Trisha wakes up feeling ravenous and weak. She hallucinates Tom Gordon again as she walks along the stream, although she is now certain she will die in the woods. Meanwhile in Castle Rock, detectives question Pete and Quilla about Trisha’s disappearance. The investigation focuses on her supposed abduction. As search parties tighten their perimeter around the area where she first went missing, Trisha unknowingly crosses the border from Maine into New Hampshire.

Trisha finds checkerberry bushes and eats many, even consuming a few leaves. She spots a doe and two fawns and enjoys watching them bound away. Realizing that the forest floor is littered with edible beechnuts, Trisha fills her pack with berries and nuts and returns to the stream restored. On the opposite side of the stream is a small clearing full of butterflies. Watching them, Trisha experiences a deep inner peace that makes her think the Subaudible might be real. She thinks of her father—his alcoholism and his aging. It occurs to her that “life could be very sad…and mostly it was what it could be” (192). She feels able to accept this fact as she is “almost ten and big for her age” (192).

Trisha sees three figures in the clearing, wearing robes that obscure their faces.