There were two big holes in his throat, with blood all around them.
Rashel whimpered. She was too frightened to scream anymore. But just then she saw white daylight, and a figure in front of it. Mommy. Mommy was pulling the tent flap open. Mommy was inside, looking around for Rashel.
That was when the worst thing happened. The worst and the strangest, the thing the police never believed when Rashel told them later.
Rashel saw her mother's mouth open, saw her mother looking at her, about to say something. And then she heard a voice-but it wasn't Mommy's voice.
And it wasn't an out-loud voice. It was inside her head.
Wait! There's nothing wrong here. But you need to stand very, very still.
Rashel looked at the tall man. His mouth wasn't moving, but the voice was his. Her mother was looking at him, too, and her expression was changing, becoming relaxed and . . . stupid. Mommy was standing very, very still.
Then the tall man hit Mommy once on the side of the neck and she fell over and her head flopped the wrong way like a broken doll. Her dark hair was lying in the dirt.
Rashel saw that and then everything was even more like a dream. Her mother was dead. Timmy was dead. And the man was looking at her.
You're not upset, came the voice in her head. You 're not frightened. You want to come right here.
Rashel could feel the pull of the voice. It was drawing her closer and closer. It was making her still and not afraid, making her forget her mother. But then she saw the tall man's golden eyes and they were hungry. And all of a sudden she remembered what he wanted to do to her.
Not me!
She jerked away from the voice and dove for the tent flap again.
This time she got all the way outside. And she threw herself straight at the gap in the climbing structure.
She was thinking in a different way than she had ever thought before. The Rashel that had watched Mommy fall was locked away in a little room inside her, crying. It was a new Rashel who wiggled desperately through the gap in the padded room, a smart Rashel who knew that there was no point in crying because there was nobody who cared anymore. Mommy couldn't save her, so she had to save herself.