It is a state in which he will soon findhimself when he becomes the victim of the Armitages’ hypno-paralysis; it isalso a reminder of the trauma of his mother’s death—she was, we later learn,struck by a hit-and-run driver and left for dead when he was a child. Thewounded doe bleats, and then presumably dies

nvestigatingwhether or not the creature has survived, Chris looks into its eyes; the deer