"Whatever you are, please don't hurt me. I won't try to hurt you, please don't hurt me. I... I'm just a kid."
The strength ran out of her legs and Trisha did not so much fall down as fold up. Still crying and shivering all over with terror, she burrowed back under the fallen tree like the small and defenseless animal that she had become. She con-tinued begging not to be hurt almost without realizing it.
She grabbed her pack and pulled it in front of her face like a shield. Big shuddery spasms wracked her body, and when another branch cracked, closer, she screamed. It wasn't in the clearing, not yet, but almost. Almost.
Was it in the trees? Moving through the interlaced branches of the trees? Something with wings, like a bat?
She peered out between the top of the pack and the curve of the sheltering tree. She saw only tangled branches against the moon-bright sky. There was no creature among them - at least not that her eyes could pick out - but now the woods had fallen completely silent. No birds called, no bugs hummed in the grass.
It was very close, whatever it was, and it was deciding.
Either it would come and tear her apart, or it would move on. It wasn't a joke and it wasn't a dream. It was death and madness standing or crouching or perhaps perching just beyond the edge of the clearing. It was deciding whether to take her now... or to let her ripen a little while longer.
Trisha lay clutching the pack and holding her breath.
After an eternity, another branch cracked, this one a little further off. Whatever it was, it was moving away.
Trisha closed her eyes. Tears slipped out from beneath her mudcaked lids and ran down her equally muddy cheeks.
The corners of her mouth quivered up and down. She wished briefly that she was dead - better to be dead than have to endure such fear, better to be dead than to be lost.
Further off, another branch cracked. Leaves shook in a brief windless gust, and that was further off still. It was going, but it knew she was here now, in its woods. It would be back. Meanwhile, the night stretched out ahead of her like a thousand miles of empty road.
I'll never get to sleep. Never.
Her mother told her to pretend something when Trisha couldn't sleep. Imagine something nice. That's the best thing you can do when the sandman's late, Trisha.
Imagine that she was saved? No, that would only make her feel worse... like imagining a big glass of water when you were thirsty.
She was thirsty, she realized... dry as a bone. She guessed that was what got left over when the worst of your fear departed - that thirst. She turned her pack around with some effort and worked the buckles loose. It would have been easier if she'd been sitting up, but there was no way in the world she was coming out from under this tree again tonight, no way in the universe.
Unless it comes back, the cold voice said. Unless it comes back and drags you out.
She grabbed her bottle of water, had several big gulps, recapped it, restowed it. With that done, she looked long-ingly at the zippered pocket with her Walkman inside. She badly wanted to take it out and listen for a little while, but she should save the batteries.
Trisha rebuckled the pack's flap before she could weaken, then wrapped her arms around it again. Now that she wasn't thirsty anymore, what should she imagine? And she knew, just like that. She imagined Tom Gordon was in the clearing with her, that he was standing right over there by the stream.
Tom Gordon in his home uniform; it was so white it almost glowed in the moonlight. Not really guarding her because he was just pretend... but sort of guarding her. Why not? It was her make-believe, after all.
What was that in the woods? she asked him.
Don't know, Tom replied. He sounded indifferent. Of course he could afford to sound indifferent, couldn't he? The real Tom Gordon was two hundred miles away in Boston, and by now probably asleep behind a locked door.
"How do you do it?" she asked, sleepy again now, so sleepy she wasn't aware that she was speaking out loud.
"What's the secret?"
Secret of what?
"Of closing," Trisha said, her eyes closing.
She thought he would say believing in God - didn't he point to the sky every time he was successful, after all? - or believing in himself, or maybe trying your best (that was the motto of Trisha's soccer coach: "Try your best, forget the rest"), but Number 36 said none of those things as he stood by the little stream.
You have to try to get ahead of the first hitter, was what he said.
You have to challenge him with that first pitch, throw a strike he can't hit. He comes to the plate thinking, I'm better than this guy.
You have to take that idea away from him, and it's best not to wait.