 
pinching, almost shifting sensation against his trembling fingertips. 
The teacher cleared his throat, extending a hand as the boy arrived 
at the desk. Giggles laced with schadenfreude skittered behind him, 
his wide, staring gaze fixed on the teacher’s face. His fist trembled, 
raising with a dreamlike slowness a few feet before freezing. No. 
There was no way, not here. Not in front of everyone. His mouth 
worked bonelessly, a creaking squawk eliciting a fresh rill of 
chuckles. 


“Come on now. Let’s have it.” 
“l...’msorryicant-“ 


And he was running, bolting from the room, the shouts of the