The Rookie

A Story by Ryn

The Rookie

The search and rescue team were called out for a 5-year-old girl named Abigail who got lost in the local national park. She was camping with her family, and she was playing at the edge of a stream. Her parents looked away for only a few moments and the girl vanished.

The team arrived on the scene within the hour. They started where the girl disappeared and fanned out in a circle. Two of the SAR members, Gary and Jeff took the section of the grid downstream. Jeff was the rookie. He started with the team a few weeks back but had only been out on a couple of missions.

They searched together for about twenty minutes and the daylight was beginning to wane. They knew they only had a short while before they would have to call off the search for the night. They searched the dense trees with their flashlights.

“Jeff, lets fan out a little farther, within hollerin’ distance though,” suggested Gary.

“Sure thing,” said Jeff, he gave Gary a thumbs up.

“You run into anything funky or any trouble, you get on the walkie,” Gary held up his walkie talkie radio. Jeff shifted his green flashlight into his other hand and held his radio up in response. The other man nodded at him and headed to the left on the path. Gary continued down the right-side path for about ten minutes. He felt himself being pulled off the main path across the stream and farther into the thick trees. He knew he should stay on the main trail, but he couldn’t fight the pull. There was just something in his gut.

After a few minutes he suddenly had a moment of clarity and stopped. He listened intently. He could hear Gary shouting for the girl back the other way. That’s not all he heard though; he heard some strange noises. Not all the typical forest noises. He could hear the wind breezing through the trees, the crunch of fallen leaves and twigs beneath his boots, and the unidentified noises. No birds and no crickets though.

The closest thing he could compare the odd noises to was a wet breathing, the scratching of nails on wood bark, and the scrabbling of claws on wet stone. So strange.

“Hello?” he called into the quickly approaching darkness. He swept the beam of his flashlight over the dense trees. “Abigail?!” he called again. He waited a moment and strained his ears to see if there was any reply.

There were no voices. Still no birds, animals, or even insect noises; just the wind and the unnatural noises he had heard before.

Jeff spun in a slow circle and strained his ears again to see if he could decipher which direction the sounds were emanating from. He thought they were coming from just ahead but slightly to the left about four or five yards from the trail. He headed that way still calling out for Abigail and swiping his light across the forest.

Just as he was going to pause and listen again, he thought he saw something dart behind a thick cedar tree.

“Hello?” he called. No response. Might have been a squirrel or other small woodland friend, but he hadn’t seen any since he’d gotten into the forest which he found strange. He continued to follow the noises and kept seeing shadows dart between the trees, but every time he shined his light trying to catch a clearer glimpse, he found nothing.

Jeff kept following the sounds until he happened onto a clearing. In the center of the clearing sat a staircase. It looked to be about 20 steps high and made of stone. He stopped and listened. The strange noises seemed to be coming from the stairs. He approached slowly, his head and green flashlight on a swivel.

“Hello? Abigail?” he called gently. He noticed the sun sinking ever lower behind the trees, making the darkness in the tree cover even thicker. In the dying light he made his way to the staircase and paused to flash his light behind him again.

Satisfied nothing or no one planned to jump out of the woods to axe murder or eat him, he inspected the stairs more closely.

They were old, and beaten by the weather, but not as beaten as you’d expect. They did appear to be made of stone, like the stone you’d see old castles made of. Some moss and lichens covered the sides, but no leaves or other debris covered the steps which Jeff found very odd. You’d expect to see some leaf litter being that they sat in a deciduous forest and it being late autumn.

He knelt and touched the bottom step with his hand. The stone felt cool, but not as cold as one would expect. He heard a noise at the top of the stairs and flashed his light but again found nothing.

“Abigail?” he asked again softly so as not to scare her, as he began to ascend the stairs. When he reached the middle of the staircase, he heard a scrabbling sound at the base of the staircase. He turned swiftly and shone his light below and his breath caught in his throat. He wanted to scream but he could only muster a whimper. At the bottom of the steps stood a rail thin black shadow with gangly taloned limbs slowly crawling up the staircase. Its pupilless eyes glowed an eerie white as it studied him.

The sound its gangly clawed fingers made on the stone step was familiar; it was the scrabbling noise he’d heard before. Another sound he recognized coming from the creature was the wet breathing sound. It sounded phlegmy and harsh.

Jeff moved backward up the stairs slowly, never taking his light or eyes off the… creature? Demon? Ghost? He had no idea what this thing was, he’d never seen nor heard about anything like it. Surely Gary would have warned him if he knew? Jeff watched as it slowly and awkwardly crawled up the stairs after him. He lifted the walkie to his mouth and clicked the talk button.

“G-Gary?” The radio crackled in response.

“Go for Gary, over.”

“Dude, there is something out here.”

“What? What do you mean? Over.”

Jeff paused as he watched the creature’s opalescent eyes draw closer to him. He stepped back up another stair and his right foot found only air. He had reached the top. He dared only to take a second to look down. Nowhere to go but straight down on the rocky and jagged forest floor. He might live if he jumped, or he might break his neck and die horribly. Not a good choice either way. He could try to fight the creature. But with what? All he had on him was his light, his radio and a very small pocketknife.

In the second it took him to glance over his shoulder and try to make a choice, the creature was three quarters of the way up the stairs. He stared as he slowly brought the walkie up to talk again.

“Gary, just get here. Its staring at me.”

“It? What’s it?!”

“Just come,” Jeff tried to even his voice and not sound panicked.

“Where?”

“Off trail to the left over the stream, in a clearing, four or five yards. I found some weird stairs.” Jeff could hear Gary sigh and whisper “Oh, no.”

“I’ll be right there, do not go up those stairs!” Gary yelled into the radio.

“A bit late for that,” replied Jeff dryly. He tried to slow his heart and calm his breathing, Gary was coming. Maybe when he reached the clearing it would scare the creature away. He hoped.

As he stared at the shadow beast, he could hear its phlegmy breaths deepen. The creature began to emit a clicking noise, almost like the clicks from a retractable pen. Jeff could now see more shadow creatures, they were moving about the tress, eyes glinting in the dwindling twilight. The creature before him inched closer and closer to him, and he shouted at it.

“Go away! Shoo!” he hollered ad he waved his flashlight frantically at it. The creature’s head followed the light as he waved it. It clicked again.

Gary heard Jeff yelling as he hurried over rocks and sticks to reach him.

“Hold on, kid!” he hollered as he almost tripped over a tree root.

Jeff watched the creature pull back and tense. Before he could move, the creature leapt at him. A blood curdling screech escaped him as they fell back, and suddenly silence fell.

Gary heard the scream just as he breached the clearing.

“F**k,” he muttered. He called out to Jeff and swept his light across the clearing as he quickly approached the staircase. He couldn’t see anything, nothing out of the ordinary anyway. No animals, no nothing. “Jeff, where are you, man?!” Silence. All he could hear were crickets, wind in the trees and an owl hooting in the distance.

Gary inspected the stairs, careful not to touch them or get too close. He circled the stairs and flashed his light high and low. No Jeff. When he came back around to the front of the stairs her heard a metallic tink, tink, tink descending the stairs. He shined the light to show Jeff’s green flashlight rolling down the stone steps.

Jeff was never seen again, nor anything else ever found of him. The team did end up finding Abigail about three miles in the opposite direction two days after this incident.

Gary never told anyone, but he felt at fault because he never got a chance to warn Jeff about strange staircases in the woods. He wasn’t the first to find one or the first to disappear after climbing one.

Most seasoned team members knew to steer clear of them. No one knew where the stairs went or what happened to you when you climbed them, but it couldn’t be good since no one ever returned from ascending them.

If you find a strange staircase in the woods, never climb them. It just may be the last thing you do in this world.