The disk whizzed up the pole. Ding. Then fell back to earth.
Add another useless prize to the collection for the day.
“Nice one, Angela.” Zach tried to look nonchalant as he leaned up against a post, his legs crossed casually and his left foot firmly planted in dog poop.
“Thanks. And, uh, Zach? You might want to clean off your shoes.”
He looked at the ground and his face turned a dusky red.
“Let’s go, Mal.”
She waved. “See you around, Zach.”
He wiped his shoe on the trodden grass. “Later, Mallory.”
I giggled as we walked off. “Why is he always an accident waiting to happen?”
“Be nice.” Mallory flicked my arm. “Think how you’d feel in his shoes?”
“Stinky.” I rolled with laughter. I couldn’t help it.
Mallory’s brows lowered as she frowned.
I jabbed her in the side. “You like Zach?”
She crossed her arms. “No.”
Yeah, right.
We reached the farthest row where a tent stood at the end. Worn, patched curtains covered the opening. It looked like a strong wind could blow it to the ground. The tent didn’t belong. The rest of the booths were in good repair, sturdy, and looked new.
“Let’s go find something to drink.” I wiped sweat off my brow.
“Or we need to find some shade.” Mallory turned to go back, then stopped.
Where did all the people come from? A rippling mass filled the aisle. The last thing I wanted to do was make my way back through the throng.
Mallory crossed her arms. “If we go down the aisle we’ll get body slammed. Or ...” She drew the word out. “We could check out what’s in that tent.”
I glanced at the tent again. It should be in another place and time. Like in a ghost town. “I don’t know, Mal. It looks odd.”
Mallory narrowed her eyes. “Not odd, a fortune-teller tent. It’d be kinda fun to have our fortunes told.”
“How do you know ...?” My words trailed off and I blinked. A sign had appeared on the side of the tent. The oval sign had an eye in the center and the words Madame Vadoma above in gold letters, with ‘Fortunes Told’ below. Why hadn’t I seen the sign before?
I grabbed her arm. “What happens if we go inside and the fortune-teller is a psycho mass murderer who kills us and keeps our eyes in a jar as trophies?”
She hesitated then pushed my shoulder. “Ew. That’s gross. How do you come up with things like that anyway?” She held up her hand. “No. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help teasing her, she was so squeamish. “You really want to go have some fraud tell you a bunch of stuff that’s never going to happen?”
Mallory put her hand on her right hip. “How do you know she’s a fraud?”
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Mal. A fortune-teller at the school carnival? How good’s she gonna be?” But we still had over an hour before we had to meet her mom. And it would be cooler inside. I shrugged. “Okay. Let’s go have our fortunes told.”
Chapter Two - The Fortune
We pulled back the cloth door and stepped inside. After the bright sunlight, the gloom inside the tent spread into every crevice. Once the curtain closed, the popcorn and funnel cake aroma disappeared and the outside noise fell silent. Neither hot or cold, we had entered a vacuum.
The tent had two rooms. We stood in the entry room, unsure whether to call out. The combination of darkness and silence made prickles run up my spine.
“Welcome.” The voice, deep and penetrating, cut through the darkness from the other room.
I started and Mallory clutched my arm. It sounded like the voice of the Bulgarian butcher at the market—the one who had the slightly crazed look in his eye when swinging his cleaver.
“I be with you soon.”
A black cloth blocked my view and I shivered.
Mallory sucked in her cheeks as she stared at the cloth. “M-m-maybe this wasn’t such a good i-i-idea.”
Her whisper barely reached my ears.
I removed my arm from her vise-like grip and rubbed the white marks her fingers left to get the circulation going again. “We’ll be fine. The dark makes it seem spooky.”
More than the dark made it spooky, but Mallory was already keyed up enough. Although reluctant at first, I wanted to see what would happen. My eyes adjusted to the dark interior, helped by the ray of light coming through a hole in the top of the tent.
The black curtain moved and something small and low to the ground streaked out. Mallory yelped.
I followed its progress until it stopped near the tent siding, just out of the ray of light.
“It’s okay, Mal.” I nudged her arm. “Look, it’s just a black cat.”
The cat sat and stared at us through amber-colored eyes, unmoving except a rhythmic twitch of the end of its tail.
I regretted my earlier teasing because Mallory trembled. Sometimes being scared was fun, like in a haunted house, because nothing bad would really happen. But this felt different.
Electricity filled the air and the hairs on my arms stood up. In the quiet, each tick of Mallory’s watch twanged my nerves. Waiting caused my feet to itch, like they wanted to run.
Mallory’s cheeks lost the pink tint from being in the sun, although flushed cheeks were preferable to the pallor taking their place.
“Why do I feel like we’re in the middle of a Scooby-Doo episode?” She giggled, but her nervousness came through.
“Well, if we’re in an episode of Scooby-Doo, then you’re Velma because you’re short, dark-haired and wear glasses, so that makes me the beautiful Daphne.” I pretended to fluff my hair.
The cat raised a paw and licked it. Was it mimicking me?
“A Chinese Velma?” Mallory squeaked as she tried to suppress a laugh. “If I’m Velma, then I’m the intelligent one. And when you walk through the curtain, you’ll get kidnapped.”
“If I get kidnapped, you’d better roundup someone to stand in for Freddie and Shaggy and come rescue me.” I stuck my tongue out at her.
A ring encrusted hand thrust the curtain back and we both jumped.
Lighthearted moment over.
A tall, thin woman followed the hand into the room. Her big eyes were circled with thick, black liner that trailed up at the corners. And dark-red lipstick made her mouth look like a bloody gash. Her prominent nose and angular cheeks gave her a hawk-like appearance.
“I am Madame Vadoma.”
Dressed all in black, she wore several thick, braided silver chains. The longest chain held a pendant—a large multi-colored oval stone at the top with a smaller round stone underneath and a teardrop stone pointing to the ground. On all ten fingers she wore rings, the largest looked like a jumble of jewels; green, red, blue, yellow, rounded, squared, tear-drop, both large and small. Her hoop earrings swayed and full skirt swished, rustling against her boots as she stalked toward us.
She had certainly dressed the part of a fortune-teller. The only thing missing was a vibrant scarf tied on her head with the long tails trailing down her back.
When she stopped under the ray of light from the hole in the tent, I noticed her amber-colored eyes—the same color as the cat’s. I glanced at where the cat had been, but it was gone.
“You.” She pointed her index finger at Mallory, and the fiery opal she wore winked in the light. “Come with me.”
Mallory froze and I thought she might crumple, so I put my mouth next to her ear. “Remember, you’re Velma. You’ll be fine.”
The woman held the curtain back. “No need to be afraid. I will give you good fortune.”
When the curtain fell back into place, silence descended again.
Decorations I hadn’t noticed before popped out of the shadows as I swept my gaze around the tent. A standing Buddha statue guarded the entrance. How had I missed him when we came in? The happy statue had a pot-belly and a bare chest with chains around his neck.
Geesh, his earlobes were big. I approached the table to the side of the Buddha.
A large lavender orb sat on a polished wooden base. I smirked. I should’ve expected to find a crystal ball in a fortune-teller’s tent. No fortune-teller would be complete without it. But the cloudiness of the orb surprised me because I expected the crystal ball to be clear. How would you see the fortune in something cloudy?
As I gazed, shapes shifted in the orb. Whoa. I blinked and took a couple steps back. That was kinda freaky.
It must have been a trick of the poor lighting.
Moving closer, I peered deeply into the crystal. If I closed my eyes, I’d be able to see Madame Vadoma rubbing the ball and muttering incantations. I snickered. Madame Vadoma was probably a stage name. I imagined her at home, where everyone knew her as Maggie Scruggs or something like it, sitting in a frumpy bathrobe sipping tea and eating popcorn while watching the news on TV.
Madame Vadoma, puh-leeeze. Such an obvious fraud. But she had Mallory conned.
To the side of the crystal ball sat a green skull about the size of a large grapefruit. I picked it up to get a better look. The rock was kinda cool—green, with turquoise colored dots and lines swirling through it. The stone had been polished, so it was smooth to the touch, except for a few crevices on the top. I set it next to the orb again.
The next object on the table was a Zen garden, complete with a miniature tree called a bonsai. Right after the divorce Mom tried growing a bonsai. She said it was supposed to help bring serenity when clipping it. It didn’t last a week before I saw the remains in the trash, a stubby stick, with no leaves. Since Dad left, neither of us had serenity and it was all Holly’s fault for stealing him away from us.
I stared at the swirls in the Zen garden sand. The marks outlined the rocks and tree, and between rocks wavy lines flowed like a sand river. In the open area a large swirl, like a sea snail’s shell—tightly wound in the center, growing larger with each loop—met the swirls outlining the stones.
A rake lay next to the garden. Without thinking, I picked it up and raked through the sand. A sense of peace came over me as I made swirly marks. Maybe a Zen garden was what Mom needed.
When the curtain opened my heart raced. I dropped the rake and spun around.
Mallory beamed and she clutched a small cloth bag in her hands. “Angela, you have to go with Madame Vadoma. It was so much fun.”
Madame Vadoma held the curtain open. “Come with me.”
As I passed Mallory, I winked. “Just remember to get Freddie and Shaggy to help rescue me.” I swept past Madame Vadoma and into the next room.
Two chairs stood on opposite sides next to a table. An arc of cards, face down, lay in the middle between two lit candles. The cards had a decorative back. A Ferris wheel loomed over a carnival tent while the fog rolled in. A little worse for wear, the tent looked eerily like the one we were in. Coincidence?
She strode to the far side of the table. “Sit.”
I sat in the indicated chair and suppressed a giggle. I wondered whether I would soon be meeting a tall, handsome stranger, or taking a long vacation to exotic places.
Madame Vadoma ran the back of her hand over the cards. “Please. Take ten cards and hand them to me.”
I selected one from the center of the deck. When I flipped it over, it was a regular playing card. The kind Mallory and I used to play War and Go Fish with. How could Madame Vadoma tell my fortune with plain playing cards? Maybe she played solitaire while waiting to tell someone’s fortune.
The candles hissed and sputtered sending coils of smoke upward. As soon as I handed the card to Madame Vadoma, the wick burned steadily with barely a wisp of smoke. Spooky.
Wanting to get this fortune over, I quickly picked cards from either end, and slowly worked my way back to the center. After handing over the requested ten cards, I sat back and stifled a smirk.
Madame Vadoma held them, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. When she exhaled, she opened her eyes and rapidly laid the cards out in front of her. The candle flames grew as she put the cards on the table.
The way she put the cards on the table was different than any game of solitaire I’d ever seen. Some were placed across the table, and others were in a column. One of the cards, the three of spades gave me an uneasy feeling, while the ten of hearts felt happy. Weird. I’d never thought about feelings with cards before.
She held her palm over the cards, then looked straight into my eyes. “You have much upheaval in your life and you feel lonely.”
My breath was sucked out of me. This no longer felt like some parlor trick. How did she know about my parents’ divorce and my being alone so much? The intensity of her stare felt like she was able to see straight through me and into my thoughts. Uncomfortable, I glanced down at the cards.
In the middle of the layout the Ace of Spades drew me in. Smoke from the candles created a foggy layer and the image wavered and morphed into a winged hooded figure carrying a scythe through a graveyard. The angel of death. I blinked and ran a hand over my eyes. Once I lowered my hand, the card showed the black spade and letter ‘A’. Nothing else. Not even a gravestone.
I didn’t imagine it. Or maybe it would be better if I had. I gazed back at Madame Vadoma.
“You will gain power beyond your wildest imaginings and need to use it wisely.”
Yeah, right. What twelve-year-old ever had power? We were back to the usual phony reading. I settled back into my chair to wait for the line about the dark stranger.
Madame Vadoma narrowed her eyes. “Young lady, this is not trick done for amusement. I give you caution. You would be wise to pay heed.”
Was she reading my mind?
“You have struggles ahead as you learn to use your power. Temptation will beckon and you will want to use it for ill. You must resist. Down the path of ill-will lies destruction.”
Weren’t these things supposed to be light, fluffy readings about finding love and fortune? Ill-will and destruction were not supposed to be part of the deal.
Her amber eyes bore into mine. “You have choices to make about the power of your heart. Casual choice makes trouble. Be cautious with desires. The right choices will lead you to happiness and fulfillment.”
A shiver ran through my body and goose pimples dotted my arms. The words sounded like the usual trickery. Besides, I could hear the same lecture from my mom. Make the wrong choices and you get in trouble. Make the right choices and you’ll be happy. Big deal.
So why were the hairs standing on my arms?
Madame Vadoma grabbed a thin leather book lying on the table beside her. She ran her hands over the cover and mumbled words I didn’t understand. Her claw-like hands grasped the book as she stared at me. Her gaze penetrated my soul and as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t look away.
Her eyes widened at something behind me. With one hand she clutched the book closer to her body, then blew twice in rapid succession on the fingertips of her other hand. Tingles ran down my spine and I snapped my head around to look over my shoulder. Nothing was there. Creepy.
She closed her eyes and the tensions drained from her arms and shoulders. Taking a deep breath, her lids fluttered open and she met my gaze. Madame Vadoma grunted and gave a nod, which sent her hoops swinging. “I give you this. It is for you to write what is in your heart.” She handed me the book. “Remember your heart has power. Use it wisely.” She stood. “Keep your heart pure, and you will do no harm.”
Things were getting a little too freaky. Hugging the book to my chest, I shot out of my seat. “Um, thanks for the reading.”
Backing up a few steps, I turned and bolted through the curtain.
Chapter Three - Madame Vadoma Disappears
Mallory took one look at my face, and her jaw dropped. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” I kept moving toward the outer door. “We have to get back to your mom. Are we late?”
Mallory checked her watch. “We still have time.”
I grabbed
her arm and pulled. “Come on, Mal. Let’s go.”
Once we stepped out into the bright sunshine, my heart slowed and my panic diminished. The heat of the day hit like molten lava and the smell of frying grease and overcooked hotdogs floated in the air. I felt like someone had flipped a switch—I heard the squeals, bells, clanging and murmurs of the crowd again. I released my grip on Mallory’s arm.
“What got into you? Did you see a ghost or something?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?” Mallory’s eyes widened. “You saw a ghost?”
“No. Madame Vadoma creeped me out.” I headed toward the crowded aisles. “At the end, she got all freaky, looking around the room like she was scared and blowing on her fingers.” I didn’t know whether to tell her about the card changing ... she might think I’d gone crazy.
“Really?” Mallory’s voice trailed up. “She calmed me down and told me the nicest things. She even gave me a crystal.” She opened the drawstring and held up a round stone which had been carved into a skull, dark green with bands of turquoise, and shiny.
It must be the same type of stone as the skull in the outer room of the tent, in miniature. “She gave you a rock? Weird. She gave me a journal.” I showed her the thin book. What kind of journal had so few pages?
Her thumb rubbed the surface of the crystal. “Well, technically a rock, but this is smooth and polished, and feels good when I rub it.”
I held out my hand. “Let me feel.”
Mallory took a step back and shook her head. “No, I’m sorry, Angela. Madame Vadoma told me not to let anyone else touch it.”
My hand dropped. “Oh, she didn’t say anything like that about the journal.” I fanned through the thin book; it’d be full in a couple days. Except for the leather cover, chintzy.
“Oh, no.” I snapped my fingers.
“What?”
“We have to go back.” Dread settled in the pit of my stomach. “I didn’t pay Madame Vadoma, did you?”
Mallory’s hand flew to her mouth. “I forgot.”
“I expected her to ask for the money first.” Steeling myself, I turned around. Especially since she gave us gifts, we couldn’t stiff her.
The Journal of Angela Ashby Page 2
