The Return: Disney Lands (17 page)

Shuddering at the thought, Amanda gave a thumbs-up. She carefully cleared
a path through the mess of spilled detergent with a rag. The girls stepped over the 390 and out of the laundry room.

Amanda led the way down the aisle. Things went well until a rat crossed their path and Emily screamed. Both girls froze. Amanda hand signaled, steering them to the left on tiptoes.

A few more minutes passed before a turn left them facing a wall of chain link fence, like
a tennis court. The storage area? Amanda wondered. As the girls moved closer, Amanda identified the
sound of a 390. She signaled Emily by marching in place mechanically.

Emily nodded and tried the doorknob. Locked. “We’re going to stand out of the way. Remember,” she whispered, “face it head on. Don’t turn to the side.”

Amanda nodded.

“Okay. Throw the switch.”

The two girls reached
down.

They disappeared.

An old man—Dirk—appeared first. He swung a flashlight in front of his path. He was followed by a slower moving 390. As the pair drew nearer, Amanda felt sweat running down her ribs.
She hoped she wouldn’t short-circuit the suit.

The man’s wrinkled leathery eyes squinted. Reaching the door, Dirk stopped and tested it, finding it locked. He turned his back on
the chain link and took several steps as if leaving.
Then, reconsidering, he withdrew a cluttered key chain, and unlocked the door. The hinges shrieked like wounded birds. In a creaky voice, Dirk called out a command to the waiting robot.
“Guard.”

The robot issued a series of cheeps.

Dirk entered the room and threw the light switch. Though it was tempting, Amanda did not turn her head
to see what he did next. All she could make out was Dirk’s shadow, stretching thinly
toward the 390.

The invisible Emily took Amanda by the hand and tugged.

The girls slipped in behind Dirk and stopped to face him as he pivoted. He looked directly at them.
Through
them.

He turned down a narrow aisle between tall shelves neatly ordered with hundreds of cardboard file boxes.

Emily
pulled Amanda away and down a different aisle. She switched off her suit to conserve the battery. Amanda did the same.

The girls were visible.

G
APS BETWEEN THE BOXES
afforded Amanda
a glimpse of Dirk as he moved slowly down a far aisle. He moved
cautiously.

“Who’s there?” croaked the old man dryly, almost as if he’d felt her staring. He moved toward them.

Amanda flipped on her suit’s invisibility feature. She looked toward Emily. Gone.

Dirk stood at the end of Amanda’s aisle. Keeping her shoulders square, she backed up. At the other end, she side-stepped out
of sight. She was about to make herself visible again when Dirk
called out, “I know you’re in here! I will catch you and you will be expelled. These records are off limits!”

Battery or not, she couldn’t bring herself to risk being seen.

Dirk crossed into the next aisle over, moving slowly and quietly. Amanda reached for one of the boxes, prepared to give him a start. Dirk, one aisle
over, drew closer.

A thought occurred to her. She felt a little devilish as she raised her hands, palms out, and
pushed
.

A dozen boxes, full of binders and papers, went flying into the next aisle.

Dirk pedaled backward and fell over. Gulping and gasping for air, he crawled on hands and knees toward the door.

“Away with you!” he shouted.

Though part of Amanda felt bad about
terrifying an old man, she nearly laughed as Emily threw more paperwork into the air. Needing no further incentive, Dirk fled the archive. The hinges cried
out as the door banged shut. Amid his scrambling flight, Dirk shouted to the 390, “Stand down! Follow!” and the robot obediently ground its way after him, vacating the room.

A grinning Emily reappeared from invisibility. Amanda switched
off her suit.

“That was genius!” Emily said, her eyes aglow. “The entire aisle at once? Using telekinesis? Tina was right?”

“Did you see him run?” Amanda said, avoiding a direct answer.

At her evasion, Emily looked crestfallen. “Oh, I see.”

“It’s a mess!” Amanda looked around, suddenly sensing the consequences of what she’d done. “How will we find anything now? And keep from getting
caught?”

“Don’t freak. Here’s the trick: if we pick up
all this mess
and put it back, he won’t believe it ever happened.”

“That’s just cruel.”

“No, it’s important. He’ll report this, Amanda. But if we make him look nuts, then this place doesn’t get locked up like a prison.”

“That doesn’t seem fair.”

“You can’t always play fair. Didn’t you learn that from your Keeper friends?
Look, he took off scared. People who are scared take a few minutes to get it together. I’ll
pick up the spilled stuff. You find the files—the ones you want and what Tim’s after. But we’ve got to hurry! At some point he’s going to convince himself he shouldn’t
be so freaked out, and that means he’ll come back.”

“You sure?”

“Go!”

Amanda sorted out the filing system with relative
ease. After that, it was a matter of moving row to row in search of the IAV file Philby wanted. She actually found what Tim was looking for
first. With those files in hand, she moved two rows over and located a box on the bottom shelf. Inside, she identified not one, but two 471 files: a and b. She hurried to Emily with the various
folders in hand.

“What do I do with these?” she asked.

“Turn around, I’ll unzip you.”

A moment later, the files shoved against her skin, Amanda felt all the more squished by the suit. It wouldn’t zip all the way, but Emily arranged Amanda’s hood to cover the gap.

In a stroke of luck, the doorknob to the archives room could be unlocked from the inside. The two girls relocked it upon leaving. With the noise of the hinges now behind them,
they reached the
basement’s main aisle just as Dirk appeared.

At his side was a dark-suited businessman.

The girls switched on their suits. Amanda felt Emily’s warm hand on the back of her arm, guiding her forward, keeping her shoulders square. Amanda, uncomfortable with the concept of her
own invisibility, nearly screamed as she recognized the businessman.

Tobias Langford.

Emily turned Amanda at the last moment. The girls pivoted like a gate opening. The men passed through seamlessly.

But then Amanda sneezed without warning.

Both men spun around.

“You see? I told you!” Dirk said. “Ghosts!”

“Not possible!” said Langford.

“I’m telling you…it’s the Hunchback. Like last time!” Dirk sounded ready to cry. He pulled at his hair, twisting the wiry white
strands every which way.

“Impossible.” Langford shook his head sharply. “We took care of him.”

“One of the resident ghosts, then.”

“Do you know how much money we paid Lockwood and Company to get rid of those things? The ghosts are gone, Dirk. They’re nothing but a story now. An old story no one
believes.”

“I’ve been telling you all for years that they’re still down here.”

Amanda felt Emily’s hand tighten convulsively on her arm. She looked down—and choked back a gasp. Large spots on her suit, spots the size of buttons, were flashing gray. Her battery
was failing. The sputtering LEDs formed ripples across her suit, a movement like water.

“You see that?” Dirk spit out. “What is that?”

He edged closer, reluctantly. Transfixed by her failing suit, Amanda failed
to step back.

Dirk bumped into her hip.

But then Amanda felt herself pulled—Emily!—and a pair of arms wrapped around her. Resolutely, Emily marched Amanda ahead, her toes nudging Amanda’s heels forward. It was a good
but flawed attempt. Langford and Dirk saw floating blobs of gray moving away from them, hovering weirdly in the dim air of the basement.

“What—what
is
that?” Langford
breathed.

“What did I tell you?” said Dirk. “Ghosts!”

Emily hurried Amanda down an aisle, released her, and then they ran. Hard. At the end of the aisle, they turned left, then right; hurled themselves through the laundry room door and jumped over
the fallen 390. Breathing hard, they ran for the dumbwaiters—and stopped, frozen in their tracks.

“If we use the dumbwaiter, they’ll absolutely
know we’re real!” Amanda whispered. “You made Chameleon for class, Emily! Langford will figure out it was
you.”

Cursing under her breath—just like Tim, Amanda thought wryly—Emily pulled Amanda toward a line of cabinets across the room. Both girls crawled inside, pulled the cabinet doors shut,
and switched off their suits, conserving what little battery power remained.

The louvered
cabinet doors made it possible to see out. The door creaked and Langford stepped into the dark laundry room, his phone extended, casting out light before it as a flashlight.

“What is this place?” Langford said, his voice echoing eerily.

“The old laundry.”

“My God, talk about spooky.”

“The three-nineties followed whoever was down here into this room. Earlier, I’m talking about.
Blue sneakers.”

“What’s that?”

“I saw a pair of sneakers on the dumbwaiter. Blue sneakers. Big ones. You put your DSI kids in front of me, I can pick ’em out.”

“Spend some time upstairs tomorrow. Keep your eyes open.” Langford sounded bored and dismissive, but Amanda couldn’t tell if he was faking it.

“But what about the ghosts? I’m telling you, Mr. L., you’ve got to see the records
room. Let me show you the mess they made in the records room.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Langford glanced around the laundry once more. Amanda saw him look directly at the cabinet, at her. She held her gloved hand across her mouth to keep from giving
herself away. “I’m telling you, Dirk, what we saw back there was weird. Those shadows, like something melting. Hard to explain.”

“Ghosts
are
hard to
explain.”

“Don’t start, Dirk.”

“You know as well as I do that strange things have been happening down here for years. Ever since the fire.”

“We took care of all that a long time ago. The voices. The crying.”

“We ain’t seen nothing like this.”

“No, Dirk,” said Langford, still eyeing the cabinet door. “Nothing like this.”

“S
O
?”
BURIED JUST BELOW
Tim’s eagerness
to hear their report was envy over the
girls’ accomplishments.

Emily and Amanda sat on a pair of beanbags in the dorm’s third-floor game room. The scuffs and thumps of Ping-Pong and foosball competed with the Disney movie sound tracks blasting from
the karaoke machine. The acoustic tile ceiling had pencils stuck into it like stalactites, evidencing years of DSI occupancy. The rest of the
dorms could seem formal, but this was a relaxed, easy
space.

“We got the files,” Amanda said.

“Can I see them?” Tim dragged a leaking beanbag over to join them. His long, lanky frame looked awkward stretched out like that. As he wiggled to get comfortable, small plastic balls
belched from a tear and bounced away across the floor.

“We weren’t able to get yours.”

“Please?” he
said nicely, his hand outstretched.

Amanda held the files close to her heart, just out of his reach. “Only if you share everything. No more holding back.”

“Agreed.”

“The shuttle leaves in ten minutes,” Emily reminded them.

Tim snatched the files and began reading, turning pages quickly, his perusal punctuated by furtive glances at the two girls. He read faster and faster. His pace
frantic, in a race against the
clock.

Then his eyes widened. He grinned.

“What?” Amanda asked.

“Why does your friend Philby want this?”

“He didn’t say. Only that Finn…that the Keepers needed them. Why,
what
are they? What’s in there?”

“Detailed specifications of color television transmission.”

“Meaning?”

“It’s a paint-by-numbers plan for setting up radio towers and
broadcasting tri-band color signals. I’ll have to check the dates, but by the look of it, it’s way ahead of
its time. That means the rumors are true!” Tim’s eyes glowed triumphantly. “The Imagineers were onto this stuff way ahead of anyone else.”