Below her the rutted track she was on ended, T-squaring into a dirt road.
Trisha walked slowly down and stood upon it. She could see no tire tracks - it was hardpan - but there were real ruts here, and no grass growing down the middle. The new road ran at right angles to her road, roughly east and west. And here, at last, Trisha made the right decision. She did not turn west for any other reason than that her head had begun to ache again and she didn't want to be walking directly into the sunshine... but she did turn west. Four miles from where she stood, New Hampshire Route 96, a patched rib-bon of hot-top, ran through the woods. A few cars and a great many pulp-trucks used this road; it was one of the lat-ter which Trisha had heard backing off through its ancient exhaust system as the driver downshifted for Kemongus Hill. The sound had carried better than nine miles through the still morning air.
She began to move again, and with a new feeling of strength. It was perhaps forty-five minutes later that she heard something, distant but unmistakable.
Don't be stupid, you've gotten to a place where anything's mis-takable.
Perhaps so, but...
She cocked her head like the dog on Gramma McFar-land's old records, the ones Gramma kept up in the attic.
She held her breath. She heard the thump of blood in her temples, the wheeze of her breath in her infected throat, the call of birds, the rustle of the breeze. She heard the hum of mosquitoes around her ears... and another hum, as well.
CHAPTER 15
The hum of tires on pavement. Very distant, but there.
Trisha began to cry. "Please don't let me be making it up," she said in a husky voice that was now down to little more than a whisper. "Aw, God, please, don't let me be making that u - "
A louder rustling noise commenced behind her - not the breeze, not this time. Even if she might have convinced her-self (for a few cruddy seconds or so) that it was, what about the snapping sound of branches? And then the grinding, splintering sound of something falling - a small tree, prob-ably, that had been in the way. In Its way. It had let her get this close to rescue, had allowed her to come within actual hearing of the path she had so casually and carelessly lost. It had watched her painful progress, perhaps with amuse-ment, perhaps with some sort of god's compassion that was too terrible to even think about. Now it was through watching, through waiting.
Slowly, both with terror and with a strange sort of calm inevitability, Trisha turned to face the God of the Lost.
Bottom of the Ninth:Save Situation
IT EMERGED from the trees on the left side of the road, and Trisha's first thought was: Is that all? Is that all it ever was?
Grown men would have turned and run from the Ursus americanus which lumbered out of the last screen of bushes - it was a fully grown North American black bear, perhaps four hundred pounds - but Trisha had been prepared for some awful horror torn from the underside of the night.
There were leaves and burdocks caught in its shiny fur, and held in one hand - yes, it had a hand, the clawed rudiment of one, at least - was a branch from which most of the bark had been stripped. It held this like a woodsy wand or scepter. It came to the middle of the road, seeming almost to paddle from side to side. It remained on all fours for a moment, and then, with a soft grunt, rose to a stand on its rear legs. When it did, Trisha saw it was not a black bear at all. She had been right the first time. It looked a little like a bear, but it was really the God of the Lost, and it had come for her.
It peered at her with black eyes that were not eyes at all 205. but only sockets. Its tan muzzle scented at the air, and then it raised the broken branch it held to its mouth. The muzzle wrinkled back, revealing a double row of huge, green-stained teeth. It sucked at the end of its branch, reminding her of a little kid with a lollipop. Then, with great delibera-tion, the teeth clenched upon it and tore it in two. The woods had fallen silent, and she heard the sound its teeth made very clearly, a sound like splintering bone. It was the sound her arm would make, if that thing bit down on it.
When it bit down on it.
It stretched its neck, its ears flicking, and Trisha saw it moved in its own small dark galaxy of minges and noseeums, just as she did. Its shadow, long in the morning light, stretched almost to Trisha's scuffed sneakers. They were no more than sixty feet apart.
It had come for her.
Run, called the God of the Lost. Run from me, race me to the road. This bear's body is slow, not yet filled with a summer's forage; pickings have been slim. Run. Perhaps I'll let you live.