I've been a search and rescue diver for 12 years. Last week was the most horrific training exercise of my life.

I wasn’t always a diver. When I joined Blue Ridge Mountain Rescue, I was an entirely inexperienced climber. I had done a little climbing in gym class when I was a kid, but the first real climbing I did was on a rescue mission, with a 60 pound pack on my back and an instructor telling me exactly where to put my hands. <br><br>I had barely taken the initial training course when my instructor pulled me aside and asked if I had ever thought about trying “water rescue.”<br><br>I was young, and I don’t think I really understood how reckless what I did next was. I told him I had already signed up for the training.<br><br>It was hell. As a climber with no experience, I was already struggling to keep up with my crew. But when it came to water, I was a total lost cause. I had never even learned to swim until I was 17. Jumping into the current and trying to do anything beyond not drowning was like trying to run a mile on the first day of gym class. I think I must have hypothermed during training at least four times. <br><br>But I got the hang of it, eventually, and now I love it. There’s something so calm about being in the water. It’s like being in space or something. <br><br>I’ve seen some shitty things, though. I’ve pulled more bodies out of rivers than I can count, and the memory of those pale, bloated corpses haunts me in my sleep. <br><br>But all of that was nothing, nothing, nothing compared to what I saw last week. <br><br>It started on Monday, when our captain stopped by my house to drop off my gear.<br><br>“Training exercise on Saturday,” he said, handing me a bag. “ Equipment check at 8, training at 9.”<br><br>“Sounds good,” I said, taking the bag from him. “Where’s the training at?”<br><br>“Lake George. We got a foreclosed house. You’re gonna love this one,” he said.<br><br>The training was on Saturday, and I spent Friday distracted, checking my gear and trying to imagine what was coming on Saturday. I had no idea.<br><br>When I arrived at Lake George on Saturday, my crew was already there. Most of water rescue was present, and we spent a few hours doing an equipment check before heading to the training house. <br><br>It was a nice place, a huge two-story house that overlooked the water. We were standing in the living room when the captain told us what the training was about.<br><br>Three divers were going to be in the water. Two were going to play the victims, and one was going to play the rescuer. The victims were going to go missing in the water, and the rescuer was going to have to find them and bring them back to shore. <br><br>It was a pretty basic exercise, and the captain was being intentionally vague on purpose. Training was always more challenging when we didn’t know exactly what to expect. <br><br>I was chosen as one of the victims, along with a guy named Nate. I didn’t know him very well, he was new. But he was a really good diver, and I could tell he’d fit in with the crew easily.<br><br>We took off our gear, put on our suits, and got in the water. <br><br>The first part of the training went pretty normally. The rescuer was one of our more experienced divers, and she located us quickly. All she had to do was float us back over to the boat, but before she did, a current started moving through the water. <br><br>It was strange. I’d never felt a current in lake George before, and the water was moving so fast we were heading straight for shore. We were all being tossed around by the water, and I managed to grab onto a log and steady myself. <br><br>I realized Nate and the diver weren’t around. I called out to them, and after a minute or so, Nate called back. He was on the shore, and he didn’t see the diver. <br><br>I didn’t want to get in trouble, so I didn’t leave my log. I stayed there and waited until the rescuer’s backup arrived, and then I explained what had happened. <br><br>That’s when shit started to go sideways. The two divers in the backup couldn’t find Nate or the missing diver, either. In fact, they were all but certain that we had never been there, and that I was imagining things. <br><br>I was so confused, I didn’t know what to think. Had the current been so strong we’d been washed away? Did we manage to go all the way around the lake? That didn’t seem possible, but I had no other explanation. <br><br>The same two divers went back out for another search, and this time, they found the missing diver. But she wasn’t acting right. She was floating face down in the water, and she didn’t seem to be moving at all. <br><br>My crew lifted her into the boat, and as soon as they did, I knew something was wrong. <br><br>She was dead. <br><br>But it was more than that. It was the entire way she was acting. It reminded me of when I pulled a dead body out of the water for the first time, all those years ago. The way the flesh was starting to decay, the way the limbs jutted out at odd angles. The diver’s body looked the same way. <br><br>They pulled her into the boat and got her to shore. Once they were there, they rolled her over, and that’s when I really started to panic. <br><br>The diver wasn’t just dead. She had been *dead for days*. The skin on her face was gray and decaying. I could see the bones of her cheek jutting out of her skin, and one of her eyes had rotted away. <br><br>I was shocked. I didn’t know what to do. No one did. Someone told all of us to go home and wait for further instructions, but the captain and a few others stayed behind. <br><br>I went home and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. I kept thinking about the diver, kept thinking about her face.<br><br>The next morning, I got a call from the captain. <br><br>The diver had never existed. There was no record of her ever joining our crew, and none of us knew her anyway. But he did say one thing. The house on Lake George had an odd history. It had belonged to an ex-Navy diver, and there had been some kind of tragedy there. A drowning, or something. <br><br>I tried to forget about it, I really did. But all week, the face of that diver has been in my mind. Every night, I dream about her corpse floating in the water, her bones jutting out from her cheeks, her eye rotted away. <br><br>But I guess I’m just getting used to it, I guess. It’s not like there’s anything I can do.