In the end, it has not been that long since I've started finding cartridges in my pocket, since I'm used to the blood smell in my cave and since the shadows under my eyes are darker than my dreams. It has not been that long since I systematically feel the hardness of the metal in the pocket of my jacket and since I use all my free time to look obscure forums up. Times when I was not crisscrossing the academic library of my city to learn about biology, chemistry, linguistics and ballistics. Times when my mother was gone, but when I didn't know.
Everything began more than ten years ago. I remember being in the garden, with the blue pants my mom gifted me for the start of my sixth grade. That must have been around All Saints' Day, the weather was mild but clearly not warm. My mother was exhausted, as usual. She was having nightmare for some time already, but I didn't really care. What was really taking my interest was cutting small chunks up from all I could find in the garden to analyze everything in my small "Nature & Découverte1" branded microscope my uncle gifted me for the start of the new school year. The kind of activity too was obviously irritating my mother, who though it was tiring having to monitor me all day, a pocket knife between my teeth and glass shards in my pockets. I dreamt of growing up a scientist when I was little. In a way, I succeeded.
So, this afternoon. I remember the firefighters' siren, followed by police's. The neighbor screaming, of sadness at first, then of rage. I remember the smell of blood when the stretcher goes past me, to see him struggling while screaming his wife's name, three policemen to hold him back. I remember his expression, distraught, piercing through my flesh. "Its a nightmare! Its a nightmare that killed her!" the husband repeated. I don't remember letting my knife fall on my foot, but the scar I still have reminds me. My mother had come running to get me, but she had to battle in order to get me out of this gruesome spectacle. I was hooked. Of course, I couldn't follow the trial live, but I remember really well reading all I could find of the case on newspapers or the household computer. Our charming neighbor reportedly eviscerated his wife and replaced her organs by insects. A national scandal, and even though my mother was doing everything to prevent me from hearing about it, she was fighting against television and all French media through the sheer force of her frail arms.
It is also about these times I have increasingly heard about mental diseases. In the news, through our relatives and even at school, the number of people terrified by their own shadow, that were hearing things or couldn't get out of their nightmares anymore, certain that everything was true had sky-rocketed. I didn't really noticed, but still. They were telling us about schizophrenia, paranoid delirium, compulsive fiction or traumatic phobias. At the beginning of high school and in university, I even saw classmates being taken out of school because of these troubles. There was this article in the "Le Parisien" newspaper: diagnostics like these had exploded by a nearly three hundred percent the last fifteen years. Incredibly astonishing fact: all patients' symptoms were linked, one way or the other, to the night. It is this climate, coupled with an increasing number of violent and particularly sordid news, that pushed me into studying psychology. I've always been a mediocre student, and I still haven't finished my master's degree, to be honest. But in the middle of all this frightening mist, as isle of weirdness would always come to me.
The posters.
I saw my first poster the day following the murder. Really simple, not much bigger than the nearby circuses ones, only black on white. A simple message, seemingly typed up, a logo and a phone number.
At the tame, it was hard for me to explain why this poster seemed so strange to me. This absurd and slightly threatening text, the slight shift in all these figures, this clearly non-existant phone number… The boss of the bar I worked during my studies was fascinated by these posters. He had several and uttered all sorts of theories about this obscure "SCP Foundation". Was it a kind of sect capitalizing on the explosion of nightmares and bad nights? To be honest, I had never met a single person that had said they were sleeping well since… since forever, in fact. Or maybe it only was a bad joke created to pick on all these ill people that cynical people carry on through resentment or malevolence? This phenomena was even evoked in the evening news of France 2, without any answer. The people placing these posters had succeeded, by a fabulous chance, to never being seen by a security guard nor a camera. Visual artefacts, distraction, maintenance… In the daily oppressive climate, it had become common to believe these posters were a conspiracy, or at least made easier by a power that was not telling its name. Even more taboo, the numerous phone numbers on the posters. According to people, nobody ever tried calling, nor even thought about it. They were obviously false, but it was hard to know how this collective consensus could have been born. As for me, I called one time, pushed by a bet. Without surprise, the number was incorrect. Nobody called back.
An important data is missing from all this depiction. My mother. An eternally exhausted woman, always alone, whose love was often dilute in life's pain. She had never really spent time with me, not that she wasn't loving me but she was of a too… tired nature for a child. My father had died while she was pregnant, the day of their wedding. She would often talk to me about this day, and me as an average child I was obviously not getting what she was talking about. My mother, like she wanted to imitate some kind of coherence and authority at home, had raised her docile little boy with loads of varied prohibitions, on food, waking up time, the position of the products in the bathroom… But among all those little rules made to shape a quite dull daily life, there was this absolute rule. Even if my life was at stake, or hers, this rule had to be seriously reconsidered.
I had to never, under any pretext, enter her room. Whatever happens.
I don't remember when, but at a time during my third year of university, I came home and didn't see her in front of Plus belle la vie2. She went out to the supermarket. I didn't see her either during diner. She had a cinema session. The next day, she wasn't there when I went out to the university. She had bought the car to the shop.
I continued my life as if it were nothing for some time, not running often into my mother. I remember wondering since when I hadn't seen her physically before moving on to something else. But above all, I was sleeping considerably less well. Every morning I was waking up with a start, feeling horrible pain without any wounds, tired as if I haven't slept. Was it my master's degree that was making me feel so bad? The pressure of the classes, the behavioral studies, the big question of the thesis or the office?
But since when was I a master's student?
It is when I asked this question to myself I suddenly grasped the invisible horror that was appearing in my house. I hadn't seen my mother for a year.
I remember that morning quite well. As soon as I had this thought fixed in my head, I rushed the stairs four by four steps to end up in the living room. And I saw it. The remote, covered in dust. The small traces of blood on the carpet I haven't noticed. I went through every corner of the house. Discovered that, in fact, my mother was not here anymore at all, that her little cookies had rotted, that the voicemail of the landline she was determined to keep using was full of messages of her scarce friends, I saw myself again going to the supermarket alone, mowing the lawn alone, getting her sunscreen and book during the summer and getting them back without them having moved. I lived an entire year like my mother had simply left for an errand.
But then, from where was this blood coming from? It was fresh. Shaking, I got a spade from the garden and carried out a meticulous but panicked inspection of the house. Nothing. Other traces in other places, nail marks in the wood floor. Running my finger over a scratch in the stairs, the image of a nightmare came back to me. My mother, dead, in her wedding dress going down the stairs trying to kill me. And me, this exact same spade in the hand, repelling her. I hadn't remembered a nightmare for at least fifteen years. I think I pinched and slapped myself several times before pulling myself together. And something completed making me losing all my self-control. In the wood cut out by the spade, a piece of white veil.
The veil of a wedding dress.
I rushed into my mother's room, my makeshift weapon still in hands, in a mix of fear and anger. I put my hand on this door which had always been forbidden to me.
And then, I remembered.
You didn't dream during the night.
No. It wasn't a dream. It was something else. I immediately took out my phone and brought the car keys searching for one of those posters. The images of all nights with her, struggling for my life. The gigantic insect that pose as the streetlight in front of our place. The indescriptible things in the sky. And above all, all the missing people. I had to be able to fight for myself. I rushed into the garage searching for anything. The nail gun I had tampered with during the years I was interested by weapons was still here, with its percussion, its security holding with a spring and its improvised barrel. To be safe, the knifes in the kitchen will do too. A flashlight, a lighter and a sleeping bag retrieved at random joined the back of my mother's grey C3 she wasn't going to use before a long time.
I wandered at random for a time it is still hard for me to estimate today. And I stumbled upon it again. The phone number was exactly the same as the first time I saw it.
I had never dialed a phone number that fast. Nothing happened. Well, almost nothing. While the first time the voice of Free3 told me the number was incorrect, this time it was saying "this number is not assigned." Which was not only very weird, but also slightly reassuring. I had seen a report on phone scammers two weeks earlier and they talked about some way they hide their phone number with an other unassigned one. I only had to wait for them to call back. But when?
The sun was starting to go down. I was laying in my car, my heart beating at full rate for several hours, my makeshift weapon held tightly against my chest. I was starting with each noise, each light change. If even at home I had been exposed to that much horror, who knows how many could torment me here? The diagnosis and symptoms of schizophrenia turned up regularly to knock on the door of my memory as the good psychology student I was. What if I had hallucinated all of this? What if I was doing a fit of delirium? What if–
We will call back.
They had called back. I remember absolutely everything of this conversation, crystalized in time. Everything had been kept intact in my memory, every crackling of the microphone, every inflexion of the feminine voice that was getting out of my mobile with a broken screen, every trembling breath from me.
— First contact hotline of the SCP Foundation. If you managed to call us, it means you remember. Where are you and do you have any means of transportation?
— Uh, yes, I, listen my mother is dead and–
— Where are you and do you have any means of transportation?
— Uh… sorry. I, I'm in my car–
— Car licence number. Please spell your name too.
— A… AG-963-SR. Martin Capgras. M A R T I N C A P G R A S.
— You will get up, without opening the car door you will get back on the driver seat and insert one hand into the compartment of the door. There is an address with an ID, a password and a web address. You will go to the indicated address as fast as possible, though without causing any accident. Is it clear?
— Yes… Yes it's clear. I put you on the hand-free kit.
— Thank you. While you are going to the hotel, I will explain to you what is going on. You are not crazy, you do not have any mental trouble and do not necessitate any treatment. You are not hallucinating, even though this kind of speech is typical of an hallucination. You contacted the SCP Foundation because you have been witnessing anormal phenomena and you managed to keep your memories. Congratulations, you are now a member of the Foundation.
— Wait, you–
— We are not a religious movement, nor a political organization, a government agency or a profit-making organization. To be honest, we are not even really a foundation. We are a decentralized organization made up of people like you that are able to keep their memories of the night. We are fighting against the anormal phenomena humanity is exposed as soon as the sun goes down and against which, for lack of memories, it is powerless. We are trying to contain as much as we can these anomalies, with the goal of ensuring the survival of mankind and try to alert the most people possible of the nature of these phenomena happening each night. We have members everywhere, in every strate of society and in every country of the world. Our organization depends of the means its members like you are able to put into this nightly and endless struggle. When you arrive at the hotel, show your badge to the receptionist, he is a member of the organization too. Ask for the room 55 to prove your identity.
— Which badge?
— The badge in your glove compartment. Do not loose it, it is named and unique. You will know how to tell the difference between a real badge and a fake.
— What do you mean in my– holy fuck! You sickos, you went through my ride to put a badge in it?
— We have not done anything M. Capgras. It is the seventh time you call this number this month, look at the writing of the paper in the car door. But it is the first time you are calling at daytime, you will remember now.
— I am crazy, right? I am sick, you don't really exist, I– holy fuck! What is this horror? I just passed by a kind of mutt eating trash, he was covered in eyes!
— Ignore it and concentrate on the hotel. You will soon be here according to the security camera at the traffic light where you are.
— You're monitoring me? But who the fuck are you? And why am I listening to you?
— Concentrate, Martin. You remember my voice? It is not the first time I guide you through the night. Tell me what comes to your mind if I tell you "Do you have anything to defend yourself in the garden?".
— Oh shit. So the spade is from you? And the–
— The nail gun, absolutely. You have not modified this nail gun in high school Martin, but on the line with me. The light is green.
— Thanks.
— Martin, I have to hang up. Room 55, don't forget.
I rarely parked as bad as this moment. I remember hurtling in the central path of this perfectly common hotel, at worst a bit decrepit. I rang several times, knocked the door like a madman. I heard footsteps through the door, then the sound of metal sliding. It is only later I learnt the mirror on the door was a two-way one and served as a spyhole. Four synchronized lock noises later, I was inside a hall with an ugly carpet and patina-covered woodwork. From the inside, the door was heavily armored.
« Do you want anything?
— Room number 55 please.
— Number what?
— The room registered at the number 55.
— Hmm, I don't know what you're talking about, I don't think we have a number 55. »
I took my badge out. I weird buzzing seemed to come out of it, like the noise of a speaker. The face of my gray-haired and thin-faced host immediately loosened. Inviting me to join him to the counter, he put his hand on my arm to invite me to hide the nail gun I still had in my hand. I didn't even noticed I had not put it away. He gave me keys, reassured
me on the fact that no, I was not crazy and him neither, precised the hotel was a meeting point he was trying to make as safe as possible for the local members of the "Foundation" as he calls it. I remember asking him if he ad a computer for the web address on my paper. He laughed and added there was a PC in every room 55 of the hotel, like there was several, with Tor browser installed on each one. Actually, it was indeed a .onion address. According to him, everything I had to know was on this website, with how I could connect on this website unencrypted and obtain rudiments of containment. I don't remember having asked questions, even if my head was absolutely fulled of them. Here is what I have learned this evening.
The SCP Foundation is a diffuse organization without resources, able to act all over the world to a ridiculously low scale. It is made of members like me, completely normal people who one day stopped forgetting what is happening during the night. Although the main goal of all people being a part of the SCP Foundation is to Survive the night, we are all invested in the mission to Capture the most anomalies possibles, these monsters, these living nightmares to prevent them from doing any harm. So most of the members have set up, at home or in places where it is possible, some kinds of makeshift prisons for creatures beyond the human mind. Those who act in the shadows and the oblivion therefore sleep very little, or adapt their pace of life to this night prison guard role and spend all their free time and savings on it. A lot of content is available on the gigantic hidden website of the Foundation to make and improve defense systems, get weapons and tools, understand scientific or occult elements, but above all to know more about the said anomalies. Because here is the third goal of each member of this self-managed network: Prevention. Prevent hazards, prevent other members from not knowing the nature of all these horrors crouched in the dark, and for the most experienced and skillful, prevent the population from these phenomena with these posters and working at the switchboard. The special phone numbers used only work when the sun is down thanks to mechanisms I still haven't understood and that constitute the most abominable hotline one can listen to. If the origin of the Foundation is unknown, its symbol and its SCP acronym are as unknown. The Foundation doesn't have any leader, no hierarchy and often express opposite opinions on many things, and if the website mentions members all around the world, we're only talking about Francophones here. I remember having counted barely more than 200 people in the members file. A considerable amount of them have a dagger symbol after their username whose meaning is more than obvious.
It is by browsing this dubious website, shut away in an hotel room, talking with those who have lived a trauma as violent as mine and had lost the ability to forget, that I understood. Understood that my neighbor was innocent. Understood that my mother was dead. Understood the hell that was descending upon this world in the general indifference. Understood the explosion of disappearances, miscellaneous news, mental illnesses, sleep disorders. During the following months, I stopped going to the university, earning a living with private lessons and online coaching. I invested all on locks, shooting licences, barricades and Faraday cages and I turned my garage into a prison. Obviously, my mother's room door has been decorated with four or five locks and shielded with a steel place, just in case. I learnt about Jean-Luc, the hotelier who served as the host of the meetings taking place in the room 55 with the two other members of the Foundation in my small rural city. I got used to hide all my links with the network, knowing I was maybe monitored by the police that took a dim view on this community putting posters and exchanging about violent crimes. I read, read again and commented piles of books of physics, chemistry, biology, electronics, linguistics and religion anthropology in the hope of better understanding the nightmare I lock up in my den in the basement. I became the Foundation, in a way. Tired, isolated, amateur but determined.
Oh, one last thing. I was right to put these locks of my mother's room door. Because she haven't stopped getting up. And every evening, regardless of if I'm looking in my microscope, having my eyes reddened by my computed or my much talked about nail gun aimed on the head of a barely living monster…
She calls me from upstairs.