Legacy of Secrets

by Ridley Pearson

  “I see him,” Maybeck told her.

  “He’s coming over here.”

  “Yeah, and if we take off, we’re going to disappear or look like three flags hurrying toward the door. That’s nothing but trouble.”

  “I’ve got this,” Charlene said, taking three quick strides toward the handsome man and intercepting him before he reached Maybeck and Willa. Away from the wall, she’d placed her two-dimensional form into a three-dimensional space. It was a huge risk. If she could keep the man six to eight feet away, he might not notice her flat face and body. No one had seen such projections before; the human mind didn’t know to see their images as incorrect. It was an advantage. But too close and there was no hiding.

  “Hello, there,” Charlene said. She stopped the man cold. “Or should I say, ‘Howdy’?”

  He bowed his head slightly. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “You won’t go giving away our secret, will you?” she asked.

  “What secret is that?” he asked.

  “Mr. Disney arranged a little treat for the guests,” Charlene said.

  That surprised and intrigued him. “Do tell!”

  “A new ghost.” She waved her arm so that his hand passed through her. “Impressed?”

  He took a startled step back, keeping his distance. “I’ve never seen anything like that!”

  “Well, if you had, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise now, would it?” She paused. “Enjoying the party?”

  He couldn’t speak. He reached out for her, but she stepped back.

  “Me?” she said, as if he’d asked. “All but the smoking.” The man held a cigarette burning between his fingers. “I find it a disgusting habit. My prediction is that fifty years from now, it’ll turn out to be the cause of heart disease, early death, and spiraling national health-care costs. That’s just a wild guess. Still, you might want to consider it.”

  He looked at her curiously. “I…ah…”

  “Enjoy the show.”

  Wisely, Charlene chose to back away rather than turn around to return to her friends. Managing a two-dimensional self made her feel like Joy in Pixar’s Inside Out, during the abstraction chamber scene. Her friends at school talked about envying girls who were paper thin. In truth, it wasn’t so great.

  “Way to go,” Willa said, as Charlene put her flat back against the flat wall.

  “Check it out!” Maybeck said, a little too loudly. He directed their attention to the wings of the stage, where they saw two boys, arms out, preventing the emcee from entering. The emcee was not pleased; the boys were giving no quarter. “You think that’s them?”

  “Could be,” said Willa, keenly interested and edging forward.

  “Why stop the singer?” Charlene said. “Unless…”

  “They have another show in mind,” Maybeck finished for her.

  FIVE MINUTES EARLIER, from their perch aboard the Mark Twain Riverboat, Finn and Philby had seen four Cast Members, all boys, approach the Golden Horseshoe. Philby expressed the same reservations about the boys as Maybeck had, believing they looked similar to the ones at the studios.

  Now Finn spotted a group of well-dressed adults coming quickly toward the saloon on foot. At first, he’d thought they were just people late for the party and eager to reach the building. But something about them put him on guard. There was a man at their center with two women and three men surrounding him like a security detail. Those in the detail were younger by far than the man they protected. The 1950s dresses and suits gave the whole thing a theatrical feel; it was hard for Finn to see it as anything more than a scene in a stage play or musical. Like at any second the group would burst into song and start dancing.

  Finn found the displacement into a time six decades earlier as difficult an adjustment as he did his two-dimensional projection. Was he alone in this? he wondered. Willa and Charlene seemed to be enjoying wearing their fancy dresses. Philby and Maybeck were unbothered by the change. All the Keepers seemed in awe of being part of the park’s beginning.

  He shook his head, clearing his thoughts. Focus. This group of adults was real. So were the four guys dressed as Cast Members, who’d already disappeared inside the Golden Horseshoe.

  “Listen to them talking,” Finn told Philby. “It’s not exactly like they’re friends, but they all know each other.”

  “The guy in the middle’s the boss.”

  “I can’t see him perfectly from here, but the guy in the middle is Hollingsworth,” Finn said. “I’m pretty sure that’s the guy from the firehouse.”

  “Could be. The others obviously work for him. Not just the men, the women, too. See how they’re paying such close attention to him? They’re being overly attentive.”

  “You’re being professorial again.”

  “Can’t help it, I guess. It’s like they’re either in awe of him, or he scares them.”

  “You guess?” Finn said. “Okay. So a guy and some employees. And four possibly fake Cast Members leading the way. What’s that spell for you?”

  “Disaster,” Philby said. “Whatever’s about to go down, it can’t be good.”

  SENSING A LULL in the entertainment, the excited audience inside the Golden Horseshoe returned to its loud conversation. The saloon played host to high-pitched laughter, shouts of joy, and more laughter.

  “This isn’t right,” Willa said. She had her eye on the Disneys’ table. Lillian was leaning over to talk to her husband; Walt’s attention remained on the stage. Shivering, Willa moved closer to the front of the room, Charlene and Maybeck right on her heels. “Something’s bothering Mrs. Disney. Something’s not going as planned.” She stopped. “We all agree on our top priority?”

  “Protect Walt and Lillian,” Charlene said instantly.

  “He’s not in any immediate danger,” Maybeck said. “We know he lives for a long time after this.”

  “But how do we know that’s not because we do something to save him?” Willa said.

  “Now you’re just messing with me.”

  “No, I’m saying by being here, we change history. We have no idea how time travel works, or what effect it has. We have no idea if we can think it through and make sense of it, or if our being here can’t be explained, predicted, or even theorized. Maybe time is random. Maybe it’s as fixed as we think. Maybe no matter what we do, things will always work out as we know them to in the future. But what if Walt needs us? What if we’re part of the solution, not part of the problem?”

  On every side, dance hall waitresses wove between tables. Cigarette smoke rose from ashtrays into a gray haze.

  “What are you saying?” asked a concerned Charlene. “And FYI: you sound like my school advisor, which I don’t appreciate.”

  “I’m saying I’m scared,” Willa admitted. “I have a very bad feeling about this.”

  “Oh, good! Me too,” Charlene confessed.

  “Me, three,” Maybeck admitted. “But what are we supposed do about it?”

  “What we’ve always done,” Willa said. “We pay attention. And when the time comes, we use our heads.”

  “A diversion,” Charlene said. She tried to tap Willa on the shoulder. Thankfully her fear and anxiety gave her a physical presence, so she made contact. All three took note of the change. “I never thought I’d like being scared,” she said, “but it has advantages.” They chuckled nervously. “I thought…since we may need a little help…you might want to look at the wall behind us.”

  A canvas fire hose was curled into a wheel on the wall next to a valve and a warning sign. On the floor stood a red fire extinguisher, though its 1950s form was barely recognizable as such.

  “Devil child!” Maybeck joked.

  “We can use it, right?” Willa said. “If we have to?”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Maybeck eagerly. “We can definitely do this.”

  FINN FELT CERTAIN NOW that the man at the center was Hollingsworth. He wanted the names of the others. “If we can get in there,” he said, “maybe we can use our DHIs to l
ift a few drivers’ licenses. It would be good to know the names of his team.”

  “With you,” Philby said.

  Finn moved first. He slipped silently down the gangway and hid behind the ticket kiosk, with its pink fringe roofline. All the while, he kept an eye on the arriving party.

  Finn paused at the ticket vendor’s, finding it hard to adjust to the fact that, in 1955, each ride required payment for a ticket. The idea of all-park access was still years away. But the small booth and the pale green fencing running up to it provided adequate “cover,” and for this Finn was grateful.

  It struck him as significant that the entourage of arriving adults did not enter through the Golden Horseshoe’s main door. Instead, they moved as a group around the side, in the direction of the Davy Crockett Museum Theater—whoever Davy Crockett was, Finn thought.

  A pop-pop sounded from the Shooting Gallery; Finn winced, marveling at the use of lead pellet ammunition. How America had changed in sixty years! Disneyland had changed a good deal as well. There was too much open space between him and the Golden Horseshoe. No carts or statues to hide behind. If he was going to keep up with the group, he would need to run for it.

  Arms pumping, legs blurring, Finn raced across the fifteen yards of black asphalt between the ticket booth and the Horseshoe’s porch area. He reached a line of benches and ducked behind a standing wooden barrel banded with metal straps. He edged closer to the next barrel, and the next, picking up sight of his quarry as he moved in.

  “Go on,” spoke one of what Finn now took to be bodyguards. “I’ll catch up.”

  Finn had been spotted. He knew there was no use running. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Releasing the lungful of air, he filled his mind with an image of a dark night. Through that dark came the clickety-clack of a train, its small white light ripping open the darkness.

  “You!” the heavyset man cried, his voice booming out above Finn.

  Me, Finn thought, but did not say. He’d lost two friends to reach this particular place, in this particular time. He’d endured pain, fatigue, heartbreak, and anguish, all debts for which he felt he should be repaid. He’d scared his parents, had been scared himself by dragons and fairies intent on killing him. The man, whoever he was, had no right to get in his way or question his actions.

  “Boy!”

  “I’m not a boy. I’m not even here.” Finn shot his legs out straight and rolled onto his side, offering the man standing above him only the thin blue line of his two-dimensional form. Rolling farther, he came to his feet and stepped through the man who’d come to inquire. Doing so spun the astonished man around like a pinwheel. Finn turned sideways again. Gone!

  He pivoted back, fully seen. He was closer to the door now than his six-foot-tall opponent. Finn backed up, step by step. Behind him, he heard the room go instantly silent—an eerie, soundless moment that signaled the occurrence of something unexpected.

  The bodyguard reached into his jacket pocket. His hand came out holding what looked like a short strap of black leather with a bulge on the end. Finn recognized it from a movie, though he didn’t know its name—it was used to quietly club a person unconscious. About as fair in a fight as a pair of brass knuckles. If Finn lost his DHI even slightly, one thwap from that thing would have him seeing stars and carrying a lump on his head the size of a softball.

  “Excuse me!” said Philby.

  The man, angry and frustrated and red in the face, raked his head back over his right shoulder. Coming at him, high speed, was one of the wooden barrels, miraculously held aloft above Philby’s head. Philby the nerd. Philby the geek. Philby who’d managed to lose his all clear long enough to hoist a barrel.

  He hit the man’s face, hard. The leather strap dropped from the man’s hand; his legs gave out, and he crumpled to the wooden porch, eyes rolling inside his sockets. As he landed, his eyes closed and he moaned.

  The Keepers rarely took time to celebrate even small victories. This was no exception. Finn and Philby charged inside the saloon. Silence met them—silence that was suddenly broken by a man’s voice. A commanding voice, loud and abrasive. An angry voice, filled with hatred and conceit.

  MAYBECK, CHARLENE, AND WILLA stared, dumb-founded, as a man emerged from a group of adults entering at the side of the building.

  “Hey, do we know that guy?” Maybeck asked as the man in question mounted the stage a step at a time. The Cast Members in the wings continued to hold back the actors and dancers.

  The man strode onto the stage and stepped into the spotlight at its center.

  “You have a good eye, Terry,” Willa said. “A real artist’s eye.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “He looks almost exactly like that Dapper Dan named Ezekiel! The guy who followed me and Philby around after the Disneyland battle. He claimed he wanted to help us, but he gave us both the creeps and we blew him off.”

  “I never met your Ezekiel,” Maybeck corrected her.

  “No, but Philby described him to you. That’s how good your memory is, Terry, and your imagination. You have an image in your head from that description!”

  “I try,” Maybeck said cockily.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the man in the spotlight called in a booming voice. “Although it proved impossible to rain on today’s parade, I will do you one better.”

  The crowd giggled nervously. Some outright laughed, assuming this sudden arrival was part of the evening’s entertainment. Walt Disney was known for surprises.

  But had anyone bothered to take a good look at Walt himself, as the three Keepers did, his expression would have filled the onlooker with discontent.

  “I can promise you confidently that within thirty days there will be no parade.” The crowd booed, not liking what it was hearing. “Walt Disney, this man right here at my feet, is a thief and swindler!” The booing grew louder. “He will find his feet held to the fire of righteousness…”

  “Go home!” The shouts piled on top of one another. “Take your preaching someplace else.” “Get on with the show!”

  “…for his creations are not only borrowed, as we all know, from the legendary Grimms’ fairy tales, but stolen from the very men and women he trusts to carry his stories to all of you, to your children and families. Walt Disney is a fraud!”

  A man in the crowd jumped to his feet. While his voice sounded familiar, the Keepers could not see his face. “Now listen here! That’s quite enough! Take your insults outside. We’re trying to have a party.”

  A smattering of applause gained momentum. As the man tried to speak, the clapping fell into a deafening rhythmic unison.

  “Look!” Willa shouted over the roar. Philby and Finn had entered through the side door.

  That was Maybeck’s cue. He pulled the entire roll of canvas hose off its spool. It fell to the floor, and Maybeck held firmly to the nozzle. “He’s all washed up!” Maybeck whispered to Charlene, who manned the valve. “Hit it!”

  Charlene spun the wheel, which was mounted to a wide pipe. The hose spit air noisily, drawing a good deal of attention.

  Water sprung from the nozzle, limply at first; then it charged like a bolt of lightning, aiming straight and true to the stage with barely any arc. Maybeck hit the man on his first try. To the sound of raucous cheering from the crowd, Hollingsworth was knocked off his feet and driven upstage on his back by the powerful stream. He spun and slid like a piece of soap dropped in the shower, and was whisked stage left, knocking down his two young Cast Members, who’d given up trying to hold back the actors.

  Everyone near the stage rose and ran away from the water. In the chaos, Philby and Finn tried to read the name tags on the speaker’s posse of bodyguards and protectors. They had to learn their names.

  The band struck up a song. Dancers twirled across the stage, kicking their legs high. The crowd went wild.

  “Off!” Maybeck said, dropping the nozzle and turning to help Charlene shut down the hose. Some of the men from the crowd were
hurrying toward them. Maybeck wanted to think they were coming to help, but what would they do when they found out the three “kids” were colorful wisps, tissue-paper thin, and invisible from the side?

  “Run,” Willa called out. “Side door! Now!”

  By working as a squad, the Keepers had learned dozens of unwritten codes. Chief among them was to respect a call for retreat. There was no taking time to argue its merits. If any one of them called for it, every one of them moved, like it or not, agree with it or not.

  Maybeck, Willa, and Charlene hurried for the side door, where, as it turned out, Finn and Philby were done picking pockets. A few wallets lay on the floor. Philby and Finn left from the same door as their three friends, hands bulging with a half-dozen licenses and other ID cards.

  Cheering and applause reverberated out the door behind them, bouncing off the walls of the Mexican Restaurant and the Shooting Gallery across the street.

  A Cast Member poked his head out of the Shooting Gallery, saw the five, and barely hesitated before grabbing a small box of something and taking off after them. Exploding out of the Golden Horseshoe’s side door came three more Cast Members, running at a full clip.

  “We’ve got company!” Charlene announced. “And I am NOT all clear.”

  The one from the Shooting Galley was fast. He aimed at a point in front of the five Keepers, toward the paddle end of the Mark Twain Riverboat. To all five, the kid seemed to have misjudged, moving too far in front of them, his angle of intercept all wrong.

  That was when he dove onto his chest, extending the box in his right hand. Maybeck was thinking he had to be some kind of tough guy to take a dive like that onto asphalt. He’d have road rash for weeks.

  That was when the contents of his small box released and spilled.

  “Jujubes?” Willa cried. Indeed, the tiny cylinders looked a great deal like the hard candy sold around the park.

  Not Jujubes, it turned out. All five Keepers went down hard as they hit the ball bearings rolling around underfoot. Lead pellets from the shooting range. Several hundred of them. The frightened Keepers, well out of their comfort zones and their pure projections, struggled to get up but slipped on the pellets and fell down again.