Status Updates From Oracle

Not a fall as much as a folding, like taking down a tent, returning it to a size that could fit in a sack

I feel the hit … a scalding cut in the flesh above the elbow. … I’ve been shot.

The knife, the point going in just below my ribs … The pain isn’t at all like the burning heat of being shot. Knives are cold. Knives are ice. … I’m pulling it out with both hands, … the ice twice as cold as it exits.

Yet when he looked at us, it seemed as though he only saw a nagging cost he’d be glad to erase from the ledger one day.

How “for certain” are you?

You’re asking a psychic, Claire. I don’t do “for certain”.

A search for a child is fueled by coffee and terror in equal measures, and they both can be found easily anywhere

If you brought me up here to be smart, you brought the wrong guy.

Where’s your husband?

He might be at church. That’s where he tells me he goes. He may be praying to the Lord Budweiser at McConnell’s Pub, for all I know.

An open bag of bread on the counter, slices tumbling over each other as if in a stampede to get out of the opening …

CARD team: child abduction rapid deployment

Nate Russo is 220 lbs. w/catcher’s mitts for hands.

How do you turn cows into leather gloves?

Not cows. Nowadays it’s either sheep or deer.

A light goes on in the room across from us. It doesn’t brighten the car any - it just sharpens the shadows.

That’s why she’s reaching out to you.

Not to me - to anyone. I just happen to be the one picking up her signals.

It’s a hell of a thing to have your story taken away from you. It’s even worse when nobody believes you.

I stepped into my mother’s hug, my need to be comforted overwhelming my need to be believed.

4 hours. They say it depends on your height, weight … the amount of space you take up vs. the amount of space that’s left over, how calm you can keep yourself after you’re put in the box. But who’s ever been down there in the dark holding a stopwatch until one’s dying breath? It’s only an educated guess, but most guesses agree: 4 hours max.

This is where the surprises come in. Usually the people with the strongest feelings about them are the ones who made them disappear.