The SCP Experience - Came Back Haunted | SCP-1692

Episode Date: May 27, 2022

SCP Foundation EUCLID class object, SCP-1692: Came Back Haunted  This story was derived from https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1692, and is released under Creative Commons Sharealike 3.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ Author: Matt Doggett Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/MatthewDoggettAuthor/ Website/Newsletter sign up: matthewdoggettauthor.com DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content. Parental guidance is advised for children under the age of 18. Listen at your own discretion. #drscp #scp #scpfoundation #doctorscp #scpencounters #securecontainprotect #scpstories #scpexplained #whatisscp Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The ragged screen door of the house screeches as I push it open and peer inside. Hello? I look around the entryway, seeing an antique table piled with dusty porcelain figurines. The runner on the floor is so old and worn, I can only see the once vibrant designs on the outer edges. The middle of the rug has been worn down to a dark gray. Mrs. Fontenow? I call, stepping up into the entryway. The house looks like it's leaning slightly from the outside. And as soon as I step up into it, I can tell that it isn't just an illusion.

There's a barely perceptible tilt to the floor. There are stairs ahead of me, leading up into the musty house. The afternoon sun streams in from behind me. But the house is dark since my eyes haven't adjusted. Everywhere I can see, the wallpaper is peeling and bubbling from the Louisiana heat and humidity. This once-great house is falling apart. and I expect it will be the same for the old woman who lives here. Mrs. Fontenow?

I call again, stepping up to a closed door on the left. As I turn the knob and open the door, a creak sounds from behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I see nothing. I return my attention to the doorway, seeing a girl missing an ear and her right arm staring up at me from just inside the room. I jerk back, my heart, lurching into my throat. She steps toward me. My first thought is that she's dead.

She's a ghost, haunting this old house. Her eyes have no life in them, and her expressionless face makes me want to scream for reasons I hope to never fully understand. Who are you? Get out of here! A voice shouts from my right, from upstairs. It's Mrs. Fontenow, and she has a rather large shotgun pointed down at me.

I bring my eyes back to the little girl, somehow thinking she's more of a threat than the gun. When I see that she's no longer moving, I put my hands up and turned to face the old woman shambling down the stairs. Mrs. Fontenow, it's me, Lance Landry, I say, willing her to travel back in time to retrieve my face as it was so many years ago. Mrs. Fontenow's eyes narrow, and she stops about halfway down the stairs. The suspicion on her face turns to recognition.

Oh, my lord, she says. You've become a man. A real man. I smile up at her, happy to see that she's no longer pointing the two barrels filled with death at me. But my heart still hammers away in my chest. From the corner of my eye, I can tell the girl is still looking at me. Mrs. Fontenow arrives at the foot of the stairs and looks up at me.

She was old when I left town over a decade ago. Now she's beyond old. but she still seems energetic enough. I turned to the girl, still half convinced that she's a ghost. Who's this? I ask. Mrs. Fontenow smiles wide and turns to the girl. You don't recognize her?

She says. It's my little granddaughter, Annette. It's a miracle. Is that why you're home again? To witness the miracles that have befallen our dying town. Something like that, I say. Looking down at Annette, It's true. I do recognize her. I was just a couple of years older than her when she went missing.

She had her left ear and her right arm back then. But now there's simply blank skin where the ear used to be, and her right arm ends in a nub. The thing is, it's not a nub common with amputees. It just ends almost like a mannequin's arm. It's just flat and featureless. Come, sit with me, Mrs. Fontenone. says. Annette may be back, but she doesn't do much talking. I sit and chat with the old woman. The girl, Annette, if it is really her, stands nearby and watches us. I try to not let my nerves show, but the girl creeps me out. The old woman tells me about the so-called miracles that have been happening. People who were missing and thought to be long dead returning out of nowhere,

the same age as they were when they disappeared. Only none of them are whole. They all have pieces missing. Has she said anything about her time away? I ask. Mrs. Fontenow shakes her head. Not a word. Both Sheriff Chauvin and I tried to get her to talk.

But she said nothing at first. Finally, she said she didn't remember. God works in mysterious ways. After about an hour, I thank Mrs. Fontenow and give my farewells to them both, although Annette just stares at me with those dead eyes. Back outside, I decided to take a walk around the town to clear my head. It won't take long. It's a small town. I haven't yet been back to the town proper, so I decide to walk toward the center of town and see how things have changed and how they've stayed the same. The few houses that are still occupied seem to sag. They all look dull, like the life has been sucked out of them.

Of course, that's how I remember the town looking when I was a kid. Only now it seems to have gotten worse. Those houses that are no longer occupied are crumbling, their windows looking like parodies of the dead eyes I saw in Annette's face. I walk on, feeling the sweat gather under my collar. It's not even summer yet. and it's hot. The little one-story buildings that make up the town's commerce center come into view.

I walk down the cracked asphalt road, but I don't see a single car drive by. And as I come to the middle of town, I see that some things have, in fact, changed. Where there was once a small drugstore, there's now an empty lot. The ground is muddy, and that mud seems to be taking over, spilling out into the street. The two buildings that flank the empty lot are leaning inward. Both buildings are empty. The businesses that once inhabited them, now gone. I stand in the street, looking at the empty lot,

careful not to step in the mud. Behind the lot is a stretch of swamp land that has been there since forever. I remember people trying to build on the land back there, trying to turn it into land they could build on, but they never had any luck. So our town was one built around a swamp. I guess that's Louisiana for you. Will I be a shit-sickle on a summer day?

A man's voice calls from behind me. A voice I recognize. I turn around, smiling. Hey, Sheriff. I say. Then I laugh. Wow, that's weird to say. Sheriff Tracy Chauvin is about my age.

He's dressed in jeans, a short-sleeved flannel shirt, cowboy boots, and a white Stetson hat. His sheriff's star glints in the sunlight above his left breast pocket. Get used to it, he says. Your old pal is the sheriff of this here half dead town. We clasp hands, and then Chauvin pulls me in for a hug. Good to see you, Lance.

He says. You too, Tracy. Your mama told me she called you, he says. Turns out the dead have come back to life to get you back here, huh? My smile fades. You think that's what's happening? I ask. He said it as a joke, but I think there's a nugget of truth in there. Hell, I don't know, man. I can't explain it.

Don't make no sense. It's like they haven't aged at all. They just started appearing all of a sudden. I don't understand it. I turned my eyes to the muddy lot and the swamp behind it as he talks. When did this start happening? I ask when he's done. about a month ago, right about when the old drugstore fell into the swamp. Fell? I say, surprised. You mean there was a sinkhole right here? Yep, it was fast too. Didn't take no more than an hour to kind of slide backward and sink. Then it was just gone. Hell's trying to swallow this godforsaken town, I say, more to myself than him.

Speaking of which, you ever find out what happened to your daddy? Chauvin asks. I try not to flinch at the question, keeping my eyes on the swamp. No, and I never tried to find out. He's probably dead or in jail. Sorry, Chauvin says. Just wondering. You've been away for all these years, so I had to ask.

Chauvin stops talking, but I know that he has something else to say. Go on, say it, I tell him. Well, I just want to. I wondered about the chances of your daddy showing up like those others. I thought maybe that's why your mama called you down. I turned to look at my old friend. I guess it's possible, I say. He did disappear, like so many people did from this town.

So maybe he'll come back, but I hope to God he doesn't. I take one last look at the swamp and then tell Chauvin that it was a long drive-in, and I'm heading to my mama's house. I tell him we'll drink a couple of beers while I'm in town. As I walk, I see several deformed people on front porches, people who disappeared long ago, and now have come back missing pieces of themselves. One man is missing an eye.

A little boy is missing his legs. A teenage girl seems to be missing a large portion of her skull. Like the missing part on Annette, these deformities seem to define nature. It's as if the skin has been smoothed over. There is no evidence of scarring or the telltale signs that the body went through a long and painful healing process. Their pieces are just gone. These people watch me as I walk.

I know all their names. Or I did at one point. Everyone did. And all I can think as I walk to my childhood home through fading daylight is that it's impossible. It's all impossible. And if the people of the town are thinking the same thing, They aren't saying so. Maybe they're thinking like Mrs. Fontenow, putting it down to a miracle.

Or maybe they've known that something is wrong with this town for a long time. And they don't want to invoke whatever evil spirits lurk here by making a fuss. I can't speak to what anyone else is thinking. But as I make it home, another thought arrives on the surface of my consciousness, like an alligator in a swamp coming up for a breath. I hope my daddy doesn't come back. During dinner, I try for the thousandth time to convince my mama to come live with me in the nice little beach community in North Carolina.

It's almost as if she doesn't hear me half the time. She hasn't been all there for a while. Not since the night my daddy disappeared. Once a vibrant woman with fiery green eyes and red hair so bright it was almost orange, she now looks more like old Mrs. Fontenow, who was 20 years her senior. After dinner, I lie down in my old room on the twin bed that my mom kept here for all these years. When the haunting images of the day finally stop coalescing in my mind's eye, I fall asleep. Lazzang sur-gillet,

puissance-molyne, for 15 minutes. We're like that's their dojo. Fere to play the pleasure with the Ojo. The casino in-line that proposes the most recent machine-ass-a-sou and the games of casino in direct. Profite of 50 tours gratu on Big Bas Bonanza. without exigence of mis, and with depemments instantane.

Hey, I've got to win. Woo-hoo! Sonture the pleasure. Play, Ojo! Dice eight-olde, 1st, first, expanse in Ontario. 50 tours gratuys on the machine

a sub-bikbas Bonanza. Depos minimum of $10. Defeiye's playing a way responsible. The conditions apply. In my dream, my daddy comes into my room. Only he's different somehow. His voice is soft and tender.

And his words soothe me instead of striking fear into my heart. There's a vague sense of unease in the back of my mind. But I heed his words, standing up and walking out. My mama is there, too. She's smiling. And it's good to see her smile.

We walk out of the house into the warm spring night, following my daddy as he tells us how different things are going to be. He doesn't actually come out and say that he will never lay hands on us again, that he'll never drink another drop of alcohol, that he'll never put his cigarettes out on my mother's thighs again. No. saying these things would ruin it. But it's all implied.

It's there in the atmosphere, in the way it can only be in dreams. And I believe him. Despite that, the sense of unease grows within me as I realize we're going to the center of town. Memories, real ones, from real life, try to force their way into the dream world

like fog, pressing up against the windows of a house. As we approach the empty lot where the drugstore once stood, I see that the whole town is out joining us, all those that remain anyway. The deformed and unaged miracles are leading their family members toward the cloying mud and the swamp that's producing it. I see Annette leading a shambling Mrs. Fontenow, and my old teacher, Mr. LeBlanc, walks behind his teenage daughter

that went missing 12 years ago. There's a little girl, one I haven't seen before, leading my old friend Tracy Chauvin. In fact, there seemed to be copies of that little girl leading all those town residents who didn't have a disappeared loved one show up recently. Some of the residents are already walking into the mud and sinking down, disappearing under the surface as the swamp claims them. We're almost there. It's almost our turn. flashes of memory pulse inside my head, cracking the dreamlike state I'm in. I shake my head, trying to ignore them.

I want to stay here. I want to believe things can be different. I want to have a normal daddy that doesn't choke me near to death any time I disappoint him. But the flashes increase, coming to me like an electrical storm. Remember, they seem to say. Remember what you did. And suddenly, with blinding clarity, I do. I remember the weight of the axe as I swung it down, hitting my daddy in the back with it,

as he loomed over my mama, whose face was turning blue. I remember not putting enough power into the swing, because the blade bounced off, leaving only a gash in the skin over his shoulder blade. But he screamed out and let go of my mama's neck, letting her take in a ragged breath. And I swung it again, putting all that my 16-year-old body could into it. I remember my daddy turning around and seeing the axe coming at him. I remember him putting his arm up and the blade hitting his wrist, nearly cutting his hand off. But most of all, I remember the way he didn't even seem to register the terrible wound. How he came at me with more hate in his eyes than I thought a man could ever have. How he snarled like a rabid dog and spit vitriol that still gives me

nightmares on occasion. And I remember thinking that if I didn't kill him, he would certainly kill me and my mama. So I did kill him. I swung the axe down right into his face. And when all was done, I took him out to the swamp and dumped him there with a couple of cinder blocks tied to his mangled body while my mama cleaned his blood off the floor at home. The terrible memories of that night bring me back, and I find myself standing only a few yards away from the muddy lot. My daddy seems to sense that I've stopped, and he turns around. The wounds I inflicted on him over ten years ago or somehow fresh. His face is a mess of split flesh and broken bone and blood. One of his eyes hangs out from the optic nerve, and his right hand is nearly

severed. Stop! I shout, seeing that all the townspeople really are out here, being led to their deaths by family members that came back haunted. Stop it! It's not real! I shout, and this seems to knock Chauvin and a couple of others out of their days. I rush forward and grab my mama's arm, pulling her back from my daddy. It's not real, Mama, I tell her. She looks over at my daddy and cringes. The townspeople are waking up to the lie, looking around with fear and confusion. My daddy snarls and plunges for me, but I make no move. I can see his one good eye just fine, and it's dead. As dead as Annette's eyes. As dead as the windows on the dilapidated houses in this town. No, I say.

My daddy stops as if he's run into an invisible wall. I already killed you once, I say, nearly yelling. I don't have to do it again. I don't know about all these other poor folks, but you're gone. You don't get to come back. The ear-splitting sound erupts from the swamp, and the ground starts to shake. The two buildings leaning over the muddy lot topple over, and the swamp seems to reach out and snatch them up.

The deformed people, including my father, are pulled. pulled inexorably backward and sucked into the expanding swamp land. We need to move! I shout, looking over at Chauvin. He nods and starts shouting for everyone to run. As we move, running as fast as we can in any direction away from the swamp, the town's center seems to disappear behind us. The shaking continues, along with the noise,

but they both fade considerably as we reach the outskirts of town. After several minutes, the insanity is over. I turn around and look back to see that what was once a collection of a dozen old buildings is now just Swamp Land. Many of the houses on the outskirts haven't been touched, at least not yet. Somehow, this whole thing seems like less of a surprise than it should be. Maybe I sensed something like this would happen. Maybe we all did.

We'll soon learn who survived and who was swallowed up. But what's done is done. So I step over to my mama and say, You're moving to North Carolina with me, and that's final. She looks up at me. Okay, Lance, she says. Okay. And she smiles.

SEP 1692 is an area of swamp land, located in central Louisiana, that is capable of producing several anomalous entities. The most common entity frequently appears as a prepubescent girl, but has been observed taking on the forms of certain mammals and or missing persons. Those instances that bear a strong physical resemblance to missing individuals often appear deformed or otherwise mutilated, with signs such as missing limbs with no sign of amputation, missing organs including total evisceration.

Hydrocephalus, disassociative amnesia, often combined with depersonalization.