80歲的老婦人生活在污穢中。沒人知道，直到她被發(fā)現(xiàn)死了，被她的狗吃掉。

80歲的老婦人生活在污穢中。沒人知道，直到她被發(fā)現(xiàn)死了，被她的狗吃掉。

80-year-old Sally Honeycheck was found dead in the chair she slept in by cousin Linda Kajma. She was partially eaten by her dog Jack.

80歲的薩莉·霍尼切克被堂妹琳達·卡瑪發(fā)現(xiàn)死在她睡過的椅子上。她的狗杰克吃掉了她的一部分。

At first glance, she thought it was a Halloween prank.

乍一看，她以為這是萬圣節(jié)的惡作劇。

The puffy corpse slumped over the chair had no eyes, nose or mouth – just hair on a skull, and bones sticking out from under a red sweater and plaid pants.

那具癱倒在椅子上的胖乎乎的尸體沒有眼睛、鼻子和嘴巴——只有頭蓋骨上的頭發(fā)，骨頭從一件紅色毛衣和格子長褲下面伸出來。

"How sick," Linda Kajma said to herself, before venturing through the rest of the house in search of her missing cousin.

“病得多厲害啊，”琳達·卡伊瑪自言自語道，然后冒險穿過房子的其他地方去尋找她失蹤的表妹。

It was Thanksgiving weekend and 80-year-old Sally Honeycheck, who for decades lived in a run-down Detroit neighborhood on Joseph Campau near the Polish Yacht Club, wasn't answering her phone. So Kajma went looking for her, only to discover that her eccentric cousin had been secretly leading a hellish existence, surrounded by filth, rats, feces and mountains of clutter. In the end, it swallowed her whole.

那是感恩節(jié)的周末，80歲的薩莉·霍尼切克(Sally Honeycheck)沒有接電話。幾十年來，她一直住在約瑟夫·坎波(Joseph Campau)附近一個破敗的底特律社區(qū)里，靠近波蘭游艇俱樂部(Polish Yacht Club)。于是卡杰瑪去找她，卻發(fā)現(xiàn)她古怪的堂妹一直在秘密地過著地獄般的生活，周圍盡是污穢、老鼠、糞便和堆積如山的雜物。最后，它把她整個吞了下去。

The horrifying figure that Kajma saw in the chair was her cousin.

卡瑪在椅子上看到的那個可怕的身影是她的堂妹。

Honeycheck, an avid Avon makeup collector who had her hair done weekly and dressed impeccably for church functions, had died alone in the filth of her kitchen, sitting in a nylon blue lawn chair under a picture of the Last Supper. She was surrounded by garbage a foot deep – empty sardine cans, stacks of greeting cards, take-out bags, burned-out appliances and dirt-stained walls.

霍尼切克(Honeycheck)是雅芳(Avon)的一位狂熱的化妝品收藏家，她每周都要做頭發(fā)，為參加教堂活動而精心打扮。她獨自一人死在廚房的污穢中，坐在一張尼龍藍色的草坪椅上，下面是一幅《最后的晚餐》的照片。她被一英尺深的垃圾包圍著——空沙丁魚罐頭、成堆的賀卡、外賣袋、燒壞的電器和臟兮兮的墻壁。

In the next room was Honeycheck's deceased Rotweiller, Jack, another victim of the house that had no heat, rat-chewed mattresses, squid-like fungi growing out of the walls and dirt-crusted floorboards that sagged so much that Kajma fell through the kitchen floor.

隔壁房間里是霍妮切克已故的羅特威勒，杰克，這所房子的另一個受害者，這所房子沒有暖氣，床墊被老鼠咬壞了，墻上長出了魷魚狀的真菌，地板上滿是灰塵，凹陷得很厲害，卡伊瑪從廚房的地板上掉了下來。

For nearly seven decades, this is where the Honeycheck sisters lived quietly together, planting flowers and lilac bushes, collecting baseball memorabilia and ordering clothes, makeup and jewelry by the box-loads. The century-old house with six stained glass windows in Detroit's Poletown neighborhood was their sanctuary. Their parents bought the two-story, 1,700-square foot home in 1951, raised their children there and never left – not during the 1967 riot or after, when the neighborhood emptied out and most white folks fled to the suburbs.

近70年來，霍尼切克姐妹一直在這里安靜地生活，種植鮮花和丁香，收集棒球紀念品，成箱定購服裝、化妝品和珠寶。這座位于底特律Poletown社區(qū)的百年老宅有六扇彩色玻璃窗，是他們的避難所。1951年，他們的父母買下了這棟兩層樓高、1,700平方英尺的房子，在那里撫養(yǎng)孩子，之后就再也沒有離開過——無論是在1967年的暴亂期間，還是在那之后，當周圍的人都搬走了，大多數(shù)白人都逃到了郊區(qū)。

The Honeychecks stayed. And somewhere along the way, in their golden years, something happened to the sisters, something that slipped past relatives and friends.

霍尼切克姐妹留下來了。在她們?nèi)松狞S金歲月里，在她們?nèi)松哪硞€地方，發(fā)生了一件事，一件從親友身邊悄悄溜走的事。

In that house, they closed the blinds and shut the doors.

在那所房子里，她們關上了百葉窗和門。

They ordered takeout and had groceries delivered.

他們叫了外賣，還叫人送了雜貨。

No one stepped foot through the door: Not family. Not the boy who used to deliver their food. Not friends who gave them rides.

沒有人踏進這扇門:沒有家人。不是那個送食物的男孩。不是載她們的朋友。

The Honeycheck sisters slowly slipped into an abyss of hoarding and squalor.

Nobody noticed, until it was too late.

霍尼切克姐妹慢慢地陷入了囤積和骯臟的深淵。沒有人注意到，直到為時已晚。

"No one should have to live like this. No one should die like this," Kajma said while poring through the clutter one Sunday afternoon in a hazmat suit, banging on the walls with a crow bar to scare the rats away. "We suspected that they were hoarders. But I never imagined the degree of hoarding. It's unfathomable."

“沒有人應該這樣生活。沒有人應該這樣死去，”一個周日的下午，卡伊瑪穿著防毒服，在雜亂的人群中穿行，一邊說，一邊用撬棍敲打著墻壁，把老鼠嚇跑。“我們懷疑他們是囤積者。但我從未想象過囤積的程度。是深不可測的。”

From the curb, however, all seemed fine. The house and porch were painted. The lawn was mowed. The bushes were trimmed. And when they left the house, the Honeycheck sisters were always put together.

然而，從路邊看，一切似乎都很好。房子和門廊都刷過漆。草坪被割了。灌木叢被修剪好了。當他們離開家的時候，霍尼切克的姐妹們總是聚在一起。

In a photo snapped at a church fundraiser one month before she died, Honeycheck is seen donning a well-coiffed hairdo, lipstick, earrings and a long gold necklace draping her navy top. She's clutching a $10 bill to buy a 50-50 raffle ticket to support St. Josephat Catholic Church, a historic landmark in Detroit.

在去世前一個月的一次教堂籌款活動上，霍妮切克被拍到梳著精心打理的發(fā)型，涂著口紅，戴著耳環(huán)，一條長長的金項鏈垂在深藍色上衣上。她手里攥著一張10美元的鈔票，準備買一張50-50的彩票，以支持底特律歷史地標圣約瑟夫天主教堂。

"I know it’s an illness," said Kajma, 68, of Troy. "But if you met them on the street you’d never, ever know. If you looked at the outside of the house ... you’d never know that this nightmare was in here.”

“我知道這是一種疾病，”68歲的卡瑪說。“但如果你在街上遇到她們，你永遠也不會知道。如果你看看房子的外面……你永遠不會知道噩夢就在這里。”