KK01 - The Kingdom Keepers aka Disney After Dark

by Ridley Pearson

  M E N F I S T P R Y

  “You are good at this!” Willa said, impressed.

  “We all have our talents,” Charlene quipped.

  Then, two right in a row:

  MET FRY SPIN, MY PINS FRET.

  Suddenly Maybeck sneezed, sending the letters airborne. Finn and Philby snagged a few of them and returned them to the table.

  Others floated down like large snowflakes. They settled, one by one.

  “Wait!” Finn called out. He gasped as he saw what the letters were spelling all by themselves: W Y

  F IR S T

  P EN

  Finn licked the tip of his finger, touched the W and turned it over. He then neatened the rest: MY FIRST PEN

  “The Stonecutter’s Quill. It’s Walt Disney’s first pen,” Philby said. “Oh my gosh!”

  “But what does it mean?” Charlene said.

  “It’s the next clue. It means we’ve got to find Walt’s first pen,” Philby answered.

  Maybeck groaned, “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “But where?” Charlene asked.

  Silence.

  “Is there a museum or something?” Finn asked.

  The kids all shook their heads.

  “There’s that thing, One Man’s Dream,” Willa stated. “Over in Disney-MGM. It’s kind of like a museum, I suppose.”

  Philby said, “That sounds…relevant.”

  “What are you, a lawyer?” Maybeck said.

  Willa continued, “As I remember, there’s stuff there, like an old desk and models and things like that.”

  “Worth a try,” Finn muttered softly.

  “Wayne,” Philby said, drawing everyone’s attention. “This is a question for Wayne.”

  Maybeck said, “I paid him a visit. Asked him to join us in the apartment. He said his hip was bothering him, and that if we wanted to see him, it would have to be at his place.”

  “Well, then,” Finn said. “I guess that’s that.”

  They split up into two groups—Finn with Willa; Maybeck and Philby with Charlene—and left the restaurant five minutes apart.

  The area of greatest risk was Main Street, which was the park’s sole entrance and exit. You couldn’t leave or enter the Magic Kingdom without walking down Main Street. The fire station was up at Town Square, at the opposite end of the street from where they were.

  When Finn and Willa reached the park end of Main Street—the area near the castle—they stayed close to the storefronts, ducking into doorways and sneaking glances out onto the empty street. Twice they hid in the shadows against a door as Finn spotted the taillights of golf carts in the distance. He checked his watch: in two minutes the other three would leave the restaurant. The idea had been for Finn and Willa to be safely inside Wayne’s by then.

  The most risk came with crossing the street. Finn signaled to Willa and counted down with his fingers. Three…two…one…

  They took off across the street, two blurs of dull, colorful light. As they did, Finn had the pronounced feeling that someone was watching him. He glanced over his shoulder and thought he saw a shadow move in one of the doorways. But who?

  Door to door they moved up Main Street. Finn looked back, but there was no more sign of anyone following. When he was sure they were in the clear, he led Willa toward the fire station and up the back stairs. Wayne answered the door as if he’d been waiting for them.

  “I think you’ve done it,” Wayne said, with all five DHIs gathered in his apartment. Philby and Finn had explained their solution to the fable.

  Wayne continued, “It was the glasses, you see? That reference to perspective was where we failed all these years. You should be very proud of yourselves.”

  “Is that it?” Maybeck asked. “Can we start sleeping again, for real?”

  “You can try,” Wayne answered, “but I’m willing to think you’ll have to see it through.”

  “See what through?” Maybeck complained. “You wanted us to solve the fable, and we did.”

  Wayne stared at Finn until the boy said, “It’s not solved. Maybe the pen is the end of it.”

  “It’s possible,” Wayne said, “but I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “Why can’t you take it from here?” Maybeck asked.

  “I could try,” Wayne answered. “But I’m not sure that would solve your crossing-over problem.”

  “You designed us to cross over. So un-design us,” Charlene said.

  “If only it were that easy. No, I’m afraid Finn’s right: you’ll need to see this through.”

  “You’re after her,” Maybeck said, finally understanding. “Was this ever about the fable? Or is that just a way to smoke her out?”

  “It’s very much about the fable,” Wayne answered. “I sense some hostility in you, Terry”

  “Do you really?” Maybeck snorted and crossed his arms. “That wouldn’t be because I was kidnapped, would it? And now you want me coming back for more?”

  Willa asked, “Is he right? Are we supposed to…deliver…that thing. Maleficent? How do we do that?”

  “You take things one at a time,” Wayne replied. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “One Man’s Dream,” Finn said.

  “You can go in as a DHI, but you won’t get out with what you want,” Wayne stated, surprising them. “Think about it. You might get inside, but the pen would not come out with you. The pen is material and real, whereas you—”

  “Are not,” Philby answered.

  “So we have to steal it?” Finn asked.

  “You are going to borrow it, I suppose.”

  “Why can’t you do that?” Maybeck challenged.

  “I wasn’t the one to solve the fable. I’m not the one brought here to fix things. You are. All five of you.

  “But you could get the pen if you wanted.”

  “Could I? If an old goat like me from Imagineering asked to get inside a display in One Man’s Dream, they’d probably fire me. I have no business there.”

  “Which display?” Philby asked. “You know which display, don’t you?”

  “I have an idea,” Wayne admitted.

  “Sheesh!” Maybeck huffed, fed up.

  “There are several replicas. A drafting table. His school desk. Even Walt’s original office. A pen…it’s conceivable it could be in any of these. You must bring me the pen the moment you have it. And understand the threat you now pose to the Overtakers. Don’t underestimate that. Not for a minute. You’ve solved the fable. They may know that, or at least suspect it. If the pen is valuable enough, powerful enough, to hide inside a fable, then one can imagine we are not the only ones after it.”

  “You’re afraid of her,” Willa said softly. “You created us because you’re afraid of her.”

  “Are you old enough to understand the saying ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’?” Wayne asked.

  Finn had heard the expression before, and judging by the faces of the others, they had too.

  He thought he understood Wayne’s message. “You’re not the one who created us,” he said. “So who did?”

  Voices came loudly up the back stairs from outside. Several men. One of them said, “Was this where you saw them?”

  “We were spotted!” Charlene said in a panic.

  “You’ll have to go now,” Wayne said.

  He looked toward Finn, who said in a panicked voice, “The remote’s back in the apartment.

  That’s where we leave it!”

  The sound of feet coming up the stairs grew all the louder.

  A pounding on the back door.

  Wayne had a contented smile on his face. “You don’t think we’d do this without making a backup, do you?” he said, holding up an exact replica of their remote.

  Another loud knock on the door. “Open up, please!” a deep male voice commanded.

  “Gather ‘round,” Wayne said, calm and relaxed, as if he had not a care in the world.

  The DHIs huddled together.

  Wayne pushed th
e button.

  28

  The Transportation and Ticket Center hummed with conversation as a tangle of park visitors shuttled between buses and monorails. Some families were ending their days just as others were starting theirs. On a Monday afternoon, thick with humidity the tired and impatient mingled with the exhilarated and anxious. For some, a day spent; for others, an evening full of promise. The humidity hung in the air so heavily you could practically wear it like a coat.

  Above the giggles and shrieks of excited children and the scornfull reproaches of their exhausted parents, the purr of a train approaching could be heard.

  “We’re off to a late start,” Philby announced, checking his watch. Charlene’s cheerleader practice had delayed them. “It’s almost a quarter to five.”

  “One Man’s Dream closes at five,” Willa informed them. “We’re okay. We’ll make it.” She turned to Finn. “What if we were ‘accidentally’ inside when it closed for the night?”

  Philby shot down her suggestion. “There’s no way five of us will be able to hide out in there and get locked in. Forget it.”

  Finn said, “But one of us might be able to.”

  Philby said, “There are at least nine security cameras inside One Man’s Dream. If even one of us is seen in there after closing, we’re in big trouble.”

  “Maybe not.” A familiar voice came from behind Finn. It was Amanda.

  She was sitting in the front part of the train car, her back directly to them, exactly behind Finn.

  This is anything but coincidence, he thought.

  Finn had barely spoken to her since that day at the skate park where it had seemed to him she’d known too much, or was keeping something from him. His intentional avoidance of her hung in the air between them.

  Finn introduced her around to those who had not met her.

  She told Finn candidly, “You saw me in the park last night. Main Street. Not far behind you.”

  The four other DHIs looked at Finn as if he’d betrayed them. “That’s because I followed Jez there after school,” Amanda explained.

  “Jez?” Maybeck blurted out.

  Amanda said, “Jez never left the park at closing. She went into Pirates of the Caribbean and never came out. I hid in the bathrooms behind Pirates and waited for the park to clear. Then I hid in a stairwell and waited.”

  “Are we supposed to believe this?” Charlene asked.

  “Believe what you want,” Amanda snapped at her. “After closing, it was her turn to hide. She took a place on Main Street. You guys just…arrived all of a sudden. I mean, one minute no one was there on the bench, and then there you were. It was the weirdest thing. And she followed you.”

  “And you followed her,” Finn said.

  Philby tested her. “She followed us where?”

  Amanda answered, “She followed you and Finn to Thunder Mountain, and so did I.”

  Maybeck nodded. What he heard made sense. “This is solid, guys. This girl Jez is trouble.”

  “Later she went over to Cosmic Ray’s,” Amanda said.

  Charlene went pale. “But why?”

  “Yeah. Why would Jez follow us?” Philby asked curiously.

  Amanda said, “Curiosity killed the cat.”

  Finn and Maybeck exchanged glances. Finn asked, “Where is she now?”

  “She followed you, Finn, today. After school. I lost her at the Transportation and Ticket Center, but she’s around here someplace.”

  Charlene snapped, “Since when did you become our guardian angel?”

  “My mother works at MGM,” Amanda said. “In administration, in one of the old bungalows. I’ve been there, like, a zillion times. They know me. The main security office for the park is in that building.” She hesitated a moment and then said, “I know those guys. I can distract them. If I think they’re going to see you on one of their screens, I can draw their attention.”

  “I’ll just bet you can,” snarled Charlene.

  “I don’t know about that,” Finn said. It sounded complicated to him. Risky.

  “I can help you,” she suggested. “I can signal if they’re on to you.” Still Finn hesitated. “You need someone to warn you.”

  He’d known for some time that she wanted to be a DHI, wanted to be part of the adventure.

  Showing off her knowledge of the area, Amanda told Philby, “Listen, there’s a sound-and-light tower right there at the side door to One Man’s Dream. From up there, one of you would be able to see pretty much all around the park. You’d be able to spot the security patrols way before they reached the attraction.”

  Willa suggested, “All in favor of Amanda helping us out?”

  Everyone’s hand went up, but Finn’s was noticeably slower than the others. Noting his reluctance, Amanda scrunched her face at him.

  “I just don’t want you getting into trouble—or worse!—for something you’re not involved in,” he said. “This can be dangerous, Amanda. You need to know that before you volunteer.”

  Amanda’s nostrils flared. She looked angry. “I can take care of myself.”

  Willa and Charlene grinned.

  Charlene, usually the most reluctant of the five, said, “Okay then, it’s decided.”

  Once inside MGM park, they quickly split up to avoid recognition.

  Finn and Willa headed up Sunset Boulevard. Amanda split from the group, presumably to reach Security. Philby sought out the sound-and-light tower, with Charlene as his runner, in case he spotted trouble.

  “You don’t look so hot,” Willa told Finn.

  “I’m just…nervous, I guess,” Finn said. They had come up with a decent plan on how he might hide inside One Man’s Dream, but he wasn’t eager to test it.

  He asked, “What if they count heads? What if they know how many go in and out of the theater?”

  Willa considered this and then said, “Nah, they don’t do stuff like that. Maybe they count people going into the park, but not onto the rides. That doesnt make sense.”

  “They might.”

  “They might, but they don’t.”

  The two passed the fifty-foot-high replica of Mickey’s sorcerer hat that stood in front of the Chinese theater and served as a bandstand. They stopped at a kiosk selling pins and film, hats, stuffed animals, and postcards.

  One Man’s Dream was crowded with grandparents and mothers with strollers trying to escape the muggy heat. Finn passed several displays dealing with the history of the park and the ways in which the Imagineers had realized Walt Disney’s dream. Willa waited near the entrance, doing a good imitation of a girl waiting for a friend.

  One of the displays showed Walt Disney’s second-grade school desk from Marceline, Missouri. Finn studied the desk carefully, wondering if Disney’s “first pen” might be inside. Its wooden top was hinged, with a shallow circular well cut into it for a bottle of ink.

  “Not exactly like your desk at school, I’ll bet,” said a woman standing behind Finn. She was very old, with kind eyes, translucent skin, and a faint white moustache. She wore an employee name tag that said CHARLOTTE. Her hair was the color of laundry lint. Her eyelashes were so pale they were almost invisible, which left her eyelids looking like weird flesh-colored cups that blinked down over her eyes like a bird’s. Her voice sounded like the squeal of a pinched ball oon.

  Finn, who’d hoped to go through the exhibit unnoticed, blurted out, “I—it—didn’t do anything.”

  “I didn’t say you did, young man.” She looked at him curiously.

  “Am I too late to watch the movie on Walt Disney’s life?”

  “No, not at all . There’s a final showing in…” She checked her watch. “Well! You’ll have to hurry. It’s just down the hall and to your right. It’s biographical, you understand? It’s not like the Bug movie or PhilharMagic. Nothing like those.”

  “I know,” Finn said. The woman’s heavy perfume made him dizzy. It trailed after her like car exhaust. She apparently felt obliged to make sure he made it in time. Together they wal
ked past other displays. Finn caught sight of Walt Disney’s West Coast office—the display Wayne had mentioned.

  “Here we go, young man,” the woman said. “Wait here and they’ll show you inside.”

  Finn saw another display, this one open to the air, not sealed under glass: a drafting table with a bunch of pens and papers. Wayne had mentioned this as well. Which display? Finn wondered.

  The doors to the theater opened. Finn and a few others were shown inside. Finn took a seat near the back.

  The lights dimmed almost immediately and the film started. Finn watched a few minutes of it, slouched down in his seat, and then slipped onto the floor. He curled up tightly under the seat in front of him in order to hide. The film ran about fifteen minutes. Finn was already feeling stiff by the time it finished.

  The theatergoers exited into daylight. Finn’s heart raced in his chest as he hid and the doors to the outside thumped shut, closing him in. The theater darkened. More sounds: ushers making small talk, people saying good-bye and good night.

  Then silence.

  Finn, still on the floor, uncoiled and relaxed his tight muscles. Two minutes passed. Five. No sounds at all beyond the almost painful beating of his heart.

  He got to his feet, gathered his courage, and called out, “Hello?” prepared to invent some excuse if he raised anyone.

  Nothing.

  He pushed through the doors and walked back into the main gallery. He tried once more:

  “Hello?” If discovered, he’d claim he had fallen asleep during the film.

  Nothing.

  A few lights had been left on, but the ones inside the displays were all off. Finn checked out the drafting table. He was disappointed to read the little sign that described the display. There was no mention of the drafting table having belonged to Walt Disney. It was just one of many drafting tables used by his animation staff. There were a couple pens and pencils, a clear plastic draftsman’s triangle, and some papers scattered around. Finn carefully climbed into the display and opened some small drawers of a cabinet next to the table. All empty.

  Next, he returned to the display of Walt Disney’s original office. There on the desk, both a mug and a cork globe held an abundance of pens and pencils. A dozen or more. My first pen.

  Finn knew just by looking that this was the place.