A Failed Hike

My former history teacher told me this story. He was an interesting guy, he loved his subject. I'll tell the story from memory, from his perspective.

My friends and I—two of my comrades and I—got together for a hike. We took two tents, food, and camping gear and headed into the mountains (he mentioned a specific place, but I forgot it). We arrived in a village and said we wanted to go to a lake in the mountains. The locals tried to dissuade us, saying it was dangerous, a bad place, and so on. We were still young and hot-tempered then, and didn't believe the rumors, only laughing at the superstitious villagers.

We walked all day and, in the evening, finally reached the lake. To the left was the lake, to the right, tall bushes (somewhat reminiscent of a cornfield). We pitched our tents on the lakeshore, ate, chatted about this and that, and went to bed.

 We had two tents—one single and one double. My friend and I slept in one, and our friend in the other. That night, I woke up to the sound of someone moving around the fire. I called out to my friend in a whisper, but it turned out he, too, hadn't slept in a while. We both called out to our third friend, who was sleeping in a separate tent (he was the most adventurous of the three). He woke up, asked what was going on, and when he heard the sounds, said it was probably a boar—he'd just grab his gun and check.

I'll never forget the next few minutes... A scream rang out—an inhuman scream of terror—our friend's scream of fear. My friend and I nearly turned gray in the tent, but after a few moments, the scream died down. We called out to our friend, but it was quiet; only the splashing of water in the lake could be heard. We never dared leave the tent that night; we were so scared. The next morning, armed with whatever we had, we finally ventured out. First, we peered into our friend's tent and found him unconscious. He couldn't answer our questions about what had happened, only mumbling something. (Incidentally, he later couldn't recall what he'd seen—his memory had been completely wiped out by fear, or perhaps he simply didn't want to tell us.)

We found no tracks near the fire. What kind of creature could move without leaving tracks and frighten a grown, strong man with a rifle to the point of amnesia? We gathered our gear and headed back to the village. We didn't say anything to anyone, but the locals seemed to guess from our faces what had happened.