Failure

Three years ago, my friends and I went on that fateful hike. We hiked with tents and large backpacks. Our destination was a small mountain 25 kilometers from our town. We reached it in about nine hours. We set up camp at the foot of this very mountain and began to rest. The place was very beautiful, and we enjoyed the peace after a long journey under the scorching sun.

In the morning, when we woke up, we discovered that Alyosha, our leader, had lost his GPS navigator, as he had an idiotic habit of carrying it in a zippered mesh pocket.

"Don't worry, people!" he said cheerfully. "We'll go back, we remember the way!"

We headed back, angry at Alyosha. He calmly pretended to remember every bush.

Three hours later, we reached a lake that none of us had seen before. But Alyosha said we'd just made a small detour from our previous route, that's all. The water was crystal clear—it would have been a shame not to take a dip. We put our things down, undressed, and waded in.

Alyosha decided to play and started "drown" me. I went under completely, pushed off the bottom, and came up. I was surprised that the lake bottom was sandy, but the surface I'd pushed off was clearly iron and rusty.

I ran out onto the shore screaming, "Ugh, I stepped on something!" Everyone started laughing. Alyosha dove in to check, and there was a sharp creak, like an old rusty door opening. Suddenly, the water began to disappear into the ground, not in one whirlpool, but in sections—here and there. Everyone rushed out of the water—thankfully, they were close to the shore. Only Alyosha was gone...

Before we could process what had happened, the shore itself began to subside. We ran away from the cursed lake, where now only a large hole remained. A children's game of tag, a life-or-death chase... One of us, Dasha, stumbled, but we didn't have a second to help her. I heard my friends' screams nearby. My best friend, Anton, had fallen too. I rushed to him, even though the holes were getting deeper and everything around was falling away, but the ground between us gave way, and I couldn't reach him. I saw his eyes as he disappeared under the sand.

I ran on, tears blurring my vision. I don't know how long I ran, I don't remember when exactly the ground stopped collapsing beneath me. I came to when the highway flashed ahead like a gray streak. I started hitchhiking and soon hailed a car. I begged the people in the car to help my friends. We walked back to the lake together, though I felt lousy and was afraid to take another step.

We didn't find any lake, and neither did my friends. The ground was smooth—sand, grass... The sinkhole swallowed us up and disappeared without a trace.