Kingdom Keepers the Return Book 3

by Ridley Pearson

  Mattie sat silently, admiring the South Sea island souvenirs and collectibles on Joe’s desk and walls. His office was like a weird museum. He was waiting for her answer. She muttered and looked away, trying to make it clear she didn’t like the idea. She worked better alone.

  “I suppose all that can wait,” Joe said. Mattie smiled slyly. That was better. “The characters I have in mind for you aren’t going anywhere. I can see that your earlier suggestion has merit.” She smiled more widely. “Truthfully,” he said, “I would rather know their plans, understand their intentions and hierarchy, than simply get rid of them. Gathering information beats potential violence any day. The chance to learn something is always better than being heavy-handed. So, yes, I think we should consider your plan.”

  “I’m glad.” Mattie chose her words carefully. She didn’t want to sound pushy, but she also didn’t want to be a pushover.

  “There are complications. Always complications.” This last bit Joe said to himself in a disgruntled, irritated manner. “We have internal processes for the implementation of our DHIs. Committees. Subcommittees. It takes time. And I know for a fact we won’t receive approval for what you have in mind. Version 2.0 in-park guides are about to be brought on-line again. At present, all the resources for that technology are fully committed. I can’t possibly pull any of my team. We don’t have the luxury of time, do we? No! We must act, and act now. If we do this—and I’m only saying ‘if’—it will need to be done in absolute secrecy, and we will have to settle for Version 1.6, which has its drawbacks and limitations. I should know! I’ve tested this myself.”

  “I don’t understand most of what you just said.” Mattie gave him a sly smile. “I stopped listening when you said you liked my plan. What about your testing it yourself?”

  He chuckled. “I crossed over, Mattie. The problem with version 1.6 is that it makes you prone to fear and emotions. For reasons not yet understood, emotion weakens the hologram and gives you a material presence. You become more solid, more human. More vulnerable. You can be hurt, wounded. You can feel pain. And you can be caught, which is probably the more dangerous side effect. If they can capture your DHI, your sleeping body is stuck at the time of crossing over. The kids call it Sleeping Beauty Syndrome.”

  “The Syndrome.” Mattie nodded. Chills ran down her arms. She’d heard the stories. Maybeck and the other Keepers had nearly been lost for good that way.

  “In 2.0,” Joe said, “you can more easily direct when to be material. Anger can trigger it. That would benefit you, since you need to physically touch a person to use your gift.”

  “My ability.”

  He nodded. “To read someone.”

  “The anger’s not a problem for me,” she said. “I’m angry most of the time.”

  “I don’t like hearing that, Mattie.”

  “Try living at Barracks 14 for a few years. You sense you’re a prisoner, but you never can really figure out if it’s true or not. They feed you. They compliment you. They make you their friend. They make you feel special. Then you escape and discover it’s all a lie. You’re the same freak you were all along. The anger…You can’t believe that kind of anger.”

  “To have a chance, you will need to control it. Can you do that, Mattie?”

  Mattie frowned. She liked Joe, grudgingly, but still. She didn’t appreciate the parental tone he took with her, though. Grown-ups thought they knew everything. They mixed lies with truth when convenient and then preached about how you should never do that. They invented random rules that made their lives easier. They were hypocrites.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” she said. “Won’t we?”

  CREATING A DHI FOR MATTIE took two excruciatingly long nights. During working hours, for fear of being seen, Joe couldn’t risk using Soundstage 6, the Studio’s green-screen stage, so Mattie started work at 8:00 p.m. and continued until 6:00 a.m. A process that typically took several weeks was reduced to a few basic movements and an abridged script.

  Donning a skintight green leotard, tights, hood, and gloves, all with action sensors affixed, Mattie performed. She walked, ran, sat, jumped, kicked, and squatted in front of a string of synchronized video cameras. When she grew too tired, she read scripts into a microphone, nonsensical phrases and word combinations intended to train the digital processor to speak like her. Then it was back to the soundstage, sometimes repeating actions like picking up a glass or mug, sometimes nodding or shrugging her shoulders. She jumped off a low box, a higher box, a wall. She somersaulted and she fought. She fought and she fought and she fought: with dummies, with a martial arts expert, with a woman her own size.

  When broken down into individual events, the movements of the human body turned out to be insanely complicated. Mattie had to walk slow, fast, casually, intentionally, angrily. Each was slightly different from the others.

  And yet, Mattie was told, this endless series of movements equaled approximately one-tenth of the program for the Keepers. Once she was crossed over, Joe and his team—all of whom were sworn to secrecy—reminded her that she would need to move slowly and deliberately. There had been no time to program subtlety or nuance into her DHI. The computers projecting her three-dimensional image were able to fill in some, but any quick motion that had not been recorded would cause blurring, or even brief invisibility.

  Joe explained it in simple terms. “If you get into trouble, just remember, you will reconnect with us once you’re asleep.”

  “Only if I can fall asleep!” Mattie said.

  “The point is that you’ll be the real Mattie during the day. You can spy for us, learn what you can. Then, at one a.m. each night, we will cross you over. That way you can seek help from us if you need it: at any time, your DHI can leave wherever you are, even if you’re captive.”

  Looking nervous, he cleared his throat. Joe Garling-ton nervous? Mattie blinked. Not good.

  “Though we’ve never tested it, we believe your DHI is capable of defending your sleeping self. You will cross over at the Hub, like the Keepers. That’s how the system is programmed, and there’s no time to change it. We will have a contact person there watching for you. Whatever your situation, we can help. We have a number of plans and strategies in place. For this first test, if you’re okay when you cross over, then we’d like you to locate the Return and end the projection. Your sleeping body will behave normally—you can be awakened, for one thing. Does that make sense?”

  “You’re saying if I’m okay, I will look for the Return and use it. If I’m not, you guys’ll help me.”

  “That’s right! Now, for the bigger question: Are you ready to try it out? Are you ready to test being crossed over?”

  Mattie smiled. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been waiting for this for a long, long time.”

  * * *

  Falling asleep wasn’t easy. Mattie’s heart rate was elevated in response to her adrenaline and excitement. Her 11:00 p.m. bedtime stretched out indefinitely. She would later tell the Cryptos (an elite group of Imagineers who worked in a secret basement lab in Disney Studios, under Joe’s direction) that her mind ran wild, that she was thinking too much about falling asleep to allow it to happen. She experienced short but vivid dreams—not unusual for her—and awoke abruptly to see that only a few minutes had ticked off the clock.

  During other periods, she ran through lists in her head, thinking of things she’d forgotten to do. Her eyes would pop open, and the clock in her small room above the Studio’s theater would reveal that only twenty minutes had passed. She’d get angry, which made falling asleep yet more difficult.

  So when she dreamed she was coming awake on the sidewalk in front of the Partners statue in the middle of the Plaza in Disneyland, she turned her head to the side to look at the bedside clock.

  Instead, she saw a mangy calico cat with half a tail and a serious chunk of its right ear missing. Its fur stood up, as if it had bitten a live wire; it had anime eyes and ridiculously long white whiskers.

  Her first thou
ght was that it was an illustration, so she looked to the other side. Bushes. Back again: cat. Bushes. Cat.

  She sat up. Partners statue.

  Cat. Bushes.

  Statue.

  No clock.

  Concrete warm to the touch.

  * * *

  The cat was gone. The bushes were there. The statue was still there. The concrete was still warm.

  The castle rose behind the statue.

  Warm concrete, Mattie thought. Tingling hands and feet.

  Tingling? Tingling!

  No lights on in the castle.

  No lights down the street.

  Main Street USA! Castle. Concrete warm to the touch!

  “Cross over,” she said aloud. And she started laughing. Her chuckling grew to guffaws, to howls, to tears streaming down her cheeks. She lifted her hand, but there was nothing wet to wipe away. Maybe not tears, but the feeling of tears. Maybe not her, but the feeling of her.

  “Oh…Em…Gee,” she spoke to no one. “You have got to be kidding me!” She gave a short squeal, followed by more laughter. And finally, a test.

  Carefully, she swung her arm toward the low concrete wall that surrounded the Partners statue. Her hand and forearm disappeared; only her elbow showed. She pulled her arm out. Her arm was whole. She tried again, and again her arm disappeared into the concrete.

  She was a hologram!

  PHILBY ASSIGNED THE KEEPERS, Wayne, Amanda, and Jess to the task of collecting specific items—Wayne, phosphorus flares and digging tools; Maybeck, small pieces of ironlike nuts and bolts; Willa and Charlene, swords; Finn, lengths of iron chain. He was taking his reading of Jonathan Stroud’s Lockwood & Co. series as the actual “How to Battle Ghosts” manual—despite, Finn thought wryly, that the books are fiction.

  No one questioned the assignments, a rarity for the Kingdom Keepers, who were prone to long discussions and never short on opinions. Though no one said it, they all knew that they’d be returning to the graveyard as soon as preparations were made. After midnight, if possible.

  On everyone’s mind—also unspoken—was the danger involved. The two grave-digging zombies haunted them. No one wanted to face those two again, much less the contents of the disturbed graves. But if they didn’t figure out what the enemy was up to, then they might face an adversary armed with the element of surprise. Definitely a bad practice—they’d lived through countless versions of it when facing the Overtakers. If they didn’t learn from their own mistakes, then, according to Mr. Woodward, Philby’s senior history teacher, they were destined to repeat them!

  This time, the team was reduced in size. If they were caught and arrested, at least it wouldn’t be all of them. Wayne would drop them off and pick them up, but not be part of it himself. Charlene and Maybeck, by far the most fit, were the first to volunteer. Finn would lead the group; Jess, whose dream had led them there in the first place, felt she had to attend to confirm (or not) their findings. As for Willa, Amanda, and Philby? They were reluctantly staying put.

  Wayne moved them to the wood shop in the Opera House, as it wasn’t currently in use. Shane and Thia’s snooping had put Wayne’s workshop off-limits to all but Philby. He and Wayne were continuing to make progress on a variety of DHI transmission issues, in an effort to allow the visitors to return to the future.

  The team of four was dropped off at exactly 12:30 a.m., under a light but warm drizzle. Maybeck lugged a pickax and two shovels. Finn carried some heavy lengths of chain to ward off the zombies; Charlene had bits of iron and a ten-pound bag of rock salt for the same purpose. All carried phosphorus flares tucked into their waists, a flashlight with red film over the lens, and curving, steel-bladed Arabic swords Wayne had pilfered from the Disneyland costume shop. The sword blades were sharp and hung from the waist to the knee, making it dangerous to walk. Jess carried the sword but swore she would not use it, having little tolerance for unnecessary violence.

  “I hope Philby’s author guy, Lockwood or whoever, knew what he was talking about,” Charlene whispered to Finn. “Otherwise, we’re carrying a lot of junk around for nothing.”

  “Authors do research,” Finn replied. “At least the ones I’ve heard speak at school.”

  “You sure that wasn’t nonfiction?”

  “Fiction, nonfiction, what’s the difference?”

  On the way down the hill, they split up. Charlene and Maybeck headed directly for the graveyard. Finn sprinted ahead, and Jess peeled off to the left, remaining outside the rusting wrought-iron fence. The light rain made their hair and shoulders damp, but softened the grasses to silence.

  They approached slowly, as if they were walking in six inches of snow. Finn switched on his red-lens flashlight, throwing a dull beam just a few feet ahead. It was enough to see by, but only for a few feet.

  Jess, who had circled around near the tree, waved with two arms: she didn’t see the grave diggers up in the branches. She bravely approached a small shed beyond the graveyard and offered the two-arm wave again. Clear!

  Finn went to work—at this wedding, he’d be the flower girl. From the moment he passed through the tilting gate, he sprinkled nuts, bolts, and rock salt to either side, making what he hoped would be a ghost-proof lane.

  Their first target was the recently dug grave in front of the wide-limbed tree. As Maybeck and Charlene waited, Finn spread more of the collected iron bits and salt, forming a path to the second stirred gravesite. When he’d completed the alleys, marked by the dissolving white salt, he created circles of chain from which to begin digging.

  When he’d finished, Charlene and Maybeck entered warily. Maybeck walked carefully straight ahead; Charlene veered to the left.

  “Do we happen to be missing something?” Maybeck whispered to Finn, who was, by design, inside his own chain circle at the branch of the two lanes, sword out and at the ready. “How much does this place remind you of somewhere else? Take out the weeds and put it on a slight incline. See any similarities?”

  The artist of the group, Maybeck saw things differently: in shapes and designs, colors and forms. But with this hint, and even by the dim red glow of his flashlight, Finn saw what had previously eluded him. “The Haunted Mansion’s graveyard.”

  “Bingo.”

  With its odd headstones, some upright, some sagging, the plot closely resembled the small patch of make-believe in front of the Disneyland attraction. There was a dried-out animal topiary and, to the left, a stone carving of a squirrel.

  “That’s bizarre,” Finn said. “I thought it was supposed to be in New Orleans.”

  “I don’t think death follows state lines,” Maybeck said.

  “A pet cemetery?”

  “I think it’s more like ‘mixed-use,’” Maybeck said. “If those ones that were dug up are pets, they had to be bears or lions. A small horse, maybe.”

  “You’re disgusting.”

  “I try.”

  “Get digging,” Finn said, looking over toward Charlene, who was throwing dirt like a dog after a bone. “We’re wasting time.”

  In the ensuing minutes, Finn heard the steady bite and toss of the shovels. He kept his eye on Jess, who remained outside the iron fence, near the sprawling tree. Hardly close enough for Finn to see, Jess nonetheless projected an intensity, a heightened alertness that reminded Finn of the two undead grave diggers. Finn didn’t believe in zombies, didn’t believe something could be undead, but for the moment he had no other reliable explanation for what they’d seen.

  Jess clearly sensed, or at least anticipated, trouble of the worst kind. She craned forward, constantly lifting up onto and lowering off her tiptoes, messing with her hair. Her twitching, combined with the gloomy setting, put Finn on edge. He, too, kept watch in all directions, especially toward the shed, which Jess had not dared enter. He watched the gravestones and the areas of disturbed dirt where Charlene and Maybeck were working themselves into a sweat. He expected the unexpected, feared the fearsome. Something strange and horrible had happened here—people tamperi
ng with graves. By repeating that act, he and his friends were asking for trouble.

  The thud of a spade’s blade hitting something solid but hollow rang out through the graveyard. Finn shivered as he looked in Charlene’s direction. She looked back at him, as if apologizing for succeeding. Finn moved toward her, taking great care to remain within the confines of the protected path. His active imagination had him straying outside, being collared by some unclean spirit, and pulled beneath the raw earth, gasping and fighting for air.

  He snapped out of it. Charlene’s shovel had scraped dirt from the top of an old, rotting coffin.

  “It isn’t very deep,” she said. She’d barely dug down more than a foot. “Not even covered up, really.”

  “They were lazy,” Finn said. “The grave must have caved in as they removed the coffin or something.”

  “So what now?” Charlene asked, dread choking her throat.

  “We open it,” Finn said. “And maybe see what they were after.”

  “There’s no ‘we’ in that,” Charlene said, stepping back.

  Finn glanced up beyond the trunk of the tree to Jess.

  “Fire,” she said, recalling her dream. “Something to do with fire.”

  “Maybeck!” Finn called hoarsely.

  “I’m kinda busy over here,” said Maybeck, shoveling more quickly now.

  “I’m going to help him!” Charlene said. “Good luck!”

  “No!” Finn called, poking the coffin with the tip of his curved blade. “You’re going to hold the flashlight.” He redistributed the length of chain into an oblong. “And if you’re smart, you’ll stay inside this with me.”

  “That’s a little cozy for my taste.”

  “According to Philby’s author, the chain is a stronger defense than the bits of iron and salt, but suit yourself.”

  Charlene looked around the ground nervously, and then resigned herself to moving inside the closed length of chain. “This is insane, just for the record.”