Kingdom Keepers Boxed Set

by Ridley Pearson

  “Maybe sometime.”

  “I can help you, Finn. I want to help you. But you’ve got to let me in.”

  He saw something behind her eyes, as if she knew more than she was letting on. Or was that just another girl trick? Finn couldn’t think what to say.

  Amanda climbed onto the bus, pausing briefly to talk to the driver. There were no tickets required on the Disney buses, so why would Amanda stop to talk to the driver? As the bus pulled away, Finn couldn’t get the driver’s face out of his mind: an old man with white hair, ice-blue eyes, and a kind face.

  Wayne? Was it possible?

  HIS HAND TREMBLING, Finn reread the list that had been left for him at the school office the next day:

  Howard

  Lee

  Maitland

  Jackson

  He recognized these as the names of four middle schools. Four schools where he now believed he’d find the other DHIs. The note wasn’t signed, but he knew it was from Brad.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he reminded Amanda, though it was a little late now. They were riding a somewhat smelly city bus toward Lee Middle School. One-story buildings painted pink, sea blue, and white streamed past. Heat waves shimmered from the pavement. Another fall day.

  “I’m okay,” she replied.

  He wanted to think this had been his idea, but he knew better. He wasn’t sure how she’d managed to talk him into letting her join him, but here she was.

  “We might not get back in time for fifth period,” he warned. They’d skipped out on lunch together, slipping out a door near the gym. They’d be in some serious trouble if caught.

  “I’m a big girl, Finn.”

  The bus driver, a fat guy with a blotchy red face, kept an eye on them in the mirror. Finn was feeling paranoid. “Hey, do you think—?”

  “That he’s watching us?” Amanda said, interrupting. “Yes.”

  “What if he’s some kind of spy?” Finn asked.

  “Oh, please. He’s just curious about a couple of kids on their own in the middle of the day.”

  He felt stupid for having said that.

  To drum it in, Amanda asked, “What kind of spy? For whom?” She whispered into his ear, “The Overtakers?”

  She meant to tease him, but Finn wasn’t laughing.

  “You saw those guys yesterday at the Magic Kingdom,” Finn reminded her.

  “You weren’t supposed to be there. You broke the rules,” she reminded him. “You think they’re Over-takers?” Again, she was teasing.

  “As if you’d know.”

  “When are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  “When I find out myself,” he answered.

  “These other kids. The other DHIs,” she said. “You think they have the answers?”

  “Not exactly.”

  The driver picked up a black radio microphone with a curly black cord and spoke into it. They couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  “What if he works with truancy cops?” Finn said. The schools were serious about kids cutting class.

  “Now you’re making me paranoid,” she said sharply. She reached up and pressed the signal for the next stop. The brakes hissed as the bus slowed and pulled over to the curb.

  As they hurried off the bus, Finn caught the driver’s gaze in the side mirror: he was watching them.

  Nine hot blocks later they reached the school. Finn was thirsty.

  It was a nicer, newer school than theirs. They walked down the main hall, trying to look like they knew where they were going. Neither had been here before.

  “What’s the plan?” Amanda asked.

  “We’re here at lunchtime for a reason,” Finn explained, checking a wall clock. They had to catch a return bus within twenty minutes or they’d miss the start of fifth period. He doubted they’d make it.

  They located the cafeteria by following the noise and smells. To save time, Finn and Amanda had decided to split up. The enormous room was packed with kids and littered with backpacks. Hundreds of kids ate at long tables.

  As Finn passed a table, he heard someone behind him say, “Hey, isn’t that one of the hosts from Disney World?” Less than five minutes, and he’d been spotted. He didn’t like being famous as much as he thought he would. He slipped on his sunglasses.

  He saw Amanda a few tables away. She carried copies of the photographs they’d taken at the Magic Kingdom. She was showing them around to kids and asking questions. Finn didn’t know which of the four DHIs went to Lee. He walked slowly, studying faces at the various tables.

  It was really loud in here. An abundance of food smells combined into a stink he found sickening.

  A big guy suddenly jumped up in Finn’s way, an eighth-grader, judging by his size. He wore a Colorado Avalanche jersey, colorful jams, and new Nikes. “Who you staring at?” he growled.

  “No one.”

  The big kid reached out and lifted Finn’s sunglasses. “Think you’re too cool?” Seeing Finn, he did a double take.

  “Hey! How come I know you?”

  “Give me back my glasses, please.”

  “Aren’t you like on Zoom or something?”

  “I’d like my glasses back, please.”

  “Give ‘em back, Roy,” a girl at the next table said. “It’s not Zoom, stupid. He’s a host—over at the Magic Kingdom—like Charlene Turner.”

  Charlene Turner. Finn had her last name now.

  “Oh, yeah!” the big kid said, reluctantly returning the sunglasses to Finn. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for Charlene,” Finn said.

  “Can’t help you,” the big guy said, sitting back down.

  Finn looked to the girl expectantly, but she shook her head. “Sorry,” she said.

  Finn looked up to see Amanda waving at him. Having won his attention, she pointed to a window that looked out onto the playing fields. She moved her hand to mimic dribbling a basketball.

  Leave it to Amanda: she’d found Charlene.

  CHARLENE WAS TALKING WITH three other girls, all dressed for P.E. in gray gym shorts and yellow T-shirts. Charlene’s expression changed instantly as she saw Finn approaching. He wondered why she should be so disappointed to see him. They’d gotten along well enough during the shoot.

  “Hey,” he said, greeting her, suddenly made painfully aware of Amanda standing by his side.

  Charlene excused herself from her friends, saying, “Back in a whack,” and approached Finn.

  “What are you doing here? Are you cutting?” she asked, viewing Finn skeptically. “And who’s she?”

  “I have to talk to you,” he said. Then, “She’s a friend.”

  Charlene looked him over, and then met eyes with Amanda. “I don’t think so,” she said, and started to walk back toward her friends.

  “The dreams. Disney after dark,” Finn said. That stopped her cold.

  Amanda looked at Finn curiously, but knew better than to say anything.

  “Dreams that aren’t dreams,” he added.

  Charlene spun to face him, excitement and alarm in her sparkling eyes. “No way you could know that,” she said.

  “Unless…” Finn said. “I’ve been there, too.”

  “What’s this about?” Amanda asked. A whisper meant only for Finn, yet Charlene overheard.

  “Where’s she fit in?” Charlene asked.

  “I told you: a friend willing to help me out,” Finn explained. He added quickly, “Wayne, the old guy. Have you met him? He needs us all together. At night. Tonight, or tomorrow. As soon as I can find everyone: the five of us, all together.”

  “This isn’t happening,” said Charlene, suspicious of Amanda, puzzled by Finn. But the expression on her face told him she’d also been in the park in her dreams.

  Charlene was the kind of girl you might see on a cereal box.

  “Do you know how to reach any of the others?” Finn asked.

  “I run into Willa on VMK sometimes, though it’s more by chance.” Virtual Magic Kingdo
m, a new “massively multiplayer” online game, was all the rage.

  Finn played too. “Can you tell her to meet us?”

  “It’s not like I know her like that.” Her friends called over to her. “Listen, I can’t do this now,” Charlene said.

  “Contact Willa if you can. But whatever you do, go to bed early tonight. Eight o’clock. Eight o’clock, exactly.”

  “I’ve been trying to stay up. I don’t exactly love my dreams lately.”

  “We need to know,” he said. She had to be as curious about this as he was. Could they possibly meet in the park in their dreams?

  “Yeah, okay…” Charlene said reluctantly.

  Charlene looked straight at Amanda but spoke to Finn. “No one can know about this,” she said. Then she lowered her voice and hissed, “It isn’t safe.”

  The coach’s whistle sounded shrilly. Charlene took off running but glanced back at Finn one last time. He saw fear in her eyes.

  “Meet me!” he called out.

  Charlene didn’t answer, but her eyes registered that she’d heard.

  After a moment, Amanda said, “We’d better be getting back.”

  “Yeah,” Finn agreed.

  “It isn’t safe.”

  Charlene’s warning seemed to hang in the air between them.

  “I’M GOING TO BED,” Finn announced, standing up from the dinner table and carrying his plate to the kitchen sink. He hadn’t been to bed at this hour since elementary school.

  “Are you not feeling well?” His mother said, in shock.

  “I’m feeling fine,” he said. “I’m just going to bed early, if that’s all right?”

  “Have you finished your homework?”

  “Yes, it’s done. I stayed after for study hall.”

  “You what?” She set down a bowl of mashed potatoes and crossed her arms. “Finn?” She eyed him suspiciously. “You stayed after school to do your homework, and now you’re heading to bed at seven-fifteen?” The night before last, his mother had received a call from her contact on the DHI team, asking if Finn had been to the Magic Kingdom lately. Finn had denied going, feeling awful about lying, but knowing she wouldn’t believe him. She’d grounded him. Finn didn’t even try to challenge her, and that had convinced her of his guilt. “If you’re planning to sneak out—”

  “No way!” Finn said. “I’m not, I promise.” He stepped forward and kissed her. “Good night, Mom.”

  “I’m going to check on you when your father gets home.”

  “Okay,” Finn said. “Just don’t wake me up. Please,” he added. “I need a good night’s sleep.”

  He checked his computer. No interesting e-mail. He debated logging on to VMK and looking for Charlene, but instead he changed into his pajamas and brushed his teeth, passing his mother in the hall on the way back from the bathroom.

  She wore her concern openly. “It’s only seven-fifteen,” she reminded him. “We could catch the Simpsons.”

  She’d trapped him. This was an offer he would never normally turn down.

  “I’m going to pass, Mom, but thanks.”

  “It’s a bad rule, making you get approval before going. A stupid rule, really. If you…if you took a friend to the park…well…your father and I would understand how you wouldn’t have wanted to tell us.”

  Finn considered her olive branch. “Amanda,” he said. “Her name’s Amanda.”

  Relief spread across his mother’s face. He feared she might hug him.

  She was smiling now. Beaming.

  “’Night, Mom.”

  She looked like she might cry.

  “I’ll talk to your father,” was all she said.

  Finn knew he wouldn’t be grounded by morning.

  He shut his bedroom door. If he crossed over into the park, he didn’t want to be in his pajamas, so he changed back into jeans and a T-shirt. He lay there for fifteen wakeful minutes with the lights out, checking the clock regularly. He tried to relax. Dusk played at the edges of his shades. It felt like the middle of the day. He cleared his mind, dozed off, and finally sank into a deep sleep.

  “You’re learning,” said the old man’s voice from behind him.

  Finn turned to see Wayne, in khakis and a plaid shirt, sitting behind the wheel of an electric golf cart with the Walt Disney World logo painted on the front. The sky glowed faintly on the horizon. It took Finn a moment to register his location as somewhere in Frontierland, not far from Tom Sawyer Island.

  “You just missed the fireworks display,” Wayne said, stopping the cart alongside Finn. “Park closed a few minutes ago. I love this time of night. Especially the music.”

  “What music?” Finn didn’t hear any music and realized now that he’d always heard music in the park. The old guy was a bit daffy.

  Finn reached out and grabbed the steel bar that supported the cart’s awning. He saw his glowing hand wrap around the metal but could also faintly see through his hand as well. Not only that, but the metal didn’t feel exactly like metal.

  “This is so weird,” he confessed.

  “Don’t fight it,” Wayne said.

  “This is probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve done some weird stuff,” Finn said. “This one time, a friend of mine and I—” He caught himself blabbering. Instead, he told Wayne, “I found Charlene. I’m still trying to locate the others.”

  “It has to be all of you. You understand that, don’t you? All or nothing. Youngsters your age, you always think it’s all about you, only you. I can promise you, it has to be all of you.”

  “I want to help you.”

  “You have no choice,” he said. “At some point you’ll understand that.”

  Finn felt the words like drumbeats in his chest. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I thought it was a dream at first,” Finn said.

  “And now?”

  “Now I don’t think so. I don’t know exactly what it is if it isn’t a dream, but I don’t think it could be a dream.” He hesitated and said, “I saw the moon.”

  Wayne nodded and cocked his head curiously. “Yet something’s bothering you.”

  “Charlene said it isn’t safe. You basically said the same thing.”

  “And yet here you are. You came back,” Wayne said.

  “You brought me back.”

  “Did I? Not exactly. This is a two-way street, young man. You’re neither hologram nor human. You’re something in between, I think. The holograms don’t think for themselves, and they speak only what you recorded for them. How much you are…one or the other…may depend on your thinking;—what you’re thinking, how you’re thinking it. So I’d be careful of what I was thinking, if I were you.”

  Finn spotted a large gold bear by the entrance to the Jungle Cruise. He shook his head to clear his eyes since the bear was walking on two feet and there was what looked like an oversized rat jogging to keep up with it. “Is that…?”

  “What?” the old man said excitedly.

  “Pooh and Piglet?”

  “Is it?”

  “There!” Finn said, pointing.

  “I told you, didn’t I?” Wayne was quick to lose his patience. “I don’t see what you see.” He sounded frustrated.

  “Pooh and Piglet.” Finn was certain now.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Walking away from us.”

  “Anything else?”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Finn felt like some kind of translator.

  “I told you: things are happening in the park. We—you and your friends, actually—need to stop them.”

  “The Overtakers.”

  “Yes.”

  “It isn’t safe,” Finn repeated.

  “No, it’s not,” Wayne said, agreeing.

  “What’s that mean, exactly?”

  “What did you think of the park as a small child?”

  “Magic,” Finn said without a second thought. He still thought of it as magic.

&n
bsp; “Exactly,” Wayne agreed. “But there are two sides to magic, yes? Good magic is what you’re talking about. But there’s other magic besides good magic.”

  “Black magic,” Finn stated.

  “A layman’s term, but yes, a darker side to magic that few if any fully understand.”

  “Do you?”

  “Heavens no. But Walt did. He wrote about it. He made films. Invented characters. He understood its seriousness, its potential for…but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”

  “Potential for what? Evil?”

  “Let’s just put a pin in that. We’ll come back to it.”

  Finn climbed into the front seat of the golf cart. His feet disappeared. They weren’t simply in shadow; they were…gone. He felt a little faint. “My feet,” he gasped.

  Wayne explained, “The hologram imaging system isn’t set up to project to all locations. There are places we call shadows. Like dead spots where cell phones don’t work. Inside some attractions they will be visible—you, the DHIs, will be visible. Other locations, maybe not. Your feet inside a cart, for instance,” he said, pointing, “not so good. You may be able to control this. We don’t know for sure. You’re the first of your kind.”

  Finn glanced down at his missing feet. It wasn’t so bad.

  “Okay?” Wayne asked.

  “Okay, I guess.”

  Wayne pressed the accelerator. The cart lurched forward.

  “Where’d you get your license?” Finn asked, holding on for dear life.

  “What license?” Wayne answered, his eyes sparkling.

  Four or five dark, shadowy figures streaked across the intersection in front of the cart. Wayne didn’t see them. Finn reached over and jerked the cart’s steering wheel, narrowly averting an accident. Wayne braked to a stop.

  “You nearly paved those guys,” Finn exclaimed.

  “What guys?”

  “The—” Finn couldn’t complete the sentence. Wayne hadn’t seen them. Then Finn said, “Pirates.” He pointed to their left. “But not exactly pirates. They look more like…”

  “Like what?”

  “More like robots…Like the lifelike pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean. And Finn realized that was it: they weren’t people, but Audio-Animatronics figures that had somehow come alive. “Never mind,” Finn said, not wanting to sound crazy. A group of the figures was pushing a line of small blue cars ahead of them. Finn thought he recognized the cars but couldn’t associate them with any particular attraction. He was stuck on the idea that some of the AAs—but they were only machines—had come alive. Was that possible?