Imagine this - it’s summer vacation and you're a
kid. You and your friends are playing in the woods near your neighborhood, just like you've been
doing most days during the break from school. One day, you spot a treehouse. It’s not that
high off the ground and it's very simply built from leaves, grass, and scraps of wood.
You and your friends are curious, so you decide to check it out. Upon investigation, you
find a kid in there. He says his name is Billy, and this is his treehouse. You don't recognize
him from school, but you figure he must just be new in town. He asks if he can join your
group, and, wanting to be nice to the new kid, you tell him “okay.” You spend the rest of the
day playing with him - games like hide and seek, tag, and red rover, until it's time
for everyone to go home for dinner. Strangely, Billy doesn't seem to
leave, he just stays in his treehouse. For the rest of the week, playing with Billy
and his treehouse become a regular fixture of your daily routine, but oddly enough, he
never comes to hang out at any of your houses, and you never seem to see him anywhere
else but in the woods. One day, however, he decides to invite one of your friends, Amy,
to hang out with him at the treehouse alone. You think nothing of it, but after
that point, you never see Billy again. It’s a couple of weeks before you and your friends
see Amy again, and when you do, she appears off somehow. She seems to be spending a lot of
time in that treehouse. Billy has disappeared, but you and Amy and the rest of the kids keep
meeting up to play together in the woods. One day Amy pulls you aside, she wants you to come
meet with her tomorrow at the treehouse… alone. This is typically how an SCP-974 infestation
begins - with a mysterious new kid inviting a group of friends to hang out in his crudely
made treehouse. But as you might have guessed, this kid isn't a kid - he's SCP-974, a carnivorous
monster that only looks like a human child. It can live on small woodland animals, but its preferred
prey… is kids between the ages of 6 and 12, taking the phrase 'you are what
you eat' to the next level. The entity will install itself in an
area with a sufficient amount of trees, in proximity to a decent population of children.
It will then construct a crude treehouse to serve as its nest, and begin befriending groups
of between 2 and 5 children. The creature will engage in normal outdoor games and allow its new
'friends' to come and go as they please, building the trust of its newfound playmates. But then,
after about a week, it will select its victim. SCP-974 will single out one member of the
group and invite them to the treehouse alone. Whether they accept or deny the invitation
is irrelevant, because this is the point where SCP-974 will strike, subduing and
then devouring that child. After doing so, the creature will disappear from the area, going
into a state of hibernation for roughly 12 days. During that time, it goes through a period
of metamorphosis, transforming from whoever it looked like before into an exact
likeness of the child it just consumed. SCP-974 will continue this cycle
of selecting and catching prey until there are no children
left in the surrounding area. While it's initially friendly to children, SCP-974
has an intense fear of any older human beings. The mere presence of a person older than 13
is enough to trigger the creature's fight or flight response, and it will run away if it sees
any adults coming. When running isn't an option, SCP-974 will resort to violence to defend itself.
Despite its looks, SCP-974 is much stronger, faster, and more resistant to damage
than a child, and it has been known to completely rip adults apart in situations
where it felt threatened and cornered. SCP-974 does not appear to be affected
by bullets or striking weapons, and the only reliable way to put down an instance
seems to be with fire. When infestations are discovered in the wild, the normal SCP foundation
protocol is to attempt to capture the creature, but if deadly force is required, agents
will set fire to the creature's nest and a portion of the surrounding area
until it has been confirmed dead, before covering up the destruction as
the result of a regular forest fire. The SCP foundation was able to capture one
instance of SCP-974 and place it in containment, hoping that having one in captivity would
provide insight into the creature's origins. It was placed in a lightly wooded
enclosure at Zoological Reserve Site 16, where it immediately started constructing multiple
treehouse nests from the plant life it found. Initially, the containment of SCP-974 involved
offering the creature live human prey. Once every 3 months, a group of
4 children would be brought in, in accordance with Protocol 12. The children
would be given room and board in on-site barracks, and encouraged to explore the enclosure and play
with SCP-974. If 974 had not selected a victim within 5 days, the group of children would be
sent away and a new group would be introduced. This system worked for a few years, but as
you might expect, the Ethics Committee had a problem with the practice of offering
up live children to a deadly anomaly. Now, as of January 1st, 2015, the team at
Zoological Reserve Site 16 are no longer able to evoke Protocol 12 in order to acquire
children. Attempts to use another SCP - SCP-1680, a collection of clones of a missing 8-year-old
boy - failed, as SCP-974 refused to eat them. The procedures then changed
to only allow small animals to be introduced into the enclosure as prey. While it might seem like this was a good idea that
would stop SCP-974 from killing any more children, like a lot of seemingly good changes to
containment procedures in the Foundation, this well intentioned move would
ultimately have deadly consequences. SCP-974 at first seemed to behave normally
despite being denied its favorite food. But then, on August 16th, 2015, while
on their weekly sweep of the enclosure, patrol teams found that 974 had
destroyed all of the treehouses it had built in its time in containment. The
SCP itself was also nowhere to be found. There was something new in the enclosure
though, a small oval of disturbed soil. A geological team was called in, and through
ground penetrating radar, it was found that there was a humanoid figure buried there, curled
up in a fetal position. This couldn't be SCP-974, could it? The figure was much too long and
thin to be anything resembling a human child. But it had to be SCP-974 - it was the only
living thing in the enclosure. The scientists were intrigued, and they theorized that the
SCP might have been entering a new life stage. Further scans were conducted over the next 10
days. During that time, the creature never moved from its position, though it did continue
to grow. It seemed like it was absorbing nutrients from the surrounding soil. The team
decided to exhume the creature to examine it. When they dug it up, they found that SCP-974 had
stretched out, now measuring 220 cm in length and weighing just 37.4 kilograms. It had no features
or orifices of any kind anywhere on its body, and its now pale white skin was covered in
some kind of sticky mucus that, when examined, was found to contain a previously undiscovered
enzyme. The creature was alive, but barely. It wasn't breathing, and its heartbeat was extremely
slow, almost to the point of being undetectable. SCP-974 was examined for an additional four weeks,
after which it died, and was sent for dissection. Some of the scientists and researchers at
Zoological Site 16 were disappointed to hear about 974's death. As vicious
and feral as the creature was, they'd developed a certain fondness for it,
and its many little treehouses. Luckily, it wouldn't be too much longer
until a new specimen was obtained. On October 16th, 2016, a group of no less than
7 instances of SCP-974 were discovered near a major American city. The containment team
was forced to kill 6 of the anomalies in the attempts to capture them, but one instance
survived and was taken to Zoological Site 16. As was mandated, the area was burned and
Foundation counterintelligence disseminated a cover story about a forest fire caused
by an improperly extinguished campfire. The new SCP-974 was, like the original one, placed
in the enclosure and denied human prey. Also like the first one, this 974 buried itself after being
denied its preferred meals for several months. The decision was made to leave the SCP
underground longer than in the first instance, to see what it might become if this
developmental stage wasn't interrupted. On January 25th, 2017, the creature finally
dug itself free from the earth. Now designated SCP-974-A, it was far more aggressive than any
instance of 974 had ever been before. As soon as it was free from the dirt, it made a beeline
straight for the nearest monitoring station. It ripped the roof off and tore the 6 team
members stationed there to shreds in just 90 seconds. When the response team
arrived 15 minutes later, only 12% of the human remains were able to be recovered.
But, strangely enough, it at first seemed that one of the team had been spared. Georgia Stone,
one of the monitoring team, was severely injured, but apparently in a stable condition.
Disoriented, she approached the response team, begging for assistance and urging them to
take her out of the enclosure. But the team was skeptical - they knew that SCP-974 could
become an exact copy of any child it consumed, so it followed that the fully-grown
SCP-974-A might be able to copy adults. They asked Georgia questions in order to confirm
her identity, but she was unable to answer them. Having been found out, SCP-974, still
mimicking Georgia, attacked the response team. They'd been armed with flamethrowers, but
unfortunately, on top of its resistance to damage, the adult form of 974 didn't seem
to be afraid of, or harmed by, fire. The team was at a loss for how to kill this
thing, or even subdue it long enough to get out safely. SCP-974-A was tearing through the
members of the team like they were made of paper. Thinking quickly, one member of the
response team, a guard named Emilio, pulled out one of his standard issue Foundation
hand grenades. When SCP-974-A came at him, he pulled the pin and, holding the grenade,
shoved his arm into the creature's open mouth. While the explosion destroyed Emilio's arm,
it didn't even break the skin of SCP-974-A. However, it did result in serious damage to
its internal organs, which finally killed it. Following its death, an autopsy was
conducted, revealing enough about the creature that a new file of effective methods
of extermination was able to be created. After this event, the protocols for SCP-974
containment were completely overhauled. Any instances of SCP-974-A seen in the wild
are to be killed as quickly as possible. More disturbingly though, the ethics committee
rescinded their previous decision, and any instances of 974 that are brought into containment
are to be provided with human prey again. Letting SCP-974 kill children might not be
a very humane way of keeping it contained, but given how much more aggressive and hard to
kill this SCP's adult form is, any option that stops the creature's metamorphosis from happening
is likely the best option in the long run. So remember: If ever you’re out in the woods
and see a crudely constructed treehouse, perhaps think twice about how innocent it is.
There could be something hungry lurking inside… Now go check out our playlist with the
entire tale of “SCP - 5000 - The Suit” for an epic saga about a Foundation gone
bad, and one man’s quest to find the truth!
