July 18th, 2014. The calm and peaceful tranquillity of the
day has just been disrupted by the squawk of a panicked report over the radio. Civilians in danger, urgent assistance required. The Park Ranger hears the screams carried
through the trees by the wind a second later, already hurtling his way toward the location
given by his colleague. Something is very, very wrong. Usually, nothing like this happens at Crater
Lake National Park. His mind starts racing as fast as the Jeep
he’s driving, a brain entering survival mode, trying to predict every possible danger. A forest fire? It was still daylight; he’d have seen the
smoke. An animal attack? Maybe, bears could sometimes be seen roaming
about on the fringes of the park, but they typically kept away from humans, especially
the more people were around. And today, in the midst of July, there were
plenty to ward off any strays. Every attempted prediction only raised the
same question: just what the hell was going on? Approaching the tree line, one of the other
rangers waves down the car. She’s armed. If the vagueness of the report hadn’t been
troubling enough, seeing another park ranger with a shotgun in her hands certainly was. They were in bear territory; it wasn’t unheard
of for one of them to occasionally need a gun to ward the bears off. But that was a rarity out at Crater Lake. Slamming the brakes and leaping out of the
Jeep, the Park Ranger rushes towards his colleague as she takes cover behind a nearby tree. He immediately asks her what the situation
is, but she urges him to be quiet. There’s something out there with them, she
tells him in a whisper, racking a live round into her shotgun. When the Park Ranger asks what, the Other
Ranger shoots him a look. Her eyes say it all: she’s terrified and
confused; this isn’t just a wild animal on a rampage or frightenedly defending its
territory and cubs; she has no idea what it is. She can’t even believe she’s seen it,
let alone start describing it. Twigs snap under the foot of… something,
causing the Other Ranger to raise her shotgun, leaning out from behind the tree in the direction
of the noise. She scans the space a few feet beyond the
barrel: nothing. The Park Ranger takes a look for himself,
not exactly eager to see what it is but unable to fend off his own curiosity. He spots something, nothing more than a shape
passing between the trees, almost mistaking it for a branch simply moving in the gentle
breeze. He taps on the Other Ranger’s shoulder and
alerts her: whatever it is, it’s close. And it seems to be walking like a man. The Other Ranger looks. In a second, she raised her shotgun and fired;
a blast of buckshot erupts from the barrel, causing a deafening, high-pitched ringing
in the Park Ranger’s ears. He doubles over, clutching his ears as the
sound becomes physically painful, not realizing his colleague fumbling as she grabs a fresh
cartridge… or the thing staggering towards them. That is, until he looks up, the moment his
hearing returns. But before we go any further, I have a question
for you - Does something feel wrong… with you? Is there something interfering with your happiness
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this channel. Now back to the bizarre creature in the forest
It’s like part of the forest has come to life and assumed the shape of a human being
in order to attack them. Roots cover its body, sealing up the space
where its eyes would be. Oregon beaked moss coats its arms and hangs
off it like it’s been draped in a sheet of yellowy green plants. The creature is horrible to look at… And yet, it looks lost. It stumbles, arms outstretched like it’s
trying to blindly feel its way around… and the Park Ranger realizes it can’t see. Another cartridge clicks into the shotgun
tube, pulled back the chamber by the slide of the pump, and the Other Ranger raises the
weapon, steadying her aim so as not to miss this time. Her sights line up, the mossy monstrosity
sitting in the center, and her finger squeezes on the trigger. An unexpected force from below pushes the
barrel of the shotgun upwards, pointing it towards the treetops. Another ear-splitting blast rings out, sending
nearby birds flying from their nests in panic. The Park Ranger keeps the weapon pointed up,
despite his colleague’s protests to let go of her gun or the drops of blood dripping
out and trailing down his neck from his own eardrums. He glances over his shoulder as… whatever
it is, flees in terror. Startled by the shotgun blast, it runs away
between the trees, knocking into some as it moves with uncertainty. Minutes later, a team of other rangers arrives,
declaring that they’re taking over the search effort for the creature that was found lurking
around Crater Lake National Park. These rangers seem off; they look the part,
in full uniforms and everything. But the Park Ranger can’t place their faces. They somehow seem brand new, yet not one of
them is phased by the unusual situation. They seemed all the more interested in questioning
all the hikers and families visiting the park who had seen the creature, as they were in
actually finding it. It was almost as if they didn’t want the
word getting out. The Park Ranger decides he can’t keep quiet
any longer and raises a concern to the newcomers. He tells them that he doesn’t think whatever
is out there is some kind of monster… he thinks it’s human. The new rangers thank him for his input, but
insist that they’ll take it from here. Little did he know, these weren’t other
park rangers… they were agents of the SCP Foundation. They have been embedded within the National
Park’s rangers to contain SCP-3310, an anomalous log floating in Crater Lake, said to contain
a powerful deity named Llao, who can cause dangerous weather to erupt unless the log
is left to float freely. Then, the call comes in from SCP Foundation
command, reports of an entity attacking civilians. Since they happen to be nearby, in the same
park, no less, a handful of agents are sent in to investigate, and, if possible, contain
the creature. Before too long, the civilian witnesses, even
the real park rangers who had tried to kill the entity, have all been interviewed, administered
with memory-wiping amnestics, and subsequently released, as if nothing out of the ordinary
has even happened. Putting boots to the ground, the search for
the unidentified creature doesn’t take long. Within two hours, the agents have found what
they’re looking for. Only it’s not a creature. It’s a person. His name is Zach Hermann. They find him cowering under an alcove near
the edge of the lake, his moss-covered skin providing a near-perfect camouflage for him
to blend in with his woodland surroundings. The only thing that gives him away is the
sound of his frightened sobs. The Foundation agents aren’t under orders
to neutralize him on sight. Instead, they humanely subdue Zach Hermann
and arrange to have him taken to a nearby Foundation outpost for examination. SCP-3462, an anomalous humanoid entity known
to inhabit a rundown Blockbuster video rental store in the nearby town of Bend, Oregon,
with the area having been sealed off and constantly patrolled by Foundation personnel. So, that seems like the best place to take
Zach and figure out exactly what happened to him. Upon closer examination at the Foundation
outpost, it’s discovered that Zach Hermann has a number of unidentified roots growing
through both his skin and internal organs. Given the danger to his life that this poses,
he’s rushed into an operating theatre to undergo emergency surgery. Eighteen hours pass as the Foundation tries
to save the man’s life. At this time, the surgeons decide that it
isn’t wise or possible to remove all the roots at once, so instead, they focus on clearing
the ones that had grown within and over his eyes, nostrils, ear canals, and throat. Another seven hours of intensive surgery pass,
and Zach Hermann is still alive. He’s not cured, but the roots covering much
of his face have at least been cleared. After stabilizing, it’s then that he’s
transferred to Site 56, where the Foundation intends to conduct further operations to remove
the growths from his body, as well as ask Zach questions about what happened to him. They’re still baffled as to what caused
his anomalous mutation into a moss monster. Just where had these roots come from… and
what exactly was SCP-7185? Researcher Charlie Kanley is tasked with conducting
interviews with the subject, Zach Hermann, between his various procedures, and she wastes
no time in unearthing his story. Oakridge, Oregon. Sixty miles north of Crater Lake National
Park, where Zach will eventually be found. That’s where he describes the horrific mutation
taking place. Given that the roots would grow over his eyes,
his vision impaired, he has no idea where he’s going until he eventually winds up
in Crater Lake. Scared, alone, and changed beyond recognition. And as he describes it, he wasn’t the only
one. Shortly before his own mutation, Zach mentions
witnessing the same happening to Kellen Hermann, his husband. The couple, along with a group of several
others, are in a small Oregon town reached by traveling to Hills Creek Lake, then following
Hills Creek Road south until finding a road sign simply labeled ‘Beard.’ The place has spent seventy years in ruins,
abandoned, and left to be overtaken by the elements. Most of the roads leading into the area are
blocked off thanks to a landslide, leaving the town completely void of all human life. Until Zach and his friends arrive in Beard. There are six of them in total, including
Zach, his husband, Kellan, then Azrael, Mark, Angel, and Caleb. Answering an ad on Craigslist, the group has
come to Beard after being hired by a man named Sean to scavenge through the abandoned town,
collecting anything that could potentially be of value. Scrap metal and intact valuables, as long
as they can be resold, are worth holding on to. While the group searches, Sean delivers food
and supplies to them once per month. One thing that they hope for each time, but
never seem to get, is something to drink in their downtime. So, on a whim, while exploring an abandoned
factory they come across, Zach looks for an alternative source of beer for the group to
enjoy. What he finds is an unusual blue machine. Pulling levers on it, he finds that it dispenses
samples of a surprisingly green liquid. Of course, none of the group immediately drinks
it. Not until Angel finds an old journal with
entries dating back to the 1930s. It describes the owners of the factory giving
the liquid to their workers and only ceasing the practice after the workers stopped getting
drunk. Taking that to mean the liquid was safe to
drink, the group decided to each take a swig of the green. Initially, none of them feel any change. It’s actually rather anticlimactic, at least
at first. Soon after, however, they start to feel energized,
more alert and awake for much longer without feeling the usually expected fatigue that
would bring. It even helps them search through parts of
the town quicker, something they’re all grateful for. After a week, not one of them even feels the
need to sleep. They were even healing from injuries faster;
small cuts were sealing in minutes, bruises clearing entirely almost as quickly as they
formed. After about a month, the negative side effects
start. They start manifesting as small symptoms,
the group experiencing various bodily aches that gradually become far, far worse. It affects each of them differently, too. Zach starts to experience a tightness in his
chest, while Caleb develops a bad fever that leaves him barely able to function. Mark and Angel’s hair starts falling out
in thick clumps, too. Soon after, the same is happening to Caleb
too. His symptoms are the first to worsen; after
his hair falls out, his skin starts to do the same. It keeps peeling away, turning red… Then, Sean arrives in Beard. According to the information given by Zach
in his interviews with the Foundation, their employer would routinely drive to the town
every three months in order to pick up anything valuable the group has recovered. All of them suffering from the ill effects
of whatever the liquid they’d all drank was, those of the group that still had the
strength to stand rushed to meet Sean and beg him to get them help. Upon taking one look at them, he drives away,
abandoning them. Four days after Sean left them there, the
sleepless group is startled by screaming in the night. It’s Caleb… and he’s on fire. Panicking, the others try to help, pouring
water on him to douse the flames. It seems to work, if only for a few minutes
before the fire starts up again. They even try taking him to the creek that
runs through the town, but submerging Caleb in the water only causes his skin to form
massive blisters that painfully burst. Keeping him under didn’t work either; he
kept needing to come up for air – and breaking the surface, he started catching fire again,
the second he was above water. There was nothing they could do to save him;
he just kept burning. Caleb is the first of the group to die. It’s not clear when this occurred. Investigating the area, the Foundation recovers
fragmented journal entries written by Azrael, in which the others all attribute Caleb’s
death to him having a weak immune system. But normally, diseases don’t cause people
to spontaneously catch fire. By the morning, he has almost completely burned,
leaving only a charred corpse that the group buried by the factory. Following Caleb’s death, Zach is forced
to leave. The others blame him for Caleb’s death,
and he does as well. He intends to find some other way of getting
help for the rest of the group. Kellan joins him, and the couple leave Beard
together. Meanwhile, Angel, Mark, and Azrael search
for their own way out of the town, but to no avail. Hardly any of the roads are accessible on
foot, and those that are just lead to abandoned properties on the woodland outskirts of Beard. According to Azrael’s journal entry, they
then refocused their efforts towards finding a cure for whatever it was they had drunk. It’s not much more successful. During Zach and Kellan’s absence, Mark is
the next group member whose symptoms start to get worse. His hair had almost entirely gone, and soon,
rashes started to form over his skin before peeling away. Immediately, he and the other two start to
fear that what happened to Caleb might be about to happen to Mark, too. Their only plan is for Mark to stay out in
the snow if he starts catching fire in the same way since, by this point, winter had
reached Oregon. But instead of a reoccurrence of Caleb’s
condition, Mark’s skin begins repeatedly forming an unusual blueish-green substance,
warm to the touch. It accumulates every few hours, and Angel
and Azrael help him scrape it off before it ultimately returns. Within days, it’s returning faster, too
fast for them to clear it. So much of it forms that it starts dripping
off Mark. Then Angel points out it seems to be candlewax…
and the more of it, the hotter it gets. Shortly after, the substance burns out Mark’s
eyes. He’s completely covered in scalding hot
wax, with no way of removing it entirely. Eventually, he dies. Angel and Azrael can’t move his body thanks
to the wax, as more of it keeps forming, nor can they bury him yet, thanks to a snowstorm
outside. It’s only a week later that Azrael thinks
he sees the body moving… Mark is still alive. He’s been lying in a pile of hot wax the
entire time, his body still making more. Soon, he stops moving altogether. While all this is happening, Kellan and Zach
are still trying to find help, but manage to wind up lost in the woods surrounding Beard. The numerous overlapping and confusing paths
surrounding the town had meant one wrong turn sends both of them heading towards the woods,
with only a few cans of food, a lighter, and a pocket knife between them. After a week, they pass a mountain that Zach
assumes is the Diamond Peak volcano. Another week later, both he and Kellan are
beginning to suffer their own severe symptoms from the liquid they consumed. Kellan is vomiting shards of metal and glass. Further metallic chunks were breaking through
Kellan’s skin as they grew within his body. At the same time, roots grow over Zach’s
eyes, preventing him from fully seeing just what is happening to his husband. They sit together in Kellan’s dying moments,
Zach feeling like he needs to be there for his partner even though he can’t see him
or do anything to help him. A few hours after Kellan’s breathing eventually
stops, Zach walks through the woods until he hears the sound of cars, only to be found
in Crater Lake National Park. Around the same time, Angel also dies. It takes him a whole week after his eyelids
and fingernails fall out, followed by every layer of his skin. It would happen multiple times, thanks to
the effects of the green liquid causing him to recover, all so his skin could once again
come off. At one point, Azrael, horrified by it all,
sees his friend’s face fall off. Still unable to find a way out of Beard, one
of the remaining two survivors of the group also starts to change. Bumps form under Azrael’s skin, eventually
causing his hands to become swollen and preventing him from moving anything below his chest. Aware of his impending fate, he stashes the
journal he’s been writing in inside a backpack and leaves it for whoever finds them. The Foundation is able to recover the bodies
of Azrael, Angel, Mark, and the buried remains of Caleb within Beard, but they decline to
share this information with Zach. Sean’s identity is confirmed to be that
of Sean MacDougall, and Foundation agents are sent to interrogate him. They aren’t able to ascertain any valuable
information from him, so instead amnesticise him. Anything saved on Sean’s devices relating
to the location of the town of Beard, the group he hired to scavenge there, and the
forty-six thousand dollars he’d made from the scavenged goods are all seized. SCP-7185 consists of two elements. The first is an unidentified machine that
was uncovered by Zach Hermann and his friends in an abandoned factory in the Southern Cascadian
Mountain Range of Oregon. Despite not having any power sources connected
to it, SCP-7185 seemingly functions without the need for electricity. It is instead operated via a series of levers
connected to the main body of the device. Two are black, and one is rusted over. Should both of the black levers be switched
downwards and the rusty lever pulled, the machine will produce the second element of
this anomaly, designated by the Foundation as SCP-7185-1, hereby alternatively known
as the Body Horror Juice. The alcoholic liquid byproduct of activating
SCP-7185 is green in color and has a semi-viscous consistency. If this liquid is drunk at any point by a
human being, then this person will undergo major bodily changes that tend to span a period
of at least several weeks. Anyone ingesting SCP-7185-1 will suffer numerous
mutations and deformations of their body, although exactly how they are altered varies
depending on the person drinking the juice. SCP-7185-1 also negates the effects of any
depressants, opiates, or other stimulants taken after ingestion, meaning there is no
way to nullify the pain of these intense physical changes. On July 21st, 2014, Zach Hermann died thanks
to complications during surgery. The Foundation surgeons have been making extensive
efforts to clear the roots growing throughout his body as a result of Hermann ingesting
SCP-7185. They have made enough of a difference to allow
him to participate in interviews with Researcher Kanley. However, during these exchanges, Zach mentions
that he can still feel everything that is happening to him during the procedures. Every incision, every removal, every stitch. The same day, the body of Zach’s husband,
Kellan Hermann, is also recovered. Check out the Dr. Bob Patreon and become a
junior researcher today! Now go and watch another entry from the files
of Dr. Bob, like SCP-420 Aggressive Skin Condition!
