The Siberian Incident

by Andrew Gille

  Again Colin is being condescending, he’s having Anatoly tell me this story to make fun of me, and he’s making fun of Anatoly in the same breath. I don’t think that Colin is an atheist, but he is really patronizing about religion when he doesn’t agree with the theology.

  “So, not a polar bear, just a mythical forest man,” Colin says.

  “Colin, I don’t know what I saw, but you don’t need to make fun of Anatoly or me. You’ve become a real asshole you know that?”

  “Colin, not make fun, menk is word used by Khanty people and I not sure they talk about same thing. My grandfather call it eeyaytay,” Anatoly says.

  “A yeti,” I say.

  “Yes, I think this is what you say in English,” Anatoly says.

  Colin scoffs, Anatoly looks at him, he is not laughing.

  “I have story about eeyaytay, I tell you Colin. You must translate for Mason because I not have words to tell story,” Anatoly says.

  Colin exhales, rolling his eyes, he says, “Ok.”

  Anatoly begins speaking in Russian. Colin listens and then begins talking to me.

  “He says, his grandfather encountered a yeti in the forests we’re hunting. It was around this time of year, and the winds blew from the northeast like they are right now. He says his grandfather tells him that he smelled it before he saw it. White fur, it stood on two legs.”

  Colin lets Anatoly speak again and then begins to translate, ”He says the yeti are intelligent and use tools, they have spears, but they know that men are the most dangerous of the creatures they can encounter in the wilds of Siberia. So they avoid us, actively hide from us, they have superior sight and hearing, superior noses so they can stay miles away from humans, everyone out here knows this he says.”

  Colin looks like he’s a bit annoyed at being made to translate Anatoly’s words, but Anatoly can tell that I am very interested in the story and I think he might be threatening Colin based on the two times he yells at him, Colin rolls his eyes and mutters, “Da, da…”

  “His grandfather is hunting in the same forests we’re hunting in. This is old Soviet Siberia, Stalin’s era. A lot of paranoia even out in these parts, Stalin has eyes and ears everywhere. His grandfather is hunting reindeer, and he hears something come crashing out of the woods, the thing runs right into him. He smells it, like piss and wet fur. He’s knocked the thing over, and he thinks it is a white bear, so he fires at it with a lever action rifle, which is illegal at the time but which he’s kept to hunt reindeer. Nothing happens, he fires at it again and again. It stands up, and he sees that this is no bear, it has a man’s face, and it is covered in white fur. He is looking at its eyes and fires his fifth and final bullet right through the middle of its face. It drops right in front of him. He discovers that he’s shot a man.”

  Colin again lets Anatoly speak, and I can see Anatoly is talking like this is serious, he’s heard this story from his grandfather, and he believes it. Colin continues with his translation of the man’s words, “His grandfather looks at the man he’s shot. He’s covered in white fur, he’s about 7 or 8 feet tall, there are fangs in his mouth, and his face is broader and thicker than a human being’s. He figures out that its fur is so thick and matted that it absorbed the shock of the rounds, he finds them mushroomed and stuck in the fur. The face had little fur, and this was where he fired the killing shot. Now he’s scared that this is some kind of agent of Stalin. He buries the creature up there in the mountains and hides his gun. It is months before he goes hunting again when he does, he returns to the grave site where he buried the creature, and it’s been dug up. He’s so scared that Stalin’s agents have found out what he’s done that he destroys the gun. Its years before he realizes that bears, wolves or some other animal have probably dug up the creature and eaten it.”

  Anatoly laughs, like his grandfather’s paranoia about Stalin is some kind of punchline. Colin's face is now neutral, no longer smirking or laughing.

  “That’s pretty sad about the gun, I’ll bet it was a classic like the Savage 99,” is all Colin has to say about the story.

  “You don’t think there’s any plausibility to the story I am assuming,” I say to Colin.

  “A yeti? Well as is the case in most of these Bigfoot stories, the evidence has been destroyed or is missing. There’s a story about some Russian wild woman named Zana who was captured in the 1800s. She was six foot six, super strong, could outrun a horse and god knows what else they exaggerated her up to be. I think they found out she was a runaway slave or something and DNA analysis discovered that she was most definitely a human from Africa. How terrible is that? You escape slavery, and then you’re recaptured, and your captors spread stories about you being some kind of animal. The whole thing reeks of racism and stupidity,” Colin says.

  “My grandfather not stupid,” Anatoly says.

  “I wasn’t implying that,” Colin says, suddenly sounding sheepish, “Who knows what actually happened, what he actually saw.”

  “Pretty sure he saw a yeti,” I said.

  “Yes, lots of strange thing happen in Siberia,” Anatoly says pouring us all vodkas into metal cups that are too big. I’d really like to try to keep from clouding my mind especially since we’re now sleeping at altitude, but I feel that Anatoly has taken enough rude treatment from his guests tonight.

  “Dyatlov Pass, you translate,” Anatoly says to Colin.

  “I can just tell him the story,” Colin says to me.

  “So I think it was in the ’50s, these 10 experienced skiers go into the Ural Mountains. Not some tourists, not inexperienced hikers out for some three-hour tour type shit. These people know what they’re doing. They go out on this ski trip, one guy gets injured or has some condition, and he turns around, he’s the only one who of the party who survives. A search party is sent out after a telegram that Dyatlov, the party’s leader, says he’ll send when he reaches a checkpoint never arrives. They find their camp, sometime during the night, they’ve cut their way out of the tents and run away from something. Something must have really scared them. All of their belongings have been left behind, and some of them were wearing only their underwear as they ran out into the snow and sub-zero temperatures to escape whatever reason they’d cut their way out of the tent. Most were barefoot or had one shoe on while they were running. Five corpses are found as close as 300 meters from the camp, they’d died of hypothermia and one tried to climb a tree while he was wearing his underwear. The remaining four aren’t found until spring. They are better dressed than the others but have major injuries including a fatal skull injury that could have only been caused by the force of something like a car accident. One girl is found face down in a stream, she has a major chest fracture and is missing her eyes and tongue. Another also has severe chest trauma and is missing his eyes. Some of the clothes the ones who were found later wore had been badly torn and burned. A student who attended the funerals of five of the group said their skin looked very brown, almost like they were very tanned. That’s the Dyatlov Pass incident,” Colin nods to Anatoly and says something in Russian, I understand “Dyatlov,” as part of what he said.

  “Yes, mysterious circumstances, strange things in Siberia,” he says.

  “You think that it was the menk or a yeti who did this?” I say.

  Both men start laughing, I feel a little foolish for even suggesting that now.

  “No, not yeti, they probably go crazy from what you call it, coldness?” Anatoly looks at Colin.

  “Hypothermia,” Colin offers.

  “Yes, hypothermia, it can make you crazy. The injuries, who knows, but the eyes and tongue, favorite parts of birds to eat on dead. I see this some, few times,” Anatoly says swigging back his vodka.

  I’ve got chills from these stories, and I’m not sure if Colin is trying to spook me out or if this is just the kind of conversation one has with their Russian guests. I don’t care to ask him about the number of times he’s encountered dead bodies out there. Thankfully his time with us is at an en
d for the evening, and he won’t be recounting any more stories.

  “I go now, get sleep, you keep vodka, have more, we leave again in morning for hunting area in East, no tigers, let’s hope! Spokoynoyi!”

  Anatoly opens the door and heads out into the darkness, he closes it behind him, and I sit staring into the fire with my cup of vodka. I feel the warmth of the alcohol coming over me, and I wish that I hadn’t had so much to drink, I fear what the lack of a sharp mind will do to me out here and what the night will bring. Colin sits next to me, he takes a drink of his vodka and throws the rest into the fire. Not sure why he wasted good vodka like that because he uncorks the bottle and pours more into the metal cups we drink out of.

  “So what do you think?” Colin says as I continue looking into the fire.

  “I think Anatoly has some interesting stories,” I reply.

  “Yeah, they’re a superstitious people, you find that in rural areas. I don’t think the rest of Russia is like that, too many years of government mandated atheism. Cleans that kind of religious nonsense up and these legends and myths go with it,” Colin says.

  “I don’t think you have to come down on the guy because of his story about the yeti, his grandfather told him that,” I said.

  “Yeah, and my parents told me about Santa Claus. Eventually, you should wisen up,” he says.

  “You have a real condescending attitude about beliefs other than your own, Colin, do you think you should maybe be a little more tolerant of other people’s beliefs?”

  “Well this kind of stuff leads to all sorts of bad things, legends and whatever might seem like scary stories to tell around a campfire, but they have real repercussions when you start believing them. Millions of bears killed for their gall bladders and tigers slaughtered for their dicks because of a belief in magic. Seems funny until you realize that people end up dead because of beliefs in things that just don’t exist and you can use these beliefs to manipulate people. Look at Heaven’s Gate, you get people to believe in aliens and comet spaceships and then you can get them to kill themselves. I mean where is the line?”

  “So I am taking it you are an atheist then Colin? You don’t believe anything for which there isn’t concrete empirical evidence? You don’t think there are things that we might not understand out there?”

  “That’s a stretch. There isn’t empirical evidence about a lot of things that are probably true, look at quantum physics, it's all theories, I believe in quantum mechanics.”

  “You don’t go to church anymore, I take it?”

  “No.”

  “That’s disappointing to me,” I tell him as my faith is an important part of my life and has been a source of strength for me in difficult times. The community I have at my church is a network of support for me. At that moment, I feel like it must be very lonely to be Colin Crossfield.

  “Look, I don’t know what Anatoly’s grandfather saw, maybe it was some undiscovered species, but I think by now there would be evidence of snow apes or whatever this was. Yeah, it seems innocent, what can be the harm in believing in these things, right? I can tell you a story about Bigfoot that I know. My friend in fifth grade, Matt Tromsko, he goes camping with his uncle, and he claims to me that Bigfoot came into his tent during the night and tried to mate with him. He says it took off his clothes and touched him all over. He tells his uncle this Bigfoot story and his uncle tells him that he can never tell anyone else this story or his parents won’t let him come camping again because he’s taken him to an area infested with Bigfoots. Well, guess what? Spoiler alert, the guy’s uncle was molesting him and using this Bigfoot ruse to cover it up. He finally figures this out in his late teens, and it is too late to press charges on the uncle who is now taking his younger cousins on hunting trips.”

  “It’s a pretty big jump from yetis to pedophilia. All I’m saying is that there could be some things out there that just can’t be explained, some things we aren’t aware of yet.”

  “I highly doubt that a seven-foot bipedal hominid that lives in the Eurasian forests would be able to hide into the 21st century Mason,” Colin said.

  “Well, I don’t think I want to argue with you about what I saw, I don’t know what it was myself. Your great grandmother used to believe in brownies, they were little sprites that helped around the house. If you kept your house clean, the brownies would make housework easier for you. Let your housework go, and goblins and trolls will take up residence where the brownies had once been and make it harder for you. I believed in these things right along with her and guess what Colin?”

  “What?”

  “The brownies never molested me. Good night now, hope you rest well.”

  “You too Mason,” Colin said with the smirk back on his face.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Hunt Day 2

  I HEARD THE knocking again. Loud pounding and it jolted me out of a very deep sleep. It took a few moments to realize where I was and that it was Anatoly getting us up for the second day of our hunting trip.

  I have to say that I was very excited on this morning. Colin reported that we’d see 10-15 bears each day and we’d seen none yesterday so I thought the chance that we’d see and shoot bears on this day was quite high.

  Colin was downstairs, looking through the scope of his rifle. He had unplugged it from some kind of battery pack that he was using to recharge it since it needed to be recharged every day like a phone and the cabins had no power.

  “I didn’t get anything on video yesterday,” he said. He was apparently reviewing the videos he had shot with the scope the prior day.

  “You don’t see the tiger?” I said.

  “No, and I know I was looking in the same place that Anatoly was,” he said.

  “I saw it, it was definitely a tiger,” I said, “Are you accusing Anatoly of making something up to leave the hunting grounds?”

  “No, I believe him, I just wish I’d have got it on video,” he said as if this disappointed him greatly.

  I noticed that he didn’t say that he believed that I’d seen the tiger and it irked me that he hadn’t acknowledged that. I wondered if he told me this to cast doubt that I’d seen the tiger. I got the idea that he wasn’t trusting what I was seeing. I was also getting the impression that he wasn’t very observant.

  I had left my equipment packed and took the clothes down from a line strung across the room to allow them to dry. I hadn’t gotten that much snow on myself, but I had actually sweated a lot into my base layer from the hiking and particularly the walk across the log bridge. I noticed steam rising from under my jacket during part of the day, and it had become quite cold on the ride back. I could see how someone on a ski trip like the group from Dyatlov Pass, might sweat during the day and begin freezing to death at night if they did not have the convenience of a man-made structure like our cabin with a fire inside to keep them warm.

  When we’d gone to bed last night, the fire had increased the temperature in the cabin to the ’80s in my estimation. I actually slept for a few hours without covers. It was still in the mid to upper 60’s this morning, so my body had recovered fully from the chilly ride back. I resolved today to try to keep from sweating so much during the day, so I wouldn’t be so uncomfortable and have a potentially dangerous situation in an emergency if, say, a snowmobile broke down.

  As we warmed up the snowmobiles, Colin and Anatoly looked over a map. It didn’t seem like Colin wanted me to be a part of the conversation, so I stood by checking over my equipment and occasionally revving the snowmobile, listening for anything that seemed off.

  Colin said nothing to me and put his helmet on.

  Anatoly walked by and said, “We go,” then made his way to his snowmobile, put on his helmet and rode past us. Colin followed, and I got on my sled and followed them.

  The day was colder and clearer. As expected, we didn’t follow the same path that we’d taken the previous day, and we rode right into the rising sun as we made an eastward trek toward the hunting area. I flipped dow
n the integrated sunglasses in my helmet. The sun was flashing through the forest as trees flew by and we again rode up into a valley, this time the mountains seemed to rise higher, and the sun came up right through the dip in the peaks.