Kingdom Keepers Boxed Set

by Ridley Pearson

  They had no choice but to lie there and await their fate.

  At last they heard the door shut and the truck rumble off. Finn directed the group behind an outbuilding. Amanda had gotten Wanda’s phone number from the visit she had paid to Mrs. Nash’s house, but she didn’t have it in her phone’s contact list. It turned out not to matter, because Philby had Wanda’s number memorized, though no one knew how he’d gotten it in the first place. That was the thing about Philby: you learned not to ask.

  Finn apologized for waking Wanda up and then attempted to explain their situation. She stopped him several times, whenever he mentioned her father—first in the Mission: Space video, then in person at Wonders. She agreed to pick up Maybeck and Jess, saying she could meet them at Epcot. She offered to get Maybeck a Studio Cast Member Security uniform if possible, and said she’d have Jess come dressed as one of the cast of Fantasmic!

  With everyone now accounted for, Finn felt better. He led the four others deeper into the backstage area of the Studios. The Fantasmic! technical rehearsal was scheduled to start in less than five minutes. As they walked, Philby caught up to Finn and Amanda.

  “Why do you suppose they’d be conducting technical rehearsals on a show that’s been playing for so many years?” Philby asked. “Have you thought about that?”

  “I just assumed…” Finn said. But he didn’t finish his thought. “You’re saying it has something to do with the Overtakers?”

  “What else? Something is disrupting the show. Tech rehearsals are all about the effects—the timing, the lighting, the music, entrance cues. It could have been what got Wayne going. Right? He hears a rumor about Fantasmic! having problems. The problems came on recently and aren’t going away. The first few attempts to fix them don’t work, so they schedule a whole week of tech rehearsals to strip the show down and build it back up, scene by scene, minute by minute.”

  It made sense to Finn. “Okay. But he went missing way before now, way before these rehearsals.”

  “But the first time Jess gets one of her telepathic visions was this week. Right now. Because he knew something no one else did: if we were going to stop them with the least risk to the audience, we had to do it now, when the rehearsals are going on. The genius of Maleficent and Chernabog hiding at Fantasmic!—if that’s even what they’re doing—is that the only time anyone’s around that place, there are like five thousand guests hanging out. Who’s going to put them at risk?”

  “The genius of them hiding there,” Finn corrected him, “is that they belong there. All they have to do is stash an Auto-Animatronic figure or a Cast Member or two and then take their place. Who’s to know? Who looks that closely at Maleficent? It’s probably dark backstage. From out front she’s pretty far away and not very big. Green skin. Weird chin. Who’s going to pull her aside and ask for a Disney ID anyway?”

  “So what you’re saying, Philby,” said Amanda, “is that they aren’t tech rehearsals at all. They’re more like exorcisms. The Disney people are actually searching for Overtakers in hopes of finding them and locking them up, or whatever they do with them?”

  “If they know what they’re up against,” Philby said, “then that’s exactly what they’re doing. But—”

  “If they don’t know what they’re up against…” Finn said.

  “—then everybody involved in those rehearsals is in danger,” Amanda said. “Including us.”

  “Most definitely including us,” Philby said.

  Finn said, “The Imagineers will want to lock them up and study them. If anyone’s going to take them on, if anyone’s going to try to stop them permanently it’s going to be…us.”

  The word died on the tip of his tongue. Amanda could have corrected him; Philby could have corrected him. Finn reached down and touched the grip of the sword.

  Why had Wayne put him in charge, anyway? Why couldn’t it be Maybeck with the sword, or Philby with his encyclopedic knowledge of famous Disney sword battles? Why him? The answer came to him indirectly, as it so often did. He had been the first one to cross over; the first one to meet Wayne; he was still the only one who could all-clear nearly at will. He was the one because Wayne had chosen him. There it was, as simple as he could break it down. Asking why Wayne had chosen him would only send him running in circles right back to the fact that Wayne had chosen him. He needed to stop questioning it and start doing something about it. His hand gripped the sword so tightly that, just for a moment, his fingers appeared bloodless, his knuckles white, the sword’s grip welded to his hand. At one with it.

  “I can do this,” he heard slip past his own lips. As faint as a whisper, not something anyone heard—or so he hoped. But Amanda shot him a fearful and sympathetic look that said otherwise. At the very least she had heard; at the very least one other person knew his deepest fear.

  Willa and Charlene caught up to them.

  “Assignments?” Philby asked. That was another thing: when they’d first come together as a group, everyone was constantly jockeying for control, trying to come up with a better idea, a better plan. Now only Maybeck voiced that kind of discontent, and even so, less and less. Philby wasn’t telling, he was asking; and no one but Finn would be expected to answer.

  “Give us the layout,” Finn said. Maybe that was why Wayne had chosen him: because he understood the value of each Kingdom Keeper, knew when to seek advice.

  “A control room. Seating for several thousand. Two acres of water with a channel down the middle and a natural-gas pipe running just under the surface. A flotilla of a dozen barges. A multitiered performance stage complete with various trapdoors, zip lines, stunt pillows, all over five stories high, including another three stories below stage level with multiple staircases, dressing rooms and enough pyrotechnics on hand to be monitored by the federal government.”

  “Sounds…dangerous,” Amanda said.

  “Sounds big,” said Willa.

  Philby, hearing their comments, snapped his head toward Amanda, then shot Finn an intense look.

  Finn said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I can’t believe we missed it.”

  “Missed what, you guys?” Amanda said.

  “You nailed it,” Philby said. “Fantasmic! has everything, including isolation, to make it—”

  “A base of operations for the Overtakers,” Finn said.

  “If they ever got their hands on all the ordnance—”

  “That’s fireworks,” Willa explained to Amanda, in case she hadn’t heard the term, but Amanda nodded as if she already knew that.

  “—together with the boats,” Philby continued, “and the way Fantasmic! is laid out, it would give them a base of operations. A fort. A defensible position from which to launch strikes on the various parks.”

  “Willa,” Finn said, “you’ll hang back. We need one person keeping watch on the whole place while the rest of us focus on specific tasks.”

  “I can do that,” Willa said.

  “You’re our go-to person. Anyone needs help,” he told the others, “Willa’s it. She’s our wild card.”

  “I’ve been called worse,” she said.

  “I don’t know if I should say this or not,” Amanda said. “But couldn’t the Overtakers hang out in place like this for a long time before anyone ever figured it out? I mean it’s so far removed from everything else.”

  “I think that’s the point,” Finn said. “That’s the point exactly.”

  “But what if that’s what Wayne discovered?” she asked. “What if they already control Fantasmic!—then aren’t we walking into a trap?”

  Philby glanced at Finn, who looked back at Philby. Their DHIs shimmered, revealing they were on an edge of the projection range. Their DHIs spit static and glowed off-color.

  Finn said, “No, we’d be running into a trap.” With that, he and Philby picked up the pace and the girls followed. Five glowing figures stealing through the dark up a path toward flashes of light reflecting off the low-lying clouds as booming
explosions combined with a narrator’s excited voice rippling through the air.

  The show had begun.

  “YOU’RE GOING TO HAVE to duck down on the floor,” Wanda said.

  “On the floor?” Maybeck complained, “But it’s a subcompact!”

  “Besides, we’re invisible!” Jess said, finding the state disconcerting and upsetting. Invisibility wasn’t the thrill she’d imagined. It left her feeling half dead, as if she didn’t exist and never would again.

  “Keep low,” Wanda said. “There’s no choice. You’re going to reappear at some point, and though I doubt they’ll search the car, they might glance in through the windows or something and it would be bad luck if that’s when you showed back up. I put a blanket back there, and some clothes. Just make it look messy.”

  “Messy,” Maybeck said, “I can do.”

  He told Jess he’d take the bottom so he wouldn’t crush her and instructed her to pull the blanket completely over them. She nodded, feeling nervous about lying on top of Maybeck, nervous about the Security guards at Hollywood Studios, nervous about her invisibility and the thought she might suddenly reappear at the wrong moment. In short, nervous about everything.

  “Hurry. We’re coming up to the booth.”

  The two scrambled to get down onto the car’s floor. Maybeck lay down face-first and Jess piled onto his back and tugged and kicked at the blanket until she was completely covered. Hopefully the blanket would keep them in the projection shadow and allow them to retain their invisibility.

  “And for heaven’s sake stay absolutely still,” Wanda said.

  The car arrived at the backstage checkpoint. She rolled down her window and showed her ID.

  “You’re not on the list,” the guard informed her bluntly a minute or so later.

  One of the longest minutes in Jess’s life. She and Maybeck were as close as ham and cheese; she wanted out of there.

  “Listen, friend, there’s a tech rehearsal at Fantasmic! That should be on your list somewhere. If you check with Alex Wright you’ll find that not only am I expected, but I’m late. Or try Rich. Any one of them will tell you not only to let me in, but that you should chew me out for being late.”

  The guard snickered. “Stand by,” he said.

  Wanda put her window up.

  Jess saw a flicker of light beneath the blanket. She realized it was her right elbow—sticking out slightly from the blanket—their DHIs were active. She drew her arm beneath the blanket, hoping she’d fully covered their feet.

  She whispered into Maybeck’s ear. “We’re in range.” He nodded and the back of his head hit her chin.

  The hum of Wanda’s window coming down sent a jolt of panic through Jess. She fought against the anxiety, knowing she could ill afford it. She tried picturing the ocean. All of a sudden she felt her hands and feet tingling, then her arms and legs. She was pressed up against the backseat—and watched her left hand disappear through the seat itself. She understood immediately what was happening to her.

  She found Maybeck’s ear under all that hair and whispered something to him.

  “You trying to get me fired?” the guard said. “I woke up Mr. Wright and he was none too happy about it.”

  “But he backed up everything I said,” Wanda stated boldly.

  “Well, yes, ma’am, he did. All that’s left is for me to search the car. Won’t be but a second.” The guard cupped his hands and peered through the rear side window. He tried the door.

  “Would you unlock the door please, ma’am?”

  “Whatever for?” Wanda said, sounding threatened.

  “I just need to take a look.”

  “You’ve had your look. I told you: I’m late.”

  “Then the sooner you unlock the doors, the sooner you’ll be on your way.”

  Wanda heaved a long sigh and threw the master switch. All the doors popped. The guard opened the rear door.

  “Listen, officer,” Wanda said, turning to see into the backseat, “there’s no need to—”

  “Just doing my job, ma’am.” He took hold of a corner of the blanket.

  “Listen. I can explain everything if you’ll just—”

  The guard pulled the blanket away. The backseat was empty.

  “Explain what, ma’am? What was that?”

  “Ah…the messiness. I’m not usually…this messy.”

  “No crime in that. If you’d just pop the trunk, I’ll have you on your way.”

  As she popped the trunk, Wanda reached between the seats to pull the blanket back into place over the kids. She whispered softly, “Thank goodness you stayed invis—” But she caught herself as the blanket fell flat to the floor. The kids weren’t there.

  Then, as the guard pulled open the trunk, a bulge appeared and the blanket rose up from the floor on its own, first about a foot high, then rippling and rising another foot. Wanda lifted the edge and saw Jess lying on Maybeck’s back. Jess grabbed the blanket from Wanda and pulled it back into place, hiding them.

  Wanda, who knew nothing of all-clear—had no idea how the two might have moved into the trunk and then returned to the floor of the backseat—stuttered and tried to say something coherent, but was brought up short by the guard tapping on her window. She had no recollection of his shutting the trunk.

  “You’re set to go, ma’am. And I wouldn’t worry about, you know…?”

  She offered him a puzzled look.

  “The messiness,” he said.

  “Ah! That!” she said. “You have a good day.”

  “And you, ma’am.”

  She pulled the car through the raised barrier and released another pent-up sigh.

  “What the…? What was that?”

  “Tell us when it’s safe to come up,” Maybeck said, his voice sounding strained.

  “I think I’m squishing him,” Jess said.

  Wanda parked in front of the costume department and led them inside. “You can probably pass as a Security guard,” she told Maybeck, who stood up taller, appreciating the comment. “That would get you inside as Finn told you he wanted. And you…” she said to Jess.

  “I will be of the most help as close to the stage as possible. There’s at least a chance I’ll see something before it happens and be able to warn someone.”

  “A stagehand,” Wanda said excitedly. “I can get you the headset and everything. It won’t be hooked up to anything, but no one will know that. You’ll look official, which is all that matters.”

  “We can hook it up to one of our phones,” Maybeck said. “Philby can do that stuff.”

  “As a stagehand, you’d have full access backstage,” Wanda said.

  “We need to find the dressing room Maleficent uses.”

  Maybeck said, “Amanda’s going to do that. Finn said so.”

  “She’s going after the missing Cast Member,” Jess said.

  “You are not going to take on the real one by yourself,” Maybeck said, trying to make his statement sound irrefutable.

  Jess studied him thoughtfully. “Of course not. But the closer I can get to her—physically closer to the real one—the more likely I might be able to see her thoughts. Have a vision. Think about that, Donnie: what if I could find out what she was thinking? Planning? What if I could see her future? We’d be one step ahead of her from now on. How could she possibly win if we knew what she was going to do before she ever did it?”

  Wanda looked deeply troubled. “You’re beginning to scare me,” she said.

  “If it’s okay with you, we need you to get to Philby to figure out a phone for Jess,” Maybeck said. “And it would be great if you could manage to get me a Security radio—a real one.”

  “What?”

  “I need to be able to know what’s going on with them. Can you do that?”

  “I can try, I guess.”

  Jess looked at her with sympathetic eyes. “That’s all any of us can do.”

  MRS. WHITMAN KNEW all the expressions: Be careful what you wish for. You can’t undo
what’s already done. Had calmer heads prevailed, she might have considered the ramifications of her initial panic, might have thought through the effect her contacting the other parents would have, might have sat down with her husband and talked this through. But as it was, she’d considered nothing, reacting instead to a mother’s concern for the well-being of her son and believing she was acting in his best interests.

  “An ambulance is taking our son to the hospital,” said Gladis Philby over the phone.

  “But…”

  “Listen,” Philby’s mother said. “I know we think we know what’s going on. I’ve heard the theories from the Imagineers, and I hope to God they’re right. Of course I do. But the fact is, college fund program or not, my son’s in a coma, and I can’t take any chances. If they disqualify him, take him out of the program, well, honestly, maybe that’s for the best as long as I get my son back. I can’t stand this anymore, to tell you the truth. I’m done with it.”

  “But if the Imagineers are right,” Mrs. Whitman said, “then the doctors might just make matters worse. That’s why we’re keeping our Finn at home. You heard what Bess Morton, Donnie’s aunt, said about Donnie? She has been through this—she’s the only one who has been through this—and the fact of the matter is, Terrance just woke up at some point and climbed out of bed fit as a fiddle.”

  “If you want to count on that…on the word of a…of an…artist,” she said with a good deal of disdain, “that is of course your prerogative. We have elected to put our faith in the doctors.”

  “I want to do what’s right,” Mrs. Whitman said. “I was just hoping we, the parents, might approach this in a similar—”