Fifty Feet Tall

Out The Door

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The air was cold and crisp so close to the mountains, and the skies now darkening of their usual shade of grey. The mountains stretched before Marley's red rusty car like the jagged talons of a bird. Trees ran up the sides of the slopes, the autumn season painting the landscape in dull golds and browns.
The roads towards the hiking trails was deserted of any life, minus the occasional bird who had yet to fly south. The eerie quiet set Lou on edge, the once familiar car path feeling cold and foreboding. He sat forward on his seat, or far as his seat belt would allow, as if he would need to jump up and run in any given moment. Marley was calm at his shoulder,  leading them down the dirt path with confidence.
He didn't know how she did that. She was so rarely nervous of anything, even with the odds stacked against her. He remembered one time in highschool when he had accidentally broken his teacher's prized model of the Royal Globe Theater. He had been so terrified of what his teacher would do. Yet, Marley was there, steady as ever. Not only did she take the blame for it, she did it so confidently that she didn't even get a punishment. Lou wanted to be like that.
Finally, Lou's thoughts halted when they drove into the empty car lot at the end of the hiking trail. It was the only illuminated part of the trail, a sad little information desk in the corner and a few signs warning of bears or moose. The lot was at the base of the mountains, among the lush forests that surrounded it and crawled up the base. Lou loved these mountains, but with them all set in a pitch black coat of paint it was foreboding.
Marley cleared her throat, causing him to jump. "You're as twitchy as a rabbit," she commented, sliding out of the banged up car and unkindly slamming the door shut. Poor Lou winced at the sound, but exited as well.
"This is a terrible plan," he said for the millionth time in the last hour. Unfortunately, his protests were getting ignored more and more, so he doubted his last comment would make any impact.
"Hey, I might have a flashlight in the trunk, want to grab it?" Marley suggested as she leaned through the window of her back seat, shuffling through a random assortment of garbage and discarded clothing.
Lou rounded the side of the car, his sneakers crunching the crisp autumn leaves beneath of him. This time of year it was growing cold, and the mountains added to it in a steady rush of wind chill. The sky had nearly darkened completely, so no warmth would be coming down from the sun. He could feel damp frosty air biting through his sweater, threatening to come in. And thanks to their location between the ocean and the Rockies, it rained constantly, leaving patches of wet ground every few feet.
He popped the trunk to probably sort through a similar waste to the back seat, attempting to find a light source. But to his surprise, the trunk was tidy and neat, though it was probably the cleanest it had ever been. The only thing inhabiting the trunk was a pair of old backpacks, so he dragged one over and zipped it open.
As Marley had suggested, there was a flashlight... Or, two. One was a simple light, the kind you could probably find at any hardware store. The other was a heavy duty flashlight, the ones that are held from a handle on top and can flood a huge area in light. From what he could see there was also a blanket, a couple water bottles, and a bag of trail mix.
Lou looked at Marley as she pulled herself out of the car window, shrugging a sweater over her shoulders. "You planned this," he accused, leaning forward on the trunk edge and shooting her a glare. His friend's eyes went wide and she shook her head, but it was so obvious that she was trying to suppress a grin that it ruined the innocent effect. "Plan this? Me? I could never do that..." She shrugged helplessly and walked around to his side. Lou didn't reply.
She had done it again. She had manipulated him perfectly in the palm of her hand, and he had fallen right into it. All of his protestations at the apartment had fallen on deaf ears. She had already made her choice. The wind whistled through the mountains as he silently boiled. Why should she have the right to manipulate him like that? He said no and she should have dropped it, not conspire to do it anyways. It wasn't fair, and he always fell into these traps.
When most people were angry they yelled and broke things. When Lou was angry he sat there and remained quiet. It always made it an ordeal to figure out whether he was mad or not. Of course, Marley always knew.
"Look, honey," she began, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, giving his shoulder a tight squeeze. "I know you don't like it, but I promise, everything will be alright. 'Kay?"
The small boy hesitated, but they both knew he never held grudges. "Yeah... Okay..." And with that, he slung the second pack over his shoulder and held his camera bag close as if he was afraid to lose it.
Marley gave a small 'whoop!' And the flashlights from her own bag, offering one to get friend. "It will be pitch black on the trail, we will need a lot more then just two lights to stay grounded," Lou warned as he took the flashlight, the simple variety while she took the floodlight. She nodded in reply, and turned to the trail.
The trail, nicknamed 'the drop' by many avid hikers, was probably not the safest choice of routes for the dead of night. It had many cliffs and edges, even so low down on the mountain's face. Unfortunately, it was also the closest trail to where they were headed, and Lou would rather traverse up a slightly dangerous path that he knew by heart then spend an extra three hours hiking from an easier trail.
The well used path was harder to follow then expected, with the worn dirt hard to differentiate from the more unkept forest around. Patches of orange leaves littered the ground from a couple maple and birch, occasionally covering the path and threatening to send the pair off in an accidental direction. And unfortunately, much to Lou's dismay his flashlight did little in the way of helping. It could illuminate certain spots well enough, but he had to be able to see them in the first place to point the light. It was a good thing that they brought the floodlight, because it worked surprisingly well, illuminating the trail and surrounding fir trees.
Although he probably wouldn't admit it to Marley, the trip might not be so bad after all. He stopped every dozen yards to snap a picture of the trees or the path or the sky. His friend tapped her foot impatiently, waiting for him to choose his settings to take a picture to his liking.
"Lou, babe, we're not going to get there until morning at this rate," Marley called as he stopped to take pictures of a nest belonging to birds who headed south months ago. He thought it would make a pretty picture, but evidently Marley did not agree.
"You said I could stop to take pictures whenever I wanted," he pointed out, before going back to taking pictures of the nest. She didn't reply. The path became hushed other then the quiet clicks of Lou's camera and the occasional hoot of an owl or chirp of a cricket. After a minute or so of the silence, Marley spoke up again.
"You're delaying, aren't you?"
Lou visibly winced from his crouched position, and he turned his head to look at her from the corner of his gaze. "No..." He said, pronouncing the word slowly and unconvincingly. But of course he was, this was a bad and dangerous idea. Marley only snorted in reply and stretched her arms above her head, as if calling him out was exercise.
"Alright, we're going," she said, hooking a strong hand around his forearm and pulling him down the road, giving him barely a second to grab his camera bag from where he had left it. She towed him down the road.
Lou sighed, letting her drag him along as he swept the path with his flashlight. Tall pines, a small clearing with assorted boulders and a hiking stop... He knew where they were.
"Uhm, Marley, you might want to slow down, we're coming to a--" his words were halted by a yelp and he felt her fingers slip from his arm. That was followed by the sound of twigs snapping, leaves being disturbed and thumps on cold hard ground. After what seemed like a century he finally heard a loud thump at what must have been the bottom of the slope.
Lou snapped out of his stupor and swung his flashlight to where he had felt Marley disappear to, the steep bluff he had walked beside many times before. Unfortunately, his sad little flashlight couldn't quite reach the bottom. His heart skipped a beat, his stomach dropping as he started to panic.
This was his fault. She hadn't known about the cliff because he hadn't told her. She had fallen down, probably scared out of her wits, and cracked her head on a rock. Or maybe she had landed funny on the fall and simply snapped her neck, which at least was quick and painless. Or maybe she had fallen down fine but had been impaled by a sharp branch, and was just sitting there bleeding out, slowly dying.
Then something interrupted his thoughts. A grunt from the bottom of the cliff, followed by a collection of swears that could have easily been from a crusty old pirate. Finally, the speaker actually articulated a sentence that didn't include a dirty word.
"A drop? Is that what you were going to say?" Yelled a familiar voice. He breathed a sigh of relief and sat down on the cold hard ground, feeling like the weight of the world had been lifted from his shoulders. He had never been so happy to hear the vaguely angry voice of his best friend. He saw a light flicker way down the slope, illuminating a figure, which he guessed was Marley, and the surrounding area. The light moved, as if she was taking a look at her new position.
"Hey, Lou? You might want to get down here. I found it."
"It?" He called back down, but there was no reply. He stood up to begin the climb down, when he felt something grab him from behind. Strong arms wrapped around Lou's waist, nearly scaring him to death. The arms lifted him from the ground, probably too easily, causing a scream to escape his lips. He vaguely heard Marley yell up her concern, but he was panicking and barely heard. He struggled, trying to claw the arms away from him, but stopped when he heard his assailant laugh. Fear turned into anger as he twisted his head to glare.
"Sean! What are you doing here?" Lou hissed, crossing his arms and trying to look annoyed, despite being held two feet in the air. The dark-haired boy laughed again, his glasses skewing from all the movement. "What? I thought you'd be happy to see me?"
Lou was about to answer when Marley's voice again came from the bottom of the bluff. "What is going on up there? Lou, are you okay?" She yelled, sounding surprisingly worried. "Put. Me. Down." The small boy growled to his friend, before being dropped unceremoniously onto the hard earth below him. Without even bothering to stand he turned back to the cliff edge.
"I am fine! Sean followed us for some god damned stupid reason!" He called down, sounding angry in contrast to Marley.
"What? What was the screaming, then?"
"He scared me."
"Jerk. Will both of you just get down here?"
Lou looked up to glare at the hulking behemoth before him. "Just why did you follow us?"
"Maybe I just enjoy your company."
Lou thought about that for a moment, before raising an eyebrow that was probably unseen in the dark.
"The date was a fluke, huh?"
"Yep."
The small boy sighed, rolling his eyes. He honestly wasn't that mad, he just didn't like being tricked, but it seemed to happen a lot. That's probably karma, or irony, or something similarly cruel.
"Well, come on then. You may as well join us."
So, Lou sat down and shimmed himself to the edge, and began to slowly and carefully bring himself down the bluff.
It wasn't an easy path down, and multiple times he nearly took the painful shortcut Marley had taken before. His boots skidded across stone ledges and fallen logs alike, an assortment of pebbles slipping to scatter down the slope. Thanks to the darkness, Lou had to put his flashlight into a pocket of his bag and attempt to do the descent practically blindfolded. With his eyes particularly useless it seemed like his other senses heightened, though that was probably silly. Of course Sean was having no problem at all, even without the light. At least Lou thought he wasn't having trouble, as he had yet to hear any stumbles or cursing from him. In fact, from what little he could see the large boy was climbing down with the skill of a squirrel. Which is to say, easily.
One thing he did notice was how quiet it was, other then he and Sean's climbing. He would have expected to hear owls, maybe, or scurries of small rodents. But it was surprisingly quiet.
As the floodlight at the bottom of the slope edged closer to them, Lou was able to make things out. Though the pointed light mostly kept Marley in shadow, he could just make out her bouncy hair. He had yet to see what was so interesting that was down here, but he hoped it was worth the hellish climb down.
Sean found his way to even ground first, with Lou following not to long after. Marley walked over to the boys after they were done picking twigs from their hair and dusting wet leaves from their backsides, and slugged Sean right in the arm.
"Ow! What was that for?" The behemoth whined, rubbing the injured part of his arm, which would display a nasty bruise by morning. "I never did anything to you."
"Lou is an extension of me," Marley explained as if stating a scientific fact. She hugged the photographer around the shoulders, keeping one arm there protectively. "Therefor, you scared me, too. Now quit whining and let's go."
Lou wasn't going to protest about the extra protection, so he just shrugged at Sean and let his friend lead him away. His eyes swept the dim bottom of the hill.
At first, he wasn't sure what was so important that he had had to the ground was damp, thanks to water from recent rains running down the slope and sinking into the ground. It made the ground slippery and sticky, his shoes creating soft shluck, shluck, sounds in the mud. The trees loomed over them as usual, moss covering their lower trunks from the damp ground.
It just looked like the forest... or it did, until he noticed thin lines he hadn't seen.
In the dark, it looked almost like a silvery spider web stretching between the many trees. It shone in the flashlight's gleam, like metal.
Lou half expected a giant harry bloodsucker to suddenly crawl along it, hissing and spitting acidic venom. It took him probably too long to realize it was a fence.
"Oh. Oh." He hadn't realized how close they had come. He thought they would be walking at least another hour.
Marley nodded in the dark, her face barely illuminated by the residual light. She head a big smile plastered across her lips, her brown eyes wide and excited. "Well, we're here! Time to get a move on!" She left Lou's side, walking the rest of the distance to the great wire fence. He noticed for the first time warnings of trespassing. Fines. Imprisonment.
Why did he get roped up in all of this?
"Marley, maybe we should just go home..." Lou spoke up, shuffling his feet in the mud.
"Come on, don't chicken out!"
"I am not! I just--"
"Don't worry, dear, we'll protect you," Sean interrupted as he strolled up to the fence as well. Marley turned to shine the light at Lou, still lagging behind.
Why had he gone out the door this morning?