SCP-6297

Link to article: SCP-6297.


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[[include :scp-wiki:theme:basalt darkmode=a|hidetitle=a]]
[[include :scp-wiki:component:betterfootnotes]]


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[[/module]]
[[>]]
[[module Rate]]
[[/>]]
----
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[[div class="blockquote" style="padding: 1rem 1rem 1rem 1rem; outline: solid 3px #f24;"]]
[[=]]

{{Welcome User:}} Matthew Seward
-----
{{You are currently editing **SCP-6297**. Previous revisions were saved on: ##b80b0b|**06/04/2022**##}}

[[/=]]
[[/div]]
@@ @@
-----
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++ ##b80b0b|__SCP-6297 -- Provisional Documentation:__##
@@ @@
[[div class="notation"]]
[[div class="table5"]]
[[include component:image-block
name=https://scp-wiki.wdfiles.com/local--files/scp-6297/Campus3.jpg
|caption=Photo taken by Dept. of Presumptive Divination personnel, 28/03/2022.
|width=250px
|align=right]]
[[/div]]
+++ **Item #:** SCP-6297

-----

**Object Class:** Pending

**Special Containment Procedures:** An investigation into potential anomalous phenomena related to SCP-6297 is underway; this inquiry has been assigned to representatives from [*https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/secure-facility-dossier-site-184 Site-184]'s Dept. of Presumptive Divination.[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]This Department specializes in the practical employment of ritualistic divination for threat identification, containment integrity, and mitigation of ideal-probability-variance. They have been assigned to SCP-6297 due to the apparent similarity between the event and ritualistic practices performed by members of the Department.[[/span]]

**Description:** SCP-6297 refers to a homicide that occurred on 28/03/2022, within a university library in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Initial reports indicate a possible thaumaturgical ritual occurred proceeding, during, or immediately following this event.

Additional information will be amended to this file as the investigation continues.
@@ @@
[[/div]]
@@ @@
----
@@ @@
++ ##b80b0b|__SCP-6297 -- 29/03/2022:__##
The following is an excerpt from Matthew Seward's (Dept. of Presumptive Divination)  'Divination Log',[[span class="fnnum"]].[[/span]][[span class="fncon"]]A journaling device used to assist diviners in interpreting and analyzing potentially prognostic phenomena.[[/span]] entered shortly after his examination of SCP-6297, alongside Madame Laurier, the Director of the Dept. of Presumptive Divination.

@@ @@
[[div class="notation"]]
[[=]]
+ Divination Log: March 29, 2022
-----
[[/=]]

**##b80b0b|__Foreword:__##** In this role, you come to see death as a window to look through. It's something that's already there, before you start gazing at the true subject, what's really important. It doesn't feel like that anymore.

I've been asked to share this log entry due to the investigation into SCP-6297. However, some additional contextualization may be appropriate. When divining one looks for signs in phenomena that indicate (or more accurately reflect), likely future outcomes: omens. Our role is to know //what// is significant, and then what that significance means.

To do that, we train ourselves to absorb as much information as possible in a given moment, analyze it, and retain that knowledge to refer to. This 'Divination Log,' is primarily a tool to assist with that.

For the sake of documenting the anomaly, however, I've included peripheral information preceding and following my encounter that would normally be irrelevant to the log.

-----

We didn't speak much as we drove into Halifax, but that wasn't unusual. I'd never known Mme Laurier to partake in small talk, even when it would have put people at ease. It wasn't until she'd parked the car and the headlights were off that I brought up what was on my mind: "If this was a murder, why are we here?"

She didn't respond as she got out of the car and started making her way to the library.

The building was squat and low to the ground -- grand though: stonework and soft light spilling into the night from the arched windows. There was a cop at the entrance, Mme Laurier spoke to him for a moment. As the man held the door for us, the smell hit me first: acidic and metallic, the smell of recent death and daily work. It lingered in the air, heavier than I was used to; as we turned into the reading room you could almost taste it. Scent gets into you like that. Sight and sound, there's the barrier of experience between you and it -- they affect your body but don't violate it -- scent is intimate, you take it in, it's transgressive.

It unnerved me how familiar that taste had grown, especially as we turned into the reading room.

The first thing I saw was the blood. It caught the light -- held it, splintered it into crimson hues, memories of violence. It laid across the floor in concentric rings. In the center was the body: a shriveled thing, curled in on itself.

The frightening part was seeing the meaning of it, or at least recognizing the intention. The forms were akin to that of a disembowelled goat. [*https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/presumptive-divination-orientation I had committed such an act: read the future from the cooling entrails, wrung prognostication from bloodied bodies.] The crime before me was the same. In that collapse of action and actor, I felt guilt and nausea, something in me resonated with the scene before me, and I recoiled from it.

I turned, gagging, needing to steady myself at the nearby table. When I could stand Mme Laurier was beside me. "Do you understand now?" she asked. I nodded. "Not yet. Not everything, look closer, for what eludes you."

I steadied myself reluctantly, willing another glance. I dissociated, I admit, I looked at the scene before me as I would blood in the bowl: frozen in time, divorced from what was once life. I looked at the angle, the forms, the shapes. Not just the future had been extracted from this array, something else was missing, taken.

Mme Laurier bent towards the floor, letting the tip of a finger drag against the blood. She approached me, and before I could react placed it against my forehead.

My vision split. I saw the room not as it was, but as it had been. I felt an unbridled //need// grab my being: a coveting, a hunger for substance. Before me was a source. I reached out and it quivered in recognition to my will. I unspooled it into red current in the air. I tasted the events that brought about this moment and sucked the marrow from a rapidly narrowing future: sweet as a dying star, immensity distilled to a single point.

And then I was in the present, stumbling on my hands and knees, my skin clammy and breath shaking. I looked up at Mme Laurier, disgusted by the revelation of what had happened, of what I had been. She offered me her hand. I took it as I rose and she spoke to me.

"We look for ripples, movements in the currents, signals of the streams ahead. But just as what will be affects what is, so does what was. Something came here, looking up and down the river's flow: for the future and the past, held in the body, in the blood."

I answered, seeing where she was going. "And it found it? Whatever it was looking for?"

"No, not quite" she corrected. 

"It wasn't here to look for a future and the past, it fed upon it."
[[/div]]
@@ @@
----
@@ @@
++ ##b80b0b|__SCP-6297 -- ADDITIONAL CONTEXT -- VAMPIRISM:__##
@@ @@
[[div class="darkdocument"]]
[[=]]
+ An Account of the Vampire:
++++ With Apologies to Buffy & Van Helsing
Dr. Harper, Dept. of Ficto-Critical Mythology.
-----
[[=image RedVamp.png]]
-----
__**An Introduction:**__
[[/=]]
@@            @@In Bram Stroker's seminal vampiric text, //Dracula// -- unlike many of its adaptations and reinterpretations -- the reader knows very little of the titular character. We learn, as the text progresses, his strengths, weaknesses, and desire for English blood, but we are never given an emotional appeal to his past -- tragic or otherwise -- or what he intends to do, aside from continuing to spread the plague of vampirism and satiate his endless appetite.

@@            @@It may be presumed that this is a result of the structure of the work itself. //Dracula// is, after all, a series of documents assembled by the ambitious vampire hunters: a dossier on Dracula's crimes that does not leave room for a sympathetic, self-reflective, or human villain. However, this depiction draws attention towards an important characteristic shared between this literary creature of the night and the entities we, The SCP Foundation, have colloquially designated as vampires.

@@            @@The vampire is fundamentally a creature of the present; it only exists in relation to the immediate moment in time it occupies, at that moment. Driven by base desires, the vampire does not relate ontologically to its own past or future. While the creature may be cunning: capable of orchestrating and executing predatory plans and drawn-out seductions, the purpose and intent of said actions are intimately related to its grounded relation to the present. Vampires are inhuman, not due to their actions but their fundamental relationship to the experience of time.

@@            @@However, it is extrapolated that this existence is not one of contentedness. The vampire ever-grasps at that which it cannot have: the very experiences of past and future it is defined in opposition of. Blood, ever-symbolic, occupies a physical manifestation of this craving. Although the exact nature of this relationship is unclear, the relation of blood to the past -- often expressed in relation to family lineages -- and the future is reiterated time and time again. Behind the Veil, blood is a demonstrated vector essential to the time-crossing magics of the Daevites, and occupies ritual significance among various thaumaturgical groups.

@@            @@In this framework, blood is not merely 'the life;' it is a manifestation of the experiences of life, and the ongoing will, desire, and ability to live -- it is the antithesis of the vampire, who craves it in recognition of its absence. This is the source of their thirst -- for even the finest wines and appetites of the flesh offer only pleasures in that moment. Blood, in contrast, provides the vampire with a taste of the infinite, of the impossible and transcended: something to die for, to kill for.

= [...]
[[/div]]
@@ @@
----
@@ @@
++ ##b80b0b|__SCP-6297 -- 30/03/2022:__##
@@ @@
[[div class="notation"]]
[[=]]
+ Divination Log: March 30, 2022
-----
[[/=]]

We went to the victim's dorm room today, Mme Laurier and I.

It was a single room on campus, the Don let us up the staircase, chattering on all the while about how horrible the whole thing had been. They'd closed the library, had to bring in specialists who could clean it -- wasn't exactly facilities' typical work.

I wasn't sure what to expect when he fished an electronic key from his pocket and swiped it against the handle: maybe some sort of echo of the scene I'd seen the previous day.

As the door swung open, the first thing that struck me was how normal it felt. A single room, with a cookie-cutter bedframe, messy sheets, a few posters and personal touches, but a transitory space. Beneath the rotation of personalities over the year, there was a sense of identity here. For the most part, its occupants went through the same cycles of love and heartbreak, stress and regret -- not its most recent one though.

Mme Laurier told the Don we'd need a moment. She'd introduced us as detectives, but that wasn't a profession I'd signed up for. When the door shut she told me to look for something personal, a diary if there was one. I glanced around the mess of notebooks and school supplies: some novel was facedown on the desk and the small shelf was piled with books. I was going to make a comment about not knowing where to start, when suddenly I did: in the lower drawer of the bedside table. I stooped down, pulling out a grey-covered and dog-eared book.

As I touched it, my vision shifted. I was sitting on the bed, writing in it, the details were fleeting. I was stressed, I can recall that, but nothing more of substance. I tried to push forward in my mind and felt myself skip like a stone through flat water. It touched down again, on the other side of //something.// I was in a hundred places at once: in the dining hall, walking to class, taking notes -- and then one: the library and those other presences faded into the definitive. The branches of the future -- my future, or this future -- were being tripped off the tree, reduced to a pole.

I stumbled, unsteady on bended knee. Thrust back into the room, I rose to my feet and handed the journal to Mme Laurier. I didn't want to hold it any longer than I needed to.

She asked what had happened, and I responded as well as I could. She flipped through the book as I spoke, and set it down on the bed as I finished. I asked if we'd need it for the investigation.

"Not anymore" she answered.
[[/div]]
@@ @@
------
@@ @@
++ ##b80b0b|__SCP-6297 -- SR_02 | 31/03/2022:__##
@@ @@
[[div class="jotting"]]
[[=]]
@@ @@
+++++ //MTF Iota-3 -- 31/03/2022//
+ SURVEILLANCE Report:
-----
[[/=]]
> **##b80b0b|__FOREWORD:__##** Following the events of 29/03/2022, Mme Laurier requested Foundation Personnel, Matthew Seward be placed under covert surveillance. Mobile Task Force Iota-3 ("Neighbourhood Watch") is responsible for this ongoing initiative. The following Surveillance Report details an event occurring on 31/03/2022.
-----
[[div class="blockquote"]]
{{**__03:02:__**}} Subject becomes restless in bed, rolling back and forth and pushing the covers off its body.
@@ @@

{{**__03:20:__**}} Subject appears to rise from the bed. The individual's eyes remain closed, and they appear to begin sleepwalking. The subject approaches the room's window and draws back the curtain. Rain is seen softly falling against the glass.
@@ @@

{{**__03:35:__**}} Subject places both hands against the pane of the window. They begin vocalizing unintelligible, which continues for several minutes.
@@ @@

{{**__03:38:__**}} As seen in the reflection of the subject in the glass, one eye opens. It appears to make prolonged eye contact with the covert camera installed in the lighting fixture. MTF Iota-3 is placed on intervention-standby, as a precaution should the entity display hostile anomalous behavior.
@@ @@

{{**__03:42:__**}} The subject's open eye closes, and the individual moves toward the bed. At some point within the previous 40-minutes, the subject suffered a laceration on its left hand; blood trails onto the bedsheet as the individual lies down and covers themselves.
@@ @@

{{**__04:18:__**}} Surveillance personnel from MTF Iota-3 note an unusual outline in the reflection of the room's window -- mirroring the form of the subject. This form becomes harder to determine over the period of 5 minutes, due to the ongoing rain.
[[/div]]
----
> **##b80b0b|__AFTERWORD:__##** Due to the recorded events, surveillance personnel responsible for monitoring Matthew Seward placed a request for his temporary detainment to ascertain the validity and nature of the potential anomalous phenomena displayed.
>
> This request has been vetoed by Mme Laurier, Director of the Dept. of Presumptive Divination. As such, Matthew Seward is permitted to continue his regular duties and responsibilities under persistent surveillance.
[[/div]]
@@ @@
----
@@ @@
++ ##b80b0b|__SCP-6297 -- 03/04/2022:__##
@@ @@
[[div class="notation"]]
[[=]]
+ Divination Log: April 3, 2022
-----
[[/=]]

While, in fiction, dreams are recurringly depicted as prognostic, in truth they are noticeably unreliable. Dreams are complex manifestations of the human psyche; trying to unwind what significance is imparted upon them from the future, and what is manufactured by the brain's mundane chemical reactions is a fool's errand. Dreams lack substance and depth, unlike blood and bones. The physical world has a set baseline, something that can be changed by temporal influences, and in turn, read by those who know where and when to look. But even knowing this, sometimes you can't help but read significance behind them.

Lately, I've been having dreams of blood.

They start with me before a copper vessel. In it, liquid seeps from cooling entrails. I start to examine them, pick apart their meaning, but I see myself in the reflection -- altered in the slippery distortions of metal and blood, but still me. I reach towards it, and the mirrored, reddened hand moves towards me. Our fingers touch on the surface and I push through, breaking the tension. In response, the dripping hand slides up my arm. I force it in deeper, and the warmth radiates along my forearm beneath the liquid's surface. A heat echoed by the touch of the wet hand upon my upper arm, and the drips that run across my bare skin. The foreign, familiar hand slides up to cup my neck. It goads me on, to push in further, more completely. Slipping forward into the vessel, my elbow disappears into its depth. The hand creeps further along my body. It touches gently upon my face. Where it passes, it leaves behind its ichor; the wet mass of it drips down my front, I can feel the movement of the heat as trickles, pools, and diverges. I push again. I know there's something there for me, something to reach. My body twists as I press my shoulder to the rim of the dish. The hand emergent is on my cheek, pulling me inwards, further. I let it take me. My face is against the surface now, two slick fingers slip between my lips and tug at my jaw. I let it open me and the blood pools in. The taste is sweet and familiar. It takes me under.

And I wake up.

-----

I've spoken to Mme Laurier about these dreams -- and about the murder, but she's been dismissive. She's taking the lead on the case and suggested the dreams were a consequence of the fugue state I entered. Apparently an individual uninitiated with seeing the past, particularly someone else's, will often suffer from hallucinations as their brain attempts to insert the memories into its existing chronology. I can understand what she's saying, but it doesn't feel right.

I'm going to keep monitoring it.
[[/div]]
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-----
@@ @@
++ ##b80b0b|__SCP-6297 -- Requisition Order -- 03/04/2022:__##
@@ @@
[[div class="jotting"]]
[[=]]
+ __SITE-184 -- REQUISITION ORDER:__
+ ##880808|🝩##
++ ##b80b0b|CRUCIBLE-CLASS##
++++ ##b80b0b|//RESTRICTED THAUMATURGICAL MATERIALS//##
-----
[[/=]]
[[div class="blockquote"]]
**Requesitioned Materials:**
* Copper Vessel, 15 Liter,
* Divining Rod, metal, 2 feet,
* Chalk, 98% minimum calcium carbonate,
* Vellum, calfskin, 2 rolls,
* O-Negative Blood, human, 2x500ml bags,
* Antiseptic Bandages,
* Haematomantic bloodletting equipment, sterile.
**Requesition Iniator:** Mme Laurier.
[[=]]
-----
**Status:** ##GREEN|{{**APPROVED**}}##
[[/=]]
[[/div]]
[[/div]]
@@ @@
----
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++ ##b80b0b|__SCP-6297 -- 04/04/2022:__##
@@ @@
[[div class="notation"]]
[[=]]
+ Divination Log: April 4, 2022
-----
[[/=]]

I haven't been sleeping well. I wake at night, uncomfortable in unfamiliar poses. I'll rouse myself, captured in the stillness of movements that weren't my own: contortions of form that feel wrong, foreign. I've taken to drawing the curtains, as waking up in those moments, with the half-glow of moonlight draping across the bed makes my skin crawl. It's as though I'm behind a silver shroud, one that's been pulled over me, suffocating me -- but so imperceptibly fine it feels like a trick of the light, until it tightens around my throat.

I wish I could attribute the things I see in my waking hours -- on my work -- to that.

-----

Trying to divine the future is inconsistent, the interplay of temporal influence and its ripples in the present lack solidity: you won't always see the same omen twice. You throw the bones, time and time again, and read different signs in their fall. You watch the blood as it pools, traces the winding curves of the vapours, and the meaning you gleam twists and shifts on a repeated attempt.  You have to trust yourself, in your ability to get it right the first time, because repetition isn't the way to clarity; this is pre-scientific for a reason.

So the fact I've spent the better part of the day casting the bones over and over, and prodding entrails across the metal curvature of the vessel just shows how desperate I am.

But maybe that's appropriate, given that they keep offering the same fortune: death. Not an abstracted notion of death as the lurking threat of finality; I've seen a very specific death. My death.

It lurks in the reflection of the cooling blood, in the twists of smoke and smog, in the fall of sticks and stone.

Normally, the influence of the future is subtle -- it whispers to the present in soft syllables. But this is an iron-clad promise, a guarantee of impending unbeing. I've seen the consistent dissolution of self.

But it's not the potential for death that worries me, it's that I can't see beyond it. The harder I look: for legacy, memory, lasting influence, I'm met with nothing. A cessation so total in its absolution, a reduction of the future. It's a wall, between me and what will be. I've struggled with uncertainty -- seen that as a natural consequence of this art, but this is something else, other, a consuming darkness, tethered to a moment in time, unknowable but inevitable.

Death will come, that great veil will slide over me, and what I am now will be no more. I write this as fact, intrinsic.

Maybe in doing so, I can escape oblivion, offer just the smallest fragment of self to endure.

I'm not optimistic.
[[/div]]
@@ @@
----
@@ @@
++ ##b80b0b|__SCP-6297 -- ADDITIONAL CONTEXT -- VAMPIRISM-Cont:__##
@@ @@
[[div class="darkdocument"]]
[[=]]
+ Selected Excerpt:
++++ Letter from an unknown writer, to [*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Augustin_Calmet Antoine Augustin Calmet], dated 1742.
-----

[[/=]]

@@            @@I have heard tell through our mutual scholarly circles that you intend to compile a Great Work, exploring in part the rumours and reports of monstrous beings, such as the ungodly Vampyre. I would be remiss if I did not enclose my experience with these and other horrors. I have often considered publishing these journals myself, but fear censor from the misunderstanding public that is apt to conflate forwarning with proof of involvement. Therefore, I leave my accounts in trust to you, dear Sir, in hopes that they may offer a first-hand account to inform your own great text. I assure you, upon my ever-lasting soul, the details I recount are honest experiences. It is by the Grace of God alone that I have endured these encounters and now write to you.

@@            @@I feel it pertinent to inform you that much commonly known about these creatures is based in misunderstanding and superstition. I know not how these beings transgress the laws to which man is bound, only they must do so in allowance with our Lord; to suggest otherwise would be to ascribe to them the capacity to reshape His World, which is a blasphemy that cannot be. Indeed, much of their nature aligns more with the accounts of His Angels than the predatory beasts encountered throughout this broad world -- it might be that they are those fallen Angels, thrust into Hell, now freed by His Will to enact His Judgment against us sinners. But I move too hastily, at present, it is worth summarizing the common motives and methods I have seen employed by the Vampyre and its ilk.

@@            @@The Vampyre is not a creature of flesh and substance, as are we. They are immaterial and by-choice imperceptible: they move upon gossamer strands and through shadow -- sometimes here, sometimes there. To track a Vampyre is to hunt moonlight, and only the most Holy Objects, endowed with a Blessed affiliation with the Lord, Our God, may hope to effect such a creature.

@@            @@Their method of predation is perverse, yet predictable. Their victim receives their mark, having through their actions, thoughts, or deeds, sinned against the Lord, and thus permitted the creature to enter and suffuse their body. In this moment of possession, it must be assumed the Immortal Soul departs from the body -- as it does upon natural death, to face His Judgement. The Vampyre thus occupies the once-human and may act in its victim's voice and movements for some time. It will soon become reclusive, and find for itself a lair or dark place, from which to consume the blood of the victim.

@@            @@This act, I presume works to remind us through perverse mimicry of the great sacrifice of the Son of God -- who gave to us His Body and His Blood, so that we may be cleansed of our sins and, God Willing, live eternal life in His Glory. While one is the greatest of sacrifice for our mortal kind, the former is an act done in lust and greed. The Vampyre, having made of its victim a feast, departs the body, which then  -- lacking its animating Soul -- suffers the effects of decay, and may thus be buried with Christian Rites.

@@            @@There are accounts of the Vampyre being dissatisfied with the consumption of its initial host, and thus remaining within its form, seeking the blood of other living, innocent souls. I am unsure as to the validity of this claim, or if the presence of the Vampyre leads those more impressionable minds who cannot ascertain the nature of its predation to see dangers behind every corner.

@@            @@In these following documents, I offer my accounts of these creatures in hopes that may assist you in the work you endeavour to complete.
[[>]]
Your Friend,
[The following text had been obfuscated.]
By the Grace of God.
[[/>]]
[[/div]]
@@ @@
-----
@@ @@
++ ##b80b0b|__SCP-6297 -- Site Security Statement -- 06/04/2022:__##
@@ @@
[[div class="jotting"]]
[[=]]
+ SITE-184 -- SITE SECURITY STATEMENT:
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[[/=]]
> **##b80b0b|__FOREWORD:__##** The following transcription was taken from an oral report given by Site-184 Security personnel, Jim Ardmore. Mr. Ardmore was questioned following the events of 05/04/2022, during which he was stationed at Site-184's gatehouse. In particular, the relevant event refers to the return of Mme Laurier to the site, accompanied by the deceased corpse of Matthew Seward; both individuals had departed earlier in the day to consult with a thaumaturgical specialist.
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**Jim Ardmore:** Yes, I do recall the individuals leaving the site. When Mme Laurier was leaving she informed me that she had received permission to take restricted thaumaturgical materials off-site. I checked, and all the relevant approvals had been given, so I waved them through. I didn't notice anything particular at the time. Mr. Seward looked a little tired perhaps, but I didn't really have the opportunity to speak to him, I'm not sure if I'd have thought to ask anything if I had, either.

**Jim Ardmore:** I noticed something was off as they -- she -- returned to the site. They'd left around noon, and were coming in towards the end of my shift, I think about eight o'clock, the security log will have the exact time. Anyway, I could see that only Mme Laurier was in the front seat as they drove up. I assumed she'd just dropped Mr. Seward off at home, and was returning the materials.

**Jim Ardmore:** As they returned, I saw that she was covered in blood. I'm ex-military, and I've seen friends of mine bleeding out, but this was absurd, some Tarantino-stuff, the whole front of her clothing was covered in it, splashed up into her hair, I was about to call for medical -- thinking there'd been some sort of car accident and the adrenaline was keeping her conscious when she started speaking, really calmly. She told me she'd need my help in the truck, it didn't seem like she was in shock, just weirdly calm. I followed her around back as she got out, and I could tell it was mostly dried on her, with some wet, slick splotches in her hair. As she popped the truck, I knew the blanket-wrapped lump could only be a body. At this point, I started moving back and told her to remain where she was. She leaned against the side of the car, and told me I'd just be wasting all of our time.

**Jim Ardmore:** I radioed for backup, and once they were there, we searched her and the car: the thaumaturgical materials had been used, and we put two-and-two together. One of us marched her to Head-Camp, and the rest of us brought the body to medical. I was there when they unwound the sheets, it was Mr. Seward, that much was clear. His skin was pale-white though and shriveled. I got sent home after that. Word is Mme Laurier was cleared. I don't know what happened, and quite frankly I don't even want to guess.
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{{Date: 11/04/2022}}

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{{User:}} Matthew Seward

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+ Divination Log: April 9, 2022
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So obviously by the nature of me writing this, it should be clear I'm not dead. Not currently dead, that is; it's a hard thing to wrap your head around.

I suppose I should start from when we left the Site. Mme Laurier had told me we were consulting with a specialist, something we do occasionally when we're looking for a particular expertise to suit our own.

We arrived at the woman's house, a member of a local coven, the "[*https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-6609 VVicked VVitches]" that Mme Laurier had known for a long time. I know I was introduced, but I'm not sure about her name -- a lot of the details from that day are fuzzy now. They asked me to read through the library there, double-checking the dates for an augury ritual we were trying, while they set up.

I didn't notice anything unusual until I stepped into the room.

When you're trained to notice things, to capture minute details, you get accustomed to reading a situation. As I walked in, before I could even process what I was seeing, some part of me -- deep and animalistic -- was commanding me to run, to turn. The floor was covered in chalk circles, radiating from the copper vessel. It was dim with only the flickering of candlelight. The scene before me radiated with this absolute sense of power and presence. Sometimes, you get a clearer sense of the future or the possibility of the future. Things respond to observation, that's as fundamental a principle in magic as quantum physics. I knew what was happening here wasn't just looking, it was something more intentional, more direct.

I stamped down that flight response, and took a moment to ask what was happening. As I did so, there was this flash of sliver in the corner of my vision, and I found I couldn't speak. I raise my hand to my neck and it came away wet, in that moment, my body started to come undone. I could feel the blood trickling down, swelling. It wasn't just bleeding, it was being pulled out of my, summoned forward. That feeling of your veins pulsating involuntarily, expelling the very substance keeping you alive, it was like there was something inside me, living and alien, trying to escape.

I fell forward, onto my knees. A hand on the back of my head moved me towards the vessel. I could see into it as the blood-filled it. I watched my life leaving my body, pooling into a reflection that was and was not me. The only thing I could think, as I slid out of consciousness, my eyes locked on the figure in the reflection, was how grateful I was not to be it.
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The next thing I knew was bright lights -- the unmistakable glare of a hospital. I tried to sit up, but couldn't move, My neck and chest were locked in place. I glanced around, recognizing the Site-184 medical ward. I tried to speak, eliciting only a broken croak. It was enough to bring someone over, leaning into my vision was those piercing eyes of Mme Laurier. I should have been terrified, but I was calm. I don't know why.

After a moment she began to speak. "I am sorry, for what you have suffered by my hand. Were there any other option, I'd have taken it."

I swallowed, and tried to speak, managing only a single word: a question, "dead?"

"Yes." She answered, "I spoke to you of the vampire, a being of the present, of hunger, and of blood. It had you, was draining you slowly but surely. When it was done -- if it sensed a threat -- we'd have lost it again."

"To kill it was to kill the present. To kill the present was to kill you, body and mind. We slit your throat to bleed you dry: a lamb to slaughter."

I tried to respond, "buh--"

She rested her hand on my arm, softly. "Easy. You will speak in time. Yes, you died, and yes you lived. You understand the river of time, know to look at how the rapids downstream affect the current where you are. We pushed you -- your awareness -- further along, down the river. You found safe passage home, once your body drifted along to where you were, to the now."

"The threat has passed, washed away, and now it is only you who remains. You must rest." I wanted to protest, to question, to understand this act that defined my knowledge and experience. Such a thing couldn't be possible, and yet here I was. But fatigue overtook me and I drifted off.

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I started writing this when I woke up. The whole experience feels unreal, othering. I wanted to make some lasting account of it, even though I want to forget it as well.

I don't know what it means, that I was dead and now live. I don't know what matters more: the progression of my body through time, or my consciousness of that fact. I suppose in the end of the day, it doesn't matter. I'm here again, and there's still work to do.
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{{Date: 11/04/2022}}

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+ Divination Log: April 11, 2022
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I was worried I'd forget what happened entirely; suffer the obscuration of fact to unbelievable myth. It hasn't happened yet through. And I don't think it will, not with this reminder on my flesh.

It wrings around my neck, this angry scar. Whenever I look in the mirror, it's there. I can't help but think of the first time I watched Mme Laurier open up a goat: the same practiced moves that slit me open. I can picture that moment: where the interior and the exterior meld in a red outpouring.

I went back to work today. I drew the blood from a corpse again. I thought about how I lost the ability to act, to protest, to fight when it happened to me. I may as well have been dead myself, maybe that was the point.

I let the blood pool into the vessel, keeping the entrails within the carcass. It flattened and shone, smooth and even in the dim light. I leant forward, looking for meaning. What I found was an absence, I knew it intrinsically, although I couldn't tell of what.

Then revelation unveiled itself: there was no reflection, no mirrored image of myself looking out. No gaze met my own, just the flat, red expanse. I was horrified.

Not for what wasn't there, but because I realized I could bring it back. That the not-self hasn't dissolved, it was hidden in its absence.

I only had to reach for it.
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