Oracle of Doom

by D. J. MacHale

  A man stood next to one of the wide wooden poles that held up the tent. He looked pretty slick in a suit and tie, but his eyes were wide with shock.

  The dagger was embedded in the pole, right next to his head.

  “Get out,” Baz yelled to him venomously.

  The oracle hadn’t thrown the knife at us. It was meant for the guy in the suit. Baz had either missed him or meant it only as a warning.

  The guy pulled out a handkerchief, took off his hat, and nervously wiped his forehead.

  “You’re making a big mistake, Baz,” the guy yelled back. “You want to be stuck playing two-bit carnivals and sideshows the rest of your life? Your choice.”

  “Indeed it is,” Baz replied.

  “Then you’re a fool. Good luck to you, loser. You’re gonna need it.”

  The guy was ticked. I didn’t blame him. I’d feel the same way if somebody chucked a knife at me. Because somebody just did. The guy spun and hurried for the exit, all the while glancing back over his shoulder in case Baz decided to wing another dagger at him.

  “Who is that?” Theo whispered to Derby.

  “Mr. Hensley. The park manager.”

  “And another Baz-hater,” I added.

  I pushed off the other two and jumped to my feet. “Look, chief,” I called to Baz. “All we want is—”

  The stage was empty. Baz was gone.

  “Let’s go after him,” I said, and started for the stage, but Theo jumped up and held me back.

  “I don’t think that will get us anywhere, Marcus,” Theo said. “Not if he’s throwing knives at people who ask for his help.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  “What’s Baz got against that Hensley guy?” I asked Derby.

  “From what I hear, Hensley wants to be partners with him,” Derby said. “He brought Baz to Playland because he was already kind of famous. But Baz wants nothing to do with Hensley. Says he’s a solo act.”

  “Who’d want to be partners with such a creep?” Theo asked.

  “I don’t know,” Derby said. “Maybe somebody who wants to see the future.”

  “We’re spinning our wheels here,” I said, and stormed for the exit.

  When I stepped out of the tent, the first thing I saw was a woman standing about twenty yards away, leaning on a tree, staring at me. Or maybe she was staring at the tent. Either way, it was totally eerie because she looked horrible. She hugged herself like it was cold outside, though it was steaming hot. Her eyes were red and set in dark sockets, probably because she’d been crying. Her hair was a stringy mess, like she hadn’t combed it in a week. This was definitely not somebody who came to the amusement park for an afternoon of thrills and popcorn. She leaned against the tree for support, looking so fragile a stiff breeze might knock her over.

  I couldn’t move. The sight of this strange, haunted woman was, well, strange and haunting. For a second I thought she might be a ghost. Why not? It’s not like I hadn’t seen any before. And she sure as heck looked spooky enough.

  Theo and Derby joined me and both stopped to stare.

  “Well, that certainly is unsettling,” Theo said under his breath.

  “You see her, right?” I asked.

  “Of course I do,” Theo replied, like it was the dumbest question ever asked.

  “Poor lady,” Derby said.

  “You know her?” I asked.

  “It’s Mrs. Simmons,” Derby said. “Her husband was killed on opening day.”

  “The pirate boat guy?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Derby replied. “Baz predicted something would happen to him. She’s been coming to the park every day since. She just kind of wanders around like she’s dreaming. Nobody bothers her. They feel so bad for her. I think she blames Baz for what happened.”

  Mrs. Simmons backed away from the tree and walked off just like Derby had said, as if she was floating through a dream. Or she really was a ghost. Which she wasn’t. I think.

  “And there we have it,” I said.

  “What?” Theo asked.

  “Another enemy of the Oracle Baz. It’s getting to be a long list.”

  “You guys want to know where the clowns are?” Derby asked.

  “No, I think we should go home,” I said. “Maybe another time, okay?”

  “Sure,” Derby said. “Just don’t ask me to go with you to see Baz again. It’s getting dangerous to be around him. See ya!”

  Derby jogged off, headed back toward the midway.

  “It’s getting dangerous, all right,” Theo said. “Especially for Baz. Maybe one of those people he’s having problems with will set fire to the Magic Castle.”

  “If that’s true, and we find out who it is, it might finish the story,” I said.

  “Baz’s story,” Theo said. “Not mine. Or Lu’s cousin’s.”

  “Let’s get outta here,” I said, and started for the carousel.

  We’d only gone a short way when we passed the park manager, Hensley, headed back toward Baz’s tent. Whatever he wanted from Baz, he wasn’t going to give up easily. Fool.

  A little farther on we saw the guy in the coveralls arguing with his girlfriend in front of a concession stand. It was the high-dive lady. Daring Donna. Or was she Baz’s girlfriend? She was crying as the guy stood over her, screaming. Can’t say that I blame him. I wouldn’t want my girlfriend hanging out with that sleaze.

  “Look out!” somebody screamed.

  A truck came careening onto the midway, out of control. People shouted in fear and scattered to get away. The denim guy was directly in its path. He turned to face the truck but didn’t move, as if he was so surprised at the sight that his brain locked. Donna grabbed him and pulled him out of the way a split second before the truck flew past. It barely missed him, sped on, and finally smashed into a tree.

  Nobody was behind the wheel.

  A park worker came running up, yelling, “Sorry! Sorry! It got away from me!”

  Nobody was hurt, but it had been close.

  “Baz predicted that!” Theo exclaimed. “He warned the guy about runaway trucks. He really can predict the future.”

  I was quickly becoming a believer.

  We walked on toward the carousel, passing poor Mrs. Simmons, who sat alone on a bench, clutching something that looked like a pirate hat. She was crying.

  The mystery of the Oracle Baz was only getting deeper. We were no closer to figuring out what was going to happen to Theo on his birthday, or where Lu’s cousin was, for that matter. But after what I’d seen, I didn’t need any more convincing that Baz really did have a direct link into the future.

  We had to figure out how it worked. And fast.

  ANNABELLA LU WAS ON a mission.

  Her cousin Jenny Feng had been missing for several weeks, with no clue as to what might have happened. At twenty-two, Jenny was known to disappear for a few days at a time. She was a free spirit who loved music and followed several bands to their concerts all over the country. She had friends everywhere and often crashed at their houses. There was nothing wrong with what she did, but she usually neglected to tell anybody she would be gone. After her college graduation, she continued to live with her parents in Stony Brook, and they worried about her as if she were still a young child.

  “Hi, Aunt Tina,” Lu said when her aunt opened the front door.

  “Annabella!” Aunt Tina exclaimed. “What a surprise!”

  Lu unlaced her roller derby skates and left them on the doorstep. She knew that Aunt Tina liked things to be neat and clean. Rolling around her house on skates would be frowned upon.

  “I’m guessing you haven’t heard from Jenny,” Lu said as the two of them hugged.

  Aunt Tina’s smile fell, and the worry lines grew more pronounced around her eyes.

  “I want to be p
ositive,” she said. “It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. But not for this long without any word.”

  “What do the police say?” Lu asked.

  Aunt Tina shrugged dismissively. “They have no idea. They tried to locate her using her cell phone, but there’s no signal. I just don’t know what else to do.”

  Tears welled up in Aunt Tina’s eyes, so Lu gave her a reassuring hug.

  “Would it be okay if I checked out her room?” Lu asked. “Maybe there’s some clue that was missed.”

  “Please do,” Aunt Tina said.

  Lu wasn’t looking for just any clue. She had a very specific target…the fortune card from the Oracle Baz machine.

  Lu ran up the stairs to the second floor, taking two steps at a time. Though Jenny was older than Lu by eight years, the two cousins had always been close friends. Jenny was like the cool older sister that Lu never had. She had introduced Lu to all kinds of music and movies and even played roller derby with her for a while. It wasn’t until Jenny left for college that the two had drifted apart.

  Jenny’s room was very familiar to Lu. She had been there countless times. So when she opened the door, she couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Whoa,” she said to herself.

  The room was spotless and tidy…the exact opposite of the way Jenny kept it. Aunt Tina had been busy. Not a single piece of clothing was on the floor, the bed was made, and the bathroom counter was free of makeup.

  Lu went straight for the vanity, which had a triple mirror and a padded seat. It had several small drawers, perfect for collecting all sorts of items both valuable and not. Lu had been through the drawers many times. Jenny had no problem with that. She said she had nothing to hide.

  Lu went drawer by drawer, yanking them open and digging through years of accumulated junk. She found makeup and brushes, hair clips and a curling iron, vitamins, and notepads. In other words, absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. They could easily have been her own drawers at home.

  She turned her attention to several wooden jewelry boxes that rested on top of the vanity. One held just that: jewelry. Jenny had loads of earrings, pendant necklaces, and silver rings. A second box held a stack of instant photos. Lu did a quick scan and saw that they were mostly selfies and casual shots of Jenny’s friends and family. There was even one of Lu and Jenny together, making pouty kissy faces. It made Lu laugh and feel sad at the same time.

  The third box had more promise.

  It held a collection of cards that advertised band performances and parties, along with ticket stubs from concerts that dated back a few years. Lu slowed down and looked at each of them, noting the dates in case one might offer a clue to where Jenny was headed when she dropped off the face of the earth.

  When Lu was nearly at the bottom of the pile, she scored.

  “Yes!” she exclaimed.

  The card, made of heavy paper, was roughly the size of a credit card. It was ivory-colored, with deep brown lettering that gave it the feel of an antique that had been printed a century before. On one side was a drawing of a crystal ball with fanciful writing above it: The Oracle Baz.

  On the other side was the fortune.

  SEIZE THE MOMENT. YOU MAY NOT GET ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY.

  FOLLOW YOUR HEART.

  “Any luck?” Aunt Tina asked. She stood at Jenny’s door, looking pained.

  Lu quickly palmed the fortune card so her aunt wouldn’t see it. It would have been tricky to explain why she thought it was important.

  “Not really,” Lu said. “I thought maybe some of these tickets might give me a clue, but they didn’t. Sorry.”

  “I’m so worried,” Aunt Tina said.

  Lu went to her aunt and gave her another hug.

  “Me too,” Lu said. “But Jenny is going to be okay. I really believe that.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I just have a good feeling,” Lu said. “We’re going to figure this out.”

  Lu slipped the fortune card into her back pocket and headed for home.

  Mission accomplished.

  “Jenny’s fortune isn’t scary at all,” Lu said, holding out the card she had nicked from her cousin’s jewelry box.

  “You mean not scary like mine,” Theo added, depressed.

  “Well…uh…no,” Lu said awkwardly.

  The three of us were in Theo’s room at his house. It was after dinnertime. Theo had stayed home sick from school, though he was about as sick as I was, and I wasn’t. I think he was getting ready to hunker down and barricade himself inside.

  His birthday was only two days away.

  I took Jenny’s fortune card from Lu. “ ‘Seize the moment,’ ” I read. “ ‘You may not get another opportunity. Follow your heart.’ ”

  “That’s not a warning,” Lu said. “It’s advice. It’s nothing like…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Go ahead say it,” Theo snapped. “It’s not like Theo’s.”

  “Let me see yours,” I said to Theo.

  Theo handed me his fortune card. It looked exactly the same as Jenny’s except that it was worn and dirty. He’d been holding on to it for weeks, rubbing it between his fingers with nervous energy.

  “ ‘Life as you know it will end on your fourteenth birthday,’ ” I read. “ ‘Humility.’ ”

  “Humility?” Lu said. “What does that mean?”

  “I guess it means I’m going to die and I should be humble about it,” Theo snapped. “Swell.”

  “You’re not going to die!” Lu shot back. “We won’t let you.”

  “How?” Theo asked impatiently. “That guy can see the future. I saw it happen. And if his spirit is somehow working through that fortune-telling machine, I’m done for.”

  “Then we’ll change the future,” Lu argued.

  Theo jumped up and paced, tugging his ear, thinking. Theo was a genius. It took him seconds to work through problems that left mere mortals in the dust. Like me.

  “I’ve been giving this a lot of thought,” he said, turning professorial. “Did you know there are physicists who believe time travel into the future is possible?”

  “Uh…no,” I said. “Except in sci-fi movies.”

  “But it’s true. Even Einstein speculated about the possibility. It has to do with accelerating matter to such a rate that it can break through the ripples of time.”

  “You mean like with a flux capacitor in a DeLorean?” Lu asked with a chuckle.

  “No, like with an atomic explosion,” Theo said, deadly serious. “The theory is that if matter were propelled faster than the speed of light, it would speed up time and send that matter into the future.”

  “Yeah, so?” I asked. “You want to travel through time?”

  “No, but it might explain how Baz can see into the future. If he can somehow accelerate light, it might give him a glimpse into what’s going to happen.”

  Lu and I gave each other sidelong glances.

  “That’s your theory?” I said skeptically. “You think he’s got atomic fusion going on inside that crystal ball of his?”

  “I have no idea!” Theo shouted, exasperated. “But there is scientific theory that says travel into the future is possible. If that’s what Baz can actually do, it means he’s seeing things that are going to happen. Not that might happen—that will happen.”

  “He doesn’t see an entire future,” I said. “He just sees certain dramatic things.”

  “Exactly!” Theo exclaimed. “But dramatic things don’t just happen. There has to be a series of events leading up to them. It’s like fast-forwarding a movie. You can always jump ahead to the big climax, but you’d be missing everything that built up to that moment.”

  “What’s your point, Einstein?” Lu asked impatiently.

 
“When Baz sees into the future, he’s skipping over all the events that led up to a dramatic moment,” he explained. “But none of those events actually happened yet, so nobody knows what they are. That means there’s no way to know what has to be done differently in order to change the dramatic event.”

  “So you’re saying there’s nothing we can do to stop you from being killed the day after tomorrow?” I said.

  Theo started to answer, but the words didn’t come out. That was because my words were still hanging in the air like deadly, stinking vapor.

  “I think that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Theo finally said, barely above a whisper.

  “Bull!” Lu shouted. “That would mean our entire lives are already planned out, and no matter what we do we can’t change it. So then why go to school? Or listen to our parents? Or brush our freakin’ teeth? It wouldn’t matter what we did, because everything’s already been decided.”

  “I know it’s how you roll, Theo,” I said. “But I don’t think you can explain any of this through science, any more than we can explain the Library.”

  “Then why else would Baz see events, if they aren’t predestined?” Theo asked.

  “I don’t know!” Lu said with frustration. “It’s magic. Who cares? Whatever the reason, I can’t believe we don’t have control over our own lives. It would mean this story is about something way bigger and more important than…than—”

  “Than my death?” Theo said.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Lu said sheepishly.

  She looked ready to jump out of her skin. She sat in a chair, her leg pumping with nervous energy. She needed to be on the roller derby rink to get out her aggression.

  “This isn’t an experiment, Theodore,” Lu scolded. “You can’t input this data into your computer of a brain and calculate it like a mathematical equation. It’s beyond science. It’s a…a…”

  “A disruption,” I said.

  “Yes!” Lu yelled. “A disruption. Our job is to figure out how to end disruptions, right? If we can’t save you, then the whole human race might as well give up because it means we’re all just along for the ride with no say in anything that happens to us.”