Recovered from SD Card #17 – Unlabeled, found in abandoned recording equipment at the base of Mount Orison, 7 miles east of Fairlight, Washington. Contents transcribed and redacted by order of the Forest Surveillance Agency. WARNING: Visuals classified anomalous.
End?
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I like found footage stuff and mushrooms so, I wrote this. If you want a sequel, let me know in the comments.
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[CAMERA 1 – Footage Timestamp: 03/12/24, 7:04 PM]
(Camera turns on. Static for a second. A young woman appears—early 30s, pale, disheveled, wearing a parka. The name "ELLEN" is stitched on her shoulder. Her voice is ragged.)
ELLEN:
This is Day 6. We lost David last night. It wasn't the cold. It wasn't the storm. He walked into the trees after the third hum. Just like the others.
(Pause. Camera pans to the tent interior. Flickering lantern. Crumpled map.)
ELLEN:
I'm keeping the camera on now. Not because I think I'll make it out, but because I need… someone to know. We didn't find a cave system. We didn't find ancient burial grounds. We found something alive under the mountain.
(She looks behind her nervously. A faint, rhythmic humming can be heard—like radio static turned musical.)
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[CAMERA 2 – Footage Timestamp: 03/08/24, 2:13 PM]
(Earlier. Five expedition members: Ellen, David, Marsha, Tarek, and Leo. Spirits are high. Snowmobiles parked outside a forestry outpost.)
DAVID:
Still think we're gonna find Bigfoot?
LEO:
Nah. Too cliche. I'm hoping for a government bunker full of ghosts.
MARSHA:
I want mushrooms. Big, creepy ones. Bioluminescent.
TAREK: (chuckling)
We're not here for freaky fungus. We're here for geological anomalies.
ELLEN:
Yeah. Seismic pulses, underground heat readings. Something's wrong beneath this mountain. We're gonna find out what.
(She glances toward the distant peaks, where fog rolls unnaturally against a pale sky.)
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[CAMERA 3 – Timestamp: 03/09/24, 10:46 PM]
(The group is inside a snow-covered cave. Their voices are hushed. Ellen points the camera at a wall of stone etched with circular patterns. Marsha leans closer.)
MARSHA:
These aren't natural. Look—symmetry, repetition. It's like… sonar?
DAVID:
Or language.
(A deep vibration hums through the rock. Lights flicker. Tarek's Geiger counter clicks.)
TAREK:
We just got a spike. Radiation or… something else. Jesus.
(A low, otherworldly sound begins. None of them speak. Camera distorts with static.)
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[CAMERA 1 – Timestamp: 03/12/24, 9:17 PM]
(Ellen alone in the tent. The hum is louder now. Her hands tremble.)
ELLEN:
I thought it was seismic activity. I thought it was heat or some hidden tectonic vent. But that sound—it's a voice. It's not human. Not animal. It's like a thousand thoughts scraping against my skull.
(She lifts her shirt. Dark, rootlike lines are spreading under her skin, branching along her abdomen.)
ELLEN:
They're in me. They're in all of us. The air… wasn't clean. The spores—we breathed them in when we broke the stone. They're watching from below. I can feel it.
(Wind howls. Camera glitches. Faint whispering overlays the audio.)
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[CAMERA 4 – Timestamp: 03/10/24, 4:33 AM]
(Footage from David's GoPro. Night vision enabled. He walks alone in the forest. Breathing is erratic.)
DAVID:
I can't sleep. I keep hearing it… under the ground. Like something slithering. And those shapes—Marsha saw them too. They moved. The cave walls breathed.
(He pauses. In the distance, a massive shadow pulses beneath the snow—no visible source. Just a rhythmic bulge in the earth like something enormous rolling beneath a skin.)
DAVID:
Nope. Nope, nope, nope.
(He turns to run. Camera flips. His scream cuts off abruptly. Feed ends in static.)
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[CAMERA 5 – Timestamp: 03/11/24, 1:22 AM]
(Group is now three: Ellen, Marsha, and Leo. Tarek is missing. They sit in silence around a dim fire inside the cave.)
LEO:
Tarek said he heard his mother's voice. She's been dead eight years. He swore she was calling to him from the cave mouth.
MARSHA:
I dream in circles. Always spirals. Like I'm being wound up, spun into something smaller.
(Marsha looks at her palm. Fungal patterns bloom beneath the skin like tattoos made of mold.)
MARSHA:
Do you think we're already dead?
ELLEN:
I think… I think we were supposed to find this.
LEO:
You sound like them.
ELLEN: (quietly)
Maybe I do.
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[CAMERA 6 – Timestamp: 03/11/24, 4:44 AM]
(Leo alone. He's outside, holding the camera up to the sky. The stars are shifting. Literally. They move in slow spirals.)
LEO:
It's not just the mountain. It's everything. The spores… they're not local. Not from Earth. They're rewriting space. I watched the sky blink.
(He zooms in. The moon is missing. In its place is a gaping hole, blacker than night, ringed with luminous fungal stalks rotating like clock hands.)
LEO:
They're here to convert. Not conquer. Convert.
(He holds up a note: "I am joining them now." Walks into the woods. Camera drops. Remains recording for 5 hours, capturing nothing but rising static.)
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[CAMERA 1 – Timestamp: 03/12/24, 11:59 PM]
(Final log from Ellen. She's barely recognizable. Her eyes reflect faintly like an animal's. The mycelium has overtaken her arms, spreading from beneath her jawline.)
ELLEN:
If you find this… don't come back. Don't look for us. The spores are a door. The sound is their language. The fungus is a message we were never meant to receive.
(The tent vibrates. A massive shape passes overhead—no clear form, just displacement, a suggestion of something too vast to comprehend.)
ELLEN: (smiling faintly)
I've seen it now. The root-brain. The dreaming below. It doesn't think like us. It doesn't hate or love. It just needs.
(She reaches toward the lens. Behind her, the cave walls pulse in rhythm with her breath.)
ELLEN:
I hear it. I see it. I—[UNINTELLIGIBLE WHISPERING]
(The camera goes dark.)
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[POSTSCRIPT – Agency Note]
This footage is to remain classified. All crew members from Expedition Orion-6 are presumed absorbed or deceased. Mount Orison has since experienced zero seismic activity. The fungal growths have receded beneath visible layers.
However, low-frequency recordings near the site indicate continued subterranean humming. Patterns analyzed from audio logs suggest non-human intelligence, though no known encryption or waveform matches.
Final words extracted from last frame via audio enhancement:
"We are the static between stars."