Nick caught Mattie looking in his direction and worked to hold her gaze. He purposefully eyed the sparking pipe and mouthed some words, but she couldn’t hear. He cocked his head at Maleficent, who seemed to have suffered from the explosion as well. Her bits and pieces of color were less distinct and not at all congealed. They swirled, snapping together like puzzle pieces, the whole of her form beginning to re-form.
Nick patted his own waist. Mattie didn’t understand. He did the same thing again. Belatedly, she checked her waist—the length of pipe from the waterfall was missing. Nick’s eyes found a spot on the deck; Mattie’s followed.
There it was, having fallen from her waistband. Mattie didn’t understand: no piece of pipe was going to clobber Maleficent. But the boy was insistent with his eye movement.
The electric wire mounted to the wall, violently spitting electricity.
The swirling, re-forming Maleficent.
Mattie’s thin length of pipe on the deck.
He repeated.
Electric wire.
Maleficent.
Pipe.
His next move said it all. Nick waved his hand in a shaking motion toward the deck.
Lightning? Mattie thought, the signal unmistakable.
She looked overhead: blue sky.
Nick made the lightning gesture a second time. But he also shook his head and held up two fingers. Mattie was lost; she had no idea what he was trying to tell her. He must have suffered a blow to the head when the firework exploded.
But there was Nick, reaching for the fat wire mounted to the wall. And there was Dash, helping him to pull it free.
Electric wire.
Maleficent.
Pipe.
Idiot! Mattie thought. Nick knew exactly what he was doing!
As the two boys tore the live wire from the deck’s low surrounding wall, Mattie dove for the length of short pipe and, her eyes on Nick, waited for his signal: a slow closing of the eyes.
Lightning…no…two fingers. That had been Nick’s signal: lightning never strikes the same place twice. Lightning had killed Chernabog on this very deck. But with a blue sky, there wasn’t any lightning, so Nick—with Dash’s help—was going to make his own. He was going to make lightning strike twice.
Mattie tossed the length of pipe at Maleficent’s swirling force field. Just as it entered, Nick swung the thick electric wire in the direction of the dark fairy. The electricity arced and jumped from the broken wire to the piece of metal pipe. It looked like a giant Fourth of July sparkler: a fiery white spray of electricity, thick as water, catching hold of the pipe in midair. The blast was so intense, it jumped from the insulated rubber deck into the sky, erupting forty feet into the air like a Roman candle. A torch of exquisitely hot, brilliant energy.
And then it stopped.
Just like that.
The fireworks stopped, the park sky suddenly empty of explosions.
On the deck, a black doughnut of scorched plastic smoldered. It smelled disgusting. No Maleficent. No Tia Dalma either, though an ugly black vulture with a naked pink head soared off into the sky, heading away from the Matterhorn. A vulture Mattie did not remember seeing.
Nick seemed to be cheering, but Mattie heard only the whine in her ears.
Dash buzzed around in circles, a grin on his face.
Mattie stared at the vulture as it grew smaller and smaller, moving farther and farther away.
Then she realized what had seemed impossible only seconds earlier: it was over.
Her lips were still moving, mouthing words: it’s a small world after all.
She smiled.
MAYBECK LOOKED AT THE TABLES. He looked at Amanda, who couldn’t tear her hands away from her face.
He thought of the first time he’d seen Finn Whitman. They’d been on a Disney soundstage in Disney Hollywood Studios. All five of them were there that day, with a guy named Brad.
Finn and Philby had quickly stood out, like overachievers on the first day of school. Philby understood the technology that all five Keepers had individually been part of for the past six weeks. Finn seemed to see a bigger picture, to already grasp what lay ahead.
Of course, none of them could have foreseen the adventures to come, except maybe Jess, whom they knew at the time as Jezebel.
A listener, a quick study, a not-so-special athlete, a pretty boy with an inner confidence that made him special, Finn took on the leadership of the group from the start. They didn’t vote for a leader. They just found one among them. The kid everyone liked enough to complain to, the kid without an agenda.
Maybeck handed out criticism and jabs like the guys giving away pamphlets on street corners. He teased and mocked. He thrived on projecting a don’t-care attitude, the Han Solo macho-me that girls liked, that made other boys step away. He’d hit Finn with endless rudeness, knowing Finn could take it, knowing it would form a bond between them.
And he’d needed that bond. Philby? Too smug. Willa? Too lost in her own head. As for Charlene, her beauty had been almost too much to take, her athleticism too great a challenge for someone as competitive as Maybeck.
No, Finn made himself the perfect target. Maybe, Maybeck thought, his mind spinning, it was the way he never called out others in public. He might pull you aside to complain—always gently—or ask advice, and only later would you realize he’d been directing you to a certain conclusion. Maybe that was it.
So how had he ended up here? How could this be the end of his story? Here, in front of Maybeck, tipped over and leaning like a temple offering to the kneeling Amanda.
Maybeck threw a few choice words to the ceiling. His belly hurt far more than anything a stupid witch doctor could concoct. It was the pain of loss, of friendship broken, of a string of years more wonderful than any he’d ever known come to an end.
He backed up in staring disbelief, withdrew until he was side by side with Amanda, and fell to his knees beside her. Felt a sobbing Jess lie atop them, her hand finding Maybeck’s shoulder. And then Willa. Together, a pile of grief.
No dramatic words were spoken by the boy at the end. No speech about the meaning of life. No fluttering eyelids or hand gone limp. Just the damn tables, too close together to allow life. The tomb of a witch doctor’s insanity, and the boy’s final instinct, his willingness to stop the threat to the kingdom by pulling Hollingsworth down with him.
In the end, as in the beginning, for Finn Whitman, it had all been about self-sacrifice.
BUSINESS MOGUL FOUND DEAD IN LIKELY SUICIDE
Amery Hollingsworth Jr., chief executive and board chairman of Renatus, LLC, was pronounced dead at Surgeon’s Hospital just after 4 p.m. this afternoon. He was the oldest son of embattled former Disney executive Amery Hollingsworth.
A staff member found the 57-year-old unresponsive in his Westwood home early Thursday morning, according to law enforcement officials.
Sources who wished to remain anonymous due to the ongoing investigation reported the cause of death as self-inflicted asphyxiation. A full medical examiner’s report is expected within three weeks.
The elder Hollingsworth died in 1955 after falling from a balcony, which news sources at the time reported as a suicide. The financially troubled business executive engaged in numerous failed legal battles with the Walt Disney Company for more than a decade before his death. Those efforts, which sought to clear his name and reputation, led to repeated bankruptcies in the early 1950s.
Hollingsworth Jr. is survived by his brothers, Rexx and Ezekiel. There will be no service. In lieu of flowers, the family is requesting donations be sent to the Save All Children Foundation in Hollingsworth Jr.’s name.
Joe reread the obituary three times. His office door was closed, his right leg bouncing rapidly, causing a spring in his office chair to repeatedly squeal.
It had been more than thirty hours since Joe had slept. In that time, he’d visited Zeke Hollingsworth at the area hospital where he was being treated for dehydration, interviewed four Fairlies, who’d b
een caught dragging an adult backstage, spoken with local police and Disney security, and sat in on a conference call with Baltimore police, who’d raided the Barracks facility based on his testimony. He looked as exhausted as he felt.
Mattie was asleep on his office couch in Burbank, as she had been for the past fourteen hours straight. She’d refused medical attention; the doctors said she’d be fine with rest.
He looked over at her, sleeping peacefully, and wondered what might have happened had he managed to grab hold of her ankle.
Some things were meant to be, he thought, closing his eyes and fighting off the temptation to sleep.
Joe’s worry now, as it had been for some time, was the safe return of the Keepers, and of Amanda and Jess. Presently, he had no way to judge if Amery Jr.’s death would affect the creation and eventual rise of the Overtakers.
Joe frowned, searched for another name. It should be five, not four, Kingdom Keepers. He was sure of it. But he failed to find the name he sought. He must have dreamed the fifth.
Mattie snorted and woke, her eyes coming open abruptly. “Good grief. I feel like lunch meat left in the sun. How’d I get here?”
“Do you remember the Matterhorn at all? You were turned over to my care. They told me the bump to your head might cause some fuzziness.”
“Fuzzy? I hurt like someone used me for a punching bag.”
“Tell me what you remember.”
Mattie walked Joe through everything she could recall about the meeting in the Tower, the Fairlies’ leader’s decision, speaking to Teresa, the train, the fireworks, the attack.
“The Fairlies went after the Barracks adults pretty violently,” Joe said, watching her with tired eyes. “Only a few Fairlies were caught.”
“Thank goodness.”
“That’s what you say.”
“They’ve been through too much, for too long. They could use a safe place to live for a while. Without strings.”
“I understand what you’re suggesting, but I don’t see how I could get word to them, to say we might shelter them.”
“I can,” Mattie said. “You find them a safe place, and I can get the word out.”
Joe nodded. Scribbled a note. Looked up and met her eyes.
“And you? I owe you more than I can ever repay, Mattie, including an apology. This company, every guest from here on out, thanks you. If there are parks going forward, that’s thanks to you, too.”
Mattie sat up and locked eyes with him. She felt undeserving of the praise in so many ways. She’d reacted defiantly. Uncooperatively. She’d disobeyed and gone rogue. If she’d failed, she could only imagine how Disney would be treating her.
“I want to be a Kingdom Keeper,” she said. “That’s what you can do for me. Amanda and Jess, too. Maybe Nick. Maybe some of the other Fairlies, if they agree. An army of us. Why not? I want to mean something, Joe, to make a difference like Maybeck, Charlene, Willa, Philby, and…”
“What is it?”
“A name. I can’t remember…Never mind. It’s nothing.”
“So you’re obviously thinking there’s still a reason for the Keepers to exist. Why is that?”
“I don’t know exactly. A hunch?” Mattie twisted her hands together, stared off into space. “But now that you mention it…do you think it’s over? Really over?”
“It depends on whether or not the Keepers return, and what happened while they were back there.”
“Do you think changing the past changes the future?” Mattie’s eyes were wide and surprisingly earnest. “Or is everything that happens going to find a way to happen no matter what we do? Like water running downhill: you can put stuff in its way, but it’s just going to run around it.”
“Interesting.” Joe looked up at the ceiling. There was nothing there but lost time and wishful thinking, random ideas stuck like pencils flung by aimless boys.
“That’s all you’ve got?” Mattie sat up farther. Her whole body hurt. “Your take on whether the past changes the future is ‘interesting’?”
“Philosophy can wait, Mattie. We’ll never know the answer to that, not until they come back. If they come back.”
ON AN OVERLY CHILLY NIGHT in Anaheim in 1955, a red Ford half-ton pickup truck idled noisily alongside the westernmost, darkest wall of Pacific Hospital. Four dark figures slithered over the rails and moved as swiftly as shadows into the dark. It absorbed them like a sponge, and they were gone.
In the Ford, a young guy wearing overalls grabbed the wheel with both hands, staring straight ahead. Next to him sat a beautiful young woman with Asian eyes and warm olive skin. Next to her, a nervous-looking young woman, a little too thin, with dyed white-blond hair.
At first, no one spoke. It had all been discussed an hour earlier, amid a storm of tears and grief. As a group, they were talked out, cried out, burned out. The events in the Tower Hotel’s dining room had created a kind of crust over them all, slowing and fogging them till it seemed as if nothing remained.
Jess asked Wayne, “Can this possibly work?”
“If you think about it, as Charlene clearly did, why not? Something that never existed in 1955 in the first place can’t be changed sixty years later by events in 1955. I think it was Philby who said there’s nothing to lose by trying. Nothing to lose, Jess, and everything to gain.”
“Everything,” Amanda mumbled. “Absolutely everything.”
Philby’s news of the successful crossing and return of a tailless cat named Max—collected from beneath an area of park construction and sent into and back from the future—went uncelebrated. No cheering. No pats on the back. Just a sense of passive inevitability, as if the Keepers had assumed Philby and Wayne would figure it out all along. It upset Philby to no end. Even in the midst of his grief, he’d worked tech miracles. He felt greatly underappreciated.
If the three in the truck cab had been able to clear their throats of tears, they might have discussed the fire at the abandoned hotel, which left the building with scars and markings resembling those of a certain park attraction. An attraction that would not be imagined or built for decades to come.
Or they might have discussed how the radio was already reporting Hollingsworth’s death as suicide. According to press reports, he’d jumped from a hotel balcony. This deviation from the facts suggested a staging of the body, either by his own people or the police, a worrisome development that, at best, showed the early reach of the Barracks.
So much to say, and yet they discussed nothing. Just shed a few more tears. The chill in the air seemed symbolic—part Maleficent, part despair.
The four figures emerged less than fifteen minutes later, the tallest—Maybeck—carrying something large and saggy in his arms. The figures to either side of him kept checking the sidewalk behind them, as if expecting trouble.
Wayne checked and adjusted the mirror as the figures flowed over the truck’s back rails, returning to their original position in the bed.
“Do they have him?” Amanda asked, her head bowed. “It?”
A knock came sharply against the cab’s back window. The three in front flinched.
“It would seem so.” Wayne goosed the accelerator, shifted out of neutral, and rolled the truck slowly down the street. When he next looked at the rearview mirror, he saw only darkness. It would have appeared to any other driver that the bed was empty. But Wayne knew his passengers remained, facedown, dissolving so deeply into the shadows that the truck bed seemed suddenly bottomless.
The ride back to Disneyland was bumpy and long, anything but comfortable. Streetlamps cut their harsh glare across the legs and chests of the three in the cab, like knife blades endlessly slicing, trying to reach the depths of their emotions. But just like the truck bed, there was no bottom.
It seemed like Amanda would never stop crying. She would grow old quickly, wrung out, and twisted dry. Existing only to hope and wish, to pray and ache.
This was the life Jess had foreseen. This was not the first time Jess had hoped she was wrong.
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WAYNE USED HIS CREDENTIALS and company friendships to get his pickup truck through the back gate between Main Street and Tomorrowland, which in 1955 amounted to a single security booth manned by an old guy named Fred. The Ford lumbered onto park property, slipping past attractions with a muted rumble of the engine. The castle stood dark, its broad shape materializing out of empty sky.
It began raining before the truck pulled to a stop beside King Arthur Carrousel. Though it was light at first, the rain seemed to contain the anger of the six teens, and soon it was coming down in torrents.
There were no hugs or handshakes between Wayne and the others, only a grimace, a shared feeling of past memories and lost opportunities. Wayne did stop to wipe the rain and tears from Amanda’s face in a caring, loving way—a mannerism that would carry through the decades to come and still be there sixty years later, if and when they met again.
When the truck had gone, Philby addressed the group.
“We all know what this means, right?” He looked from stricken face to stricken face. “We’ve stopped Hollingsworth. Maleficent and the others will never be OTs.”
“Which means we’ll never be Keepers,” Willa said, interrupting. “How sad is that?”
“It’s true,” Philby said, disappointed Willa would remind everyone of the possibility that they might be strangers upon their return. They needed all their focus now. “There’s a chance that if and when we make it back to the present, we were never needed as DHIs. That Wayne never created us, never crossed over Finn that first time. That we never met. So I guess, this could be good-bye.”
Amanda said, “Good-bye happened back in the hotel dining room. It all ended there.” She sniffed and Jess threw an arm around her.
Now, as she had then, Amanda knelt beside Finn’s body, which was covered in a white sheet, just as it had been when Maybeck carried it from the hospital morgue to the truck. The Keepers and the Fairlies had agreed not to pull that sheet back. Maybeck and Amanda had already witnessed what Finn had endured. They didn’t want anyone else to share that burden.
Kingdom Keepers the Return Book 3 Page 27
