The SCP Experience - My Uncle's Mask | SCP-9114

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

SCP-9114: My Uncle's Mask Author: Jordan Grupe Check out more of his work here: https://www.reddit.com/user/Jgrupe/ DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content. Parental guidance is advised for children under the age of 18. Listen at your own discretion. #thescpexperience #scp #scpfoundation #scpencounters #securecontainprotect #scpstories #scpexplained #whatisscp Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's no way I can sleep in here with that thing staring at us all night. I said to my brother, pointing up at the mask on the wall. Can't you take it down? I tried. It's like it's super glued up there. I'll have to take a closer look tomorrow when it's light out. The mask was white, painted with black, red, and blue details. There was a hideous smile where the mouth should be,

showing large, crooked teeth, stained red with blood. The lines on it looked like war paint, and it reminded me of something someone would wear into battle. But the creepiest part about it was the hair which was attached at the top. It looked like it was actually growing out of the top of the mask. It looked human, long, wispy strands of dark hair that billowed and moved in the slightest breeze. My uncle had always refused to tell us any details about the mask.

He would get upset when we asked about it, which I always thought was strange, because he was the one who had chosen to display it. Well, it creeps me out. Isn't there anywhere else to sleep? What about the family room or the bedroom? The family room is full of boxes, and I don't want to sleep in Uncle Fang's bed.

That's just weird. So unless you want to sleep on the bathroom floor or in the kitchen with the cockroaches, this is it, bro. I gave up and settled in under the blankets. We managed to find extra linens in the closet earlier in the evening. so at least we wouldn't be cold in the night.

The furniture was mostly moved out, and so we would be sleeping on the floor rather than on couches. Hopefully we can get the rest of this stuff packed up tomorrow. I don't want to spend one more day here if we don't have to, I said. We both lived back in the States, and I really wanted to get back home to see my girlfriend. We'd been dating for a month, and she was way too good for me. I was a little worried she'd figure that out while I was gone.

What? You're getting sick of the home country already? I thought you liked Auntie Ways cooking so much. You could eat it every day for the rest of your life, he teased. I was just being nice. She uses so much freaking garlic I can still taste it in the back of my throat. Man, I would kill for a fucking cheeseburger right now. And a joint. Don't say that too loud.

The secret police might come for us. Now come on, let's get some sleep. If we get up early, we can probably get the rest of this done tomorrow. The two of us quit talking as I turned off the lamp next to me. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I caught a glimpse of the mask and quickly looked away. Still, my eyes were drawn back to it again. As I found myself staring at the mask on the wall, I realized it was staring back at me in the blackness of the living room.

Inside those dark, blank holes, there were eyeballs. And they were looking right at me. They were pulsating and vibrating with excitement as they watched me, holding my gaze. I screamed and turned on the lamp next to me, vaulting upright and pointing at the mask on the wall, my entire arm trembling with terror. As the room was cast in harsh white light, the eyes and the mask disappeared. Its stare was blank and empty once again. It was just a plain, inanimate mask, creepy but not alive.

not looking at me. What the fuck, dude? My brother asked, blinking his eyes open. He looked like he had just fallen asleep, and I had woken him up with my scream. That! The mask! There were eyes in it looking at me. It was looking at me! My answer did not impress my brother Chang. Are you crazy? What's wrong with you? It's just a stupid mask! He stood up and walked over to it, waving his hands in front of it. He then made

my heart skip a beat as he knocked heavily on the forehead of the mask with his knuckle. Anybody home? He mocked, beating on the forehead of the mask with his fist, as if it were a door. Nope. Okay, okay. I'm sorry, all right? I must have imagined it. Let's just get some sleep, I said. It was just a trick of the light, or a product of my overworked mind. You don't have to tell me twice, he said, as he got back under his blankets, and I turned the out next to me. Do me a favor. If you see any more ghosts or floating eyeballs or whatever, tell me about them in the morning, okay, John? My heart was beating fast in my chest, even faster with the light off again, and I tried to say something but found myself coming up empty. Chang

rolled over, and I heard him snoring a few minutes later. I couldn't help but envy his ability to fall asleep so quickly, as I tossed and turned for at least an hour after that, trying desperately to avoid looking at the mask hanging from the wall. From what felt like hours, I couldn't sleep. Eventually, I decided to give up on it entirely and go to my Uncle Fang's room to box up a few more things. Maybe I could tire myself out, I thought. But anything had to be better than tossing and turning with that dreadful mask, staring down at me.

I purposefully avoided looking at it as I left the room. But I still felt like there were eyes on me, a dark, malevolent gaze, staring at me. and watching me go. I went into my late uncle's room and looked around to see where the best place would be to start. There were books on a shelf, and so I began with those, stuffing them into a box as neatly as my half-asleep mind would allow. After that, I moved on to the closet. There were loose items in the back, tucked behind some boxes, golf clubs and baseball bats, tennis rackets, and something caught my eye, and I pulled out a long item from the back. It was a little bit of It was a sword, tucked into a scabbard.

But the strangest thing about it was the hilt. Just like the mask in the living room, it had a lock of long, straight human hair attached to it. But this hair was stark white, the opposite of the dark hair on the mask in the living room. I drew the sword so that I could examine it and saw it looked like a samurai sword, or something similar. It was long and very sharp. The steel was patterned with wavy lines, indicating it.

it was made from folded steel, the kind that is made by master swordsmiths. What the fuck, Uncle Fang? I muttered to myself. Suddenly I heard a sound coming from where my brother was sleeping. It was a strange noise, unlike anything I'd ever heard before. And I felt like I needed to go look and see what was making that sound. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I began to walk down the hallway, sword still in hand, trying to figure out what was making those noises. It was like something scratching and clawing at wood, digging their nails in and thrashing against it. Then suddenly the noise stopped, and it sounded like someone dropping down to the floor, as if someone had just climbed in through a window and landed a little

too loudly with their shoes on. I entered the living room and saw that Chang was still passed out on the floor, so it couldn't have been him making the noise. Movement to my left caught my eye, and I looked to see a black silhouette duck behind the table. That was when I saw that the mask was gone from the wall. The light switch was on the right side of the room, and I would have to walk at least ten steps to get to it, moving away from the table and away from my sleeping brother who was exposed and vulnerable.

But it felt important at that moment to have the light on, to see what I was dealing with. If it was a burglar, that would be one thing. But there were no broken windows or signs of a break-in. and something told me whatever was hiding behind the table was not a criminal. Something told me it was not even human. Somehow I knew that to be true. I imagined it pulling itself free from the wall like a mutated baby emerging from the birth canal,

twisting and clawing at the wood, making those noises I'd heard from the other room. Without my uncle Fang here to keep it locked away, that creature was making its way into our world. Gripping the sword's hilt tighter in my hands, I ducked down to see underneath the table. But there was nothing, only shadows. I didn't dare to speak or scream. Instead, I ran over to the light switch to flip it on, hoping the bright light would startle Chang out of his sleep, and it would show me what was hiding behind the table.

I turned it on, and the room was cast in ultra-bright white light. Chang bolted upright and covered his face with his hands, yelling obscenities at me. I tried not to take it too personally. What the fuck are you doing, man? What is your problem? The mask! yelled.

It's gone! There's something behind the... My words were cut short as I looked to see the mask was still hanging on the wall, just as it had been before. But I was sure it had been gone. And I had heard something and seen something hiding behind the table. I was positive. I ran over to check behind the table, still holding the antique sword in my hands, drawn from

it scabbard. Dude, what the fuck! Where did you get that thing? Chang was yelling, blinking his eyes repeatedly against the light. But I ignored him, searching behind the table and looking for some sign of an intruder. At this point I was almost hoping to find one, just to prove I wasn't insane. But of course, there was nothing. And there was nowhere for any intruder to hide if one had been behind the table.

I eyed the mask again, distrustfully. I was sure there was something malicious about it, something evil. It was gone. There was something in the room. I swear I saw it, Chang. You have to believe me. But my brother looked unconvinced. He was a skeptic and didn't believe in ghosts or anything supernatural.

I had always been mostly the same. And now I was second-guessing myself, looking at his calm, rational face. The mask is still on the wall, same as before. Now can you please stop with the bullshit and get some sleep? Or go pack more boxes if you can't get any shut-eye. I was already doing that. That's where I found the sword. in Uncle Fang's closet.

But then I heard something out here and came to check on you. And then I saw something behind the table. I thought maybe it was a burglar. You're just jumpy because we're in a different country, in a weird house, and everything's different here. You gotta relax, John. There's no burglar. There's no ghost. We're safe, all right?

Now go put that away before you hurt yourself with it. It looks sharp. There's something else here now. Something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus. It's the series Stephen King calls Scary as Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-fi vision calls it the best show streaming right now.

We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules. Don't miss what the movie blog calls something you need to watch. Saving those children is how we all go home. From binge all episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. I sighed and did as a lot. he asked, feeling uneasy still, and wishing we could just leave the lights on all night. Or better yet, go home and never come back here. I had never liked Uncle Fang's house. It was like it had a bad aura, and that feeling was even worse now that he was gone. Of course, the lights clicked

out a moment after I had left the room, and I wandered in darkness back to Uncle Fang's bedroom, trying not to impale myself along the way. The scabbard was laying on the bed, and I tucked the sword back into it, keeping it close in case I needed it. Chang's heavy snoring could be heard a minute later, and I tried not to think about those noises that had come before. Those sounds of scratching wood and gouging drywall with long talons. Was it just raccoons on the roof? Or squirrels? That seemed plausible, but something told me it wasn't, as much as I wished it was. I looked through the closet and pulled out a few more miscellaneous items, some boring, others interesting. Each one I took a moment to examine, before sorting it into one of three piles,

Keep, Giveaway, or Garbage. The Keep pile would be for the family to discuss, while the giveaways would go to charity donation bins. One thing caught my eye, and I pulled it out and dusted it off to look at it more closely. It was a wood-cut print, showing a man holding a sword, much like the one I'd found in my uncle's closet. At first, I didn't notice the shadowy figure behind him, But then I saw the mask, and my heart began to beat like a drum in my chest again. There were more of the prints, and I pulled them out one by one,

seeing that they revealed a story told in pictures. A warrior was standing in the forest, holding the sword in his hands. Something came up from behind him and attacked. An epic battle ensued, spanning over multiple landscapes, and what appeared to be many generations of warriors, all from the same family line, sharing the same distinctive facial features. features that I recognized for my own family photos. Each woodcut print was a little newer than the last,

and was done in a slightly different style, as if these had been made by many different people, spanning over hundreds of years, maybe longer. They were stacked up with the oldest on the top and the newest on the bottom, as if telling a multi-generational story of a warrior family, my family. Uncle Fang never had children, I realized.

He would have been the last on a long time. long line of guardians. The word came to me like osmosis, but it felt right. At the bottom of the pile there were two more recent prints, looking as if they were only a few decades old. They showed a warrior cutting off the head of the masked monster from the forest and mounting its face on a wall. The picture looked a lot like my Uncle Fang,

and the face on the wall looked exactly like the mask I was so afraid of. Fuck! We needed to get out of the house immediately, I realized. That mask was not just evil. It was incredibly dangerous, and clearly it still possessed some sort of power. Maybe, now that Uncle Fang was gone, it was coming back to life. I stood up on shaky legs and was about to walk over to the door when I heard creaking floorboards down the hall in the living room. I had set the sword down to look at the prince, but now I held it firmly in my grip again and drew it from the scabbard, terrified that I might have to use it to kill that creature, whatever it was. Pushing the door open, I exited the room, slowly making my way down the hall.

Something raced past the doorway at the far end of the hall, quick as lightning, and I barely caught a glimpse of it. But then it peaked out from behind the wall very slowly and looked at me, as if to tease me. The monster was wearing the same white mask with long black hair from the wall, and it was shambling forward like an ape, using its hands as another pair of legs. It smiled when it saw me, the hard mask, stretching like skin around its toothy grin. I wanted to scream, but found myself incapable of making a sound. Long limbs with even longer fingers began to make their way around the wall,

flowing like black water and not looking anything like arms anymore. They made their way toward me on either side, rushing at me quicker and quicker as they got closer, crawling along the walls of the hallways like vines. As they stretched out to touch me, I swung the blade with every ounce of four. force I could muster. The vibrations caused my entire body to shake as I slashed against the wall to my left, and then to my right, slicing off the ends of the creature's fingers and gouging long holes in the walls.

It let out a piercing, animal scream, and the liquid limbs began to retract rapidly, like a tape measure being snapped back into its housing. The face disappeared from behind the wall, and the floorboards creaked under its weight as it moved toward the kitchen through the living room. If it went fast enough, I realized it could sneak up on me since the hallway entered the kitchen from the other side behind me. Sure enough, I spun around to see the creature standing right behind me. It stood taller than I would have imagined, as if it had grown with every year of its life. For all those hundreds of years my ancestors had fought it, it was growing bigger and stronger. And finally my Uncle Fang had defeated it, or so he thought.

A blade of darkness was suddenly swinging at my head, And I found myself rolling backwards to get out of the way, using an acrobatic maneuver I hadn't known myself capable of. As soon as I was up, the creature was attacking again. Its hideous smile was always present, and I realized that it was not on a mask. It had never been a mask. All along, it was the face of that horrible creature.

Uncle Fang had mounted its head on the wall like a trophy. But apparently, this thing had the ability to regenerate. The creature's body was made of liquid darkness, and its limbs transformed into whatever it wanted, using itself as a weapon. At times its arms were long tentacles, slapping and whipping through the air, trying to entangle me. At other times they were blades or long spears, thrusting at me and carving the empty space I had just occupied. Somehow I avoided every strike, leaping off the walls like Jackie Chan and parrying the creature's attacks like a ninja. I realized it had to be the sword letting me do all this.

How else could I be making so many acrobatic maneuvers? And how else could I be using the blade with such expert ease? Backing into the living room, I nearly stumbled over Chang's sleeping form. But I managed to right myself at the last second. Somehow he was still snoring and passed out through all of this. As I stepped over him, I realized I was leaving him in the monster's path, and that would mean his certain death. Sure enough, the creature was now leaning over Chang,

looking ready to devour him, Its mouth widening further and further. Without hesitation, I leapt forward and swung the blade as hard as I could at an angle, trying to lop off the creature's head. It reared up as if expecting this and opened its maw, smiling wider than I would have thought possible. It had been anticipating my weakness that my love for my brother would cause me to make an error. And that was when I realized my uncle had kept himself secluded for a reason. He'd always been a hermit, pushing other people away.

And this was why he didn't want them to get hurt. The creature's long fingers were around me a second, stretching like vines around my midsection and wrapping me up. The sword clattered to the floor, making a loud noise. Black tendrils were wrapping themselves tighter and tighter around my neck in my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I could feel my ribs straining under the pressure, threatening to pop and to break.

And during all of this, the creature was smiling wider and wider, showing rows and rows of teeth going all the way down its gull. The world started to fade around me, and I felt myself losing consciousness in the dark room. Terrified, I knew at that moment I was going to die. And then suddenly the lights flicked on, and I fell to the floor in a heap, gasping in breaths of air. Are you okay, man?

Chang asked, running over to me. I thought I heard you choking or something. Holy shit, what the hell happened to you? I looked around, frightened that the creature, was still lurking nearby, but it was gone. Spinning around to check the wall, I saw the mask was hanging there again, as if it had never left its place. It was its defense mechanism, I realized.

It could hide there in plain sight. Or maybe it couldn't even take on physical form in the light. It needed darkness to manifest itself. Biennue at board of Via Rai, Embarked and Profite. Embarque and Celebrate. We can't publiced Savory

Admire And profite Via Raille The Voice That We We can't stay here I said to my brother darting my gaze around the room And checking every hiding place

There's something evil in this house That seemed like the best way To explain it, I thought You have to trust me Can we go stay at Aunt Way's house I don't want to be here While it's dark out I guess

He said reluctantly She's always up I'll give her a call. While we went to the other room, I picked up the sword and looked at the mask on the wall. Suddenly, I had a good idea on how to get it down. I went over to it and swung the blade down hard in a thin, empty space behind the mask. The blade met resistance, but it was sharp enough and powerful enough to do the work. The mask clattered to the ground, lifeless and inanimate, looking just like a simple white-painted object once again.

The doorbell rang suddenly. rang suddenly, and I wondered who it could be at this hour. I went over to the front entrance and looked through the glass to see two men in suits who looked American. For some reason, I trusted them enough based on appearance alone to open the wooden door and talk to them through the screen. I had a feeling that they knew something about what had just happened. I don't know why I felt that way.

I just did. Hello, I said, can I help you? We're looking for Fang Zhu, or his closest surviving relative, We have reason to believe that... He stopped speaking, seeing the sword in my hand. I had actually forgotten I was holding it. Oh, sorry, I said. I was sorting through the family heirlooms.

It's not what it looks like. But then I noticed the black, Terry stain on the blade, like blood, but darker. I think it's exactly what it looks like, the man at the door said. And that's a good thing. That's a very good thing. What's that? I asked, confused. The two men turned to walk away.

looking like they had accomplished whatever they'd come to do. Hey! I called after them, opening the screen door. What the hell is going on? A gentle rain began to patter down as they walked down the driveway to their car. But one of them stopped for a second to look back at me. And he called something out to me that I will remember forever. You have a very important job now, Mr. Zhu.

You have accepted a responsibility that even we are not able to fulfill. Good luck. You will certainly need it. He paused as if remembering something, and asked me one more question. You have a girlfriend. Does she want children, Mr. Zhu? Yes. I called back.

She talks about it all the time. Good. You have children, Mr. Zhu. At least one should suffice to keep the bloodline intact. With that, he got into the car, and the two men drove away in a hurry, as if they couldn't get away fast enough. I went back inside and picked up the mask, examining it in my hands. There was no black Terry blood dripping from it, but it still remained on the blade,

and I went into the bathroom to clean it off in the sink. It seemed important to keep the blade clean now, to keep it ready. When I went back out to the living room, Chang was waiting for me, looking ready to leave. His eyes widened when he saw me carrying the mask and watched me put it into my bag. Hey, you managed to get it down from the wall, he said, not quite laughing but almost. How'd you do it? I thought about this for a moment before saying, I guess you just need a special kind of blade. It's been a decade since that day, and my girlfriend and I got married and had a child, a girl, who I'm teaching to use the sword. She's good, even at such a young age. She's a natural. The mask hangs on my living.

room wall, not for display purposes, or to show it off like a trophy, but so I can keep a close eye on it, and watch for any changes. I sleep lightly at night, listening for the sounds of scratching wood and creaking footsteps, and I keep the blade at my bedside, very close at all times, sharpened and ready for action. Lazzang sur-gillet, puissance-mojone, for 15 minutes. We'd say that's their dojo. Ready to play. The casino in-line that's the

most recent machine to do you to casino in direct. Profite of 50 tour gratuys on Big Bas Bonanza, without exigience

of mis, and with the payment instantane. Hey, I've got won't. To get the pleasure. Play-Ojo. 18-8 and plus,

1,1 depot only, exclude in Ontario. 50 tours gratu on the machine-a-sou $1%% dollar.

Veillate to pay to fashion responsible. The conditions can't apply.