Excerpt: Untitled

Chapter 7: A Giant Rescue

“You can’t be serious,” Eric said. “I think we should turn back now. Anything could happen up here. And no, I’m not talking about being captured by a giant. I’m talking about getting lost, or maybe falling into some crevice in the mountains somewhere and getting trapped with no food and water. I used to hear about stories like that all the time, about people hiking around the Mt. Washington area in New Hampshire and getting lost in a blizzard and dying up there.”
“That’s because stupid people go up there in the middle of winter without preparing,” Bobby said. “This is still fall. Plus, Mt. Washington is six thousand, two hundred, and eighty eight feet tall. These mountain ranges are, at most, only a few thousand feet tall.”
“Only a few thousand,” Eric said. “Great. That makes me feel so much better about climbing them now. You know, it doesn’t matter to me how tall or short this mountain is. It’s still dangerous to me. We’re heading off into a place where no one would think of looking for us. Well, I take that back I guess. Everyone in our group at least saw both you and me walk this way. But no one will probably both coming to find us. They’re all a bunch of superstitious weirdos.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call them superstitious,” Bobby said. “I think they knew exactly what they were talking about when they told their stories about the Haynesville Giant. Take a look at this.”
The two boys had reached a point on the trail where the trees had disappeared, revealing a plateau of a grassy field. But once they were both standing in the field, it was not hard to notice what it was that had attracted Bobby’s attention. The two boys stood at the end of a deep crater. The hole was maybe a foot deep, and about thirty feet long by almost three feet wide. Eric’s heart began to race, however, because he noticed that the hole resembled the proportions of a foot. A very large foot. A very large foot with no distinguishable toes, but rather two long indentations at one end, almost like two huge, thick toes. Or possibly, the imprint was from a cloven foot.
“What do you say about this?” Bobby asked.
Eric noticed, after he stepped away from the hole a bit, that there were a series of those prints that lined the entire plain. They entered the plain from a point on the other side of the plain, where the trees, and the slope of the mountain, continued, and went off to the left somewhere, down a hill and then back up again until it reached more trees on that side.
The logical part of Eric’s brain tried to kick in at that point, and he realized that the print might have been placed here on purpose. Maybe some of the adults in the town put them here to scare kids from going up into the mountains by themselves. This he voiced to Bobby.
“Well, I’m not scared,” Bobby said. “And I don’t think the parents did this. Just look at the markings at the bottom of these prints. You could really see the lines and the veins of the foot in the packed mud at the bottom of the holes.”
Darn, Eric said. I didn’t notice that before. There goes that theory. Still, it’s possible that someone had gone to great lengths to make sure that the illusion was as real as possible.
“You have to wonder anyway,” Bobby continued, “if there weren’t some other reason why the parents would scare their children away from coming up here. Even, if what you say is true, the footprints are in fact fake.”
“So what are you suggesting?” Eric said. “That the adults put fake giant prints up here to keep the kids away from the real giant? That doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.”
“Maybe there isn’t really a giant up here then,” Bobby said. “But there might be something else that they want to keep the kids away from. I’m going to keep following the footprints.” And then Bobby was off across the plain, taking a left from the path they were on and walking down the hill.
Eric followed behind Bobby, partly because he did not want to let him out of his sight, but also because he was beginning to get curious himself about the mysterious footprints. They followed the footprints down the hill and then back up the other side, and then they both paused at the edge of the woods. The footprints entered the forest there. The trees grew much closer together and formed a tunnel that led into the woods and up the mountain.
Eric once again got that sensation of being trapped by the trees. He felt that if they entered this part of the forest, that the trees would simply close in around them, block their passage going both forward and back, and then grab them. They would probably be eaten by those killer trees and never been seen again. Eric shuddered.
“What’s the matter?” Bobby said. “C’mon, can’t you smell that? I smell smoke.”
“It’s probably drifting up from the town of Haynesville below,” Eric suggested.
“No, it’s definitely coming from the woods ahead of us somewhere. When the wind blows from that direction, you can smell it much stronger. I’ll bet someone lives up here somewhere.” With that, Bobby stepped into the woods.
“I wish you wouldn’t go up there,” Eric said. “I don’t like the looks of those trees.”
The path became dark even though it was still morning, and Eric was becoming concerned. Also, he could now smell the burning smell that Bobby could, which was making him even more nervous. He could not even see the path that they were walking on, and he hoped that they actually were still walking on a path at all. Otherwise, they were going to get hopelessly lost trying to find their way back down the mountain.
As they climbed higher and higher, the trees began to change. The fact that the trees lower on the mountain were crowding them in was bad enough, but now the trees became more skeletal looking. They had very few leaves on their branches, and the trees took on a gnarled look. And, they were still crowding them on the path.
Bobby began to slow down once they passed through this new grouping of trees, and then he stopped altogether.
“What’s the matter?” Eric asked. “What are you stopping for?”
“I, umm...” Bobby began, and then trailed off.
“You what?” Eric asked.
“I’ve just never seen trees like this before in any book I’ve ever read,” Bobby said.
“I have,” Eric said.
“You have?” Bobby asked. “Where?”
“In the Wizard of Oz maybe,” Eric answered. “I told you we shouldn’t have come up here.”
“You’re the one who doesn’t believe that there’s a giant living up here,” Bobby said, “and now you’re thinking that the trees are going to come alive and attack us? I thought you said you didn’t believe in any of those silly legends.”
“I said I didn’t believe in the legend of the Haynesville Giant,” Eric said. “But I don’t remember them saying anything about any sinister looking trees.”
As if on cue, the trees on either side of them began to rattle, and Eric saw the branches, which were once leaning over the top of the path, start to move down to where the two boys were standing.
“Run!” Eric shouted.
The two of them attempted to run back down the mountain the way they came up, but the trees positioned their branches so that the way back was completely blocked. So the two boys had no choice but to run up the path. Eric could feel the branches trying to latch onto his legs and his arms, and more than once he had to try to kick them away from trying to wrap around his ankles.
All at once Bobby fell down in front of him. The branches reached down and tried to latch onto his legs. Eric threw himself at the branches, grabbing them and pulling each one of them off him. Soon Bobby was free enough so that he could get up off the ground and run. Eric dodged the branches, which were searching around for him next.
Suddenly they were both breaking from the trees into another open clearing. Unfortunately, they did not see the huge lake, so they both ran headlong into it without stopping.
Eric swallowed some water by accident as he went under, and he sputtered and spat out water when he resurfaced. Looking around, he realized that it was not water that filled the lake, but some kind of golden brown liquid. Disgusted, he swam back to the shore of the lake, climbed out, and lay down at the lake’s edge. He closed his eyes and gasped for air. AS he lay there, he could hear Bobby splashing around in the water and calling out for him.
“I’m... over here,” Eric panted.
He heard the splashes coming closer, and then Bobby called out to him again.
“I can’t see you,” Bobby said. “Where are you?”
“Right here,” Eric said again.
The splashing came closer and closer, and then it suddenly stopped. Eric sat up and looked around, but strangely enough, he could see no sign of Bobby.
“Bobby?” Eric called. “Where are you?”
“I’m right beside you,” a voice spoke up right next to him.
Startled, Eric jumped up from his spot on the ground, and then he took off around the lake.
“Wait, come back,” the voice called again.
The voice was definitely Bobby’s, but when he turned, he still could see no sign of him. As he was backing up away from the voice, he suddenly felt the ground give way beneath him. He fell through the ground and landed hard at the bottom of a deep hole. The sudden stop at the bottom knocked the wind right out of him.
All of a sudden, something large fell to the ground next to him.
“Ouch!” Bobby’s voice cried out right next to him.
“Bobby, is that you?” Eric called out. He looked at the ground next to him, and he noticed that the leaves at the bottom of the hole were moving, as if someone were moving around on top of them. He reached out and was startled to feel an unseen hand next to him.
“Uh, Bobby,” Eric said, “I can’t see you.”
“I was just about to say the same to you,” Bobby said. “I’m glad we’re both stuck in this hole. If you had run away, I would’ve never been able to find you again.”
“But how did this happen?” Eric asked. “We’re... invisible!”
“It must’ve been that liquid in the lake,” Bobby said. “Here, try rubbing it off your body.”
Eric could hear rustling against the leaves on the ground, and suddenly Bobby’s hand appeared in front of him. Eric started rubbing himself against the ground, and pretty soon the two of them started becoming more and more visible.
“Well, we solved that problem,” Eric said. “Now how do we get ourselves out of this hole?”
They looked at the walls of the hole, and the first thing Eric noticed was that the hole’s walls were almost completely smooth.
“Someone actually dug this hole on purpose,” Eric said.
“Maybe the giant did it,” Bobby suggested.
“You and your giant,” Eric said. “So far I’ve seen nothing but circumstantial evidence of the existence of this Haynesville Giant.”
The next thing Eric knew, the biggest hands that he had ever seen were closing around them and lifting them out of the hole into the sunlight.