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Her father could be such a drip sometimes.
Candy picked up a stick and dragged it in the powdery dirt at the edge of the road.
As she walked deeper into the enveloping darkness, she noticed for the first time a car parked in the shadows at the side of the road.
Candy heard the vehicle before she had really become aware of it, for, though its lights were off, the engine was running.
The car didn't move as she approached.
Candy couldn't see anyone inside, and when she was a few feet away from the vehicle, she stepped up onto the grassy embankment so she wouldn't get hit if the car drove off in a hurry. She was also a little curious to see what the car's occupants were doing hidden down behind the dashboard.
When she had gotten high enough up on the embankment and had drawn parallel to the car, she peered carefully down into the vehicle.
In spite of the darkness she could see the front and back seats of the big blue car clearly. But to Candy's great disappointment there was no one visible inside.
There was something spooky about the abandoned car.
Candy Clay was about to run home to tell her father about the parked car with its engine running, when something happened that would confirm the elder Clay's worst fears about the darkness on Shoshoni Street.
Someone suddenly raced out of the woods and grabbed Candy from behind.
Candy tried to fight as she felt a strong hand wrap around her neck. All at once she felt herself lifted into
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the air and she realized with horror that she was being carried bodily to the phantom car.
She thrashed and twisted frantically in the air. A hand covered her mouth, its thumb and forefinger clamped firmly over her nose. Candy tried, but couldn't pull in a breath.
The young girl twisted her head hard to the side one last time, desperately trying to catch a glimpse of her attacker, but her kidnapper jerked the head back. A little too hard.
There was a hideous snap, and Candy Clay's head lolled lifelessly to one side.
Candy's attacker propped the girl—now deadweight—against the side of the quietly purring car and spun her around. A pair of small, dead eyes stared blankly back at her.
"Shit," said Esther Clear-Seer. She shook Candy Clay a few times. The little girl's head flopped from side to side like a rag doll that had lost all the stuffing in its neck.
She dropped Candy Clay into the litter-strewed gutter and climbed quickly behind the wheel of her car, muttering all the way.
"Spit, shit and double shit," Esther Clear-Seer hissed angrily. She drove away, leaving the body of Candy Clay at the roadside. Esther needed another virgin. Fast. She hoped the nine-o'clock show at the local movie theater hadn't gotten out yet.
Ten-year-old Candy Clay lay in the filth of the gutter for almost six hours until she was spotted by a police cruiser. They would have found her sooner, a police spokesman said the next day, but they were already busy, what with the abduction of the eleven-
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year-old Forrester girl near the Wishy-Washy Wash-ateria.
Also, the sheriffs office complained, Shoshoni Street was way too dark. Somebody ought to see about putting up some lights.
When they read the report in the papers the next day, the residents agreed that the sensible thing would be to get some streetlights put up on Shoshoni.
Apollo had claimed numbers three and four.
Chapter Twelve
The Pythia writhed on the tripod as the yellow smoke swirled around her head. Curls of chestnut brown hair rippled across her porcelain skin as she tossed her head back and forth in ecstasy.
"Your life will be changed in the near future," the Pythia intoned.
Beside her, Kaspar smiled. "The meaning of that is obvious," he called down to the well-dressed man at the base of the hill.
"Can she be more specific?" the man called up hopefully. He glanced around the torchlit chamber but saw only the woman who had led him through the tunnel to this place.
"You have made your future your own," the Pythia rasped.
The man's face became a puzzled frown. He wore a political button on his expensive gray flannel jacket. It said Vote Calhoun.
"The result of the campaign," Kaspar explained. "My master has proclaimed it a foregone conclusion."
A flicker of a smile toyed nervously with the corners of the man's broad lips. "You're telling me I'm going to win?" he asked.
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"All will be as I have foreseen," the Pythia announced with finality.
With that the smoke from the crevice puffed to a near stop—as if someone had doused a fire—and the Pythia's writhing slowed to a jumble of tiny, spastic nervous tics. The young girl's chin dropped lazily to her chest.
Kaspar tapped the blunt end of his wooden staff ceremoniously against the metal grate beneath the tripod twice before descending the rocky steps to the earthen floor.
This was T. Rex Calhoun's second visit to the Pythia Pit. He had been advised to stop here by his party's bigwigs in Washington before Senator Cole availed himself of the infallible predictions of the Rag-narok Oracle. If he was the first in the water at Rag-narok, it was suggested by the higher-ups, perhaps the enigmatic Kaspar would see to it that Jackson Cole was excluded from the Pythia's oracles altogether.
"The future is secure," Kaspar said as he approached Calhoun.
"That's great. That's really, really great." He sounded more like an excited teenager than a serious senatorial candidate. "By the way, it's very kind of you to waive the fee," Calhoun added with a nervous smile.
Kaspar waved the staff in a dismissive arc. "My only interest is that the right man represent our fine state."
Calhoun was still apologetic. "The campaign has limited funds," he said with an awkward shrug.
"Of course."
Kaspar knew full well that Calhoun had married a
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