Legacy of Secrets

by Ridley Pearson

  Now Amanda saw her walk up to the four men, singling out the second from the left. She spoke to him as she shook his hand. Invading another’s thoughts was when things could get dangerous. Amanda hugged herself tightly, trying not to let her nerves get the better of her.

  The Dapper Dan said something to his friends and nodded to Mattie. They walked over to Amanda.

  “Hi,” Amanda said.

  “Hello there,” he said, standoffish.

  “I see you’re wearing the name tag ‘Ezekiel,’” Mattie said.

  “That’s my name, as I told you a moment ago when we met and shook hands.”

  “But when I asked you about it—when we shook hands, as you’ve just said—you thought of the name Ebsy,” Mattie said.

  The man appeared blindsided. “But how could you—?”

  “It’s such an unusual name,” Amanda said, interrupting. “A friend and I happened upon the same name, the name of a man about your age: Ebsy Balwin Hollingsworth. Son of Amery senior, brother of Amery junior and Rexx.”

  The Dapper Dan blinked and doffed his hat. “I have nothing to do with my brother. I disapprove of everything he’s doing. I don’t know who you work for, young ladies, but you have this all wrong.”

  Amanda wondered why Disney would ever hire Amery Hollingsworth’s son. “You’re a spy for Joe Garlington,” she said, theorizing. “You keep your eyes open for people who might be working with your brother.”

  The man blinked rapidly. “I know Mr. Garlington. That’s a ridiculous accusation.”

  “One you didn’t deny, I noticed,” said Mattie.

  “You can’t hold a brother responsible for his brother,” the man said.

  “So you’ve helped Joe out with that.”

  “Maybe, a little.”

  “You know of the DHIs.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of their work in the Disney kingdoms.”

  “I am very much aware. I met two of them recently, I’m proud to say. I respect them all.”

  “They need your help. We need your help,” Mattie said. She reached out and put her hand on his wrist. “We need to know about a vault that’s here in the park.” A moment later she removed her hand and gave a slight nod to Amanda.

  “I think you overestimate me,” he said.

  “You won’t help us unless Joe tells you to?” Amanda sounded angry.

  “Let’s say I was who you think. Then what do you suppose my answer to that is?”

  “The Kingdom Keepers need you,” Amanda said. “This is life-or-death.”

  Mattie spoke, giving no indication she’d just gained this information by reading the man. “The vault is in the Disney Gallery. It contains important information. There’s a curtain,” Mattie added.

  Ebsy Hollingsworth appeared impressed. “Inter-esting.”

  He was far more cautious than Amanda had expected. “Both my friend and I spent several years in Barracks 14.” She paused, staring into his eyes, waiting for him to nod. “It’s outside Baltimore.”

  Ebsy looked deeply saddened. “I…I know my brother acquired a former military training base outside of Baltimore. He’s trying to continue my father’s legacy. I don’t approve of what he’s doing. You must know that.”

  “Which is?”

  He glanced around nervously. “Complicated.” He added, “If you were there, I’m assuming you’re both…talented.”

  Amanda just stared. “What do you think?” She paused. “No, that was rude. I’m sorry. Yes. ‘Talented,’ that’s us.”

  He nodded, considering. “May I ask what your talents are?”

  “If you won’t laugh,” Mattie said.

  “I can promise you that.”

  Amanda spoke first. “Telekinesis. I move things.”

  “I can read people,” Mattie said. “I’ve read you. I saw the vault, but I don’t understand exactly what I saw.”

  He addressed Mattie. “That’s…somewhat incredible.”

  “Work with us here,” Mattie said. “I only saw a few pictures of the vault. We need more.”

  “I feel partly responsible for all that’s happened here in the Kingdom. And I want to help. I do know the vault you’re asking about, and what it contains. It’s said to be a record of disturbances within the park, but I can’t verify that. It’s not money, I know that much. So it must be information of some kind. There’s a certain Cast Member who visits the site each and every day.”

  “In the Disney Gallery,” Mattie said, repeating herself from earlier.

  “It used to be the Bank of America. Now it’s the gallery and the vault door is left open for visitors.”

  “How could they keep anything secret with the vault door open?” Amanda sounded suspicious.

  “It’s typical Disney. An illusion. Since it’s not shut, one would never think to try and open it.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Amanda asked. Her mind was spinning, trying to make sense of all the hints and half-answers.

  Something or someone caught the man’s eye. He snapped his head to the left and spoke faster. “If the stories I’ve heard are true, the combination is put into the open vault door, just as if it were closed. That opens an interior wall. It’s only rumor; I can’t vouch for it.” He glanced in the same direction, face flushing with excitement—or fear. “Now, pretend I’m giving you directions!”

  He turned them both, pointing off toward the castle. The girls played along, nodding. They thanked him and shook his hand. Then Ebsy Hollingsworth rejoined the crowd in the street.

  “What just happened?” Mattie asked.

  “I think,” Amanda said, “he just told us how to open a vault that’s already open. You’re going to have to read a Cast Member to get the combination. But then I think,” she said, barely containing her excitement, “that we’re in business!”

  * * *

  As the final sparkles fell from the sky, ending the evening’s fireworks display, and guests flooded down Main Street toward the exit, an average-looking man with an average walk entered the Disney Gallery. He wore khakis and a white Disney Cast Member shirt, and carried an average-looking briefcase.

  The Cast Member behind the register walked over to the door and locked it. She drew down window shades that were easy to miss—reflective film that eliminated any chance of the events inside being witnessed from the street. She nodded, which translated as, Good to go.

  The man with the briefcase heaved against the old bank vault’s open door. It moved one inch. He pushed again. It moved two feet. He stepped between it and the wall and began to spin the combination lock. The Cast Member, used to the routine, stood a distance away with her back turned.

  He spun the dial to the left, right, left, right. Then he jumped violently as someone—or something—brushed against his back. “Whoa!”

  “Excuse me?” the woman said.

  “Never mind.”

  “What?”

  “You know those Disney myths? Like Cast Members who heard a sneeze inside Snow White, right before they closed it down?”

  “Or the ghost in Haunted Mansion.”

  “That’s no myth,” the man said. “And whatever just touched me on the shoulder isn’t, either.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Funny thing is, I’m serious. Something touched me on the shoulder.”

  Mattie stepped back as they continued speaking, working to memorize the numbers 131, 3, 71, and 3 stolen from the man’s thoughts—the combination to the vault.

  Emily’s invisibility suit barely fit her. It bulged where she didn’t want it to bulge and stretched where she didn’t want it to stretch. The girls had warned her that because of this, the suit wasn’t perfectly invisible from the sides. The plan had been for her to leave the moment she had the combination, but now she couldn’t resist the opportunity to discover more.

  The man moved around the safe’s two-foot-thick door and into the vault. Mattie followed. He drew a curtain aside on the left, exposing a section of wall, and a
second thick door popped open a few inches. He pulled it open with some difficulty, revealing a large square room beyond, two of its walls lined with neatly ordered shelves, the third filled with smaller doors—file drawers, Mattie realized.

  Aware of the battery’s limited charge, she headed for the gallery’s front door, only to remember the female Cast Member had locked it. This was nothing short of a disaster. She had three to five minutes remaining; then she’d be exposed—a girl in a silver glitter suit that fit her like a leotard. What now?

  The Cast Member stood by the door, waiting idly for the man to finish. Did Mattie dare turn the dead bolt and knob with the woman just a foot or two away? Would it be taken as the act of a ghost, scaring the woman and sending her running, or would she think some-one was opening the door from the outside and block the entry? The ghost option would work beautifully for Mattie. Blocking the door could backfire horribly.

  Stuck with those choices, Mattie lost her nerve. Staying well away from the woman, she crossed the room and crouched behind a display stand just wide enough to hide her. She switched off her suit to save her battery. And she waited, counting down the seconds.

  She looked like a silver Spider-Man. Face hood, gloves, booties.

  She heard a clunk—the vault handle being turned.

  “All set?” The woman’s voice.

  “Right as rain. Thanks, as always.”

  “One last loop and we’re out,” the woman said.

  Loop? Mattie wondered, her finger returning to, but not pressing, the battery’s button. Mattie looked toward the window and caught a distorted reflection off the Mylar window shade.

  Something yellowish moved toward her end of the room: the woman Cast Member. How do I handle this? she wondered, unsure if she had more than a few seconds of invisibility remaining in the battery.

  Heart in her throat, she peered around the display case. The man was reading his phone, head down. She decided to risk it. Watching the moving yellow orb on the window shade, Mattie waited until the woman was only a step away from seeing her. Then she turned on the battery, going instantly invisible, and moved around the display case, like hiding behind a tree in hide-and-seek. Her arms and legs flashed. If the man looked up, he’d see her.

  The Cast Member walked past; Mattie slowly circled the display case until she was back where she’d started. The Cast Member was at the far wall now, passing the cash register, reaching the vault.

  “All good!” she said. She switched off all but one row of ceiling lights, unlocked the door, and left with the man. Mattie heard the key turn in the lock, then silence.

  Her suit’s battery dead, she waited several minutes before trying the combination on the vault door. It took her two tries; the second time, the handle moved and the door inside popped open.

  Thankfully she knew exactly what she was looking for—Joe had shown her.

  * * *

  They reviewed the documents in the dorm library—Tim, Nick, Amanda, Jess, and Emily. Mattie had an important internship project coming up. She was desperate to be included, but keeping the internship was critical to her.

  Hollingsworth’s history with the company read like a Shakespearian tragedy. He had started low, as a runner on the studio lot, and risen up through the ranks to become a member of WED Enterprises, the earliest version of Imagineering.

  “It looks like once his plan for the park got turned down,” Tim said, reading, “he turned sour. He started making false claims and bad-mouthing Walt Disney.”

  Hollingsworth had been accused of trying to recruit a fellow member of WED into the occult. He’d told this Cast Member that he’d learned to cast spells and was working on summoning the dead, that his power and abilities far outstripped those of a “cartoonist” like Walt Disney. His twisted ambition was to make the parks darker. He criticized Walt for sugarcoating the experience and underestimating the average park guest.

  Among the secreted papers were testimonies from Cast Members who’d been intimidated into joining up with Hollingsworth. Photographs in the file appeared to be the work of private investigators, which suggested that the WED employees had begun to take the Hollingsworth threat seriously. They were right to worry: soon, animation cells went missing—always of villains.

  Eventually, WED set up a film camera to shoot frames every fifteen minutes—very likely the first security camera ever built. It was on this film that a man named Adrian Chesborogh was caught stealing. Chesborogh had been arrested and questioned by the police; no connection to Hollingsworth was proved, but the man shook with fear at the mention of Hollingsworth’s name. Without ever naming him specifically, Chesborogh went on to describe satanic worship, animal sacrifice, and worse. He escaped police custody his first night in jail—it was reported he’d “disappeared” from within a locked cell.

  “Well? Thoughts?” Nick said, reading along with the others. “Cat got your tongue?”

  “It says here that one of Hollingsworth’s sons was admitted to an asylum,” Jess said softly. “They thought he was bewitched and tried to cure him with a priest.”

  Jess and Amanda exchanged a look of confusion and fear. They’d been treated much the same way as children.

  Nick said, “What do you want to bet Hollingsworth was working on a few spells of his own, trying to bring the villains to life? I’m betting he tested one on his son. That his ultimate goal—the destruction of Disney—having failed in the courts, in the company, in everything he tried, came down to battling Disney from within?”

  “The Overtakers.” Jess had dreams to back up this theory, but didn’t want to take the time to explain.

  “We already knew that at some point the villains broke away from the Disney ‘family,’” Tim said. “That was the start of the Overtakers.”

  “But we didn’t know why,” Jess said.

  Emily cleared her throat and waited for everyone’s attention. “Anyone remember eighth-grade language arts? How do you incite action? Through conflict. Hollingsworth cursed or created or reinvented certain villains to go inside Disney and recruit the same way he was. What if he wanted to create a divide between Disney villains? That divide would be like splitting the atom—excite it enough and you create a burst of energy capable of bringing down the house. In this case, the House of Mouse.”

  “That’s what has to be stopped,” Tim said. “The divide. The early conflict that results in empowering the villains—”

  “Turning them into the Overtakers,” Jess said.

  “Yes! That’s what we have to tell the Keepers,” said Amanda. “They have to know it’s not as simple as getting Walt’s pen back.”

  “What pen?” asked Nick.

  “Never mind.” Amanda shook her head vigorously.

  “They stop the divide,” said Jess, “and maybe they prevent the Overtakers from ever existing.”

  “I hate to say it,” Nick said, “but that makes sense.”

  “Trouble is,” Amanda said, troubled, “how do we tell them?”

  THE EXCITEMENT OF the moment led to a giddiness among the Keepers. The search for the pen had consumed them for days. Now the five teens and Wayne were about to test it out.

  It was well past midnight; they were human, not hologram. Only Finn was not at his best. His connection with Amanda, across a million miles and sixty years, left him feeling melancholy and anxious. While the group celebrated their discovery, he was looking ahead to the reality of their situation: there was no way to return. The five of them were Dorothy without the ruby slippers. Stuck in 1955.

  His feelings for Amanda, his yearning for his family, overcame him. Though he overheard the conversation, he was a reluctant observer, pushed into the corner of Wayne’s small workshop.

  “So, are we ready for this?” Maybeck asked. As resident artist, he got the honor of testing the pen.

  “I am so ready,” Charlene said, ruffling her skirt. “I’ve had enough of crinoline for about sixty years.” Willa laughed. The boys didn’t get it.

 
No one was talking about the fact that the last test of a pen, nearly identical to this one, had failed. The connection of the pen to Walt’s drawing table gave them all added hope this time might be different. Wanting to test it on a blueprint, they used Wayne’s diagram of a floating head in a haunted house, an attraction he hoped to pitch to WED Enterprises sometime soon.

  “Aren’t you coming over to watch?” Charlene called out to Finn. Finn got up and joined them—picking a spot at the table far away from Charlene.

  Maybeck uncapped the pen. “There is a difference. This one has gold trim.”

  Finn sensed something wrong, someone nearby or pres-ent. “Have we checked the workshop?” he asked Wayne.

  “For?”

  “Unwanted guests.”

  “Finn, this place barely holds us,” Willa said. “What are we waiting for? If this is the right pen, if we make sure it’s on Walt’s desk to stay, then it should be on his desk in One Man’s Dream when we solve the Stonecutter’s Quill in sixty years. This is epic!”

  “Here we go.” Maybeck lowered the pen’s bulbous nib toward the diagram and used the lever to release a drop of ink. Everyone but Finn watched him closely. Finn’s attention was elsewhere, on all the places a person could hide in the cluttered workshop.

  “Try again.”

  “Maybe draw a line?”

  “Try another blob!”

  Finn looked at the unchanged diagram.

  “Another piece of paper,” said an anxious Philby.

  Wayne dug one out of a drawer. Maybeck drew a mouse, then a rabbit. Nothing changed.

  “Wayne, you try,” Philby ordered. “The first time we saw this thing do anything, you were the one holding it.”

  Wayne gave it his best. The pen drew lovely lines, Finn thought, but nothing more.

  “It…doesn’t…work!” Maybeck declared, exasperated.

  “All this for nothing?” Charlene moaned. “Again!”

  “Try again,” Philby said, taking the pen from Maybeck and scribbling madly. “It’s got to work!”

  “We’re missing something,” Finn said.