The Return: Disney Lands (11 page)

“I
F YOU STAND ON YOUR TIPTOES,
your
hair’s going to hit the lights,” Amanda said,
looking up at the elevator car’s ceiling.

“You’re obsessed with my height. I’m tall. Great. There’s not that much I can do about it.”

“Believe me, I’m not obsessed with anything about you. Don’t fool yourself.”

The elevator’s doors closed, but the car did not move.

“You need to answer something for me,” Tim said, leaning back against
the wall and casually crossing his arms. “Why the interest in early television in the park? You
don’t strike me as a radio technology freak.”

“What’s it to you?” Amanda said, exasperated. “Why are you doing this, anyway? Helping me?”

“Helping you and Jessica,” he corrected.

“That’s hardly an answer. You’ve been here over a year now. You could have done this research anytime. Why
now?”

“Stand back, and hold on tight,” Tim instructed, leaning forward and giving her a sly grin.

“I’m perfectly fine, thank you.”

He pushed and held three buttons on the panel. The elevator car did not move up or down. Instead, with a heaving jerk, it jumped violently to the right. Amanda fell to the floor. Tim did
not.

Groaning, Amanda pulled herself to her knees.

“I’d
stay down there, if I were you,” Tim said.

The elevator lurched backward. It jerked to a second stop. The car fell away, dropping as if its cable had been cut.

Amanda bit her lips to keep from screaming.

The car bounced. The doors opened, revealing a dark basement.

“To be continued…” Tim whispered, dragging her by the hand out of the car and across a dark, open space into a tangle
of wide pipes. Before she could speak, he pressed his
hand over her mouth. “I probably should have mentioned that Dirk the Jerk lives down here. The janitor. Don’t worry he’s ancient.”

As if in response, there came the sound of shoes scraping the floor. A human shadow approached, stretched thin and ghostly on the floor’s surface. It had a pinched head, sloping shoulders,
a long narrow
body, and pencil legs fifteen feet long. The shadow soon joined at the feet with a pair of paint-splattered brown leather boots. The work pants that fell over the boots were faded
gray from years of laundering.

Dirk, the man wearing the pants, was unshaven, greasy-haired, and bony. His forehead jutted out like the bill of a hat, all but hiding a pair of small eyes, a beak of a nose. He walked
stiffly,
like his joints had frozen, swinging his arms like canoe paddles.

Tim tugged Amanda down behind the three-foot-diameter pipe. She couldn’t see, only imagine, the maintenance man inspecting the elevator. He moved closer to Tim and Amanda and stopped,
sniffing the air. Amanda had shampooed that morning. Strawberry peach.

Beads of sweat left silver lines down Tim’s face. His
full lips had gone pale. Amanda gave him a thumbs-up. Tim didn’t look convinced.

Then the scratching of the boots against the concrete retreated. Several minutes passed.

Tim exhaled audibly. “That was close.”

“I could tell you about close,” Amanda said softly, “but I’ll save that for another time. Wherever we’re going, let’s make it fast. I’m beginning to
think Jess was the smart
one.”

“I have a theory, based on the hotel electric schematics.”

“Wait.” Amanda paused, looked at him incredulously. “You don’t know where we’re going?”

“Has to be in the far corner of the basement,” Tim said doggedly. “There’s a separate air-conditioning system and dehumidifier. It was all retrofitted. That’s where
we start.”

“When you say far, how far is the ‘far corner’?”

“Well, Amanda, it’s a big hotel.”

“Hardly reassuring. What’s between here and there?”

“Probably nothing.”

“Probably?” She sat back, wiped cobwebs from her face.

“I’m not a regular visitor! Some storage, maybe. The hotel had a full kitchen and laundry back in the day. If they’re still here, they’d be centrally located.”

“I need to know: why do you care about the Imagineering
archives so much?”

“We can talk about this later,” Tim said, and turned away, crouching to avoid banging his head as he ducked and maneuvered through the pipes. Amanda had no choice but to follow.

“I think we should talk about this now,” she said, slightly louder.

Tim shushed her. For a tall kid, he was incredibly limber and agile. She worked to keep up.

An aisle appeared to the
right. A bare concrete floor; high metal shelving on both sides, all of it crowded with open plastic crates and boxes. A thick black stripe ran straight down the
aisle’s center.

Tim pointed out a concrete block structure, eight feet square, and spoke in a whisper. “Far side of the lobby. That’s the support for the fireplace.”

“Fascinating.”

“I’m just saying.”

Amanda rolled her
eyes, but kept quiet. They were finding a rhythm, moving like police sneaking up on a suspect.

“Interesting,” Tim said, looking up overhead. “I think there might have been dumbwaiters here. What’s now the cafeteria used to be the hotel dining room, so that would
make sense.”

They reached a door. Tim tried it. Locked. Soon, another door. The handle turned. The door opened, and they stepped
inside. Amanda eased the door shut, and Tim activated his phone’s
flashlight function, shining a wide swath of light into a huge room filled with cobwebs, old machinery, dangling wires, long tables, and carts with rotting scabbed canvas. Part horror movie, part
History Channel, the hotel’s former laundry room was a museum of antique washing machines, industrial mangles, rods, and racks.
Regularly spaced wooden tables for folding and sorting the
laundry turned it into an obstacle course. It looked as if people had abandoned it quickly. A long time ago.

Shuddering, Amanda unwound a wire hanger and used it to dislodge the spiderwebs clotting their path.

“Do you see all the rat droppings?” she asked.

“Noted.”

Together, but with Amanda leading, they crept through
the cavernous room. The only sound was their footsteps, and a quiet rustle of the hanger in the webs.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Tim asked.

“Is that a trick question?” Amanda said. “I happen to love the Haunted Mansion. I still get shivers when I’m in there.”

“That’s different.” Tim cast his eyes left and right, then shuddered. “This looks like everyone just walked away from what
they were doing and never came back. I find
that disturbing.”

“You’re not alone in that,” Amanda said wryly. “But what would cause something like this? An earthquake? A fire?”

Tim stopped abruptly. “Wait a second! The story behind the Tower of Terror: five people disappear from an elevator during a horrific lightning strike. Think about it. Lightning.
Electricity.”

“Is that what
you’re after? The truth about what happened to this hotel?”

“Come on, Amanda. Do you understand the significance to Disney history? If the inspiration for the ride is this hotel and not the Hollywood Tower hotel, then this building may well be
haunted!” Tim’s eyes were wide and frantic in the pale light of his cell phone.

“If everybody in the hotel had been wiped out in a lightning strike,
don’t you think we’d know about it?” Amanda swatted at more cobwebs, resumed her forward
movement.

“Not if it was part of a bigger disaster. I’m sorry to say the people in this hotel would have been just a statistic. And if there
were
stories written about it, where would
those newspaper articles reside?”

They’d reached a door clear across the room on the far wall. Tim held the doorknob
but waited to turn it.

“Answer the question,” he said.

“Okay. I’d hide them in an archive. A secret archive. And I’d hire someone to live in the basement and keep an eye on all those secrets.” Amanda paused. “Fine. I
get it now. But…why bring me?”

“You think I was going to come down here alone? I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid.”

Amanda answered with a frank, grim expression.
“There’s something wrong here. I’ll give you that much.” Chills racked her body, shooting along her limbs. “I think
maybe I’ve seen enough.”

“You realize how close you are to the history of television and video technology in the parks? Look, all basements are weird. This one in particular. But did I feel a wave of cold or
fingers around my neck? No, I did not. Not even close. I just freaked
myself out.” Tim smiled ruefully. “And I freaked you out, too. Hey, when I was a kid, my brother used to tie me up
and leave me in the basement. We had a big house, very old, and the basement was cold and smelled bad. I still have nightmares. But I fight past it. You have to ask yourself: what are you trying to
find, Amanda? And why? Don’t try the word ‘curiosity.’ I’m not buying.”

“Fine,”
Amanda said tartly, “because I’m not selling.”

“Sure you are. You’ve been selling since we met. You just happened to want my book? Just happened to need help in my area of interest? Do you want to try again? Start all
over?”

“Think what you want,” Amanda said.

“That’s not an answer. You’re avoiding the question.”

“You first.”

They locked eyes in the dark. After a moment,
Tim shrugged and said, “There are some interesting historical overlaps I need verified. Technical observations. If you look closely, really
closely, at the history of Imagineering, you find uncanny connections between big technological jumps in video transmission—think, television—radio/wireless devices, and Disney. There
are all these rumors. I’d love to confirm or debunk them.”

“See?”
Amanda said. “That wasn’t so hard! Telling the truth is a lot easier than it sounds.”

“Easier for me than you, apparently,” Tim said, fighting a grin. He motioned forward, but Amanda slipped behind him, allowing him to lead the way down yet another aisle framed by
towering shelves. These held paint cans, replacement furniture, plumbing parts, light fixtures, toilets. It looked like a hardware
superstore.

The faintest sound startled them both. A creak. A drip of water. Gurgling pipes. The grind of distant machinery, a continuous whine from the overhead tube lights.

Tim’s obvious anxiety was a relief to Amanda. She whispered, “Have you ever noticed that
scared
and
sacred
are basically the same word?”

In spite of himself, Tim almost laughed. “Never.”

A sound like a whirring
kitchen mixer rose up to overpower all others.

“What is that?” Amanda hissed.

Ahead of her, Tim had reached an intersection of aisles; his attention was fully absorbed by the black paint stripe at their feet, which split left, right, and continued straight.

“It’s such ancient technology,” he breathed, “I didn’t recognize what it was!”

She wasn’t going to say anything. He resembled
a bloodhound on the scent and she didn’t want to get bit. Tim checked in both directions, brushing his hair out of his eyes.

“I can’t see it yet, but I hear it.”

“It? Who? What?” Amanda let slip, and instantly chastised herself. “Forget I asked! I didn’t mean to say any—”

“Shut up!” he snapped, and went back to listening intently, moving his head to hear. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going
to do.” He backed up, knelt, and waved her
down alongside. “We’re going to belly-crawl over there.” He pointed across the intersection to the same aisle they were now in. “As we do, you’re going to look right.
I’ll look left. We keep low and we keep moving no matter what. Got it?”

“No, I don’t ‘got it’! Why? What’s out there?”

“The three-nineties have slow focus!” Tim said. “Once we’re
across—”

“Wait! What’s a three-ninety?”

“Once across, we’ll hide until he passes. After that, we should be okay.”

“He? Dirk?”

“I wish!” Tim said. “Ready?”

“No, I’m not—”

But Tim dropped to his stomach and crawled out into the intersection of aisles. Amanda joined him, mimicking his moves.

At first she thought what she saw was some sort of industrial vacuum or cleaner.
But it wasn’t that at all.

A twelve-inch diameter metallic cylinder rose from its moving base to an inverted triangle of metal at the top. Perched on the triangle was a silver ball with three glass lenses aimed out. A
tri-clops robot. Fat, black rubber hoses created shoulders and elbows. On one arm a claw, and the other four fingers. The head spun like an owl’s.

Shaking with fear, Amanda
crawled across the intersection and crouched by Tim.

“It’s a robot!” she hissed.

“A STAN three-ninety. Way ahead of its time when the Imagineers introduced it. Ancient technology now; prehistoric, really.” He urged her onto the lowest shelf behind them and
climbed up alongside of her.

“Put your back against this pallet,” he said.

“But…I mean…a robot!”

“Yeah. Amazing it still
runs. It tracks along the magnetic strip painted on the floor. It was initially used in inventory robotics; the Imagineers wrote about three-nineties someday
replacing librarians. This goes to my earlier point: the Imagineers aren’t credited with half of what they apparently invented. I want to fix that.”