系列信息 r/nosleep · 作者 u/searchandrescuewoods · 2015-08-26 至 09-10 连更五部,累计得分 28,936
五部原帖
Part 1(2015-08-26):https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iex1h/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/
Part 2(2015-08-27):https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3ijnt6/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/
Part 3(2015-08-28):https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iocju/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/
Part 4(2015-09-02):https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3jadum/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/
Part 5(2015-09-10):https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3kd90k/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/
「森林里凭空立着的楼梯」由此成为欧美网络最流行的都市传说之一。英文原文经 Arctic Shift 从原帖逐字提取;作者其后另有续作(Part 6+)。

Part 1 · 2015-08-26 发帖 · 得分 7091

英文原版

I wasn’t sure where else to post these stories, so I figured I’d share them here. I’ve been an SAR officer for a few years now, and along the way I’ve seen some things that I think you guys will be interested in.

  • I have a pretty good track record for finding missing people. Most of the time they just wander off the path, or slip down a small cliff, and they can’t find their way back. The majority of them have heard the old ‘stay where you are’ thing, and they don’t wander far. But I’ve had two cases where that didn’t happen. Both bother me a lot, and I use them as motivation to search even harder on the missing persons cases I get called on.
    The first was a little boy who was out berry-picking with his parents. He and his sister were together, and both of them went missing around the same time. Their parents lost sight of them for a few seconds, and in that time both the kids apparently wandered off. When their parents couldn’t find them, they called us, and we came out to search the area. We found the daughter pretty quickly, and when we asked where her brother was, she told us that he’d been taken away by ‘the bear man.’ She said he gave her berries and told her to stay quiet, that he wanted to play with her brother for a while. The last she saw of her brother, he was riding on the shoulders of ‘the bear man’ and seemed calm. Of course, our first thought was abduction, but we never found a trace of another human being in that area. The little girl was also insistent that he wasn’t a normal man, but that he was tall and covered in hair, ‘like a bear’, and that he had a ‘weird face.’ We searched that area for weeks, it was one of the longest calls I’ve ever been on, but we never found a single trace of that kid.
    The other was a young woman who was out hiking with her mom and grandpa. According to the mother, her daughter had climbed up a tree to get a better view of the forest, and she’d never come back down. They waited at the base of the tree for hours, calling her name, before they called for help. Again, we searched everywhere, and we never found a trace of her. I have no idea where she could possibly have gone, because neither her mother or grandpa saw her come down.

  • A few times, I’ve been out on my own searching with a canine, and they’ve tried to lead me straight up cliffs. Not hills, not even rock faces. Straight, sheer cliffs with no possible handholds. It’s always baffling, and in those cases we usually find the person on the other side of the cliff, or miles away from where the canine has led us. I’m sure there’s an explanation, but it’s sort of strange.

  • One particularly sad case involved the recovery of a body. A nine-year-old girl fell down an embankment and got impaled on a dead tree at the base. It was a complete freak accident, but I’ll never forget the sound her mother made when we told her what had happened. She saw the body bag being loaded into the ambulance, and she let out the most haunting, heart-broken wail I’ve ever heard. It was like her whole life was crashing down around her, and a part of her had died with her daughter. I heard from another SAR officer that she killed herself a few weeks after it happened. She couldn’t live with the loss of her daughter.

  • I was teamed up with another SAR officer because we’d received reports of bears in the area. We were looking for a guy who hadn’t come home from a climbing trip when he was supposed to, and we ended up having to do some serious climbing to get to where we figured he’d be. We found him trapped in a small crevasse with a broken leg. It was not pleasant. He’d been there for almost two days, and his leg was very obviously infected. We were able to get him into a chopper, and I heard from one of the EMTs that the guy was absolutely inconsolable. He kept talking about how he’d been doing fine, and when he’d gotten to the top, a man had been there. He said the guy had no climbing equipment, and he was wearing a parka and ski pants. He walked up to the guy, and when the guy turned around, he said he had no face. It was just blank. He freaked out, and ended up trying to get off the mountain too fast, which is why he’d fallen. He said he could hear the guy all night, climbing down the mountain and letting out these horrible muffled screams. That story bothered the hell out of me. I’m glad I wasn’t there to hear it.

  • One of the scariest things I’ve ever had happen to me involved the search for a young woman who’d gotten separated from her hiking group. We were out until late at night, because the dogs had picked up her scent. When we found her, she was curled up under a large rotted log. She was missing her shoes and pack, and she was clearly in shock. She didn’t have any injuries, and we were able to get her to walk with us back to base ops. Along the way, she kept looking behind us and asking us why ‘that big man with black eyes’ was following us. We couldn’t see anyone, so we just wrote it off as some weird symptom of shock. But the closer we got to base, the more agitated this woman got. She kept asking me to tell him to stop ‘making faces’ at her. At one point she stopped and turned around and started yelling into the forest, saying that she wanted him to leave her alone. She wasn’t going to go with him, she said, and she wouldn’t give us to him. We finally got her to keep moving, but we started hearing these weird noises coming from all around us. It was almost like coughing, but more rhythmic and deeper. It was almost insect-like, I don’t really know how else to describe it. When we were within site of base ops, the woman turns to me, and her eyes are about as wide as I can imagine a human could open them. She touches my shoulder and says ‘He says to tell you to speed up. He doesn’t like looking at the scar on your neck.’ I have a very small scar on the base of my neck, but it’s mostly hidden under my collar, and I have no idea how this woman saw it. Right after she says it, I hear that weird coughing right in my ear, and I just about jumped out of my skin. I hustled her to ops, trying not to show how freaked out I was, but I have to say I was really happy when we left the area that night.

  • This is the last one I’ll tell, and it’s probably the weirdest story I have. Now, I don’t know if this is true in every SAR unit, but in mine, it’s sort of an unspoken, regular thing we run into. You can try asking about it with other SAR officers, but even if they know what you’re talking about, they probably won’t say anything about it. We’ve been told not to talk about it by our superiors, and at this point we’ve all gotten so used to it that it doesn’t even seem weird anymore.
    On just about every case where we’re really far into the wilderness, I’m talking 30 or 40 miles, at some point we’ll find a staircase in the middle of the woods. It’s almost like if you took the stairs in your house, cut them out, and put them in the forest. I asked about it the first time I saw some, and the other officer just told me not to worry about it, that it was normal. Everyone I asked said the same thing. I wanted to go check them out, but I was told, very emphatically, that I should never go near any of them. I just sort of ignore them now when I run into them because it happens so frequently.

I have a lot more stories, and I suppose if anyone’s interested, I’ll tell some of them tomorrow. If anyone has any theories about the stairs, or if you’ve seen them too, let me know.

EDIT: Part 2 is up: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3ijnt6/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

中文译文

不知道这些故事该往哪儿发,想来想去还是发在这里吧。我当搜救(SAR)军官已经好几年了,这些年里见过一些东西,我想你们会有兴趣听。

  • 我找人的记录还算漂亮。大多数失踪者只是走离了步道,或者滑下一处小崖,然后找不到回去的路。他们中的大多数都听过那句老话——「待在原地别动」——所以不会走太远。但有两次,情况不是这样。这两起让我耿耿于怀,也成了我后来接手失踪案时搜得更狠的动力。

    第一桩,是个跟父母出门采浆果的小男孩。他和姐姐当时在一起,而且几乎在同一时间双双失踪。父母只几秒钟没看住,两个孩子就不见了。报给我们之后,我们进山搜索。姐姐很快就找到了,我们问她弟弟在哪,她说弟弟被「熊人」带走了。她说那人给了她浆果,叫她保持安静,说他想跟她弟弟玩一会儿。她最后一次看见弟弟,是他骑在「熊人」的肩膀上,看起来很平静。当然,我们的第一反应是绑架,但我们在那片区域没有找到任何其他人类的痕迹。小女孩还一口咬定,那不是正常的人类,而是个很高、浑身是毛、「像熊一样」的东西,长着一张「怪脸」。我们在那片区域搜了好几个星期——那是我经手过最长的一次任务——但那个孩子,一点踪迹都没有。

    另一桩,是个和妈妈、外公一起徒步的年轻女人。据她妈妈说,女儿爬上一棵树想看得更远,然后就再也没有下来。他们在树下等了几个小时,一直喊她的名字,才打电话求援。同样,我们把能搜的都搜遍了,连一点痕迹都没有。我不知道她能去哪儿——她妈妈和外公都没有见她下来。

  • 有几次,我单独带搜救犬出任务,狗会想把我直接引上悬崖。不是山坡,甚至不是岩壁——是直上直下、完全无处抓手借力的绝壁。这始终让我百思不解。这类情况下,人通常在悬崖的另一侧,或者在搜救犬指引地点几英里外被找到。我相信肯定有个合理的解释,但这事,怎么说呢,很怪。

  • 有一桩特别悲伤的案子,是尸体回收。一个九岁的女孩跌下堤坝,被坝底一棵枯树刺穿,彻底的意外。但我永远忘不了我们告诉她消息时,她母亲发出的那种声音。她看着装尸袋被抬上救护车,发出我这辈子听过最凄厉、最心碎的恸哭,好像她的整个世界当场坍塌,有一部分的她跟着女儿一起死了。后来听同事说,几周后她自杀了。她没办法带着丧女之痛活下去。

  • 有次因为接到当地有熊的报告,我和另一名搜救官搭档,去找一个没能按时从登山之旅回家的男人。我们不得不进行相当高强度的攀登才抵达预判的位置,最后发现他被卡在一道狭窄的冰裂缝里,腿断了。场面很不舒服。他在那儿困了将近两天,断腿明显已经感染。我们把他送上直升机后,听一个急救员说,这人完全无法自控,反反复复地念叨:他本来好好的,登顶的时候,上面站着一个人。没有任何登山装备,穿一件派克大衣、一条滑雪裤。他朝那人走过去,那人一转身——没有脸。就那么一片空白。他当场崩溃,慌不择路地下撤,所以摔了下来。他还说,整个晚上他都能听见那人在下山,一路发出一种可怕的、闷闷的尖叫。这个故事折磨了我很久。庆幸我不在现场。

  • 发生在我自己身上最吓人的一件事,是搜救一名与徒步队伍走散的年轻女人。因为搜救犬捕捉到了她的气味,我们一直搜到深夜。找到她时,她蜷缩在一根巨大的朽木下面,鞋和背包都不见了,明显处于休克状态。她没有外伤,我们可以带着她步行回基地。一路上,她不停地朝我们身后张望,问我们为什么「那个黑眼睛的大个子」要跟着我们。我们什么人也看不见,便只当是休克的怪症状。但越接近基地,她越焦躁,一直求我告诉他,别再对她「做鬼脸」。有一次,她干脆停下脚步,转过身,朝着森林大喊,说她不跟他走,也不会把我们交给他。我们好歹让她继续走了起来,但这时我们周围开始响起一种怪声。像是咳嗽,但更有节奏、更低沉,几乎像昆虫发出的——我真不知道该怎么形容。当我们已经能望见基地的时候,这个女人转向我,眼睛瞪得大到我无法想象,她碰了碰我的肩膀,说:「他让我告诉你,走快点。他不喜欢看你脖子上的那道疤。」我脖子根部确实有一道很小的疤,几乎完全藏在衣领下面。我完全不知道这个女人是怎么看到的。她话音刚落,那种怪咳就贴着我耳朵响了起来,我差点从皮里跳出来。我把她火速送到了基地,竭力不表露我自己有多毛——但说真的,那天晚上离开那片区域的时候,我高兴坏了。

  • 这是最后一个,也是我经历过最怪的事。我不知道是不是每个搜救队都这样,但在我们队里,这是一件心照不宣、隔三差五就会撞上的事。你可以去问别的搜救官,但就算他们明白你在说什么,他们多半一个字也不会提。上级明确交代过不许谈论这件事。而且到了这个地步,我们所有人都已经习惯了,习惯到甚至不觉得它怪了。

    几乎每一桩深入荒野的任务——我是说深入三四十英里那种——的某个时刻,我们都会在森林正中央遇到一段楼梯。就好像把你家里的楼梯整段锯下来,搬进森林里立着。我第一次见到的时候问过,另一位搜救官只让我别操心,说这很正常。我问过的每一个人,说的都是同一句话。我想过去查看,但我被极其坚决地告知:永远不要靠近它们。现在再撞见,我就当没看见——因为,这实在是太频繁了。

我的故事还有很多。如果有人感兴趣,明天我可以再讲一些。如果你对楼梯有什么猜测,或者你也见过它们——告诉我。

EDIT:Part 2 已更新:https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3ijnt6/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

译注

  • 这个系列当年在 Reddit 引发现象级讨论,评论区里有大量自称搜救员/护林员的账号跑来「证实」或续写。
  • Part 2 起才出现楼梯的细节描写(狗死活不肯靠近、楼梯一尘不染、有人听见楼顶有人哭、爬上去的同事下不来等等)——「不爬楼梯」的规矩也是从 Part 2 开始逐步揭开的。

Part 2 · 2015-08-27 发帖 · 得分 5403

英文原版

First post: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iex1h/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

So I logged back on tonight and was blown away by the staggering amount of interest this seems to have generated. First off, I’ll address a few things that you guys have brought up:

  • There’s been an overwhelming amount of people mentioning the similarity between some of my stories and those of David Paulides. I assure you I’m not trying to rip him off in any way, I’ve got nothing but respect for the guy. He’s actually what inspired me to write this, because I can verify a lot of the things he talks about. We do have a lot of these strange missing persons cases, and most of the time they aren’t solved. Either that, or we find them in places they have no business being. I personally haven’t been on many calls like that, but I’ll share a few that I’ve seen, and a story my friend told me that relates to this.

  • There was a lot of feedback about the stairs, so I’ll touch on that briefly here, and I’ll also include a story.
    They come in a variety of shapes, sizes, styles, and conditions. Some are pretty dilapidated, just ruins, but others are brand new. I saw one set that looked like they came from a lighthouse: they were metal and spiral, almost old-fashioned.
    The stairs don’t go up infinitely, or farther than I can see, but some sets are taller than others. Like I said before, just imagine the stairs in your house, as if someone cut-and-pasted them in the middle of nowhere. I don’t have any pictures, it’s never really occurred to me to try again after the first time, and I don’t really feel like risking my job over it. I’ll try again in the future, but I can’t really promise anything.

  • A few people expressed confusion about the guy who ran into the man with no face. Just to clarify, when the climber ascended and reached the top of this peak, he saw another man in a parka and ski pants. This was the man with no face. Sorry about the confusing wording of that story, I’ll try to avoid that in the future.

Alright, on to the new stories:

  • As far as missing persons go, I’d say about half the calls I get are related to that. The others are rescue calls; people who fall down cliffs and hurt themselves, get injured by fire (you wouldn’t believe how often this happens, mostly drunk kids), get bitten or stung by animals or insects. We’re a tight team, and we have veterans who are excellent at finding signs of lost people. That’s what makes these cases where we never find any trace of them so frustrating. One in particular was upsetting for all of us, because we did find a trace of them, but it just led to more questions than answers.
    An older man had been hiking alone on a well-established trail, but his wife called to say that he hadn’t come home when he should have. Apparently he had a history of seizures, and she was worried that he hadn’t taken his medication and had suffered one out on the trail. Before you ask, I have no idea why he thought it was okay to go out alone, or why she didn’t go with him. I don’t ask about that kind of thing because past a certain point, it really doesn’t matter. Someone is missing, and it’s my job to find them. We went out in a standard search formation, and it wasn’t long before one of our vets found signs that the guy had gone off the trail. We grouped up and followed him, spreading out in a fan to make sure we were covering as much ground as possible. Suddenly, a call comes over the radio telling us to all head back to the vets location, and we come right away, because this usually means the missing person is injured, and we need a full team to help get them out safely.
    We meet back up, and the vet is just standing at the base of a tree with his hands on the sides of his head. I ask my buddy what’s going on, and he points up into the branches of this tree. I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but there’s a walking stick dangling from a branch at least thirty feet off the ground. The little strap thing on the handle has been looped around the branch, and it’s just hanging there. There’s no way the guy could have tossed it up that far, and we don’t see any other signs that he’s still in the area. We call up into the tree, but it’s obvious no one’s in it. We’re all just sort of left scratching our heads. We keep searching for the guy, but we never find him. We even bring our canines out, but they lose his scent long before this tree. Eventually, the search is called off, because there are other calls we have to attend to, and past a certain point there’s not much we can do. The guy’s wife called us every day for months, asking if we’d found her husband, and it was heartbreaking to hear her get more and more hopeless each time.
    I’m not sure why this call in particular was so upsetting, but I think it was just the sheer improbability of it. That and the questions that were raised. How the hell had this guy’s cane ended up there? Did someone kill him and toss that up there as some weird trophy? We did our best to find him, but it was almost like a taunt. We still talk about that one from time to time.

  • Missing kids are the most heart-breaking. Doesn’t matter what circumstances they go missing under, it’s never easy, and we always, always dread the ones we find deceased. It’s not common, but it does happen. David Paulides talks a lot about kids SAR teams find in places they shouldn’t be, or couldn’t be. I can honestly say I’ve heard about this kind of thing happening more than I’ve seen it, but I’ll share one of the ones that I think about a lot that I witnessed personally.
    A mother and her three kids were out for a picnic in an area of the park that has a small lake. One is six, one is five, and the other is about three. She’s watching them all really closely, and according to her, she never lets them out of her sight at any time. She never saw anyone else in the area either, which is important.
    She packs their stuff up and they start to head back to the parking area. Now, this lake is only about two miles into the woods, and it’s on a very clearly established trail. It’s almost impossible to get lost getting from the parking area to it, unless you’re deliberately going off the path like an imbecile. Her kids are walking in front of her, when she hears what sounds like someone coming up the path behind her. She turns around, and in the four or so seconds she’s not looking, her five-year-old son vanishes. She figures he’s stepped off the trail to pee or something, and she asks her other two where he went. They both tell her that ‘a big man with a scary face’ came out of the woods next to them, took the kid’s hand, and led him into the trees. The two remaining kids don’t seem upset, in fact she says later that it seems like they’ve been drugged. They’re sort of spacey and fuzzy. So of course, she freaks out, starts looking frantically in the area for her kid. She’s screaming his name, and she says at one point she thinks she heard him answer her. Now obviously she can’t go blindly running into the woods, she’s got the other two kids, so she calls the police and they send us out immediately. We respond, and we start the search for him.Over the course of this search, which spans miles, we never find a single trace of the kid. Canines can’t pick up any scent, we don’t find any clothing or broken bushes or literally anything that would signify a child being there. Of course there’s suspicion about the mother for a while, but it’s pretty clear that she’s completely destroyed by the whole thing. We looked for this kid for weeks, with a lot of volunteer help. But eventually, the search peters out, and we have to move on.
    The volunteers keep searching, though, and one day we get a call on the radio letting us know that a body has been found and needs to be recovered. They tell us the location, and none of us can believe it. We figure it has to be a different kid. But we go out there, about 15 miles from the site where he vanished, and sure enough, we find the body of the kid we’ve been looking for.
    I have been trying to figure out how this kid got where he did ever since we found him, and I’ve never come up with an answer. A volunteer just happened to be in the area, because he figured he might as well look in places no one else would think to on the off chance the body had been dumped. He comes to the base of a tall, rocky slope, and half-way up, he sees something. He looks through his binoculars and sure enough, it’s the body of a little boy, stuffed in a little opening in the rock. He recognizes the color of the kid’s shirt, so he knows right away that it’s the missing boy. That’s when he calls it in, and we’re dispatched.
    It took us almost an hour to get his body down, and none of us could believe what we were seeing. Not only was this kid 15 miles from where he’d started, there was no possible way he could have gotten up there on his own. This slope is treacherous, and it’s hard even for us with our climbing gear. A five-year-old boy had no way of getting up there, of that I’m certain.
    Not only that, but the kid doesn’t have a scratch on him. His shoes are gone, but his feet aren’t damaged or dirty. So it wasn’t as if an animal dragged him up there. And from what we can tell, he hasn’t been dead that long. He’d been out there over a month by that point, and it looked like he’d only been dead for, at most, a day or two. The whole thing was unbelievably strange, and was one of the most disconcerting calls I’ve ever been on.
    We found out later that the coroner determined the kid had died from exposure. He’d frozen to death, probably late at night two days before we found him. There were no suspects, and no answers. To date, it’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen.

  • One of my first jobs as a trainee was a search op for a four-year-old kid that had gotten separated from his mom. This was one of those cases where we knew we were gonna find him because the dogs were on a strong scent trail, and we saw clear signs that he was in the area. We ended up finding him in a berry patch about half a mile from where he’d been last seen. Kid wasn’t even aware that he’d wandered that far. One of the vets brought him back, which I was glad for because I’m really not good with kids, and I find it hard to talk to them and keep them company.
    As my trainer and I are headed back, she decides to take me on a detour to show me one of the hot spots where we tend to find missing people. It’s a natural dip in the land near a popular trail, and people will usually move downhill because it’s easier. We hike out there, it’s a few miles away, and we get there in about an hour or so. As we’re walking around the area and she’s pointing out places she’s found people in the past, I see something in the distance. Now, this area we’re in is about eight miles from the main parking area, though there’s back roads you can take to get closer if you don’t want to hike that far. But we’re on state-protected land, which means there can’t be any kind of commercial or residential development out here. The most you’ll ever see is a fire tower or makeshift shelter that homeless people think they can get away with building. But I can see from here that whatever this thing is has straight edges, and if there’s one thing you learn quickly, it’s that nature rarely makes straight lines. I point it out, but she doesn’t say anything. She just hangs back and lets me wander over and check it out. I get within about twenty feet of it, and all the hair on the back of my neck stands up.
    It’s a staircase. In the middle of the fucking woods. In the proper context, it would literally be the most benign thing ever. It’s just a normal staircase, with beige carpet, and about ten steps tall. But instead of being in a house, where it obviously should be, it’s out here in the middle of the woods. The sides aren’t carpeted, obviously, and I can see the wood it’s made of. It’s almost like a video game glitch, where the house has failed to load completely and the stairs are the only thing visible.
    I stand there, and it’s like my brain is working overtime to try and make sense of what I’m seeing. My trainer comes and stands next to me, and she just stands there casually, looking at it as if it’s the least interesting thing in the world. I ask her what the fuck this thing is doing here, and she just chuckles.
    ‘Get used to it, rookie. You’re gonna see a lot of them.’ I start to move closer, but she grabs my arm. Hard.
    ‘I wouldn’t do that.’ She says. Her voice is casual, but her grip is tight, and I just stand there looking at her. ‘You’re gonna see them all the time, but don’t go near them. Don’t touch them, don’t go up them. Just ignore them.’ I start to ask her about it, but something in the way she’s looking at me tells me that it’s best if I don’t. We end up moving on, and the subject doesn’t come up again for the rest of my training.
    She was right, though. I’d say about every fifth call I go on, I end up running across a set of stairs. Sometimes they’re relatively close to the path, maybe within two or three miles. Sometimes they’re twenty, thirty miles out, literally in the middle of nowhere, and I only find them during the broadest searches or training weekends. They’re usually in good condition, but sometimes it looks like they’ve been out there for miles. All different kinds, all different sizes. The biggest I ever saw looked like they came out of a turn-of-the-century mansion, and were at least ten feet wide, with steps leading up at least fifteen or twenty feet.
    I’ve tried talking about it with people, but they just give me the same response my trainer did. ‘It’s normal. Don’t worry about it, they’re not a big deal, but don’t go close to them or up them.’ When trainees ask me about it now, I give them the same response. I don’t really know what else to tell them. I’m really hoping someday I get a better answer, but it hasn’t happened yet.

  • This is another one that was less spooky and more sad. A young man went missing late in winter, when realistically no one should be going that far out onto the trails. We close a lot of them, but some remain open year round, unless there’s a shit-load of snow. We did an op for him, but we had about six feet of snow on the ground (it was an unusually heavy snow year), and we knew it wasn’t likely that we’d find him until spring when the thaw came. Sure enough, when the first big thaw came, a hiker reported a body a little ways off the main trail. We found him at the base of a tree, in a pile of melted snow. I knew right away what had happened, and it scared the living shit out of me. Most of you who ski or snowboard, or spend any amount of time on a mountain, will probably have guessed too. When snow falls, it doesn’t collect as thick in the areas beneath the branches. It happens most with fir trees, because they have a sort of closed umbrella shape. So what you end up with is a space around the base of a tree that’s filled with a mixture of loose, powdery snow, air, and branches. They’re called tree wells, and they’re not immediately obvious if you don’t know what you’re looking for. We put up signs in the welcome center, big ones, letting people know how dangerous they are, but every year that we get an unusual amount of snow, at least one person doesn’t read them, or doesn’t take the warning seriously, and we find out about it in spring.
    My best guess is that this young man was hiking and got tired, or maybe a cramp from walking in the deep snow. He went to go sit at the base of the tree, not knowing that there was a tree well, and fell in. He got stuck with his feet up, and the surrounding snow caved in around him. Unable to free himself, he suffocated. It’s called snow immersion suffocation, and it doesn’t usually happen except in really deep snow. But if you get stuck in a weird position, like this guy did, even six feet of snow can be lethal.
    What scared me the most was imagining how he must have struggled. Upside down, in the freezing cold, he didn’t die quickly. The snow would have formed a dense, heavy pile on top of him, and it would have been literally impossible to get out. As it got harder to breathe, he would have known what was happening. I can’t even imagine what he was thinking in his last moments.

  • A lot of my less outdoorsy friends want to know if I’ve ever seen the Goatman while I’ve been out on calls. Unfortunately, or I guess fortunately, I’ve never had anything quite like that happen. I guess the closest was the whole ‘black-eyed man’ thing, but I didn’t see anything. However, there was one call where I had something kind of similar happen, but I’m not sure I’m willing to chalk it up to the Goatman.
    We’d gotten a report that an older woman had fainted along one of the trails, and needed assistance getting back down to the main area.
    We hike up to where she’s at, and her husband is just beside himself. He runs, well, I guess more jogs, to us, and tells us that he was a little ways off the trail looking at something when his wife starts screaming behind him. He runs back to her and she’s passed out on the trail. We get her on a backboard, and as we’re getting her down to the welcome center, she comes to and starts screaming again. I calm her down and ask her what happened. I can’t remember verbatim what she said, but essentially, what happened was this:
    She’d been waiting for her husband when she started hearing this really strange sound. She said it sounded sort of like a cat, but it was off somehow, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. She went a little ahead to try and hear it better, and it sounded like it was coming closer. She said the closer it got, the more uneasy she was, until she finally figured out what was wrong. I do remember this next part, because it was so weird that I don’t think I could forget it if I tried.
    “It wasn’t a cat. It was a man, saying the word ‘meow’ over and over. Just ‘meow, meow, meow’. But it wasn’t a man, it couldn’t have been, because I’ve never heard a man make his voice buzz like that. I thought my hearing aid was going out, but it wasn’t, I adjusted it and it still sounded all buzzy. It was awful. He was coming closer, but I couldn’t see him. And the closer he got the more scared I was, and the last thing I remember was a shape coming out of the trees. I guess that’s when I fainted.”
    Now, obviously I’m a little perplexed as to why a guy would be out in the fucking woods chanting ‘meow, meow’ at people. So once we get down the mountain, I tell my superior that I’m gonna go search the area to see if I can find anything. He gives me the go ahead, and I grab a radio and hike back to where she fainted. I don’t see anyone, so I keep going about a mile more, and I when I head back I go off the trail, to see if I can figure out where she saw him coming from. It’s almost sunset by this point, and I don’t have any desire to be out at night alone, so I just sort of write it off and make a mental note to check it out again tomorrow. But as I’m headed back, I start to hear something in the distance. I stop, and I call out for anyone in the immediate area to identify themselves. The sound didn’t come closer or get louder, but it sounded exactly like a man saying ‘meow, meow’ in this really odd monotone. As comical as it makes it sound, it was almost like that guy on South Park with the electrolarynx, Ned. I go off the trail in the direction I think it’s coming from, but I never seem to get closer. It’s almost like it’s coming from all directions. Eventually, it just sort of fades out, and I ended up going back to the welcome center.
    I didn’t get any further reports like that, and even though I went back to that area, I never heard that exact sound again. I suppose it could have been some stupid kid out there fucking with people, but even I have to admit it was weird.

So this kind of turned into a massive wall of text, and for that I apologize. I wanted to get to the stories my friend told me, and he does have some good ones, so I’ll post those tomorrow evening. I also have a few more of my own I think you guys will like. I’m sorry to keep you all in suspense again, hopefully the stories here make up for it and help you get through the next 24 hours until I can post again!

EDIT: Since it seems like all of you would like to hear more, tomorrow I’ll write up as many stories as I can and do a massive post. I’ll include my friend’s stories, and I’ll see if I can’t get ahold of a few more people who might have interesting things to talk about. I just wasn’t sure how people felt about big huge walls of text, but if you’re all okay with it, I’ll post lots of stories!

EDIT: Part 3 is up: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iocju/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

中文译文

今晚我重新登上来,被这件事引来的铺天盖地的关注吓了一跳。先来回应你们提出来的几个问题:

  • 有非常多人提到,我讲的一些故事和 David Paulides 的很像。我向你保证,我绝没有半点想剽窃他的意思,我对他只有敬意。其实正是因为他才启发我写下这些,因为他讲的东西,有很多我都能核实。我们确实有大量这类离奇失踪案,而且大多数时候都无法侦破。要么就是,我们在一些他们根本不该出现、也不可能出现的地方找到了他们。我个人没出过太多这类任务,但我会分享一桩亲眼所见、还有一个我朋友讲给我听、和这事相关的事。

  • 关于楼梯,反馈多得不得了,所以我在这里简单提一提,后面也附上一个故事。
    它们有各种各样的形状、尺寸、款式和状况。有些已经破败不堪,成了废墟,另一些却像新的一样。我见过一套,看起来像是从灯塔上拆下来的:金属材质、螺旋形、几乎老式。
    这些楼梯并不会无限延伸,也不会延伸到我看不到的地方,但有的确实比其他的高。就像我之前说的,想象一下你家里的楼梯,仿佛有人把它们从中间剪下来,粘贴到这片荒郊野岭。我没有照片,第一次之后我就再没动过要再拍的念头,而且我也不想拿我的工作去冒险。以后我会再试着拍,但我给不了什么保证。

  • 有几个人对那个遇见无脸男人的故事感到困惑。这里澄清一下:那个登山者向上攀爬、到达这座山峰顶部时,他看见另一个人,穿着派克大衣和滑雪裤。这个人才是那个没有脸的人。抱歉那篇故事的措辞让人费解,以后我会尽量避免。

好了,下面是新故事:

  • 就失踪案来说,我接到的任务大概有一半跟这个有关。剩下的都是救援:有人摔下悬崖受伤、被火烧伤(你很难相信这种事有多频繁,多半是喝醉的年轻人)、被动物或昆虫咬伤、蛰伤。我们是一支紧密的团队,队里几位老手极擅长寻找失踪者留下的踪迹。正因如此,那些我们永远找不到任何痕迹的案子才格外令人沮丧。其中有一桩,我们所有人都深感难受,因为我们确实找到了一点点踪迹,但它带来的问题远比答案多。

    一位老人独自在一条很完善的步道上徒步,他的妻子打来电话说,他该回家的时候却没回家。他好像有癫痫病史,她担心他没吃药、在步道上犯病了。你们自己问之前我先说:我不知道他为什么觉得一个人出门没事,也不知道她为什么不陪他去。我不会去追问这类事,因为过了某个节点,真的就不重要了。一个人失踪了,找到他是我的职责。我们按标准的搜救队形出发,没过多久,一位老手就发现了老人偏离步道的迹象。我们集合起来跟上去,呈扇形散开,确保尽量覆盖更多的地面。突然,对讲机里传来呼叫,让所有人都回到老手所在的位置,我们立刻过去,因为这通常意味着失踪者受了伤,需要整个团队协力安全带他出来。

    我们重新会合,那位老手只是站在一棵树的根部,双手抱着头。我问搭档怎么回事,他指了指树上方的枝条。我几乎不敢相信自己看到的:一根手杖从一根至少离地三十英尺的树枝上垂悬下来。手柄上那根小绳子打了个环,套着树枝,就那么吊着。老人绝不可能把它扔那么远,我们也没有看到任何表明他还留在附近的迹象。我们朝树里喊,但显然里面没人。我们都有点摸不着头脑。我们继续找这个人,却始终没找到他。我们甚至带出了警犬,可它们早在这棵树之前就闻不到他的气味了。最后,搜索被叫停了,因为我们还有别的任务要处理,而且过了某个节点,我们能做的也相当有限。他妻子每天给我们打电话,一连打了几个月,问我们找到她丈夫没有,听着她一次比一次绝望,让人心碎。

    我不太明白为什么偏偏是这桩任务让人如此难受,但我想纯粹是因为这件事本身太不合常理了。还有由此引出的一连串问题。这家伙的手杖到底是怎么到那儿的?是不是有人杀了他,把东西扔上去当作某种怪异的战利品?我们尽了全力找他,但那东西几乎像是一种嘲讽。我们到现在还会时不时提起这桩事。

  • 失踪的孩子最让人心碎。不管他们是在什么情况下失踪的,都从来不好受,而我们总是、总是害怕见到我们找到的是遗体。这并不常见,但确实会发生。David Paulides 讲过很多搜救队在那些他们不该出现、也不可能出现的地方找到孩子的例子。老实说,这类事我听到的比我亲眼见到的多,不过我要分享一桩我反复想起、且亲身见证过的。

    一位母亲和她的三个孩子在园里一片有小湖的区域野餐。一个六岁,一个五岁,另一个大概三岁。她把他们看得很紧,按她的说法,她任何时候都不会让他们离开自己的视线。她也没在这片区域见过任何别的人——这一点很关键。

    她收拾好东西,他们开始往回走,去停车场。这座小湖距离林间只有大约两英里,而且位于一条非常明确、清晰的步道上。从停车场到那里几乎不可能迷路,除非你像白痴一样存心离路。她的小孩走在前面,这时她听到身后的小路上好像有人跟上来。她转过身去,就在她没看的那大约四秒钟里,她五岁的儿子不见了。她以为他只是离开步道去撒尿什么的,就问他另外两个孩子他去了哪。两个孩子都告诉她,一个「大个子,长着一张吓人的脸」从他们旁边的林子里钻出来,牵起那孩子的手,把他领进了树林。剩下的两个孩子似乎并不难过,事实上她后来说,他们像是被下了药。他们有点恍惚、迟钝。她当然吓坏了,开始在那片区域发疯似的找她儿子。她尖叫着他的名字,她说有一刻她以为自己听到他回应了她。显然,她不能盲目地冲进树林,她还带着另外两个孩子,于是她报了警,我们立刻被派出去。我们赶到现场,开始搜他。这场搜索横跨好几英里,我们始终没有找到那孩子的一丝痕迹。警犬捕捉不到任何气味,我们没有发现任何衣物、被压断的灌木,或是任何能表明有个孩子曾在此待过的东西。当然,有一阵子人们怀疑那位母亲,但很明显,她整个人都被这件事彻底击垮了。我们找这个孩子找了好几周,还有很多志愿者帮忙。但最终,搜索慢慢淡了下去,我们只能转去别的事。

    不过志愿者们还在继续找。有一天,我们通过无线电接到呼叫,说发现了一具尸体,需要回收。他们报了位置,我们谁都难以置信。我们想那一定是另一个孩子。但到了那里——距离他失踪的地点大约十五英里——果然,我们找到的正是我们一直在找的那个孩子的遗体。

    从找到他那天起,我就一直在琢磨这孩子到底是怎么到那儿去的,至今没找到答案。一名志愿者恰好路过那片区域,因为他想,反正不如去那些别人不会想到的地方看看,万一尸体被丢弃在那儿了呢。他来到一处高大岩石坡的底部,在爬到一半的地方,他看到了一样东西。他透过望远镜一看,果然,是一个小男孩的尸体,塞在岩石里的一个小开口中。他认出那孩子衬衫的颜色,立刻知道那正是失踪的男孩。他这才报了进来,我们被派去了现场。

    我们花了将近一个小时才把他的尸体弄下来,谁都不敢相信自己看到的东西。这孩子不仅离起点十五英里远,而且他绝不可能凭借自己的能力爬上去。这面坡险峻难行,即便我们有攀爬装备也很吃力。一个五岁的男孩不可能爬上去——这一点我确信无疑。

    不但如此,这孩子身上连一点擦伤都没有。他的鞋子不见了,但他的双脚既没受损,也不脏。所以不可能是动物把他拖上去的。而且据我们判断,他并没有死很久。那时他已经在外面待了一个多月,但看起来他最多只死了一两天。整件事不可思议地离奇,是我出过的最令人不安的任务之一。

    后来我们得知,验尸官判断这孩子死于暴露。他是冻死的,很可能是在我们找到他两天前的深夜。没有嫌疑人,也没有答案。到现在为止,这也是我见过最怪的事之一。

  • 我当实习生时接到的头一批任务之一,是一桩对一个与妈妈走散的四岁男孩的搜救行动。这属于那种我们知道一定能找到他的案子,因为狗循着很浓的气味,我们也清楚地看到他在那片区域留下的迹象。最后我们在一个浆果丛里找到了他,离他最后一次被看到的地方大约半英里。这孩子甚至不知道自己走了那么远。一位老手把他带了回来,我很庆幸,因为我实在不怎么擅长跟小孩打交道,也不大会跟他们说话、陪着他们。

    我和教官往回走的时候,她决定带我绕一段路,去看看一个我们容易找到失踪者的「热点地区」。那是紧挨着一条热门步道的一处天然洼地,人们通常会往下坡走,因为省力。我们徒步过去,有几英里远,大约一个小时就到了。我们绕着那片区域走,她一边指着过去她找到过人的地方,我一边发现远处有一样东西。我们现在所在的区域距离主停车场大约八英里,不过如果你不想走那么远,可以走小径靠近一些。但我们是在州属保护地上,这里不可能有任何商业或住宅开发。你能看到的最多也就是一座瞭望塔,或者无家可归的人以为能蒙混过关搭起来的临时窝棚。但从这里我就能看出,无论那是什么东西,都带有笔直的边缘——要说有什么是你很快就会学到的,那就是大自然很少造出直线。我指了出来,她没吭声。她只是留在原地,让我自己走过去看。我走到离它大约二十英尺远的地方,后脖颈子上的汗毛全都竖了起来。

    那是一段楼梯。就在这该死的森林正中央。放到合适的语境里,它本来该是世界上最平常的东西。就是一段普普通通的楼梯,铺着米色地毯,大约十级高。但它不在房子里——它显然本该在房子里的——而是立在这森林正中央。两侧自然没有铺地毯,我能看到它所使用的木料。这几乎像是电子游戏的 bug,房子没完全加载出来,只剩楼梯看得见。

    我站在那儿,感觉大脑在疯狂超载运算,试图弄懂眼前的东西。我的教官走过来,站到我身边,就那么随便地站着,看着它,仿佛这是世界上最无趣的东西。我问她这鬼东西到底在这儿干什么,她只是轻声笑了笑。

    「习惯就好,菜鸟。你会见到很多这样的。」我开始靠近,她却一把抓住我的胳膊。很用力。

    「我要是你,就不动它。」她说。她语气随意,但握得很紧,我就站着看她。「你会经常见到它们,但别靠近。别碰它们,别上去。当没看见就好。」我开始问她,可她看我的那种眼神,让我觉得最好还是别再问。我们最终离开了,这个话题在我接下来的整个实习期里再没被提起过。

    她是对的,真的。大约每出五次任务,我就会撞见一段楼梯。有时它们离小路比较近,可能就在两三英里内。有时它们远在二三十英里外,真真正正处在鸟不拉屎的地方,我只在最大范围的搜索或训练周末才能碰上它们。它们通常状况良好,但有时它们看起来又像是已经在外面立了很久。各种各样,各种尺寸。我见过最大的那段,像是从世纪之交的豪宅里拆下来的,至少十英尺宽,台阶向上延伸到至少十五二十英尺高。

    我试过跟人聊这事,但他们给我的回应跟我的教官一模一样。「这很正常。别担心,它们不是什么大事,但别靠近,也别上去。」现在有新学员问我,我也给出同样的回答。我真不知道还能跟他们说什么。我很希望哪天能听到一个更好的答案,但一直没等到。

  • 还有一桩,没那么吓人,倒更让人难过。一个年轻人在冬末失踪,这个时节,按理说不该有人走那么深进步道。我们关了很多步道,但有些全年开放,除非雪多得不像话。我们为他组织了一次行动,但地上大约有六英尺厚的雪(那是一个雪量异常大的年份),我们知道很可能要等到春天化雪时才能找到他。果然,第一次大融化来临,一名徒步者报告说,在主步道边上一小段路发现了一具尸体。我们在一棵树的根部、一堆融化的雪里找到了他。我立刻知道发生了什么,吓得魂飞魄散。你们当中滑雪、滑单板,或在山上待过哪怕一阵子的人,多半也猜到了。下雪时,树枝正下方的区域积雪不会那么厚。冷杉树最常见,因为它们有一种收拢的伞状。于是你会在树根部得到一个空间,里面混杂着松软粉末状的雪、空气和树枝。它们叫树井(tree wells),如果你不知道自己在找什么,它们并不能一眼看出来。我们在游客中心立了告示牌,很大的那种,警告人们它们有多危险。但每年只要雪量大得不正常,至少会有一个人不看告示,或者没把警告当回事,我们就会在春天知道结果。

    我最好的猜测是,这个年轻人在徒步时累了,或者是在深雪里走导致抽筋。他打算去树根下坐坐,不知道那里有个树井,结果掉了进去。他脚朝上卡住,周围的雪在他身边崩落。他挣脱不了,就这么窒息而死。这叫做雪埋窒息,通常只在雪特别深的条件下才会发生。但如果你像我说的这人一样卡在奇怪的姿势里,即便是六英尺的雪也可能是致命的。

    最让我恐惧的,是想象他当时是怎样挣扎的。头朝下,在刺骨严寒中,他并未很快死去。雪会在他身上堆成又厚又重的堆积,要出来几乎不可能。随着呼吸越来越艰难,他会明白正发生什么。我甚至不敢想象他最后一刻在想什么。

  • 我那些不太爱户外的朋友,很多都想知道我出任务时有没有撞见过羊男(Goatman)。可惜,或者说,幸好,我从没遇到过那样的事。我想最接近的也就是那桩「黑眼睛男人」的事,但我什么也没看到。不过,有一桩任务我遇到了有点类似的情况,但我不确定自己愿不愿意把它归为羊男干的。

    我们接到报告,一位老太太在一条步道附近晕倒了,需要帮助下山回到主区域。

    我们爬到她所在的地方,她的丈夫急得六神无主。他朝我们跑过来——嗯,说小跑更贴切——告诉我们,他刚才在小路不远处看什么东西,突然身后的妻子开始尖叫。他跑回她身边,她已经昏倒在步道上。我们把她放上背板,正往下朝游客中心送,她醒了过来,又开始尖叫。我让她冷静下来,问她发生了什么。我不记得她的原话了,但大致是这样:

    她一直在等丈夫,这时她开始听到一种很奇怪的声音。她说那声音有点像猫,但总觉得哪里不对劲,她想不明白到底是哪不对劲。她往前走了走,想听得更清楚些,那声音似乎正越来越近。她说声音越近,她越是不安,直到她终于搞明白哪里不对劲。接下来这部分我确实记得,因为它实在太怪了,我想忘都忘不掉。

    「那不是猫。是一个人,一遍一遍地说着『喵』。就只是『喵,喵,喵』。但那不是人,不可能是人,因为我从没听过一个男人能把自己的声音弄得那样嗡嗡响。我以为是我的助听器坏了,可它没坏,我调了调,还是满耳朵嗡嗡的。太可怕了。他越来越近,可我看不见他。而且他越近我越怕,我记得的最后一样东西,是一个影子从林子里钻出来。我想我就是那时候晕过去的。」

    显然,我有点想不通,怎么会有人跑到这该死的林子里冲着别人念「喵,喵」。所以我们一下山,我就跟上司说我要去那片区域找找看,能不能发现什么。他同意了,我拿上对讲机,徒步回到她晕倒的地方。我谁也没看见,就继续走了大约一英里,回头时我离开步道,想看看能不能弄清楚她看到他钻出来的方向。这时候差不多日落了,我一点也不想一个人在夜里待在野外,所以我只是先把它放下,在心里记下明天再来查。但往回走时,我开始听到远处传来动静。我停下来,朝周围区域喊话,让人表明身份。那声音没有变得更近,也没变得更大,但它听起来正像一个男人用那种极古怪的单音调说着「喵,喵」。虽然说起来挺滑稽,它几乎就像《南方公园》里那个用电子喉的家伙 Ned。我朝我以为声音传来的方向离开步道,可我似乎从没能靠得更近。就好像声音是从四面八方传来的。最后,它慢慢淡去,我便回了游客中心。

    我再没收到过类似的报告,尽管我之后又回到那片区域,也再没听到过那个确切的声音。我想也许是哪个无聊的小孩在哪儿搞鬼捉弄人,但连我也不得不承认,那确实很怪。

所以这差不多就成了一面巨大的文字墙,为此我道歉。我本想尽快讲到朋友讲的故事,他确实讲了一些好的,我会在明天晚上发出来。我自己也还有几个故事,我想你们会喜欢。很抱歉又让你们吊在悬念里,希望这里的故事能补偿一下,帮你们撑过接下来的二十四小时,直到我能再发一次帖!

EDIT: 既然看起来你们都想听更多,明天我会尽量多写一些故事,来一次大更新。我会把朋友的故事也放进去,我也会看看能不能联系上几个可能有点意思可讲的人。我之前只是不确定大家对一大面文字墙是什么感觉,不过要是你们都不介意,我就多发点故事!

EDIT:Part 3 已更新:https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iocju/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

译注

  • 楼梯在本 Part 得到更具体的交代:形状、尺寸、风格、状况各异,有破败成废墟的,也有全新如建的;最怪的那段铺着米色地毯、约十级高,「像电子游戏里房子没加载完全、只剩楼梯可见」;最大的一段取自世纪之交豪宅,至少十英尺宽、向上十五到二十英尺。教官的规矩也升级成一句完整的叮嘱——「别靠近,别碰它们,别上去」——与 Part 1 结尾那句「被极其坚决地告知永远不要靠近它」前后呼应。

  • Part 1 里「遇见无脸男人的登山者」被多位读者问懵,作者在此专门澄清:没有脸的人,是登山者登顶后看到的那个穿派克大衣、滑雪裤的另一个人;登山者本人是有脸的。

  • 本 Part 末尾的两条 EDIT 直接给出 Part 3 链接,并预告「明晚」会补上朋友讲的故事和更多自己的故事,系列由此转入每日连更。

  • 唯一的「科学解释」出现在树井(tree wells)与雪埋窒息一段:作者用它来解释年轻男子冻死的死因。这与楼梯、失踪案的「无法解释」形成对照——他诉诸现实知识来消化其中一部分案件,却对另一些始终找不到答案。

Part 3 · 2015-08-28 发帖 · 得分 5207

英文原版

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iex1h/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3ijnt6/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

Well, once again, you guys have blown me away with your staggering amount of responses to my stories! There’s no way I can respond to each of you individually, so I’m just going to address some common things again, and then move on to the stories. I’m going to write as many as I can think of, in addition to my friend’s stories, and I will probably not update again until I get a chance to answer some questions that I myself have for my superiors.

Alright, so the common questions I found you all had:

  • I am not comfortable talking about where exactly I work, unfortunately. In all reality some of the things I’ve mentioned here could get me in a lot of trouble or fired, so it’s best if I just don’t discuss too much. I will say that I’m in the United States, and in an area that is comprised of a great deal of wilderness. We’re talking hundreds of miles of thick forest, with a mountain range and a few lakes.

  • There is still a great amount of interest in the stairs, and luckily for you guys my friend has a story that I think you’ll all be very interested in. I’ll go into that more at the end of this update. As for whether or not I have ever thought of asking my superiors about them, I have, but again, I don’t want to risk my job. However, one of my former superiors no longer works as an SAR officer, and it’s possible that he may be willing to talk to me about it. I’ll be speaking to him later in the week, and I will let you all know what comes of that.

  • As far as advice on becoming an SAR officer goes, I think the best advice I can give is to contact your local Forest Service office and see if they offer and training courses, or what the qualifications are. I’ve been doing this for years, and I started out as a volunteer helping on SAR operations. It’s a great job, despite the occasional tragic situations, and I wouldn’t want to do anything else.

Alright, let’s move on to the stories:

  • The first happened on a case that I went out on right after I got out of training, and was still pretty new to everything. Before I took this job, I was a volunteer, so I had a basic idea of what to expect, but on those calls you’re mostly dealing with finding lost people after vets have found signs of them. As an SAR officer, you go out for all kinds of cases, from animal bites to heart attacks.
    This case got called in early in the morning, from a young couple who were up on one of the trails that goes by the lake. The husband was completely hysterical, and we couldn’t really figure out what was going on. We could hear the woman screaming in the background, and he was begging us to come up there right away. When we get there, we see him holding his wife, and shes got something in her arms. She’s screaming these awful, almost animal-like screams, and he’s sobbing. He sees us and he screams at us to help them, to please get an ambulance up there. Now obviously we can’t just drive an ambulance up the walking path, so we ask him if his wife needs help, or if she can walk on her own. He’s still hysterical, but he manages to tell us that it’s not his wife that needs help. I go over while one of the vets tries to calm him down, and I ask the wife what’s going on. She’s rocking, holding something, and just shrieking, over and over. I crouch down and see that whatever she’s holding, it’s covering her with blood. That’s when I notice the sling on her front and my heart sinks. I ask her to tell me what’s going on, and I sort of pry her arms gently open so I can see what she’s holding. It’s her baby, obviously dead. His head is caved in on one side, and he’s covered in scratches. Now, I’ve seen dead bodies before, but something about this whole situation hits me hard. I have to take a second to compose myself, and I get up and go get one of the other vets, who’s standing by. I tell him that it’s a dead kid, and he sort of pats my shoulder and tells me he’ll deal with it.
    It took us over an hour to get this woman to let us see her kid. Every time we try to take him from her, she flips out and tells us we can’t have him, that he’ll be okay if we just leave her alone and let her help him. But eventually, one of the vets manages to calm her down, and she gives us the body. We took it back to the med area, but when the EMTs showed up, they told us that there was never any hope of saving the kid. He’d died instantly from the trauma to his head.
    I was good buddies with one of the nurses who met them at the hospital, and she told me later what had happened. Turns out the couple had been walking with the baby in the sling, and they stopped because the kid was fussing. The dad takes the kid and is holding him, looking out over this little gully by the path. The mom comes to stand next to him, but she ends up stepping on a loose patch of soil, and she trips. She falls into the dad, who drops the kid, who ends up falling about twenty feet down this little gully onto the rocks at the bottom. The dad climbed down and recovered the kid, but he’d fallen right on his head, and was dead by the time he got there. The baby was only about fifteen months old. It was a total freak accident, a series of events that coalesced into the worst possible outcome. Probably one of the more awful calls I’ve been on.

  • I haven’t seen a lot of animal bites in my time as an SAR officer, mostly because there aren’t that many animals that come around the area. While there are bears in the area, they tend to stay pretty far away from people, and sightings are highly unusual. Most of the animals you’ll see are small ones, like coyotes, raccoons, or skunks. What we do see frequently, though, are moose. And let me tell you, moose are nasty fuckers. They’ll chase after anything for any reason, and god help you if you get in between a female and its baby. One of the more amusing calls was of a guy who’d gotten chased down by an absolutely massive male moose, and was stuck up a tree. Took us almost an hour to get him down, and when he was finally on solid ground again, he looks at me and says: ‘God damn. Them fuckers is big up close.’ I guess that’s not really a scary story, but we still laugh about that one.

  • I honestly don’t know how I’d forgotten this story, but it is, by far, the scariest thing that’s happened to me. I guess maybe I’ve tried so long to forget about it that it just didn’t come to mind right away. As someone who spends literally all of their time in the woods, you don’t ever want to let yourself get scared of being alone, or out in the middle of nowhere. That’s why when you have experiences like this, you tend to just forget about them and move on. This is, to date, the only thing that’s ever made me really seriously consider if this job is the right one for me. I don’t really like talking about it much, but I’ll do the best I can to remember it all.
    As I recall, this took place right at the end of spring. It was a typical lost-child call: a four-year-old girl had wandered away from her family’s campsite, and had been missing for about two hours. Her parents were completely despondent, and told us what most parents do; my kid would never wander away, she’s so good about staying close, she’s never done anything like this before. We assure the parents that we’ll do everything we can to find her, and we spread out in a standard search formation. I was partnered with one of my good buddies, and we were sort of casually holding conversation while we hiked. I know it sounds callous, but you do sort of become desensitized when you’ve done this long enough. It becomes the norm, and I think to a certain extent you have to learn to desensitize yourself in order to work this job.
    We search for a good two hours, going well beyond where we think she’d be, and we come out of a small valley when something makes us both stop in unison. We freeze and look at each other, and there’s almost a sensation like a plane depressurizing. My ears pop, and I have this odd sensation of having dropped about ten feet. I start to ask my buddy if he felt that, but before I can, we hear the loudest sound I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s almost like a freight train passing directly by us, but it’s coming from every direction at once, including above and below us. He screams something to me, but I can’t hear him over this deafening roar. Understandably freaked out, we look all around us, trying to find the source of the sound, but neither of us sees anything. Of course, my first thought is a landslide, but we’re not near any cliffs, and even if we were, it would have hit us by now. The sound goes on and on, and we’re trying to yell to each other, but even standing close together we can’t hear anything but this sound. Then, as suddenly as it starts, it stops, like someone threw a switch and cut it off. We stand there for a second, perfectly still, and slowly the normal sounds of the woods come back. He asks me what the fuck just happened, but I just kind of shrug, and we stand there looking at each other for a minute. I get on the radio and ask if anyone else just heard the end of the fucking world, but no one else hears it, even though we’re all within shouting distance of each other. My buddy and I just sort of shrug it off and keep going.
    About an hour later, we all check up on the radios, and no one’s found the little girl. Most of the time, we won’t search when it gets dark, but because we don’t have any kind of lead on her, a few of us decide to keep going, including me and my buddy. We keep close together, and we’re calling out for her every couple of minutes. At this point, I’m hoping beyond hope that we find her, because while I may not like kids, the idea of them being out all alone in the dark is awful. The woods can be intimidating to kids in the daylight; at night, well, it’s a whole different beast. But we’re not seeing any signs of her, or getting any responses, and around midnight, we decide to turn around and head back to the rendezvous point.
    We’re about halfway back when my buddy stops and shines his light to the right of us, into a really thick deadfall, or group of dead trees. I ask him if he’s heard a response, but he just tells me to be quiet a second and listen. I do, and in the distance, I can hear what sounds like a kid crying. We both call the girl’s name and listen for any kind of response, but it’s just this really faint crying.
    We head in the direction of this deadfall and go around it, calling her name over and over. As we get closer to the crying, I start getting this weird feeling in my gut, and I tell my buddy that something isn’t right. He tells me he feels the same way, but we can’t figure out what it is. We stop where we are, and call the girl’s name again. And at the same time, we both figure it out.
    The crying is on a loop. It’s the same little hitching sob, then wail, then quiet hiccup, repeated over and over. It’s exactly the same every time, and without saying another word, we both take off running. It’s the only time I’ve ever lost my composure like that, but something about it was so incredibly wrong, and neither of us wanted to stay out there anymore.
    When we got back to the rendezvous, we asked if anyone else had heard anything strange, but no one else knew what we were talking about. I know it sounds sort of anti-climactic, but that call fucked me up for a long time. As for the little girl, we never found a trace of her. We keep an eye out for her, and all the other people who we’ve never found, but frankly I doubt we’ll ever find anything.

Of the missing persons calls I’ve gone out on, only a handful have ever resulted in a complete disappearance, meaning no trace of the person and no body ever found. But sometimes, finding a body just leads to more questions than answers. Here are some of the bodies we’ve found that have become infamous in our team:

  • A teenage boy who’s remains were recovered almost a year after he vanished. We found the top of his skull, two finger bones, and his camera almost forty miles from where he was last seen. The camera, sadly, was destroyed.

  • The pelvis of an older man who had vanished a month earlier. That was all we found.

  • The lower jaw and right foot of a two-year-old boy on the highest peak of a ridge in the southern part of the park.

  • The body of a ten-year-old girl with Down’s Syndrome, almost twenty miles from where she’d vanished. She had died of exposure three weeks after going missing, and all of her clothes were intact except for her shoes and jacket. There were berries and cooked meat in her stomach when they did the autopsy. The coroner said it appeared as if someone had been taking care of her. There were no suspects ever identified.

  • The frozen body of a one-year-old baby, found a week after vanishing in the hollow trunk of a tree ten miles from the area he was seen last. There was fresh milk found in his stomach, but his tongue was gone.

  • A single vertebra and right kneecap of a three-year-old girl, found in the snow almost twenty miles from the campground her family had been at the previous summer.

Now on to a couple of the stories my friend told me. I mentioned that you were all interested in the stairs, and you’re in luck: he’s had a closer encounter with them. Though he doesn’t have any explanation for them, he does have a bit more experience with them than I do.

  • My buddy has been an SAR officer for about seven years, he started when he was a junior in college, and he had a very similar experience when he first encountered the stairs. His trainer told him almost the same thing mine did, which was to never go near, touch, or ascend them. For the first year, he did just that, but apparently his curiosity got the better of him, and on one call he broke away from the line and went to go check a set of them out.
    He said they were about ten miles from the path where a teenage girl had vanished, and the dogs were following a scent. He was on his own, lagging behind the main group, when he saw a set of stairs off to his left. They looked like they were from a new house, because the carpeting was pristine and white. He said that as he got closer, he didn’t feel any different, or hear any weird noises. He was expecting something to happen, like bleeding from his ears or collapsing, but he got right up next to them and didn’t feel anything. The only thing, he said, that was odd was that there was absolutely no debris on the steps. No dirt, leaves, dust, anything. And there didn’t appear to be any signs of animal or insect activity in the immediate area, which he found strange. It was less like things were avoiding them, and more like they just happened to be in a relatively barren part of the forest. He touched the stairs, and didn’t feel anything except that sort of sticky feeling you get from new carpet. Making sure his radio was on, he slowly climbed the stairs; he said it was terrifying, because the way they’d been stigmatized, he wasn’t really sure what was going to happen to him. He joked that half of him expected to be teleported to some other dimension and the other half was watching for a UFO to come swooping down. But he got to the top with little event, and he stood there looking around. But, he said, the longer he stood on the top step, the more he felt like he was doing something very, very wrong. He described it as the feeling you’d get if you were in a part of a government building you have no business being in. As if someone was going to come and arrest you, or shoot you in the back of the head, at any second. He tried to brush it off, but the feeling got stronger and stronger, and that’s when he realized that he couldn’t hear anything anymore. The sounds of the forest were gone, and he couldn’t hear his own breathing. It was like some kind of weird, awful tinnitus, but more oppressive. He climbed back down and rejoined the search, and didn’t mention what he’d done.
    But, he said, the weirdest part came after. His trainer was waiting back at the welcome center after the search ended for the day, and he cornered my buddy before he could leave. He said his trainer had this look of intense anger, and he asked what was wrong.
    ‘You went up them, didn’t you.’ My buddy said it wasn’t phrased as a question. He asked how his trainer knew. The trainer just shook his head.
    ‘Because we didn’t find her. The dogs lost her scent.’
    My buddy asked what that had to do with anything. The trainer asked how long he’d been on the stairs, and my buddy said no more than a minute. The trainer gave him this really awful, almost dead-eyed look, and told him that if he ever went up another set of stairs again, he’d be fired. Immediately. The trainer walked away, and I guess he’s never answered any of the questions my buddy has asked him about it since.

My buddy has been involved in a lot of missing persons cases where there’s never been a trace of them found. I mentioned David Paulides, and my buddy said he can confirm that those stories are, for the most part, accurate. He said that most of the time, if the person isn’t found right away, they’re either never found, or they’re found weeks, months, or years later, in places they can’t possibly have gotten to. One story he told me really stood out that involved a five-year-old boy with a severe mental disability.

  • The little boy vanished from a picnic area in the late fall. In addition to the mental disability, he was also physically handicapped, and his parents explained over and over that he simply could not have vanished. It was impossible. Someone had to have taken him. My buddy said they searched for this kid for weeks, going miles out of the accepted range, but it was like he’d never been there. The dogs couldn’t pick up his scent anywhere, not even in the picnic area where he’d apparently vanished from. Suspicion fell on the parents, but it was pretty clear that they were devastated, and hadn’t done anything sinister to their kid. The search was concluded about a month later, and my buddy said everyone had pretty much forgotten it by later in the winter.
    He was out on a training op in the snow, on one of the higher peaks, when he came across something in the snow. He said he saw it from far away at first, and when he got closer, he realized it was a shirt, frozen and sticking part way out of the powder. He recognized it as belonging to the kid, because it had a distinctive pattern. About twenty yards away, he found the kid’s body, laying partially buried in the snow. My buddy said there was no way the kid had been dead for any more than a few days, even though he’d been missing for almost three months. The kid was curled around something, and when my buddy brushed off the snow to see what it was, he said he almost couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was a big chunk of ice, that had been carved crudely to look sort of like a person. The kid was holding it so tight that it had frostbitten his chest and hands, which my buddy could tell even with the decay that had taken place. He radioed the rest of the crew, and they took the body off the mountain.
    Now, he recapped all of this for me, and to put it simply, there was no way this kid could have both survived for almost three months on his own, or have gotten to this peak. There was no physical way this child could have walked almost fifty miles and ended up on the top of a god damn mountain. To top it off, there was nothing in the kid’s stomach or colon. Nothing, not even water. It was like, my buddy said, the kid had been taken off the face of the earth, put in suspended animation, and dropped on this mountain months later, only to die of exposure. He’s never really gotten over that one.

The last story I’ll share from him was one that took place relatively recently, only a few months ago.

  • They were out doing a recon for mountain lions, because there had been several reports of sightings in the last couple of days. One of our jobs is to scout out the areas where these animals are seen to ensure that if they are in the area, we can warn people and close off those trails. He was out on his own in a very heavily forested part of the park toward dusk when he heard what sounded like a woman screaming in the distance. Now, as most of you know, when a mountain lion screams, it sounds almost exactly like a woman being brutally murdered. It’s unsettling, but far from abnormal. My buddy radioed back and let ops know that he’d heard one, and that he was going to keep going to see if he could figure out where its territory started.
    He heard the mountain lion scream a couple more times, always from the same spot, and determined the approximate area of the mountain lion’s territory. He was about to head back when he heard another scream, this time within only a few yards of him. Of course, he freaks out and starts heading back at a much faster pace, because the last thing he wants is to run into a god damn mountain lion and get mauled to death. As he got back on the path and started heading back, the screaming followed him, and he broke into a jog. When he was about a mile from ops, the screaming stopped, and he turned around to see if it was following him.
    It was almost night by this point, but he said in the distance, just before the path rounded a corner, he could see what looked like a male figure. He called out to them, warning them that the paths were closed, and that he needed to come back to the welcome center. The figure just stood there, and my buddy started to walk over. When he was about ten yards away, the figure took, as he described, ‘and impossibly long step’ toward him and let out the same scream my buddy had been hearing. My buddy didn’t even say anything, he just turned and sprinted back to ops, never looking behind him. By the time he got back, the screaming had moved back into the woods. He didn’t mention it to anyone else, just said that there was a mountain lion in the area and that they would need to close those paths until the animal could be located and moved.

I’m going to end this entry here, since it’s turned into a huge wall of text. I’m going to be heading out on a yearly training op tomorrow morning, so I’ll be gone until early next week. I’ll be meeting with a lot of former trainers and buddies who work in other areas of the park, and I’ll be asking around about any stories they’d like to share. I’m so glad you guys have been interested in my stories, and once I’m back from this op, I’ll continue to share them!

EDIT: Part 4 is up: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3jadum/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

中文译文

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iex1h/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3ijnt6/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

好吧,又一次,你们对我的故事那海量的回应让我彻底震住了。我没法一一回复你们每一个,所以我还是先统一回应一些常见问题,然后再讲故事。我会把能想到的都写出来,再加上我朋友的那些故事,而且在下一次去向上级确认一些我自己想问的问题之前,我大概不会更新了。

好了,以下是我发现你们都有的几个常见问题:

  • 很遗憾,我不方便说我具体在哪里工作。说实话,我在这里提到的某些事情可能会给我惹来大麻烦,甚至让我丢了工作,所以我最好还是少谈为妙。我只能说,我在美国,在一个广袤的荒野地带。那是数百英里的茂密森林,一条山脉,还有几座湖。

  • 大家对楼梯的兴趣还是那么浓厚,好在你们运气不错,我朋友有一个故事,我相信你们都会非常感兴趣。我会在这次更新结尾详细讲。至于我有没有想过向上级打听它们——我想过,但同样,我不想拿工作冒险。不过,我的一位前任上司已经不再当搜救官了,他也许愿意跟我聊聊这件事。我本周会去见他,有什么结果我会告诉你们。

  • 至于对想成为搜救官的人的忠告,我能给的最好建议就是联系你当地的林务局办公室,看看他们是否提供培训课程,或者说需要什么资质。我干这行多年,起初是志愿者,协助搜救行动。这是一份很棒的工作,尽管偶尔会遇上悲剧场面,我不想做别的。

好了,接下来讲几个故事:

  • 第一桩,发生在我刚结束培训就出的一次任务上,那时我对一切都还比较生疏。在接下这份工作之前,我是志愿者,所以对要面对的事大致有数,但那些报警大多是等老兵发现了失踪者的踪迹后,由我们去把人找到。而作为搜救官,你要处理各色案件,从动物咬伤到心脏病发作。

这桩案子是凌晨报来的,来自一对年轻夫妇,他们在一条沿湖的步道上。那位丈夫完全歇斯底里,我们一时弄不清出了什么事。我们能听到背景里那个女人在尖叫,他苦苦哀求我们立刻上去。等我们到了,我们看到抱着妻子的他,而她怀里抱着什么东西。她发出一种可怕的、近乎野兽般的尖叫,而他在抽泣。他一看见我们就冲我们大喊,求我们救救他们,求我们赶紧叫救护车。显然我们不能把救护车开上步道,所以我们问他,是他妻子需要帮助,还是她自己能走。他仍然歇斯底里,但总算设法告诉我们,需要帮助的不是他妻子。我走过去,那边一个老兵正试着安抚他,我问那位妻子出了什么事。她晃着身子,抱着什么东西,一遍又一遍地尖声大叫。我蹲下来,看见她抱着的不管是什么,都已经把她染得满身是血。就在这时我注意到她胸前的背带,心头猛地一沉。我请她告诉我出了什么事,一边轻轻地掰开她的手臂,好看清她抱着的是什么。那是她的孩子,显然已经死了。他一边的头凹了进去,身上满是抓痕。我见过死尸,但这整个情形狠狠地击中了我。我不得不缓一缓才镇定下来,起身去找旁边候着的另一个老兵。我告诉他是死了的孩子,他拍了拍我的肩,说他来处理。

我们花了一个多小时,才让这个女人同意让我们看看她的孩子。每当我们想从他怀里抱走孩子,她就崩溃,告诉我们不能带走他,说只要别管她、让她来救他,他就会没事的。但最后,一个老兵总算安抚住了她,她交出了尸体。我们把尸体带回医疗区,可急救人员一到,就告诉我们这孩子从一开始就没救了。他死于头部创伤,当场死亡。

我和接诊他们的医院里一位护士很要好,后来她告诉了我事情的经过。原来这对夫妇正用背带背着孩子赶路,孩子一直闹,他们便停下来。爸爸抱起孩子,抱着他,朝步道旁一道小沟壑望出去。妈妈走过来站在他旁边,却不小心踩到一块松动的土,绊了一下。她撞到爸爸,爸爸脱手摔了孩子,孩子顺着这道小沟壑掉下去大约二十英尺,落在底部的岩石上。爸爸爬下去捡回孩子,但孩子正好头先着地,等他赶到时已经死了。这孩子才十五个月大。这是一场彻底的巧合意外,一连串事件叠成了最坏的结果。大概是我出过的最糟糕的任务之一。

  • 我当搜救官这些年不太见到动物咬伤的案件,主要是因为这地方没多少动物出没。虽然这里有熊,但它们通常离人远远的,目击极为罕见。你见到的多半是小动物,比如土狼、浣熊、臭鼬。不过我们常见的是驼鹿。我跟你说,驼鹿是群凶恶的家伙。它们会为任何理由追任何东西,而你要是挡在一只母驼鹿和它的幼崽之间,那就自求多福吧。有一次比较好笑的报警,是个男人被一头巨大无比的公驼鹿追得爬上了树。我们花了将近一个小时才把他弄下来,等他终于重新踩到实地上,他看着我说:「我的妈呀。这玩意儿凑近了看,可真大。」这算不上什么惊悚故事,但我们到现在还在拿这事当笑料。

  • 我真不知道自己怎么会把这事忘了,但它是我目前为止经历过最吓人的事。我猜也许是我努力想忘掉它太久,所以一时没想起来。作为一个几乎整天待在林子里的人,你绝不允许自己害怕独处,害怕身在荒郊野岭。也正因为如此,当你经历过这种事,你会倾向于把它忘掉,继续前行。迄今为止,这是唯一一件让我真正认真怀疑过自己是不是选错了行当的事。我不太愿意谈它,但我会尽量把当时的种种都回忆出来。

我记得,这事发生在春末。是一桩典型的儿童走失报警:一个四岁的女孩从家人营地里走开,已经失踪大约两小时。她的父母彻底绝望,跟绝大多数父母一样,跟我们说:我的孩子绝不会乱跑,她一向很乖,以前从没干过这种事。我们向父母保证会尽一切努力找到她,然后按标准搜索队形散开。我和一个要好的搭档分在一起,我们一边走一边随意聊着天。我知道这听起来很冷漠,但干这行久了,你确实会变得麻木。它会成为一种常态,我觉得在某种程度上,你得学会让自己麻木,才能干这份工作。

我们搜了足足两个小时,一直搜到我们认为她可能所在的范围之外很远,走出一个小山谷时,有什么东西让我们俩同时停下。我们僵住,对视一眼,那种感觉几乎像飞机释压。我的耳朵嗡嗡作响,还有一种怪异的、仿佛往下沉了十英尺的感觉。我刚要开口问搭档有没有感觉到,还没问出口,我们就听到了我这辈子听过的最响的声音。几乎像一列货运火车从我们正前方呼啸而过,可它同时从四面八方而来,包括我们头顶和脚下。他朝我喊了句什么,但在这震耳欲聋的轰鸣里我根本听不见。我们理所当然地吓坏了,环顾四周,想找到声音的来源,可我们俩谁也没看见任何东西。我的第一反应自然是山体滑坡,可我们附近没有悬崖,就算有,也该早就砸到我们了。那声音一直延续,我们拼命朝对方喊,可即便站得很近,除了这声音,别的什么都听不见。然后,就像它开始时一样突然,它停了,像有人扳下开关把它掐断。我们一动不动地站了一秒钟,森林里寻常的声音才慢慢回来。他问我刚才到底是怎么回事,我只是耸了耸肩,我们站在那里面面相觑了一会儿。我拿起对讲机,问有没有别人也听到了这「他妈的末日」,可没一个人听到,尽管我们都在彼此的喊话范围内。我和搭档就那么把它抛开,继续赶路。

大约一小时后,我们用对讲机互相核对,没有人找到那个小女孩。大多数时候,天黑了我们就不搜,但因为对她没有任何线索,我们几个决定继续,包括我和搭档。我们靠得很近,每隔几分钟就喊一次她的名字。到这时,我抱着近乎绝望的希望盼着找到她,因为虽然我不喜欢孩子,但想到他们独自待在黑夜里,还是觉得可怕。森林在白昼里对孩子就已经够吓人;到了夜里,那就完全是另一副模样。可我们没看到任何她的痕迹,也没得到任何回应,到了午夜前后,我们决定掉头,返回会合点。

我们往回走了一半左右,搭档停了下来,把手电照向我们右侧,照进一片非常浓密的倒木林,或者说一片枯死的树丛。我问他是不是听到了回应,他却只是让我安静一下,听一听。我照做了,然后听见远处传来像是孩子哭泣的声音。我们俩都喊了那女孩的名字,听着看有没有任何回应,但只有那非常微弱的哭声。

我们朝那片倒木堆走过去,绕到它旁边,一遍又一遍地喊她的名字。越靠近那哭声,我胃里那种怪异的感觉就越强烈,我告诉搭档有什么不对劲。他说他也有同样的感觉,但说不出到底是什么。我们在原地停下,又喊了一遍那女孩的名字。就在那一瞬间,我们俩同时明白了过来。

那哭声是循环的。 总是同样的那一段:先是一阵抽噎般的啜泣,然后是一声哭号,接着是一声安静的抽气,一遍又一遍地重复。每一次都一模一样。我们没再多说一个字,两人一起撒腿就跑。那是我唯一一次这样失态,但那东西透着一股难以名状的错位感,我们俩都不想再留在那儿了。

回到会合点后,我们问有没有别人也听到什么怪声,但没一个人知道我们在说什么。我知道这听起来有点虎头蛇尾,但那趟任务让我难受了很久。至于那个小女孩,我们再也没能找到她的一点踪迹。我们一直留意着她,也留意着所有其他我们从未找到过的人,但说实话,我不相信我们还能找到什么。

在我出过的失踪案里,只有屈指可数的几桩最终落得彻底失踪,意思是找不到那人的一点痕迹,也永远找不到尸体。但有时候,找到一具尸体只会带来更多问题,而不是答案。以下是我们找到的、在我们队里变得出了名的一些尸体:

  • 一个少年男孩,在他失踪近一年后,找到了他的遗骸。我们在他最后被目击的地点四十英里外,找到了他的头盖骨顶部、两根指骨,还有他的相机。遗憾的是,那台相机已经损毁。

  • 一个失踪了一个月的年长男人的骨盆。我们找到的,就只有这些。

  • 公园南部一道山脊的最高峰上,一个两岁男孩的下颌骨和右脚。

  • 一个患有唐氏综合征的十岁女孩的尸体,在她失踪地点近二十英里外。她是在失踪三周后死于严寒,她所有的衣物都完好无损,只有鞋子和外套不见了。尸检时,她胃里有浆果和煮熟的肉。验尸官说,看起来像是有人在照顾她。始终没能锁定任何嫌疑人。

  • 一个一岁婴儿的冻尸,在他失踪一周后,在他最后被目击地区十英里外一棵中空的树干里被发现。他胃里找到了新鲜的牛奶,可他的舌头不见了。

  • 一个三岁女孩的一节脊椎骨和右膝盖骨,在离她家人去年夏天住过的营地近二十英里的雪地里被发现。

接下来讲我朋友告诉我的几个故事。我提到过你们都对楼梯感兴趣,你们运气不错:他有一次跟它们更近距离的遭遇。虽然他对它们没有任何解释,但他确实比我对它们有更多一些的经历。

  • 我的搭档当搜救官大约七年了,他大学三年级开始干这行,他第一次遇到楼梯时,经历了跟我几乎一模一样的遭遇。他的教官对他的教官灌输的几乎一样——永远不要靠近、触摸或爬上它们。第一年,他也确实那么做,但显然他的好奇心战胜了他,有一次任务中他脱离队伍,跑去查看一段楼梯。

他说那些楼梯在距一个失踪的青少女孩步道十英里左右的地方,当时警犬正循着一股气味。他独自一人,落在主力队伍后面,这时他看见左侧有一段楼梯。它们看起来像是从一栋新房子里裁下来的,因为地毯洁白如新。他说他走近时,没感到任何不同,也没听到任何怪声。他原本以为会发生点什么,比如耳朵流血或昏倒,可他就那么走到跟前,什么感觉都没有。他说唯一奇怪的是,台阶上没有任何杂物。没有泥土、树叶、灰尘,什么都没有。而且附近似乎也看不到任何动物或昆虫活动的迹象,他觉得这很奇怪。与其说是那些东西在躲避它们,不如说是它们恰好落在森林里一片相对荒芜的地方。他摸了摸楼梯,除了那种踩新地毯会有的黏腻感,什么感觉都没有。确认对讲机开着后,他慢慢爬上楼梯;他说那很吓人,因为它们被渲染成这样,他也不确定自己会遇到什么。他开玩笑说,一半的他以为自己会被传送去另一个维度,另一半则在提防一架飞碟俯冲下来。但他没出什么意外就到了顶,站在那里四下张望。可他说,他在最顶上那级台阶站得越久,越觉得自己在做一件非常、非常错的事。他形容,那就像你走进政府大楼里一个你无权踏足的区域。仿佛随时会有人来逮捕你,或者从背后朝你后脑勺开一枪。他试图甩掉这种感觉,但它越来越强,就在那时他意识到,他再也听不到任何声音了。森林的声响消失了,连他自己的呼吸都听不见。那像某种诡异、可怖的耳鸣,但更加压抑。他爬下来,重新加入搜索,没提自己做过什么。

但他说,最怪的部分在后面。那天的搜索结束后,他的教官回到接待中心等着,在搭档离开前拦住了他。他说教官脸上带着强烈的怒意,他问出了什么事。

「你爬上去了,对不对。」我的搭档说,这句话并不是以问句的语气说出来的。他问教官怎么会知道。教官只是摇了摇头。

「因为我们没找到她。警犬跟丢了她的气味。」

我的搭档问这跟案情有什么关系。教官问他,他在楼梯上待了多久,搭档说不超过一分钟。教官用那种极其可怖、几乎死水般的眼神看着他,告诉他,如果他再爬上任何一段楼梯,他就会被开除。立刻。教官走开了,我猜,从那以后他再没回答过搭档问他的任何问题。

我的搭档参与过许多从未找到失踪者踪迹的失踪案。我提到了大卫·保利德斯,搭档说他可以证实,那些故事大体上是准确的。他说,大多数时候,如果那人没有马上被找到,那么要么永远找不到,要么会在数周、数月或数年后,在他们根本不可能到达的地方被找到。他讲给我听的一个故事特别扎眼,涉及一个患有严重智力障碍的五岁男孩。

  • 这个小男孩在深秋从一个野餐区消失了。除了智力障碍,他还有身体残疾,他的父母一遍又一遍地解释,他根本就不可能自己走丢。那是不可能的。一定是有人带走了他。我的搭档说,他们为这个孩子搜了好几个星期,一直搜到公认范围外几英里,却像他从来没在那里待过。警犬在任何地方都闻不到他的气味,甚至在他显然消失的那个野餐区也没有。怀疑一度落在父母身上,但很明显他们悲痛欲绝,没对自己的孩子做过任何恶事。大约一个月后,搜索结束了,搭档说,到了那年冬天晚些时候,大家差不多都忘了这事。

他在雪中执行一次训练任务,在一座较高的山峰上,在雪里撞见了一样东西。他说他起初是从远处看到的,等走近,才看清那是一件衬衫,冻得硬邦邦的,半截戳出雪面。他认出那是那个孩子的,因为上面有辨识度很高的图案。大约二十码外,他找到了孩子的尸体,半埋在雪里。我的搭档说,这孩子绝不可能死了超过几天,尽管他已经失踪了近三个月。孩子蜷缩着抱着什么东西,当搭档拂开雪想看是什么时,他说他几乎不敢相信自己看到的。那是一大块冰,被粗糙地雕成人形的样子。孩子把它抱得那么紧,以致冻伤了他的胸口和双手——即便是已经腐败的情况,搭档还是能看得出来。他用无线电通知了队里其他人,他们就把尸体从山上抬了下去。

现在,他把这一切复述给我听,简单说,这孩子既不可能独自存活近三个月,也不可能到达这座山峰。从生理上讲,这个孩子根本不可能走完近五十英里,出现在一座该死的山顶上。更别提,孩子的胃和结肠里什么都没有。什么也没有,连水都没有。搭档说,就像这孩子被人从地球上抹去,放进某种假死状态,几个月后才被丢在这座山上,仅仅因为失温而死。他从来没能真正放下这事。

我要讲的他的最后一个故事,发生在相对不久之前,只有几个月。

  • 他们出去做美洲狮侦察,因为过去几天有好几起目击报告。我们的工作之一,就是侦察这些动物出没的区域,确保如果它们确实在那,我们能警告人们并封锁那些步道。黄昏时分,他独自一人在公园一片林木非常茂密的地方,这时他听到远处传来像女人尖叫的声音。正如你们大多数人知道的那样,美洲狮尖叫时,听起来几乎和一个正被残忍杀害的女人一模一样。这很瘆人,但远算不上反常。我的搭档用无线电回报,告诉行动组他听到了一只,说他要继续往前,看看能不能摸清它的领地从哪里开始。

他又听到那美洲狮叫了几次,每次都从同一个地方传来,从而大致确定了它的领地范围。他正要往回走,这时又听到一声尖叫,这次离他只有几码远。他当然慌了,以快得多的步伐往回赶,因为他最不想的就是撞上一只该死的美洲狮,被活活撕碎。等他回到步道往回走时,那尖叫一直追着他,他小跑了起来。等他离行动组大约一英里时,尖叫停了,他转过身,想看看它是不是在跟着自己。

这时天几乎全黑了,但他说,在远处,就在步道拐弯角之前,他能看到像是一个男性身影的东西。他朝那人喊,告诉他们步道已关闭,他需要回接待中心去。那身影只是站在原地,搭档开始朝他走过去。等他走到大约十码远的地方,那身影——照他的说法——朝他迈了一大步,「步子大得离谱」,然后发出了他一直在听的那种尖叫。搭档一句话也没说,转身就跑,一路狂奔回行动组,再也没有回头。等他跑回去时,那尖叫已经退回了树林深处。他没跟任何人提起,只说那附近有一只美洲狮,需要封闭那些步道,直到那只动物被找到并转移为止。

我在这里收尾吧,因为这已经变成一大堵文字墙。明天一早我要出发去参加一年一度的训练行动,所以会离开到下周初。我会见到许多在其他区域工作的前任教官和老搭档,我也会四处打听,看他们愿不愿意分享一些故事。我真高兴你们一直对我的故事感兴趣,等我这次行动回来,我会继续分享!

EDIT:Part 4 已更新:https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3jadum/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

译注

  • 本部分为系列第三部,叙事人先从三类常见问题切入(工作地点不便透露、楼梯依旧是他关心的话题、想当搜救官的建议),再用「先几桩普通案件、再一件吓人的、最后朋友故事」的结构推进,延续了前两部冷静的护林员口吻;结尾预告「明天一早去参加一年一度的训练行动」并给出 Part 4 链接,一如系列前几部以「下回更新」收尾。
  • 楼梯是本系列的核心意象。本部分首次由第三人视角(叙事人的搭档)细写一次「近距离遭遇」:他能摸到、能爬上去,却因「在上面站得越久越觉得自己在做一件非常非常错的事」而下——这是第一部里一句「不要靠近」之外,第一次正面铺开爬上去之后的具体感受(耳鸣、丧失听觉)。教官那句「因为我们没找到她,警犬跟丢了她的气味」,把楼梯与「失踪案」直接联系起来。
  • 失踪者遗骸清单(少年男孩的颅顶与指骨、老人的骨盆、两岁男孩的下颌与右脚、唐氏综合征女孩、失去舌头的一岁婴儿、三岁女孩的椎骨与膝盖骨)是本部分新引入的细节;其中多处遗体被找到时都「远离失踪地点」,为后续「人不可能走到那里」的怪谈埋线。
  • 叙事人提到大卫·保利德斯(David Paulides)与失踪案,但在本部分只是借搭档之口说「那些故事大体上是准确的」,并未展开;「患有严重智力障碍的五岁男孩」案中,孩子在雪山顶被发现,胃里却空空如也,是本部分的又一处留白式恐怖。

Part 4 · 2015-09-02 发帖 · 得分 6575

英文原版

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iex1h/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3ijnt6/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iocju/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

Hey guys! I’m back from my training op, and I have a lot of really interesting stories to share with you. I’ve got enough that I’m going to break them up into two parts, this being the first. I’d love to put them all in one entry, but I just haven’t had a chance to write them all down yet.
I didn’t have anything too crazy happen while I was out there, but we did have one incident with a rookie that I found relevant. Since I’m sure you guys have been waiting for these, I’ll just get right into the stories. I’ll assign each batch of stories to the person who told them to me.

K.D:
K. D is a vet who’s been an SAR officer for about fifteen years. She specializes in high elevation mountain rescues, and is widely considered one of the best in her field. She was one of the more enthusiastic storytellers, and since we were together a fair amount during exercises, she ended up telling me about four that really stuck with me.

  • The first she told me in response to my asking about her most traumatic calls. She shook her head and told me that really bad calls happen more frequently on the mountain, since the potential for nasty accidents is higher.
    About five years ago, one of the parks she worked at had a string of disappearances. It was a bad year, she said, one of the worst on record as far as weather went. They were getting about a foot of new snow every couple of days, and there were a few avalanches that killed some climbers. They’d warned people about staying on the mapped areas, but of course there’s always those who don’t listen.
    In one particularly nasty case, an entire family got wiped out because the father decided he knew better than the officials, and he took them out into an area that wasn’t safe. They were snowshoeing, and as best K.D could figure, they’d walked onto a shelf of snow that looked solid, but actually wasn’t. It gave way, and this family went ass over teakettle almost three hundred feet down a slope. They landed on the rocks at the bottom, and the parents died instantly. One of the kids did as well, but the other two survived. One had a broken leg and fractured ribs, the other was almost unharmed save for some bruising and a sprained ankle. The uninjured child left his sibling behind and set out to find help.
    K.D said the kid didn’t make it more than half a mile before a storm overtook him. Kid stopped to try and get warm, or maybe just to rest, and ended up freezing to death. They ended up finding the family with the help of some witnesses who saw them heading out into the wilderness, and she was the one to find the kid who’d frozen to death looking for help. She said it had started to snow, just enough to obscure long-distance vision, but not enough to make searching impossible. She saw a figure sitting in the snow up ahead, and she got to it as quickly as possible. She described, in detail, how as she got closer, she realized first that it was a child, second that they were deceased, and third that they had frozen in one of the most pitiful positions she’s ever found a corpse in.
    The kid was sitting upright, with his knees tucked up against his chest. His arms were curled around them, and his head was tucked up in his coat. When she moved the coat to look at his face, she saw that he’d died crying. His face was twisted, and the tears were frozen on his cheeks. She said it was painfully obvious that the kid was terrified when he succumbed to hypothermia, and as a mother, it broke her heart. She told me, repeatedly, that she hopes the father is burning in hell as we speak.

  • The other traumatic story she told me that stood out, in my mind, was one that happened when she was a rookie. Her team got a report of an experienced climber who hadn’t come home the previous day. His wife was convinced that something bad had happened, because he’d never failed to come home on time. They went out looking for him, and had to climb what sounded like some very technically challenging parts of the mountain. They got to a relatively flat area, and K.D started seeing blood in the snow. She followed the trail, and as she went, she started seeing little bits of tissue. She wasn’t sure exactly what body part it had come from, but the farther she followed it, the more there was. She follows this blood-and-tissue trail to a sheltered area under a cliff face, and she finds the climber. She said there was so much blood, more than she’d ever seen before. He was lying face down, one arm stretched in front of him, as if he’d died crawling. She looks closer, and sees that he’s been partially disemboweled, which is where the tissue she’d seen had come from. The guy has an ice pick tucked into a hip holster, and it’s covered in blood. Of course, they’ll never be sure exactly what happened, but she said as best she can figure, this is what went down:
    The guy had been attempting to climb up to the next area, and had been using his ice ax to ascend. He’d probably hit a loose patch, and had fallen. On the way down, or possibly when he landed, he’d gotten impaled by the ax, and it had disemboweled him. He’d drug himself along, tearing pieces of himself out as he went, and had died under the cliff face. She isn’t terribly bothered by gore, but I guess a few of the guys who came to help her remove the body threw up when they turned him over and a good portion of his intestines spilled out.

  • I mentioned to her that I was interested in hearing about any experiences she had with people completely disappearing. Her eyes light up, and she leans in close to me.
    ‘Wanna hear a real doozy?’ She asks.
    She tells me about how, when she first started, there was a case that got a lot of attention in the media. A family had been out berry picking in an area of the forest very close to the entrance of the park. They had two little boys, both under the age of five, and at some point during the day, one of them vanishes. There’s an absolutely massive search, and they find absolutely nothing. It’s another of those cases where it’s like the kid was never there in the first place. The dogs just sit down and don’t pick up on anything, no trace of the kid is found. The search goes on for about two months, but is eventually called off.
    Fast forward to six months later. The family comes back to place flowers at a memorial that’s been set up there for the kid. They bring their other son. While they’re placing the flowers, they lose sight of the kid for about three seconds, and in that span of time he vanishes into thin air. Now obviously, the parents are beyond devastated. It’s awful enough to lose one child, but to lose two is beyond imagining. The search is huge, one of the largest in state history. There are about three hundred volunteers combing every inch of this park, looking for the kid. But again, there’s no trace of him. The search goes on for about a week, with people looking miles from the part of the park he vanished from.
    And then, almost two weeks later, a volunteer almost fifteen miles from the designated search area radios in that he’s found the kid. They assumed that the kid was dead, but the volunteer says he’s not only alive, he’s in good shape. K.D and her team go out to recover the kid, and when they get there, she can’t believe that this is the kid that’s been missing. His clothes are clean, there’s no dirt on him anywhere, and he doesn’t appear traumatized. The volunteer says he found the kid sitting on a log, playing with a little twig bundle that’s bound together with some old rope. K.D asks him where he’s been, who he was with for those two weeks, and the kid tells her that he’s been with ‘the fuzzy man’. Now K.D firmly believes in Bigfoot, so she gets all excited and asks what he means by fuzzy. Was he hairy? But the kid says no, he wasn’t hairy. He was a ‘fuzzy man’, and he describes a man that’s blurry, ‘like when you close your eyes but not all the way closed.’ He says the man came out of the trees and took the kid with him deep into the woods. The kid says he slept in a hollow tree, and the fuzzy man gave him berries to eat. K.D asks if the man was mean, if he scared the kid, and the kid says ‘no, he wasn’t scary. but i didn’t like how he didn’t have eyes.’
    K.D says they get the kid back to headquarters, and a cop takes him into town to talk to him more about what happened. She’s friends with the cop that talked to him, and she said the kid described being kept in this tree by the fuzzy man, and given berries whenever he was hungry. He was allowed to wander around a very specific clearing, but when he tried to go further, the fuzzy man would ‘get mad and yell real loud even though he didn’t have a mouth’. When the kid got scared at night, the fuzzy man ‘made it go brighter’ and gave him the twig bundle. He said the fuzzy man was going to keep him, but he had to let him go because the kid wasn’t ‘the right kind.’ He either can’t or won’t elaborate more on that. The cops are just sort of left scratching their heads, and the search for his brother is renewed with no results. The kid has no idea where his brother might be, and they never find him.

  • The last story that K.D told me was of something that happened to her when she got separated from her training group when she was a rookie. They were learning the basics of high elevation belaying on a well-mapped side of the mountain, and she had to use the bathroom. She went off about fifty yards from the group during a meal break, and did her business. I’ll tell the rest exactly as she told it to me’
    ‘So I go to take a piss, and once I’m done, I start going back to the group. But I’ve only gotten about five feet when I realize that I have no idea where I am. And this wasn’t a ‘oh, I got turned around’ lost. I mean I had literally no fucking clue where I was. If you’d asked me, I don’t even think I’d have been able to tell you what state we were in. It was sort of how I imagine people with amnesia feel, you know? You’re completely lost, and you have no idea what to do. So I stood there for a while, just trying to figure out where the fuck I was and what I was supposed to do. But the longer I stand there, the more confused and turned around I get, so I started walking. As I recall, I just picked a random direction and went for it. And as I’m walking, it’s just getting worse and worse to the point where I have no concept of why I’m on the mountain in the first place. I’m just trudging through the snow, and then I start hearing this voice. It’s kind of inside my head, almost. Like if a frog could talk, all low and croaky. And it’s telling me over and over ‘it’s okay, it’s okay, you just need to find something to eat. Find something to eat and you’ll be okay, just keep walking and find something to eat. Eat. Eat.’ So I start looking around for anything that I can eat, and I swear to god I’ve never felt that hungry in my whole life. It was bottomless, and I think I’d have eaten just about anything you put in front of me right then. I had no concept of time, so I had no idea how long I’d been out when I hear an actual voice coming toward me. I go toward it and see one of the other SARs, and he looks fucking terrified. He’s running toward me, asking if I’m okay and what the hell I’m doing out here.
    And the scary thing was, as he’s running toward me, I kind of see myself reaching into my belt for my hunting knife. I’m not even really thinking about what I’m doing, but what I am thinking is that I have to eat. If I don’t eat, I’ll never be okay again, so I just have to eat. He sees me doing that and he backs off right away. He yells at me to put my knife away, that he’s not gonna hurt me, and that kind of snaps me back. All of a sudden, I know exactly where I am, and I put the knife away. I run to him and ask him how long I’ve been gone, thinking he’ll tell me I’ve been gone for half an hour or so. But he tells me I’ve been gone for two fucking days. I’ve gone over two peaks and ended up almost on the other side of the mountain, and if I’d kept going, I would have ended up wandering into about three hundred miles of wilderness. They’d never have found me. He can’t believe I’m not dead, and of course I don’t know what the fuck to think. To me, no time has passed at all. I don’t say anything, I just go back with him to a rendezvous point and I’m taken back to HQ to be airlifted to the hospital. When I get there, they do all kinds of tests, and try to figure out what happened. As best they can guess, I had some kind of weird fugue state, which is kind of like amnesia, or a weird seizure that knocked my brain out of whack. But the truth is that we really don’t know. It’s never happened again, but I’ll tell you, ever since then I never go out there alone. People rag on me for making them come with me when I have to leave the group, but I just tell ‘em that listening to me piss in the snow is better than losing me for two fucking days on a freezing mountain.’

EW:
The next person I talked to was E.W, a former trainer who now works as an EMT. He still comes to ops like this to help out, but doesn’t work full-time for us anymore. He specialized in finding lost kids, he just seemed to have a sixth sense when it came to knowing where they’d gone. He’s a legend among the more senior vets, but he gets embarrassed if you compliment him on his work. He sat down with me at dinner one evening, and we ended up swapping stories. Most of them were just casual, but when we got on the subject of our weirder calls, I mentioned that I’d had a buddy who’d gone up a set of stairs. He got kind of quiet and asked me if I’d heard of a little boy who’d disappeared from his park a few years back. I hadn’t, so he told me this story.

  • They were out looking for this eleven-year-old boy, Joey, who’d gone missing near a river. Of course, the first thought was that he’d fallen in and drowned, but when they brought dogs out, they led SAR officers away from the river and up into a very densely forested area. When we do searches for people, we search in a grid pattern, and we search every ‘box’ of the grid incredibly thoroughly. What E.W’s team noticed right away was that a very strange pattern was emerging. Dogs in alternating boxes were picking up Joey’s scent, but losing it when they overlapped with another box. If you think of a checkerboard, Joey’s scent was being picked up in random black squares, but never in red. This, of course, didn’t make any sense, because how could the kid bounce from area to area without leaving a scent in each place he passed? E.W and his partner pass into a new box of the grid, and E.W notices a set of stairs about fifty yards away. He tells his partner that they need to go check near it, but his partner flat-out refuses. He tells E.W that he’s made it a point never to go near any stairs he sees, and that while it may be routine, he’s not to pretend that it’s normal. He tells E.W that he’ll wait in sight while E.W checks. E.W says he was irritated, but he felt for the guy, and didn’t push him on the subject.
    ‘I walked over to the stairs. They were small, kind of like stairs into a basement. I don’t really feel strongly one way or the other about them, the stairs I mean, so I wasn’t scared or anything. I guess I’m like everyone else, and I just prefer not to think about them too much.
    ‘Anyway, I went over and I could see that there was something lying on the bottom step, sort of curled up. My hear sinks, because of course you always hope for the best. And we were confident that we’d find this kid alive, because he’d only been missing for a few hours. But I knew right away that it was him, and that he was dead. He was curled up in a little ball on the step, holding his stomach. It looked like he’d been in horrible pain when he died, but I didn’t see any blood, except some on his lips and chin. I radioed in that I’d found him, and we got his body back to command. That poor family, they were devastated. The parents couldn’t understand how he’d be dead, ‘cause he’d only been gone for such a short amount of time. And on top of that we didn’t have any obvious cause of death, which just made it worse. I figured he’d probably eaten something poisonous, since he was holding his stomach when I found him, but I didn’t want to guess. It’s hard enough to hear that your kid is dead, let alone have some stupid SAR guy guessing about what happened. They took him away, and I went home and tried not to think about it. I hate finding dead kids, man. I loved this job but it’s one of the reasons I left. I’ve got two daughters, and the thought of losing them that way just…’
    He choked up a little here. I’m not great with emotional stuff like that, and it’s always sort of awkward to see a grown man cry, so I didn’t really know what to do. He pulled himself together eventually, though, and he kept going.
    ‘We don’t always hear back from the coroners about cause of death. It’s not really our job to know, I guess, and sometimes if they think it’s foul play they won’t tell us because of legal bullshit. But I’ve got a friend who works for the sheriff’s department, and he’ll usually pass along any interesting info if I ask. In this case, though, I actually got a call from him about a week later. He asks if I remember the kid, and of course I do, and he says some seriously weird shit is going on. He tells me, ‘E.W, man, you’re gonna think I’m crazy, but the coroner has no idea what happened to this kid. He’s never seen anything like it.’ My friend goes on to tell me that when the coroner opened the kid up, he couldn’t even believe what he was seeing. The kid’s organs were like swiss cheese. Quarter-sized holes were punched clean through just about every single organ this kid had, aside from his heart and lungs. But his colon, his stomach, his kidneys and even one of his testicles, were full of these clean holes. My friend said the coroner described it as if someone had taken a hole-punch and punched holes out of everything, they were so neat. But the kid didn’t have a scratch on him, no entry or exit wounds. The closest anyone there had ever seen like it was a guy who’d filled himself full of buckshot a year or so back while cleaning his rifle. No one had a clue what could possibly have caused it. My friend asked me if I’d ever heard of anything like it, or if we’d had similar cases in the past. But I’d never even heard of something like that, and I told him I wasn’t going to be of any help to him. As far as I know, the coroner determined the cause of death as something like ‘massive internal bleeding’, but no one knows what really happened.
    I’ve never been able to forget that kid. I have nightmares about it sometimes. I don’t let my kids go into the woods alone, and when we go together I never let them out of my sight. I used to love it out here. But that case, and a couple others, just sort of ruined it for me.’
    Dinner was over, so we started to clean up and go back to our cabins. Before we went our separate ways, he put his hand on my shoulder and looked at me really close. He tells me that there’s bad things out here. Things that don’t care if we have families or lives, or that we can think and feel. He tells me to be careful, and he walks away. I didn’t a chance to talk with him again, but that story stuck with me.

PB:
By pure coincidence, I got to talk to another vet, P.B who’s been in the SAR field for years. We were partnered on a grid sweep during a training exercise, and we were chatting casually about how we liked the job, what kinds of things we’d seen, and the like. At one point, we passed an old set of stairs, though these were probably from an old fire lookout, given the area that we were in. I sort of casually mentioned that I was curious about the stairs, and that I wished I knew more about them. He got kind of quiet and looked like he wanted to tell me something, but wasn’t sure if he should. Finally, he told me to turn my radio off. Obviously this is something we are never, ever supposed to do, but I did it, and he did the same.

  • About seven years ago, he tells me, he was out on a call with a rookie. They were in an area of the park that’s had a lot of strange reports and events. Disappearances, stories about lights in the forest, odd noises, things like that. The rookie was totally spooked, kept going on and on about ‘things out in the woods’. According to P.B:
    ‘The guy wouldn’t stop talking about ‘the Goatman’. Just on and on, ‘Goatman’ this and ‘Goatman’ that. Finally, I told him that there was plenty else to be afraid of out here that was very real, and that he’d better get over this thing with the Goatman. The rookie wanted to know what kinds of things I was talking about, and I just told him to shut up and walk. We crested a little ridge and there was a staircase about ten yards ahead. The rookie stops dead in his tracks and just stands there looking at them. I tell him, ‘See? That’s something you should be afraid of.’ The rookie asks me what the hell these are doing out here, and for some reason, I just open up and tell him the truth. Or what I’ve been told is the truth. I could have gotten in a lot of trouble for doing what I did, and I could get in a lot of trouble for repeating it to you. But you’re a nice kid, and I want you to stop looking into this. Quit while you’re ahead. So I’ll tell you what I know, under the condition that you never breathe a word of this to the supes.’
    I told him I wouldn’t say a word, and he double-checks that our radios are off.
    ‘When I first started out, we were a little less tight-lipped about them, and other things that happen out here. We warned people before they were even hired that there was weird shit going on. I guess the Forest Service was tired of having such a massive turnover rate, and they wanted people to know what they were getting into. So they started having people sign these agreements that they wouldn’t go to the media about what they were going to see. The FS didn’t want to scare people away, so the last thing they needed were spooked rookies running off to the media with stories of ghosts and haunted stairs. But eventually, they found that the agreements weren’t necessary. People not only didn’t want to talk about what they saw, they wouldn’t. A few times, media tried to talk to people when kids or hikers would disappear, and no one would say a word. I can’t really explain it. I guess we just… don’t really want to admit anything is wrong. This is our job, to be out in the woods every single day. We don’t need to be spooked, and the best way to avoid that is to pretend like everything’s okay. So I’ll tell you everything I can think of, and after that, I’m done talking about it for good. And I expect you not to bring it up around me, ever.
    ‘The stairs have been out here as long as the parks have existed. We have records going back decades describing them. Sometimes people go up them, and nothing happens. Other times… Look, I really don’t like talking about this, but sometimes, really bad shit happens. I saw one guy get his hand sliced clean off when he got to the top step. He reached out to touch a tree branch, and it happened so fast. One second his hand was there, and the next it was gone. Completely clean wound. We didn’t find his hand, and the guy almost died. Another time, a woman touched one of the stairs, and a blood vessel in her brain exploded. Literally exploded, like a water balloon. She sort of stumbled down and came over to me, and all she got out was ‘I think something is wrong with me.’ She dropped like a sack of flour, dead before she hit the ground. I’ll never forget the way the blood leaked into the inside of her eye. Before she died, I watched it turn red. I watched it happen and there wasn’t a single thing I could do to help.
    ‘We warn people not to go anywhere near them but there’s always at least one idiot who does. And even if nothing happens to them, something bad always happens. Kids go missing as we’re on their trail. Someone dies the next day, cut in half in a completely safe part of the park. I don’t know why, but something bad always happens. I don’t know exactly why they’re out here, but it doesn’t matter. They’re here, and if we were smart, we’d tell our new officers exactly what they’re capable of.’
    We were both quiet for a little while. I was afraid to talk because I wasn’t sure if he was done. He looked like he wanted to say something else. Finally he spoke up again.
    ‘Have you ever noticed how you can’t find the same ones twice?’
    I nodded, expecting him to continue. But he just stayed quiet, walking alongside me, and eventually he started a story about the biggest deer he’d ever seen in the park. I didn’t bring up the subject again, and I didn’t press him for any more stories. He dropped out of the op the next day. Apparently he left before the sun came up; he said he was sick. None of us have heard from him since he left.

I’m going to stop here for the time being. I’ll try and post the next part in the coming days, but what with it being the end of summer, things are pretty busy here. Thanks for the continued interest, guys, you’ve really awakened this curiosity in me that I didn’t know I had!

EDIT: Part Five is up: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3kd90k/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

中文译文

嘿,各位!我训练任务回来了,有一大堆很有意思的故事要讲给你们听。我攒了不少,打算分成两部分,这是第一部分。我很想一次全写完,但实在还没机会把它们全记下来。
训练的时候我倒没碰上太疯狂的事,不过有个新人的小插曲我觉得值得一说。既然各位应该等这些故事等很久了,我就直接开讲。每批故事,我都归到讲给我的那个人名下。

K.D.:
K.D. 是个老手,当搜救官(SAR)大约十五年了。她专攻高海拔山岳救援,被公认为这一行里最好的之一。她讲故事特别起劲,训练时我们常泡在一起,所以最后她跟我讲了四个让我印象特别深的故事。

  • 第一个,是我问她最惨的几次出勤时她讲的。她摇摇头,说山里真正糟糕的求助其实更频繁,因为发生恶性事故的可能性更高。
    大约五年前,她工作过的一个公园发生了一连串失踪事件。她说那是个坏年头,就天气而言是有记录以来最糟的之一。差不多每隔两三天就落一英尺新雪,还有几场雪崩要了登山者的命。他们反复提醒人们待在图上标出的区域,但当然,总有人不听。
    有一桩特别惨的,一整家人就这么没了,因为做父亲的自以为比管理人员懂得多,把他们带去了一片不安全的地方。他们在雪地穿雪鞋健走,K.D. 尽量还原,估计是走到了一块看起来坚实、其实并不结实的雪檐上。雪檐塌了,这一家人几乎连滚带爬地掉下三百英尺的坡,摔在底部的岩石上,父母当场死亡。其中一个孩子也是,但另外两个活了下来。一个断了腿、肋骨骨折,另一个几乎毫发无伤,只是有些淤青和一只扭伤的脚踝。那个没受伤的孩子抛下兄弟姐妹,动身去求救。
    K.D. 说那个孩子连半英里都没走到,就被一场暴风雪追上了。孩子停下来想暖和一下,或者只是想歇歇脚,结果冻死了。他们最终是在几个目击者的帮助下找到这一家人的——目击者看见他们往荒原里走了——而找到那个出门找救兵、却冻死的孩子的人,是她。她说那时开始下雪了,刚够遮住远距离视线,但还不至于让搜索无法进行。她看见前方雪地里坐着一个人影,尽可能快地赶过去。她详细描述了靠近时的过程:她先意识到那是个孩子,然后意识到他已经死了,再然后,是孩子冻僵的姿势——是她见过的尸体里最令人心酸的姿势之一。
    那个孩子直挺挺地坐着,膝盖蜷在胸口,双臂环抱着,头埋进外套里。她把外套拨开去看他的脸,才发现他是哭着死的。他的脸扭曲着,眼泪冻在脸颊上。她说,这孩子死于失温那一刻是吓得要命的,这点一目了然,让人看着难受;作为母亲,这让她心碎。她反复跟我说,希望那个做父亲的此刻正在地狱里烧着。

  • 她讲给我的另一桩惨事,印象也特别深,是她还是新人的时候的事。她的队伍接到报告,说一个有经验的登山者前一天没回家。他妻子坚信出事了,因为他从没误过回家的点。他们出发去找他,还得爬几段听起来技术难度很高的山头。他们到了一片相对平坦的地方,K.D. 开始在雪里看到血迹。她顺着血迹走,一边走,一边开始看到一点点组织碎块。她当时不确定那究竟出自哪个器官,但越往下跟,碎块越多。她顺着这条血与组织的痕迹,一路跟到崖壁下一处避风的地方,找到了那个登山者。她说血太多了,多到她这辈子从没见过。他趴在地上,一只手臂伸在身前,像是爬着死的。她凑近看,发现他被部分开膛破肚——她之前看到的那组织,就是这么来的。这人腰侧的枪套里插着一把冰镐,上面全是血。当然,他们永远无法确定到底发生了什么,但她说,据她所能还原的,经过是这样的:
    那人本来想爬到下一片区域,正用他的冰镐往上攀。他大概是踩到了一块松动的岩石,摔了下来。往下掉的时候,或者也可能是在落地的时候,他被冰镐刺穿,开了膛。他一路拖着身子爬,把自己一点点从体内撕扯出来,最后死在崖壁下。她对血腥场面倒不是很在意,但据我所知,来帮她运走尸体的几个人,把尸体翻过来、看到一大截肠子涌出来的时候,吐了。

  • 我跟她提起,想听听她有没有碰到过人就那么整个消失的经历。她眼睛一亮,朝我凑近。
    「想听个真正的猛料吗?」她问。
    她说,她刚入行那会儿,有个案子媒体炒得很凶。一家人到森林里一片离公园入口很近的地方采浆果。他们有两个小男孩,都不到五岁,那天某个时候,其中一个不见了。一次规模巨大的搜索,结果什么都不见。这又是那种「这孩子好像从一开始就不存在」的案子。狗只是蹲下,什么都没嗅到,孩子一点踪迹都找不到。搜索持续了约两个月,最后不得不放弃。
    时间快进到六个月后。一家人回来,给那孩子设的纪念碑献花。他们带上了另一个儿子。献花的时候,他们大约有三秒钟没看住那孩子,就在那么点时间里,他凭空消失了。当然,父母崩溃到极点。失去一个孩子已经够惨,失去两个,完全无法想象。这次搜索规模巨大,是州史上最大的之一。大约三百名志愿者把公园翻了个底朝天。但还是没有踪迹。搜索持续了大约一周,人们找到了离孩子失踪处好几英里外的地方。
    然后,快两周之后,一名离指定搜索区几乎十五英里的志愿者用对讲机报告,他找到那孩子了。大家都以为孩子死了,可那名志愿者说他不但活着,还状态不错。K.D. 和她的队伍出发去接孩子,到了那儿,她不敢相信这就是那个失踪的孩子。他衣服干净,身上一处灰都没有,而且看不出一丝受过创伤的样子。志愿者说他发现那孩子坐在一根原木上,玩着一小捆用旧绳扎起来的树枝。K.D. 问他去了哪儿,这两周和谁待在一起,孩子告诉她,他一直和「模糊人」待在一起。K.D. 坚信大脚怪,所以一下子兴奋起来,问他「模糊」是什么意思——他浑身是毛吗?可孩子说不是,他不长毛。他是个「模糊人」,他描述的是一个轮廓模糊的人,「就像你把眼睛闭上,但又没完全闭上的那种」。他说那人从树丛里走出来,带着他钻进了林子深处。孩子说,他睡在一棵空心树里,模糊人给他浆果吃。K.D. 问那人凶不凶,有没有吓到他,孩子说:「不,他不可怕。可我不喜欢他没有眼睛。」
    K.D. 说他们把孩子带回总部,一名警察把他带去镇上,进一步了解发生了什么。她和盘问孩子的那个警察是朋友,她说,孩子描述说被模糊人关在那棵树里,饿了就给浆果吃。他被允许在一片特定的空地上走动,但只要他想走远,模糊人就会「发火,吼得很大声,尽管他根本没有嘴」。孩子夜里害怕的时候,模糊人就把「光线弄亮」,还给他那捆树枝。他说模糊人本来要把他留下,但不得不放他走,因为孩子不是「对的那一种」。他说不清,或者不愿再细说这一点。警察们只能挠头。他哥哥的搜索重新启动,却一无所获。孩子完全不知道哥哥可能在哪,他们始终没找到哥哥。

  • K.D. 讲的最后一个故事,是她当新人时和训练小组走散的遭遇。他们在一座地图标注得很清楚的一侧山体,学习高海拔保护(攀岩)的基础,她要去方便一下。用餐休息时,她离开小组大约五十码,解决了内急。下面我完完整整按她讲的复述——
    「于是我去撒尿,解决完了,就开始往队伍那儿走。可我大概只走出五英尺,就意识到我完全不知道自己身在何处。这不是那种『哦,我迷路了』的迷路。我是说,我真的他妈一点概念都没有。你要是问我,我觉得我连当时在哪个州都说不出来。那种感觉,大概就是我设想中失忆者会有的感受吧,你知道吗?你彻底迷失,完全不知道该干什么。所以我在原地站了一会儿,就想弄明白我他妈在哪、我该干什么。可我站得越久,脑子越乱,越找不着北,于是我干脆开始走。我记得,我就是随便挑了个方向,一头扎出去。走着走着,情况越来越糟,糟到我已经没有概念自己当初为什么要上山。我就在雪里一步步挪,然后我开始听见一个声音。那种声音几乎像是从我脑子里面冒出来的,就像青蛙如果能说话,又低又沙哑。它一遍又一遍对我说:『没事的,没事的,你只需要找点东西吃。找到吃的你就会好起来,继续走,找点吃的。吃。吃。』于是我开始四处找任何能吃的东西,我向上帝发誓,我这辈子从没那么饿过。那种饥饿是无底的,我觉得那时候你放任何东西在我面前,我都吃得下去。我已经没有时间概念了。当我听见一个真实的声音朝我靠近时,我完全不知道自己在外面待了多久。我朝声音走去,看见了另一个搜救官,他看起来吓坏了。他朝我跑过来,问我还好吗,我他妈在这儿干什么。
    可怕的地方在于,他朝我跑过来的时候,我隐约看见自己正伸手去摸腰带里的猎刀。我甚至没有真正在想要做什么,但我脑子里想的,是我必须吃东西。如果不吃,我永远不会再好了,所以我就是得吃。他看见我那个动作,立刻往后退开。他冲我喊,让我把刀收起来,说他不打算伤害我。这一下把我给叫醒了。突然间,我清楚地知道自己在哪里了,我把刀收起来,朝他跑过去,问他我离开多久了,心想他会告诉我,我大概走丢了半小时。可他告诉我,我已经失踪了整整两天。我翻过了两座山头,几乎绕到山的那一边,要是再走下去,我就会一头栽进大约三百英里长的荒原,他们永远不会找到我。他简直不敢相信我没死,而我当然也不知道该怎么想。对我来说,时间一分钟都没有流逝。我什么也没说,跟他一起回到会合点,他们把我送回总部,再空运去医院。到了那儿,他们做了各种检查,想弄清发生了什么。他们能猜的最好答案是,我陷入了某种奇怪的『神游状态』,有点像失忆,或者一次怪异的癫痫发作把大脑搅乱了。但真相是,我们真的不知道。这事再没发生过,但我会告诉你,从那天起我再也不单独进那片林子了。每次我要离开队伍,他们都挤兑我,非要让我陪着,我就告诉他们,听我在雪里撒尿,总好过把我丢在一座冰冷的山上整整两天。」

E.W.:
我聊的下一个人是 E.W.,他以前是训练员,现在当急救员(EMT)。他还是会来这样的行动帮忙,但已经不当全职了。他专精于寻找走失的孩子——他似乎有种第六感,能知道他们去了哪儿。他在资深老人当中是传奇,但你要夸他,他会不好意思。有天晚饭,他跟我坐一起,最后我们互相讲起了故事。大多数都只是闲聊,但当我们聊到那些更怪异的求助时,我提到我有个哥们爬过一段楼梯。他一下子安静下来,问我有没有听说过一桩几年前从他公园里失踪的小男孩的事。我说没有,他就给我讲了下面这个。

  • 他们当时在找一个十一岁的男孩乔伊,他是在一条河附近失踪的。当然,第一反应是他掉进河里淹死了。可当他们把狗带出来,狗却领着搜救官远离河流,一路走进一片非常茂密的林区。我们搜人的时候,是按网格来搜的,网格的每个「格子」我们都会搜得难以置信地彻底。E.W. 的队伍很快注意到,一个非常奇怪的规律正在浮现。狗在交替的格子里能嗅到乔伊的气味,可一旦与另一个格子交叠,气味就断了。你想象一下棋盘——乔伊的气味是在随机的黑格里被捕捉到,却从不在红格里出现。这当然说不通,因为一个孩子怎么可能从一个区域跳到另一个区域,却没在他经过的每一处留下气味?E.W. 和他的搭档走进网格的一个新格子,E.W. 注意到大约五十码外有一段楼梯。他告诉搭档,他们得过去看看,但搭档断然拒绝。他告诉 E.W.,他给自己立了条规矩,绝不去碰他看到的任何楼梯;就算这是例行公事,他也不想去假装那很正常。他对 E.W. 说,他在视线范围内等着,E.W. 自己去看。E.W. 说他当时有点恼火,但也体谅那家伙,就没再逼他。
    「我走过去看那些楼梯。它们很小,有点像通往地下室的楼梯。我对它们——我是说那些楼梯——没有什么特别强烈的感觉,所以也没害怕什么的。我想我跟别人一样,只是宁愿不去多想。
    「总之,我走了过去,一眼就能看见最下面那级台阶上躺着什么东西,蜷成一团。我的心一下子沉了下去——因为你总会往好处想。我们本来很确信能找到活着的孩子,因为他才失踪了几个小时。可我一瞬间就知道那就是他,而且他已经死了。他蜷成一团小球,缩在台阶上,捂着自己的肚子。他死的时候似乎正承受着剧痛,但我没看到任何血迹,除了嘴唇和下巴上有一点。我用对讲机报告找到了他,我们把他的尸体运回了指挥部。那一家人真可怜,彻底崩溃了。父母怎么也想不通他怎么会死,因为他明明只离开了那么短时间。而且我们还没找到任何明显的死因,这让事情更糟。我猜他大概是吃了什么有毒的东西,毕竟我发现他的时候他捂着肚子,但我不想乱猜。听到自己孩子死了已经够难接受了,更别说让一个蠢搜救员去瞎猜发生了什么。他们把他带走了,我回了家,尽量不去想这件事。我恨发现死掉的孩子,兄弟。我热爱这份工作,但这也是我离开的原因之一。我有两个女儿,一想到她们要是那样失去,我就……」
    说到这里他有点哽咽。我对这种情绪化的场面很不在行,看一个成年男人哭总是有点尴尬,所以我真不知道该怎么办。不过他最终还是缓了过来,继续往下说。
    「我们不是总能从验尸官那里拿到死因。那毕竟不是我们要管的事,我想,而且有时候他们要是觉得涉及谋杀,就会因为那些法律上的破事不告诉我们。不过我有个朋友在县警署工作,我问他的时候,他通常会把有意思的信息传给我。可这件事上,大概一周之后,倒是我先接到了他的电话。他问我记不记得那个孩子,我当然记得,他说现在有一桩严重离谱的事。他告诉我:『E.W.,老兄,你肯定会觉得我疯了,可验尸官完全不知道这孩子到底怎么了。他从没见过这种事。』我朋友接着说,当验尸官把这个孩子剖开的时候,他简直不敢相信自己看到的东西。那孩子的内脏像瑞士奶酪一样。大约硬币大小的洞,被干净利落地凿穿了这孩子几乎每一个器官——除了心脏和肺。但结肠、胃、肾,甚至一边睾丸,都布满了这种干净的洞。我朋友说,验尸官形容得就好像有人拿了个打孔器,把什么都打上洞,洞实在太整齐了。可这孩子身上一点擦伤都没有,没有入口也没有出口的伤口。在场所有人见过的、最接近这个的,是一个大约一年前擦步枪时被鹿弹打满了半身的家伙。没人有一丁点头绪,到底是什么造成的。我朋友问我有没有听说过类似的事,或者我们以前有没有过相同案子。可我连听都没听说过那种事,我告诉他,我帮不上他忙。据我所知,验尸官最后把死因定为类似『大量内出血』的东西,但没人知道到底发生了什么。
    「我一直忘不了那孩子。我有时候会做噩梦。我不让孩子单独进树林,我们一起的时候,我也从不让她们离开我的视线。我以前很喜欢这里。但那桩案子,加上另外几桩,就这么把它给我毁了。」
    晚饭结束了,我们开始收拾,回各自的小木屋。在我们各走各路之前,他把手搭在我肩上,凑得很近地看着我。他告诉我,这片林子里有坏东西。那些东西不在乎我们有没有家人、有没有命,也不在乎我们能思考、能感受。他让我小心,然后就走开了。我再没能跟他聊上一次,但那个故事深深印在我脑子里。

P.B.:
纯属巧合,我有机会跟另一位老手 P.B. 聊天,他在搜救这行干了好多年。训练演习期间,我们搭档做一次网格扫查,随随便便地聊着我们多喜欢这份工作、我们都见过些什么之类的。有一阵,我们路过一段旧楼梯——考虑到我们所在的位置,这些大概是从一座旧的了望塔上来的。我随口提到,我对这些楼梯很好奇,真希望多懂一些。他一下子安静下来,看起来像是有话想告诉我,又不太确定该不该说。最后,他让我关掉对讲机。显然,这是我们永远、永远不该做的事,但我照做了,他也照做了。

  • 大约七年前,他说,他和一个新人出席过一次求助。他们所在的公园区域,有着大量奇怪的报告和事件——失踪,森林里出现灯光的传闻,奇怪的声响,诸如此类。那个新人被彻底吓住了,翻来覆去地念叨着「林子里有东西」。据 P.B. 说:
    「那家伙根本没完没了地念叨『山羊人』。说来说去,都是『山羊人』这『山羊人』那。最后我跟他说,这片林子里有的是很真实的东西值得怕,他最好把山羊人这回事放下。那个新人想知道我说的是哪类东西,我就叫他闭嘴,走。我们翻上一道小山脊,前面约十码处有一段楼梯。那新人钉在原地,就那么站着盯着它们。我告诉他:『看见没?这才该是你怕的东西。』那新人问我,这些东西他妈怎么会出现在这儿。不知怎么的,我就敞开了,跟他讲了真相——或者说,是我被告知的『真相』。我这么做可能会给我惹来大麻烦,我把这些话重复给你听,也可能惹大麻烦。但你这孩子不错,我想让你别再查下去了。趁还来得及,收手吧。所以我把我知道的告诉你,条件是,你对上级一个字都不能提。」
    我说我一个字也不会提,他又确认了一遍我俩的对讲机都关着。
    「我刚入行那会儿,我们对它们,还有林子里其他那些事,没那么守口如瓶。我们在雇人之前就事先提醒,说有古怪的事发生。我猜美国林务局是受够了那么高的离职率,想让人知道自己将会面对什么。所以他们开始让人签这些协议,承诺不会把将要看到的事捅给媒体。林务局不想把人吓跑,所以他们最不需要的,就是被吓破胆的新人跑去媒体那儿,讲什么鬼魂和闹鬼楼梯的故事。但到后来,他们发现这些协议其实没必要。人们不仅不想谈论自己看到的东西,是压根不肯。有几次,孩子或徒步者失踪,媒体想找当事人谈谈,可没有一个人吭声。我说不太清为什么。我猜我们就是……不太愿意承认有什么不对。这就是我们的工作,每天都待在林子里。我们不需要被吓着,而避免被吓着的最好办法,就是假装一切都好。所以,我把能想到的都告诉你,讲完之后,我就永远不再谈这些了。而且我希望你,永远别在我面前再提这事。
    「楼梯在这些公园存在之前就一直在那儿了。我们有可追溯到几十年前的记录,上面描述着它们。有时候有人爬上去,什么也没发生。另一些时候……听好,我真的不喜欢谈这个,但有时候,真的会发生很糟糕的事。我见过一个人,走到最上面一级台阶时,手被干净利落地整个切掉。他伸手想去够一根树枝,一切发生得太快了。上一秒他的手还在,下一秒就没了。伤口非常齐整。我们没找到他的手,那人差点死掉。还有一次,一个女人碰了其中一级台阶,她脑子里的一根血管爆了。真的是爆了,像水气球一样。她有点踉跄地走下来,走到我面前,只挤出了一句:『我觉得我有点不对劲。』她像一袋面粉一样倒下,还没落地就死了。我永远忘不了血渗进她眼睛里面的样子。她死之前,我眼睁睁看着它变红。我看着这一切发生,而我完全没有办法帮她。
    「我们警告人们不要走近它们,可总至少有一个蠢货会去。而且就算他们自身没出事,也总会有什么坏事发生。有孩子在我们循着踪迹追的时候失踪。第二天就有人死,还是在公园里一个完全安全的地方被拦腰斩断。我不知道为什么,但坏事总会发生。我也不清楚它们为什么会在这儿,但这不重要。它们就在这儿,而如果我们够聪明,就该把它们的本事原原本本告诉我们新来的警官。」
    我们俩沉默了一会儿。我不敢开口,因为我不确定他说完了没有。他看起来像是还想说点什么。最后他又开口了。
    「你有没有发现,你永远找不到同一批楼梯两次?」
    我点点头,等着他往下说。但他只是沉默着,在我身边走,最后他讲起一个故事,是关于他在公园见过的最大的鹿。我没再提起那个话题,也没再追问他要故事。第二天他就退出了行动。他似乎是在太阳出来之前就离开了;他说他病了。自从他走后,我们没一个人再收到过他的消息。

我暂时就在这儿停下。接下来几天我会试着发下一部分,但眼下正值夏末,这儿挺忙的。谢谢各位一直以来的关注,是你们唤醒了我自己都没发现的那种好奇!

**EDIT:**Part 5 已更新:https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3kd90k/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

译注

  • 结构上,本部分是「他人讲述」的合集。 与前几部由叙述者亲历不同,Part 4 是叙述者把训练营里听来的故事分派给讲述者:K.D.(高海拔救援好手,讲了四则)、E.W.(前训练员、现急救员,专精走失儿童,讲了一则)、P.B.(军中老手,讲了一则)。所有故事最终都落到「森林里的楼梯」这个核心意象上。
  • E.W. 的故事第一次正面写出「楼梯会伤人」。 乔伊的案子是新细节:十一岁男孩失踪,狗在棋盘式交替格子里断续嗅到气味,最后人在楼梯最下级台阶上被发现,器官像被「打孔器」凿出硬币大小的干净洞——死因定为「大量内出血」,却无内外伤。这与系列里「点手即断、碰之即死」的楼梯危险描述互为印证。
  • P.B. 那段是「楼梯来历」与「封口机制」的集中说明。 他强调楼梯「在公园存在之前就有了」、林务局曾让新人签保密协议、以及「好事不出,坏事必来」:上了楼梯的人一个手被切掉,一个脑中血管爆裂;而他遵守的规矩是「绝不能走近任何楼梯」。他问的那句「你有没有发现,你永远找不到同一批楼梯两次」是揭示楼梯「漂移、无法复现」属性的关键一句。有意思的是,他在讲完真话的第二天就退出行动、从此失联。
  • 与系列的衔接。 叙述者仍在延续「楼梯是日常却严禁靠近」的主线;K.D. 的「模糊人」与 Part 1 的「熊人」「无脸男」同属一类超自然存在,只是这一次「模糊人」会说话、没有眼睛也没有嘴,并把孩子「放回」——理由是孩子「不是对的那一种」。Part 4 文末 EDIT 指向 Part 5,全系列至此仍停留在「叙述者好奇、同伴缄默」的状态。

Part 5 · 2015-09-10 发帖 · 得分 5652

英文原版

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iex1h/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3ijnt6/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3iocju/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

Part 4: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3jadum/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

I apologize for the short update, guys. Things have gotten a little crazy around here, and I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to update going forward. I really appreciate all the support you guys have given me, and while I only have a couple of stories to share with you, I’ll be interested to see what you all think!

  • A firefighter who was helping us at the training op told me about a call he’d gone on, supposedly to help rescue a kid from an absolutely massive tree. He said they didn’t give him details, just that they needed him to come out and help because they lacked the proper equipment. He’d been called out specifically because this thing was so huge that the SARs didn’t feel safe trying to climb it. He’d been a tree-trimmer before joining the VFD, so it was easy enough for him to grab his old equipment and come help out.
    He was led out about two miles, and the team stopped at one of the biggest trees in the area and pointed up. He laughed and asked the op captain how the kid had gotten up there, made some joke about the old ‘cat in a tree’ thing, but the captain just shook his head and told him to get up there and get the kid down. He said he knew something was up, but he didn’t push it. He said that as he climbed this tree, he started wondering if they were playing a prank on him.
    ‘There was no way this kid should have been able to climb this fuckin’ thing. It was massive at the base, but about halfway up it started tapering, and I almost had to turn back a few times because I really didn’t think it was gonna hold me.’ But he said he kept going, and when he was just about at the top, he saw a flash of blue in the branches.
    ‘I saw the kid’s shirt sort of caught in a branch, and I called out to him and told him to come near me if he could, but he didn’t say anything. I kept moving, calling the kid’s name and telling him not to be scared, that I was there to help him. By the time I got to him, I knew he wasn’t gonna answer me. I found him, or what was left of him, cradled in the fork of a branch, and the fact that he was up there was sheer luck. If he’d fallen any other way, he’d have come crashing down. It wouldn’t have mattered though, because this kid was dead long before he ended up in that tree. I don’t know who put him there, or how, or why, but it was fucking sick. Kid’s intestines had popped out of his mouth, and were hanging in the branches. It was like some sick fucking Christmas tree, the way they were draped all over everything. I got a better look and saw they’d even popped out of his ass; his guts were hanging out the bottom of his pants. His eyes were gone, I assume shoved out from whatever force caused him to fucking pop like a stress ball. You ever seen a body that’s been floating in water for a long time, how their tongues kind of swell up and stick out? His was like that. I remember because there were flies crawling all over it. I think I must have gone into shock, because… man I just pushed that kid down with a stick I broke off a branch. Just kind of poked him until he fell. I don’t know why I did that… I almost lost my job because of that. But man the thought of hauling that kid down over my shoulder the whole way, gathering his guts up and coiling them around me like rope so they wouldn’t get snagged… I couldn’t do it. I’ve seen a lot of dead kids. More than I’d ever admit. I’ve seen a kid who hid in a full bathtub during a house fire; boiled him alive, turned him into literal soup. But this… I don’t know what did this, but the thought of touching that kid’s body made me feel like I was gonna lose my mind. I heard him hit the ground and I figured everyone would freak out, but they knew he was dead when they sent me up there. They didn’t say anything, but they didn’t shout or freak out or anything. I got to the bottom and I started to get up in the captain’s face, asking him who he thought he was sending me up there when they knew damn well the kid was dead. But he just told me it was none of my concern, and thanked me for getting the evidence down. I remember he said that, I remember it specifically because it was so weird to hear it phrased that way. ‘The evidence’. Like he wasn’t even a person. Like he’d never been a little kid who got lost and had something fucking unspeakable happen to him. The captain had a crew lead me back out of the woods, but he and two others stayed behind, and I thought that was weird. Why wouldn’t they have me help get the kid out? I tried asking but the guys leading me out just told me they couldn’t discuss an open case.’
    I asked him what he thought had happened to the kid, and he got really pensive and thought about it for a bit.
    ‘I would have said a crush injury, based on how his guts came out like that, but with those injuries you see massive contusions under the skin, obvious trauma. This wasn’t like that. It was almost like that kid got caught in a big vacuum and had his guts sucked out. But even then, there was no trauma. None at all. It bothers me, man. It bothers the hell out of me.’

  • One of the vets at the training op reads NoSleep, and he recognized my stories. He knows me pretty well, and we’ve swapped stories before. He asked if he could share something he’s noticed about the stairs, and some thoughts he had.
    ‘I’m really glad you decided to share these. I think it’s important that people be aware of what’s out there, especially since the Forest Service is doing such a good job at covering it all up.’
    I asked him what he meant.
    ‘What do you mean, what do I mean? The lack of any kind of media attention? No coverage of missing kids, or bodies found miles from where they got lost in the first place? David Paulides hit this right on the head, the FS is doing everything they can to keep people coming here, even if it isn’t safe. I mean, to be fair, it’s not like these things happen every day. But the numbers add up, and it’s worth looking into. Especially the stairs. I was surprised you didn’t mention the flipped ones.’
    I didn’t know what he was talking about, I couldn’t remember him ever talking about something like that. He seemed somewhat incredulous.
    ‘Dude, I can’t believe you’ve been on this long without seeing them. No one told you about them?’
    I shrugged and asked him to elaborate.
    ‘Well there’s the normal stairs, the ones that pop up when we’re out a ways. I know you know about them. But sometimes I’ve run across ones that are flipped upside down. I guess it would be like if you had a doll house, and the stairs were a separate piece. Now take that, flip it upside down so the top step is stuck in the dirt, and put it out in the woods. They’re like that. I don’t see them as often but they’re odd, to say the least. Makes me think of footage taken after a tornado, when houses are all blown apart and random things are left standing, like chimneys and garden walls. Those ones freak me out more that the normal ones because I can’t really write those off as easily.’
    I don’t scare very easily, like most of us who work out here, but that idea stuck with me, and it bothers me. I’m going to try and find more out about them.
    He also mentioned how many people were bothered by the guy with no face. He got really excited and told me he’d seen something similar.
    ‘I was out on a training exercise a few years ago. I was camped out in my tent and I heard someone walking around outside of camp. We’re told not to wander far, which you know, so I wondered if maybe it was a rookie who’d gotten up to pee and couldn’t find his way back. Remember that guy in our group a few years back who almost fell of the damn mountain? Well I’m paranoid about that happening again, so I got up to see what was going on. I went to the edge of camp and I called to whoever it was and told them that camp was this way. But they kept going back out into the woods, so I went after them. I know it was stupid but I was half-asleep and I just really didn’t want to deal with some idiot getting hurt. I followed this thing on a dead-straight course for about a mile, and then it stopped on the edge of a little river. I could see the outline of it because the water was reflecting the moon, and it looked just like an ordinary guy. He had a pack on, and it looked like he was facing me. I asked if he was okay, if he needed help, and he cocked his head like he didn’t understand me. I always have my pocket knife on me, and it’s got a little thumblight attached to it, so I turned that on and lit up his chest, so I wouldn’t blind him. He was breathing slow and deep, so I wondered if he was sleepwalking. I went closer and asked him again if he was okay. I moved the light up, and something didn’t seem right, so I stopped. He kept breathing in this real slow, deep breaths, and I sort of figured out gradually that that’s what was bothering me. It was like he was pretending to breathe, but not actually doing it. His breaths were too even and deep, and all his movements were exaggerated, like his shoulders going up and his chest moving. I told him to identify himself, and he made this muffled noise. I moved the light up and I shit you not, this guy had no face. Just smooth skin. I freaked out, and I sort of fumbled my light, but I saw him move toward me but he didn’t actually move. I don’t know how to explain it, but one second he was at the edge of the river and the next he was five feet from me. I never looked away or blinked, it was like he moved so fast my brain couldn’t keep up. I tripped and fell on my ass and I could see this line open up on his throat. It stretched up to his ears, and his head tilted back and he smiled at me with his throat. There wasn’t any blood, just this gaping dark hole, and I swear he smiled at me with this gash in his throat. I got up and I ran as fast as I could back to camp. I couldn’t hear him following me, but I felt like he was always right behind me, even though when I looked back I couldn’t see him.
    I calmed down when I got back to camp; the fire was still going and I guess that pack mentality of being with other people made me stop and breathe a little. I waited by the fire to see if he’d follow me there, but I didn’t hear anything else for a few hours, so I went back to bed. I know it sounds weird, but the whole thing was just so surreal that it was almost like I immediately wrote it off as my imagination.’

  • We were telling ghost stories one night before bed just to scare each other and poke fun at whoever got creeped out. Most of the time it’s the rookies, but one woman told a story that actually managed to get under my skin a little bit, and I know the same was true for others. She said it was true, but then again, every ghost story told around a campfire is true. Somehow, though, I don’t think she was making it up. It had that ring of truth that only really traumatizing events have.
    She said that when she was a kid, she and her friend used to go out in the woods behind her house a lot. She lived in northern Maine, where there’s a lot of dense, unpopulated national forest. She said the woods up there aren’t like they are here. They’re so thick in places that the trees block out the sun almost completely. She and her friend grew up there, so they weren’t scared of being out there alone, but they did always maintain a sense of caution in certain areas. She said it was never really talked about, but they always knew not to go more than a mile or two beyond their homes. The adults never said why, but it was an unspoken rule that no one ventured out that far. She and her friend made up stories about bears as big as houses that lived out there, and they used to scare each other by hiding and making growling noises while the other searched for them.
    She said one summer, there was a series of awful storms that blew down a lot of trees, and set one part of the forest a few miles behind her house on fire. Fire crews got it under control, but she said some of them came back ‘not quite the same.’
    ‘It was like they’d been to war. You could tell who’d really gotten scared because they had the same look on their faces, I think it’s called shell-shock. My friend and I said they were like walking dead people. They didn’t smile or say anything if you went up to them, and most of them left town as soon as everything was over. I asked my parents about it, but they said they didn’t know what I was talking about. Once everyone was told the woods were safe again, my friend and I decided to try and hike out to where the fire had been. We didn’t tell out parents where we were going, and it was pretty exciting to think that we were disobeying them like that.
    We hiked out about two miles or so, and we started seeing burnt trees and stuff. I remember my friend got really upset because we found the skeleton of a deer curled up under a tree, and I practically had to drag her away. She wanted to bury it, but I didn’t want her touching it because its antlers were weird. I can’t remember why, I just remember thinking that there was something wrong with them and I didn’t want either of us going near it.
    The farther we went, the more burnt everything got. Eventually, there were no standing trees, and it was like being on another planet. Almost nothing green, just brown and black everywhere. We were standing there looking at it all, and we both heard someone shouting in the distance. I panicked because I thought it was my dad, and that he was going to tell me I was grounded. My friend broke off and went to hide behind a big rock, because she said she didn’t want to be caught out here. Her parents had forbidden her to come out in the woods at all, and she’d lied and told them we were going to a movie. I followed her, and we kept listening. I could hear this voice getting closer, and I realized they were calling for help. I thought maybe it was some hiker who’d gotten lost and needed directions back to town. That used to happen all the time, so I was used to helping people out. I heard him following my voice, so I kept calling out until I saw him running in the distance. He got closer and I could see that his face was all red. I told my friend to give me her pack, because she had a first aid kit. She made this noise like she was grossed out, and she asked if I saw his face. I told her to shut up, and I jogged up to meet him. I stopped about halfway and when he stopped in front of me I could see that his nose and lips and part of his forehead were all gone. It was like they’d been sliced clean off. He was bleeding bad, and I saw that the knees of his pants were red too. I took a step back but I was too scared to move much, and he grabbed my shoulders. It felt like I got a shock, and he jerked back. He started babbling, and I couldn’t tell what he was saying, except that he kept asking how long he’d been gone. He asked me where ‘his unit’ was, but I just shook my head. He looked me over and he saw my Walkman and he screamed. He just kept babbling and touching his face, and I realized he wasn’t wearing the right clothing. He had some kind of weird grey cloth jacket and almost formal pants on, and the jacket had these weird buttons and red borders on it. I kept shaking my head and I told him I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I went to open the first aid kit but he just screamed again and said the only thing I could really understand:
    ‘Don’t touch me! You’ll make me go back there!’
    After that, he ran off, and I could hear him screaming the whole time. When I couldn’t hear him anymore, I turned around, and my friend was crying. I just turned around and started walking back toward town. She asked me over and over what had happened and who that was, but I didn’t say anything. When we got home, I told her I didn’t want to play in the woods with her anymore.
    We’re still friends, but we don’t talk about that guy. Not ever.’

I’ll update as soon as I’m able, guys. I appreciate the continued support!

EDIT: Part 6 is up: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3ppq81/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

中文译文

先说一句:抱歉这次更得这么短,各位。这边最近有点乱了套,往后多久能更一次,我也说不准。真的很感谢大家一直以来的支持。我这边只剩几个故事能讲给你们听,我很想知道你们听完会怎么看!

  • 一位在训练行动中帮我们干活的消防员,跟我讲起他出过的一趟警:据说是去把一个孩子从一棵大得惊人的树上救下来。他说上面没给细节,只说需要他出山帮把手,因为他们缺合适的装备。之所以专门点名找他,是因为那东西实在太大,搜救队都觉得爬上去不安全。他入消防志愿队(VFD)之前是个修剪树木的,所以收拾起旧装备回来帮忙,对他来说是轻而易举的事。
    他被领着往里走了大约两英里,队伍在一棵当地数一数二的大树前停下,朝上指了指。他笑了,问行动队长这孩子是怎么爬上去的,还拿那句老话「树上的猫」开了个玩笑,可队长只是摇摇头,让他爬上去把孩子带下来。他说他当时就觉得有点不对劲,但也没追问。他说,爬到一半的时候,他开始怀疑这帮人是不是在作弄他。
    「这孩子绝不可能爬得上这鬼东西。它底下粗得吓人,可爬到一半就开始收窄,有好几次我几乎就要折返,因为我真觉得它撑不住我。」可他还是继续往上爬。就快到顶的时候,他在枝叶间瞥见一抹蓝色。
    「我瞧见那孩子的衬衫被一根树枝钩住似的卡在半空,我朝他喊,叫他要是能动就尽量靠近我,可他一句话也不说。我继续往上,喊着他的名字,跟他说别怕,我是来帮他的。等我凑到他跟前,我已经明白,他不会回答我了。我找到了他——或者说,他残存的东西——蜷在一根树枝的分叉里。他能待在上面,纯属运气。他要是以别的姿势摔下去,早就砸到底上了。不过那也无所谓了,因为这孩子早在被放进那棵树之前,就已经死了。我不知道是谁把他放上去的,怎么放的,为什么这么干——但这事他妈病态透了。孩子的肠子从他嘴里爆了出来,挂在树枝上。那模样就像一棵病态的圣诞树,它们被搭得到处都是。我仔细一看,发现它们甚至还从他肛门里爆了出来;他的内脏顺着裤腿下缘垂在外面。他的眼睛不见了,我猜是被某种力量硬挤出来的,那力量让他像被捏爆的弹力球似的「噗」地爆开。你见过在水里泡很久的尸体吗——舌头怎么肿起来、伸在外面?他就是那个样子。我记得清清楚楚,因为上面爬满了苍蝇。我想我当时多半是吓懵了,因为……天哪,我竟只是捡了根从树枝上断下来的棍子,把那孩子往下捅。就那么戳他,直到他掉下去。我不知道自己为什么那样做……我差点因此丢了工作。可只要一想到得把他扛在肩上整路背下去,还得把他那些肠子收拢起来、像绳子一样绕在身上,免得勾到什么……我做不到。我见过很多死了的孩子。比我愿意承认的要多得多。我见过一个在火灾里躲进满满一缸浴缸的孩子——把他活活煮熟,煮成一锅如假包换的汤。可这次……我不知道是什么干的,但只要一想到要碰那孩子的尸体,我就觉得自己快要疯了。我听见他砸在地上,我本以为大家都会吓坏,可其实派我上去之前,他们就知道他已经死了。他们什么也没说,没有大喊大叫,也没有惊慌失措。我下到地面,开始冲着队长的脸质问,问他明明知道这孩子死了,还派我上去,他到底把自己当成什么人。可他只是告诉我这不归我管,然后谢谢我把证据取了下来。我记得他说的那句,我记得特别清楚,因为那说法实在太怪了——「证据」。好像他甚至谈不上是个人。好像他从来不是那个走丢了、然后有什么他妈不可名状的事落到他头上的小孩。队长派了一队人把我领出林子,可他自己和另外两个人留了下来,我觉得这很怪。他们为什么不让我一起把那孩子弄出来?我试着问,可带我出去的那几个人只告诉我,他们不能讨论一桩未结的案子。」
    我问他,觉得那孩子到底出了什么事。他变得很沉思,想了一会儿。
    「单看肠子那样迸出来,我会说这是挤压伤。可那种伤,皮下会有大片挫伤,有明显的外伤。这一次不是那样。那孩子几乎像是被一台大号吸尘器逮住,把内脏吸了出去。可即便如此,也一点创伤都没有。一处都没有。这让我很不安,哥们儿。简直不安死了。」

  • 训练行动里有一位老兵也看 NoSleep,他认出了我的故事。他跟我挺熟,我们以前交换过故事。他问我能不能讲讲他注意到的关于楼梯的一些事,还有他的一些想法。
    「我真高兴你决定把这些讲出来。我觉得让大伙儿知道那里头有些什么,很重要——尤其是林务局(Forest Service)把这一切掩埋得这么好的时候。」
    我问他这话是什么意思。
    「你问我什么意思?我什么意思?媒体上一点动静都没有?失踪的孩子没报道,那些在最初失踪地点好几英里外被发现的尸体也没人报道?大卫·保利德斯这话可点中了要害,林务局在尽一切力气让人们往这儿来,哪怕这儿并不安全。我是说,说句公道话,这种事也不是天天都有。但数字摆在那儿,值得查一查。尤其是那些楼梯。我真惊讶你没提过那些倒过来的。」
    我不知道他在说什么,我不记得他以前跟我提过类似的事。他看起来有几分难以置信。
    「哥们儿,我真不敢相信你干这么久都没见过它们。没人跟你说过?」
    我耸耸肩,让他展开讲讲。
    「嗯,有普通的那种楼梯,就是我们走远时突然冒出来的那种。我知道你知道它们。可有阵子我撞见过倒过来放的。大概就像这样:你要是有间娃娃屋,楼梯是个单独的小部件。现在把它拿起来,底朝天翻过来,让最上面那级台阶插进泥里,然后摆到林子深处。它们就长那样。我见得没这么频繁,但姑且可以说,它们很怪。让我想起龙卷风过后的影像——房子全被吹散了架,零碎的东西还孤零零立在原处,比如烟囱、院墙。那些倒过来的比我说的普通那种更让我发毛,因为我不太能拿「就当没看见」来糊弄它们。」
    就像我们这些在野外干活的大多数人一样,我不太容易受惊,可那个念头扎在我脑子里了,让我不安。我打算多去查查它们。
    他还提到有多少人被那个没有脸的男人困扰。他一下子兴奋起来,告诉我他见过类似的东西。
    「几年前我出去执行一次训练任务。我在帐篷里睡下,听见有东西绕在营地外面走动。上头交代过不要走远,你知道的,所以我猜是不是哪个新兵起夜去撒尿,找不到回来的路了。还记得几年前我们组里那个差点从该死的山崖上掉下去的家伙吗?我实在怕那种事重演,就爬起来看看到底怎么回事。我走到营地边,朝那边喊,告诉他营地方向在这边。可那人还是往林子深处走,我就跟了上去。我知道这很蠢,可我半梦半醒,就是不想眼睁睁看着哪个笨蛋出事。我沿一条笔直的路线跟了这个东西大约一英里,然后它在一道小河边上停下了。因为水面在映着月光,我能勉强看出它的轮廓,看着就是个普通人。他背着个包,瞧着是面朝我。我问他没事吧,需不需要帮忙,他歪了歪头,像没听懂我在说什么。我随身总带着折叠刀,上面箍着个小拇指灯,我就把它打开,照着他的胸口,免得晃到他的眼睛。他呼吸又慢又深,我心想他是不是在梦游。我走近些,又问了他一遍要不要紧。我把光往上移,可觉得有什么不对劲,就停住了。他还保持着那种很慢、很深的呼吸节奏,我渐渐反应过来,那正是让我发毛的地方。他像是在装呼吸,其实根本没在呼吸。他的呼吸太平匀、太深了,而且他所有动作都特别夸张,像肩膀耸起、胸口起伏那种。我叫他表明身份,他发出一声闷响。我把光往上移,说真的,这家伙没有脸。就是一层光溜溜的皮肤。我吓坏了,手忙脚乱地晃了一下灯,可我看见他朝我这边挪——其实他并没有真的移动。我不知道该怎么说,一秒钟前他还站在河岸上,下一秒钟他就离我五英尺了。我始终没移开视线,也没眨过眼,就好像他的速度快到我的脑子都追不上。我绊了一跤,一屁股坐在地上,接着我就看见他喉咙上裂开一道口子。那道口子一直往上延伸到他的耳根,他的头向后仰,他用着他的喉咙冲我笑。一滴血也没有,只有那个黑洞洞的张开的窟窿,我发誓他就是用喉咙那道裂口冲我笑。我爬起来,拼了命往营地跑。我听不见他跟在后面,可我感觉他一直就在我身后,尽管我回头看时什么也看不见。
    回到营地我才慢慢平静下来。火还烧着,大概有同伴在身边的这种抱团心态,让我能停下来喘口气。我在火边守着,看那东西会不会追过来,可好几个钟头里我再没听见别的动静,就回床睡了。我知道这听着怪,可整件事实在太超现实了,几乎让我当场就把它当成自己的幻觉,一笔勾销。」

  • 有天晚上睡前,我们在讲鬼故事,纯粹为了互相吓唬,再取笑那个被吓到的人。多半是中招的是新兵,可有一位女士讲的故事,竟真让我心里发毛了几分,我知道在场的其他人也一样。她说这是真事;不过话说回来,围着篝火讲的每个鬼故事,都是真事。可不知怎的,我总觉得她不是在编。它有那种只有真正受过创伤的事才有的真实感。
    她说她小时候,常跟朋友去屋后的林子里玩。她住在缅因州北部,那里有大片密不透风、又没人住的国有森林。她说那边的林子,跟他们这儿的不一样。有些地方密到几乎完全遮天蔽日。她和朋友在那儿长大,所以并不怕单独待在里面,但在某些区域,她们始终留着一份警觉。她说这事从没被正经谈过,但她们始终知道,别离家超过一两英里。大人们从不说为什么,可这是条不成文的规矩——没人会往那么远走。她和朋友编造说,那儿住着像房子一样大的熊,两人常拿这个互相吓唬:一个藏起来,学发出低沉的吼声,等另一个来找她。
    她说有一年夏天,连着一场场可怕的暴风雨,刮倒了好些树,还把她家屋后几英里外的一片林子给点着了。消防队把火势控制住了,可她说,其中一些人回来时「已经不太一样了」。
    「他们像打过仗似的。你能分辨出谁是真吓破了胆,因为他们脸上是同样的神情,我想那叫炮弹休克。我和朋友说他们像行走的死人。你凑过去,他们不会笑也不会说话,而且大多数人事情一了,就离开了镇子。我问我爸妈,可他们说不知道我在说什么。等所有人被告知林子又安全了,我和朋友决定试着走到起火的那片林场去看看。我们没告诉父母要去哪儿,一想到自己竟这样违抗他们,还挺兴奋。
    我们大约往里走了两英里,开始看到烧焦的树之类的东西。我记得朋友特别难受,因为我们发现一具鹿的骸骨蜷在一棵树下,我几乎是硬把她拽走的。她想把它埋了,可我不愿她碰它,因为它的鹿角很怪。我说不清为什么,只记得当时觉得那些鹿角有问题,我不想我们俩任何一个走过去。
    我们越往里走,周围烧得越厉害。到最后,没有一棵立着的树了,简直像到了另一个星球。几乎没什么绿,到处是褐的、黑的。我们站着看这一切,同时听见远处有人扯着嗓子喊。我慌了,以为是我爸,以为他要告诉我我被禁足了。朋友撇下我,躲到一块大石头后面,因为她说她不想在这儿被逮到。她父母完全禁止她进林子,而她骗他们说是去看电影。我跟了过去,我们接着听。那声音越逼越近,我意识到那是有人在求救。我心想可能是某个走散的远足客,找不到回镇子的路。这以前常发生,我已经习惯了搭把手。我听见他顺着我的声音跟过来,就一个劲儿地喊,直到看见远处有个人在跑。他跑近些,我能瞧见他的脸整个红了。我叫朋友把背包给我,因为她那个包里有个急救盒。她发出一声像被恶心到似的声响,问我有没有看见他的脸。我叫她闭嘴,然后小跑着迎上去。我在半路停下,当他在我面前停住时,我看见他的鼻子、嘴唇,还有一小块额头全没了。像是被干净利落地削掉了。他流得很厉害,我还看见他裤子的膝盖处也红了。我后退一步,可又怕得不敢挪动太多,他一把抓住我的肩膀。我感觉像挨了一下电击,他也猛地缩了回去。他开始含含糊糊地说话,我听不清他在讲什么,只听见他反复问自己已经走失多久了。他问我「他的队伍」在哪儿,我只是摇头。他上下打量我,看见我的随身听,就尖叫起来。他仍在含含糊糊地念叨,还一直摸自己的脸,我这才意识到他穿的衣服不对。他身上是件怪怪的灰色布夹克,裤子几乎像正装,夹克上有奇怪的扣子和红色镶边。我连连摇头,告诉他我听不懂他说什么。我正要打开急救盒,他却再次尖叫,说出了我真正听懂的唯一一句:
    「别碰我!你会把我弄回那里的!」
    之后他就跑了,我一路都能听见他尖叫。等听不见他了,我转过身,看见朋友在哭。我转身,开始往镇子走。她一遍又一遍问我发生了什么、那人是谁,可我一个字也没说。到了家,我告诉她,我再也不想跟她去林子里玩了。
    我们到现在还是朋友,但我们从不提起那个人。永远也不说。」

我一能更新就更新,各位。感谢你们一直以来的支持!

EDIT:Part 6 已更新:https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/3ppq81/im_a_search_and_rescue_officer_for_the_us_forest/

译注

  • 本段(2015-09-10)与本系列前几部不同:叙述者这一次几乎没有亲眼目击任何超自然存在,三个故事全部是”转述”——一位消防员讲树上的孩子、训练行动中一位老兵讲楼梯的变体与无脸人、篝火旁一位女士讲缅因州烧焦的森林。
  • 老兵首次点出楼梯的一种新形态——「倒过来的楼梯」:像玩具屋里单独拆下来的楼梯部件被整个底朝天翻过来、顶步插进土里立在林间。他直言这种比普通的更让他发毛,因为没法轻易用「当没看见」来糊弄过去。这也是本部在”楼梯”这一核心意象上给读者的新线索。
  • 「没有脸的人」这一意象在本部反复出现并互文:老兵讲述在河边追上一个无脸、喉咙裂开口子还冲他「笑」的身影(他一闭眼就瞬移到眼前);缅因州女士的讲述里,那个求救者的鼻子、嘴唇与额角被「像切掉一样」削去。此种”脸被抹去”的特征,与本系列前作中那名登山客见到的无脸黑影一脉相承。
  • 老兵口中的「大卫·保利德斯」(David Paulides)是现实中研究国家公园与荒野失踪案的调查者,本部借此明写了对林务局(Forest Service)掩盖失踪与尸体的控诉。结尾叙述者说「能更新就更新」,EDIT 中则直接给出 Part 6 的链接,本部并未对楼梯谜团给出定论。
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