Disney in Shadow (27 page)

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.

“Y
OU’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.”

M
RS. 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—”

“We are doing what we feel we need to do. If you are trying to pressure me into—”

“Not at all!” Mrs. Whitman said. “I’m not trying to pressure you into anything.”

“What if they should never come back?” Mrs. Philby said, her words choked. “I don’t accept all this nonsense our children have told us about dreaming and traveling…if you ask me, it’s…well, I can’t even say it. It’s horrible is what it is. The evil of our society. Where our children, our dear, precious children, could ever get hold of such things—”

“It is
not
what you think!” Mrs. Whitman gasped.

“The doctors will run tests. We shall see what we see.”

“Our children—their holograms—are trapped inside the parks somewhere.”

“And you actually
believe
that nonsense,” Mrs. Philby replied, “which means this conversation is over.”

“If we work together,” Mrs. Whitman said, “maybe we can figure out where they’ve gone. Maybe we can find them and bring them back.”

“Listen to you!”

“The Overtakers have kidnapped Wayne. I…Finn…your son was here at my house. We…there was a cryptogram, a kind of mathematical—”

“I know what a cryptogram is!” Mrs. Philby said. “Will you listen to yourself, Mrs. Whitman? Will you listen to what you are saying?”

“I know it sounds—”

“Ridiculous? Absurd? Impossible? Yes, it does! And you? You’re delusional if you believe such…such garbage.” Mrs. Philby was breathing heavily into the phone. “What do you mean, he was at your house?”

“After school. He and our Finn and another of the—Willa…listen, I know how far-fetched all of it sounds. We’ve been asked to endure so much. But my point is: if there is some truth to what they say about what happened to Donnie Maybeck that time, about where they go at night, about Wayne and this…this war they seem to be fighting—”

“Would you just listen to yourself?”

“But if there is,” Mrs. Whitman persisted. “If there should be—”

“But there isn’t. How could there be?”

Mrs. Whitman felt a tremendous headache coming on. She gripped her head with her free hand and tried to be objective about what she was saying. She knew that if she were the one on the receiving end of her own argument she’d think the other person a nutcase.

“I don’t know,” she muttered.

“When the doctors render their opinion,” Mrs. Philby said, “I will contact you and the other parents.”

“Kind of you.”

“It’s the least I can do. Should I call this number?”

Mrs. Whitman gave her her mobile number instead.

“Are you…going out?” Mrs. Philby asked, as if Mrs. Whitman would be committing the ultimate bad-parent crime by leaving her comatose son in his present state.

“My husband will be here with Finn,” Mrs. Whitman said. “I…that is…Donnie’s aunt and I—”

“The
artist
?”

“The same. Yes. Donnie let slip something about Epcot.” She hesitated, knowing the scorn she faced for bringing up the subject. “We can’t just sit by and do nothing, you see?”

“But…you can’t possibly believe any of what they tell us!”

“Actually…well…that is…yes. I’m afraid I do.”