The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (18 page)

Trisha went to where she was pretty sure she had seen the three robed figures and looked for any sign of them, any sign at all. There was nothing. She dropped to one knee to look more closely and there was still nothing, not so much as a patch of scuffed needles which her frightened mind could have interpreted as a footprint. She got up again, turned to cross the stream, and as she did, something in the forest to her right caught her eye.

She walked in that direction, then stood looking into the tangled darkness where young trees with thin trunks grew close together, fighting for space and light aboveground, no doubt fighting with the grasping bushes for moisture and root-room below. Here and there in the darkening green, birches stood like gaunt ghosts. Splashed across the bark of one of these was a stain. Trisha looked nervously over her shoulder, then pushed her way into the woods and toward the birch. Her heart was thumping
hard in her chest and her mind was screaming at her to stop this, to not be such a fool, such a dingbat, such an
asshole,
but she went on.

Lying at the foot of the birch was a snarly coil of bleeding intestine so fresh that it had as yet collected only a few flies. Yesterday the sight of such a thing had had her struggling with all her might not to throw up, but life seemed different today; things had changed. There were no butterflutters, no meaty hiccups way down deep in her throat, no instinctive urge to turn away or at least avert her eyes. Instead of these things she felt a coldness that was somehow much worse. It was like drowning, only from the inside out.

There was a swatch of brown fur caught in the bushes to one side of the guts, and on it she could see a spatter of white spots. This was the remains of a fawn, one of the two she had come upon in the beechnut clearing, she was quite sure. Further into the trees, where the woods were already darkening toward night, she saw an alder tree with more of those deep claw-marks slashed into it. They were high up, where only a very tall man could have reached. Not that Trisha believed a man had made the marks.

It has been watching you.
Yes, and was watching again right now. She could feel eyes crawling on her skin the way the little bugs, the minges and noseeums, crawled there. She might have dreamed
the three priests, or hallucinated them, but she wasn't hallucinating the deerguts or the claw-marks on the alder. She wasn't hallucinating the feel of those eyes, either.

Breathing hard, her own eyes jerking from side to side in their sockets, Trisha backed toward the sound of the stream, expecting to see
it
in the woods, the God of the Lost. She broke free of the underbrush and, clutching small branches, backed all the way to the stream. When she was there, she whirled and leaped across it on the rocks, partly convinced that even now
it
was bursting out of the woods behind her, all fangs, claws, and stingers. She slipped on the second rock, almost fell into the water, managed to keep her balance, and staggered up on the far bank. She turned and looked back. Nothing over there. Even most of the butterflies were gone now, although one or two still danced, reluctant to give up the day.

This would probably be a good place to spend the night, close to the checkerberry bushes and the beechnut clearing, but she couldn't stay where she had seen the priests. They were probably just figures in a dream, but the one in the black robe had been horrible. Also, there was the fawn. Once the flies
did
arrive in force, she would hear them buzzing.

Trisha opened her pack, got a handful of berries,
then paused. “Thank you,” she told them. “You're the best food I ever ate, you know.”

She set off downstream again, hulling and munching a few beechnuts as she went. After a little bit she began to sing, at first tentatively and then with surprising enthusiasm as the day waned: “Put your arms around me . . . cuz I gotta get next to you . . . all your love forever . . . you make me feel brand new . . .”

Yeah, baby.

A
S TWILIGHT
thickened toward true dark, Trisha came to a rocky open place that looked out over a small, blue-shadowed valley. She surveyed this valley eagerly, hoping to see lights, but there were none. A loon cried from somewhere and a crow called crossly back. That was all.

She looked around and saw several low rock outcrops with drifts of pine needles lying between them like hammocks. Trisha put her pack down at the head of one of these, went to the nearest stand of pine, and broke off enough boughs to make a mattress. It would hardly be a Serta Perfect Sleeper, but she thought it would do. The coming dark had brought on now-familiar feelings of loneliness and sorrowful homesickness, but the worst of her terror was gone. Her sense of being watched had slipped away. If there really was a thing in the woods, it had gone off and left her to herself again.

Trisha went back to the stream, knelt, drank. She had had little stomach-cramps off and on all day, but she thought her body was adapting to the water, nevertheless. “No problem with the nuts and berries,
either,” she said, then smiled. “Except for a few bad dreams and such.”

She went back to her pack and her makeshift bed, got her Walkman, and settled the earbuds into place. A breeze puffed by her, cold enough to chill her sweaty skin and make her shiver. Trisha dug out the ruins of her poncho and fluffed the dirty blue plastic over her like a blanket. Not much in the way of warmth, but (this was one of Mom's) it's the thought that counts.

She pushed the power button on the Walkman, but although she hadn't changed the tuner's setting, tonight she got nothing but wavers of faint static. She had lost WCAS.

Trisha worked her way across the FM dial. She got faint classical music up around 95 and a Bible-thumper yelling about salvation at 99. Trisha was very interested in salvation, but not the kind the guy on the radio was talking about; the only help from the Lord she wanted right now was a helicopter filled with friendly waving people. She tuned further, got Celine Dion loud and clear at 104, hesitated, then kept on rolling the tuner. She wanted the Red Sox tonight—Joe and Troop, not Celine singing about how her heart would go on and on.

No baseball on the FM, in fact nothing else at all. Trisha switched to the AM band and tuned up toward 850, which was WEEI in Boston. 'EEI was
the Red Sox flagship station. She didn't expect perfect reception or anything, but she was hopeful; you could pick up a lot of AM at night, and 'EEI had a strong signal. It would probably waver in and out, but she could put up with that. She didn't have a lot else to do tonight, no hot dates or anything.

'EEI's reception was good—clear as a bell, in fact—but Joe and Troop weren't on. In their place was one of the guys her Dad called “talk-show idiots.” This one was a
sports
talk-show idiot. Could it be raining in Boston? Game canceled, empty seats, tarp on the field? Trisha looked doubtfully up at her piece of the sky, where the first stars were now shining like sequins on dark blue velvet. There would be a zillion of them before long; she couldn't see so much as a single cloud. Of course she was a hundred and fifty miles from Boston, maybe more, but—

The talk-show idiot was on the line with Walt from Framingham. Walt was on his car phone. When the talk-show idiot asked where he was now, Walt from Framingham said, “Somewhere in Danvers, Mike,” pronouncing the town's name as Massachusetts people all did—
Danvizz,
making it sound not like a town but something you'd drink to settle an upset tummy.
Lost in the woods? Been drinking straight from the stream and shitting your brains out as a result? A tablespoon of Danvizz and you'll feel better fast!

Walt from Framingham wanted to know why Tom Gordon always pointed to the sky when he got a save (“You know, Mike, that pointin thing” was how Walt put it), and Mike the talk-show sports idiot explained it was Number 36's way of thanking God.

“He ought to point to Joe Kerrigan instead,” Walt from Framingham said. “It was Kerrigan's idea to turn him into a closer. As a starter he was for the birds, you know?”

“Maybe God gave Kerrigan the idea, did you ever think of that, Walt?” the talk-show idiot asked. “Joe Kerrigan being the Red Sox pitching coach, for those of you who might not know.”

“I
do
know, numbwit,” Trisha murmured impatiently.

“We're mostly talking Sox tonight while the Sox enjoy a rare night off,” said Mike the talk-show idiot. “They open a three-game set with Oakland tomorrow—yes, West Coast here we come and you'll hear all the action here on WEEI—but today is an open date.”

An open date, that explained it. Trisha felt an absurdly huge disappointment weigh her down, and more tears (in Danvizz you called them tizz) began to form in her eyes. She cried so easily now, now she cried over anything. But she had been looking forward to the game, dammit; hadn't known how much she needed the voices of Joe Castiglione
and Jerry Trupiano until she found out she wouldn't be hearing them.

“We've got some open lines,” the talk-show idiot said, “let's fill em up. Anybody out there think Mo Vaughn ought to stop acting like a kid and just sign on the dotted line? How much Mo' money does this guy need, anyway? Good question, isn't it?”

“It's a
stupid
question, El Dopo,” Trisha said pettishly. “If you could hit like Mo, you'd ask for a lot of money, too.”

“Want to talk about Marvelous Pedro Martinez? Darren Lewis? The surprising Sox bullpen? A
nice
surprise from the Red Sox, can you believe it? Give me a call, tell me what you think. Back after this.”

A happy voice began singing a familiar jingle: “Who do you call when your
wind
shield's
bus
ted?”

“1-800-54-GIANT,” Trisha said, and then dialed away from 'EEI. Maybe she could find another game. Even the hated Yankees would do. But before she found any baseball, she was transfixed by the sound of her own name.

“—is fading for nine-year-old Patricia McFarland, missing since Saturday morning.”

The news announcer's voice was faint, wavery, sliced and diced by static. Trisha leaned forward, her fingers going to her ears and pressing the little black buds deeper in.

“Connecticut law enforcement authorities, acting
on a tip phoned in to state police in Maine, today arrested Francis Raymond Mazzerole of Weymouth, Massachusetts, and questioned him for six hours in connection with the McFarland girl's disappearance. Mazzerole, a construction worker currently employed on a Hartford bridge project, has twice been convicted of child molestation, and is being held pending extradition to Maine on current charges of sexual assault and child molestation there. It now seems that he has no knowledge of Patricia McFarland's whereabouts, however. A source close to the investigation says that Mazzerole claims to have been in Hartford over the past weekend, and that numerous witnesses corroborate . . .”

The sound faded out. Trisha pushed the power button and pulled the earbuds out of her ears. Were they still looking for her? They probably were, but she had an idea that they'd spent most of today hanging around that guy Mazzerole instead.

“What a bunch of El Dopos,” she said disconsolately, and returned her Walkman to her pack. She lay back on the pine boughs, spread her poncho over her, then shuffled her shoulders and butt around until she was close to comfortable. A breeze puffed past, and she was glad she was in one of the hammocky dips between the rock outcrops. It was chilly tonight, and would probably be downright cold before the sun came up.

Overhead in the black were a zillion stars, just as
forecast. Exactly one zillion. They would pale a bit when the moon rose, but for now they were bright enough to paint her dirty cheeks with frost. As always, Trisha wondered if any of those brilliant specks were warming other live beings. Were there jungles out there populated by fabulous alien animals? Pyramids? Kings and giants? Possibly even some version of baseball?

“Who do you call when your
wind
shield's
bus
ted?” Trisha sang softly. “1-800-54—”

She broke off, drawing swift breath in over her lower lip, as if hurt. White fire scratched the sky as one of the stars fell. The streak ran halfway across the black and then winked out. Not a star, of course, not a real star but a meteor.

There was another, and then another. Trisha sat up, the split rags of her poncho falling into her lap, her eyes wide. Here was a fourth and fifth, these going in a different direction. Not just a meteor but a meteor
shower.

As if something had only been waiting for her to understand this, the sky lit up in a silent storm of bright contrails. Trisha stared, neck tilted, eyes wide, arms crossed over her breastless chest, hands clutching her shoulders with nervous nail-bitten fingers. She had never seen anything like it, never dreamed there
could
be anything like it.