Jesus, are you ready to pull this back up? Luke? They just found the real plate here and the mimics vanished off into the woods, evaporated, I think is what was said. Yep. So we immediately start putting all of our attention towards Kristen. A hell around her, and the ranger's giving her water. We're so relieved why she starts slowly regaining consciousness. It takes about full minute for her to start making sounds of her eyes starting to open. When she looks coherent enough, the ranger asks if she's okay, and she just says, what took you guys so long? It's been days. The ranger follows up and asks her if she remembers anything. She barely gets out it told me you'd come, told me i'd be safe by the stairs. I didn't realize why that rubbed me the wrong way until Sam whispered to me, that's exactly what the mimic said when we first found it. This realization to me was absolutely world shattering, because I realized that we didn't win. It's like the mimic knew we were going to find her like this, and it's mocking us from the beginning. Then even more questions started flooding my mind did not want to get out of the park. What's this motive just to get us back to the stairs. Why this thing looks so deviously satisfied. We're tending to Christen while I'm internally turning these questions over into my head. She severely just dehydrated and starving, so I really don't have time to think. We just have her slowly rehydrating from the ranger's canteen and nimbling on protein bars from Sam's pack. I want to leave so bad, but we have to wait till she's strong enough to walk herself for us. Is way too dense for us the carrier, so we just assisted her about thirty one feet away from the stairs because it doesn't feel right just hanging out right next to them. We have to wait there for about a half hour. The part of me is very curious to see at the stairs disappear or transform in any way. We don't start questioning it Kristen immediately because we want her to just focus on getting better. We all just focused on being as gentle and consoling as we possibly can. I could tell we all don't want her to see how shaken up we are because we just wanted to feel safe. Once she seems calm and content enough, we all kind of huddle up start a game plan. Our phones are working out, and even though the data is kind of spotty, we could see that we're only a mile away from the camp. Once I let them know how close we are, I could see it in our face that we had the exact same experience, because they're as a surprise as I am. Because I felt like whatever the moment did to us went on for hours before we could start talking and get into detail about any of our experiences. Kristen speaks up, of course, she asks to see if Nick is safe and okay. At this point, she's standing up and seems okay to start walking, so we walk over to her and ensure that Nick is safe with his father. We calmly explained to her that we didn't feel safe having Nick in the campsite what we were looking for just in case he tried to run off and look for her himself. She had a little bit of a shame in her face. She nodded and accepted it as a pretty reasonable explanation. The ranger asks if she's okay to start walking back to camp, and she nodded obediently, so we got all of our stuff and start walking. We're about twenty feet before the most futrid rotten smell hits my nose. I know we all smell it at once based on everybody's body language, and immediately whip my head around see if the sorcerers the stairs, and of course the stairs are nowhere to be found, and the ranger looks as lest that says we need to leave right now. We all feel guilty rushing Kristen, and after all she's been through, but it's clear that Ranger feels like we leave the area with a sense of urgency. So we really start picking up the pace. But it feels like the smell is falling. It smells like a mix of sour sewage rotten meaning sulfur. After five straight minutes of it not losing any intensity, I asked, what does that smell? Sam replies quietly, because I don't think he wants Kristin to hear. It's a carcass, he says with certainty that I know is from experience. I wisher back one of their carcasses. Ranger cuts me off and says it's carcass. But he says in a way that Kristen wouldn't be able to tell what he actually meant. But me and Sam knew what he was implying, and the look on his face was also implying we should be quiet. Finished our whispering conversation by saying, if you see antlers, keep your head down walking. I no, I can't reply verbally, but internally, I was cynically joking to myself. Great, I don't just worry about magical stairs in the faceless mimic, but now I have to worry about territorial stinky elk. Now momentarily forgot that the most dangerous thing here is still mother nature and the last thing when he needs to be rushed by a six hundred pound elk. We get through most of the hike back with zero complications, but we could see the start of the edge of the campsite through the trees. We're all about one hundred yards away from the finish line when we hear an elk scream from behind us. You've never heard an elk scream. It's horrifying and borderline human like. I encourage you to look it up on YouTube. We start to pick up speed a little bit until we're twenty feet away from the campsite. Elk let's out a second scream, but the tone changes a little bit. Half second into the scream, it sounds like a young boy screaming mom send. Panicky whips her heads around towards Ranger and says, that was nick. I thought you said my son was safe. Ranger grabs her both both so shoulders, not in an aggressive voice, but a way that he's about to say she needs to listen. I promise you that was not your son. Right now, we just need to get you to the lodge, and the second we get there will call him, I promise, okay. And then to break the tension a little bit, he said with a smile, I just found you. Please don't go running off of the woods again. This comforted Kristen enough forget her through the trees. When we get out of the woods, it felt like I could finally breathe again. We were only in there for about three hours, but with everything that happened, I couldn't believe that it was just past nude. The campsite was still empty, but we needed to get Kristen into a vehicle and headed to the lodge before anybody came back. Because it raised a lot of questions with other campers, why is she still here? There's common knowledge that she was gonna leave that morning. We could tell she's peeking towards the campsite looking for her belongings. But the ranger gets ahead of it and he says, don't worry. Your stuff left when Nick did. It was a great quick thinking by the rangers. So now let's get you home. And the ranger said, in my head, I'd consider in asking her what she remembers. But during the two minute walk to the vehicle, I can tell that she's fully under the impression that she had a couple too many and got herself lost in the woods. I can see the embarrassment building on her face. Our current situation, that's kind of ideal because we just need to get her at it here as soon as possible. She climbs into the vehicle, but before she but before they drive off, the park ranger Walkie talking's the camp guides. He alerts them to bring the campers back to the camp site because there's an aggressive elk in the area and he doesn't want them walking back after dark, where they can't see one coming, and on the other the camp guide, one of the other camp guys, replies, don't worry, we're already on our way back because an aggressive, quick full cold front has moved through and nobody's dressed for it. I don't know what it was about the camp guide saying that, but it put a sense of urgency into the ranger as he starts to walk away to the vehicle, but it shouts back to us before he gets in. Boys, I'll get back as soon as I can. Stay away from the tree line, and if you smell it, hide. We nervously watch him drive off. It's only noon and I'm absolutely exhausted. I catch myself just thinking about the devious look on the mimixed face before it disappeared and evaporated into nothing into the forest. It reminds me to check on my friend. This is the first time Sam and I have been able to have a minute to talk since everything that's gone down, So I just opened up the conversation with should we leave, and Sam goes, we can't. If it was just you that touched the stairs, i'd say let's go, but I cannot leave knowing that I might just made everything worse when I stepped on the steps. Well, I was not surprised with that answer at all, because that's exactly what I was thinking earlier when everything happened to me. I tried to comfort him a little bit more. I even asked the question, because hey, it's the first thing that came to my mind. Pretty crazy, how we were in that time loop back there. Don't really understand that. Sam looks at me funny, and he says time loop. Mine wasn't like that at all. Mine felt like sleep paralysis. I saw everything happening. I saw you losing it. I saw the ranger voluntarily switched spots with her, and I was trying to scream but nothing would come out. And then she started talking to me, but not out loud. She was talking to me in my head. She just kept telling me that it was my turn to go out the steps and that we should really stop fighting it and there was nothing that we could do. And she just kept asking me, do I know what the crows mean? And then I asked him, I asked, Sam, did she tell you what they meant? Like? What does she mean by that? Because I haven't been able to stop thinking about it this whole time, and Sam says, no, she just kept tawning me with the question about the crows. But she did say that we'll know what they mean when we get back to the camp. That was basically our cue to start walking back to the camp because we're both looking for answers. I kept the dialogue going and I asked him, if our experiences were so different, what do we think happened to the ranger. He jokingly replied, I'm sure it was something unique and horrible, but I'm more interested to see what he knows about the source of that smell. We walked quietly for a second, straight ahead towards the logs to sit down. We could see from a distance the crows were still perched exactly where they were, and we just set on the log straight across from them. It's funny, because we were so tired, we didn't even have enough energy to be scared of the crows at this point in time. We were just sitting having a standoff with these things staring at us, and we're staring at them. And then one all the way to the left, the crew all the way to the left just squawks out of nowhere and just flies off. We just look at each other and nod. It turns out the mimic was right. We knew exactly what they meant, the crows meant. Sam just casually says one down, two to go, and then he follows up and kind of shamefully asked me, did I do what you did? He was implying, you know, did he have a seizure as well? I said no, It just seemed like you were really trying hard to get at the top of those stairs, rushing as fast as you as fast as you could, but I stopped before you could get I stopped you before you could get there. He says, did you feel that vibrations? And I said, yeah, same thing happened, and you, you know, same thing happened with him a step on them. He asked me, do you think there's a correlation between how many steps you go up in the severity of the consequences? I replied, I really hope not. And then right then we hear laughing and talking approaching us. It's the group of campers coming back from fishing. Luckily, the chatter sounds very nice and pleasant, so that gives us a little bit of relief because we know nothing bad happened to that while they were out. Me and Sam do are best to keep everything out of control, obviously, so nobody else knew. We didn't want them in to show uncomfortable. Everybody else is unloading all their gear and gathering around them for lunch. Once everybody's settled in, one of the camp guides starts going around and he's doing a head count, and he shouts, were one short. Everybody look around, who's missing? Everybody looks around for the immediate family or friends or loved ones. And then two guys speak up playfully. They're both in their early thirties, like real outdoor looking types. They said, don't worry, guys, that's just our buddy Pete. Sam and I looked at each other in fear and couldn't help but assume that this was a result of the stairs in the woods being stepped on again. To be continued. Oh, man, I wish I gotta know what happens next. Yeah, there's another apart. Man, Well did dive into that later? I mean, wow, Hell, what a cool story though. Yeah. So when I said this over to you guys, I sent it over in batches, like I'm gonna read this part, Jack, You're gonna read this part. You're gonna read this part. Did you guys read the whole story? Though I read, I was going to read it all, but then I thought to myself that I kind of I was I kind of wanted to experience it live, and so I was like, you know, I'm kind of spoil it for myself. So I ended up not reading the whole thing in one setting that was also my kind of feeling, and I was like, you know, I could get into my portion and I can experience that. But then I was like, I want to hear the experience of hearing the story from you guys when you do your guys' portions, and that way I can can I get a feeling of how our listeners might feel as well. So I was just like in this mindset, like you know what, I could read this whole thing, bash it out real fast, and go from there. But then I was like, man, I just I wanted to see what was like being on the other side of this listening to it being read off by people, and so I was like excited to hear how you guys did your takes because I knew how I was gonna do mine, and so I was like, you know, I want to hear how you guys do. And so I really enjoyed experiencing it with everybody else except for the parts that were I had edited into mine. I knew it was gonna be a little bit different because the last couple of weeks we've just been sharing a story boom table talk right afterwards. But I was curious, WOULDY actually read the whole thing? Like obviously I had. I mean, I was so into this I did, so I was kind of looking for your reactions as we went along. I don't how did you guys feel about We'll get back to the story in a second. How did you feel about the change and pace this week? Obviously it's not something I think we could do every week, but so I really enjoyed it. It really felt like we were kind of like weaving the story together while we're reading it. Yeah, I felt like we were in school, like taking her in to reading. Well, we were actually paying right. Yeah. I was gonna say a slightly more ancient form that it would be like a Viking Scalds would take turns telling a ghost story. And since this is a very druidic story, as it is with the mimics and the crows, which kind of reminds me of Odin's Ravens in a way. I was thinking more like that, but similar, that's exact same thing. I was thinking, Look, that's exactly thing. Yeah, that's what Pilgrims and the vikings and all that stuff. What do you guys think about this story? Though? It was so last week we talked about the Stairs in the woods, and then I was able to find this. I really love this. I always enjoy stories involved going into the woods. I've always liked going into the woods as a kid, not at night. That was That's where I drew the line. Not searchingly for missing people, no, no, but I would you know, go on trails, go on hikes and things like that, and you just stare off out there and you're just like, what kind of things are going on out here? When when no one's watching, you know, it's just the animals and just stuff like that. So I've always enjoyed woods and wood based stories. I guess I'm always been a big fan of preachers too, Like, you know, things that someone might have conjured in some past life, some sort of weird thing that shouldn't be here, and so like this idea of something coming into our world or being attracted to someone because they interact with something from their world. That kind of uh story always is like the perfect type of like story for me. Like, you know, it gives you a little bit of a chill, but it's also like, you know, it kind of harkens back to old and religions and stuff about you know, their you know, ritualistic offerings or something, you know, just some sort of dark creature in the woods. So I've always liked stories like that in general. So this has been absolutely awesome to listen to and to talk about. I thought this was like a good follow up to what Jack teased last week. Then yeah, you know what happened when you touch the stairs in the woods. This story is a little bit everywhere. I got a lot of controversy around it. I will say one thing, it's a great story. I mean, wow, how creative? Is there another part to this? Like this, I cut it off because I knew I knew it would be it would be past our time. Well I definitely want to rest. Yeah, oh yeah, there's more. I uh, there's basically a second half. There's about the same amount left again length. Yeah, I would like to like to revisit for sure, and and uh get the ending and get get the final bits of the story. Yeah yeah, so I don't know, that's what happens when you step on the stairs in the woods, So yeah, don't do it.
