Disney After Dark (21 page)

“We’ve got to hurry!” Philby barked out.

“Hurry? I can barely move.”

The cracking sound grew frighteningly loud. It came from the scene behind them—the Utah desert scene they’d just left.

They cautiously climbed back up the small rise in the track, to look back from where they’d just come. They peered over the rails, following that loud cracking sound.

Across the way, rock splintered around the enormous dinosaur fossil.

“That’s a T. rex,” Philby whispered. “Forty feet long. Eighteen feet high. Fifty-eight teeth. Runs forty miles an hour.”

Finn didn’t need all the facts. Sometimes he wished Philby would just keep them to himself.

The two boys watched in horror as, one by one, the bones vibrated and broke free from the rock. They did not fall. They did not break. They held together as one…giant…

“Run!” Philby shouted.

A cloud of dust rose behind them as the ground trembled with a rhythmic
clomp, clomp,
clomp.

Footsteps.
Big
footsteps.

All at once, the T. rex skeleton came over the hill, following the tracks. The thing was
huge.

The dinosaur had all its bones, with no eyes, no skin, no flesh—but
all
its teeth.

Philby shouted, “Keep running! Don’t slow down!”

Finn’s cold, unwilling legs slowed him. He scrambled ahead. The T, rex charged, lowering its head and coming for them. Finn was behind Philby, close to the charge.

Clomp! Clomp! Clomp
!

The ground shook so violently that Finn fell. He slid down the rails, caught hold, and regained his balance.

The bones clattered as the dinosaur charged. The boys climbed the next rise and jumped over. The beast moved faster.

Finn made a mistake by glancing back. The beast snorted dust out of the holes in its skull where nostrils should have been. It lowered its head once again and picked up speed, the jaws clapping open and shut, sounding like a door being slammed.

Finn cleared the top of the roller coaster’s next rocky peak, with the dinosaur’s jaw bones snapping only a few feet from him now. Finn was going to be eaten. He slid down the last descending slope of the roller coaster, as if he were sliding down an enormous banister.

The track leveled off here, giving the dinosaur the advantage. It snapped and caught a piece of Finn’s shirt.

The track curved ahead. Finn, finding speed he didn’t know he had, cried, “Help!”

“Physics class!” shouted Philby back at him. “The track is
banked
.”

“What do I care?”

The T. rex stumbled and lost a few yards. The boys hurried up the slight rise into the steep turn.

“The track is
banked
!” Philby repeated.

Finn understood then what had to be done. He was the one trailing. His heart lodged in his throat as he stopped just before the apex of the turn. He faced the beast, making a target of himself.

“Come and get it!” he shouted at the T. rex.

He waved his arms like a matador taunting the bull.

The huge mass of rattling bones, surrounded by a cloud of dust, bore down on him. Faster and faster it came.

Finn waited…and waited…knowing he had to time his move perfectly.

The T. rex charged.

Just as the skeleton’s teeth were a foot away from his chest, Finn dove off the track.

The beast faltered, lurched, and tipped to its left when the track suddenly curved to the right.

The bones of an outer leg splintered and snapped at the knee. The monster rolled, broke through the plywood of the scene’s mountain backdrop, and tumbled over the side.

Finn watched as it landed with a noisy explosion of broken bones that scattered like tree branches.

Philby, who had also stopped, looked down at Finn and helped him up to the rail.

“Wait til they see that on their cameras!”

The boys turned and hurried off into the night.

27

S
ince all of the kids were hungry, they left the apartment together and reconvened at Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe. Finn led the way, passing right through the locked front door.

Maybeck surprised the others by cooking up decent-tasting turkey burgers. They stayed in the kitchen area and kept the lights off so as not to be seen. Exit signs and a few overhead security lights provided the only illumination. Finn and Philby fashioned a table out of a rolling cart with locking wheels. Inverted plastic tubs and buckets served as chairs. The two girls sat together on one side, Finn and Philby on the other. Maybeck joined them last and took the head of the table.

Philby placed a paper napkin in front of them.

“This is everything we have,” he explained, jotting down the letters they’d acquired by following the clues in the fable:

F M E Y I R S T P N

“They must spell something,” Charlene said.

“If I was at a computer…If I had an anagram generator,” Philby said.

He wrote the letters out again, this time leaving more room around each one. He tore the letters apart. A few minutes later they had Scrabble letters made out of a torn napkin.

The kids studied the letters, calling out words they saw.

“MEN,” Charlene said.

“Leave that to you!” Willa quipped.

Philby set the letters aside.

Finn said, “SPIT.”

He pulled these out as well.

“FRY is left,” Philby pointed out.

“MEN FRY SPIT?” Willa asked.

“MEN SPIT FRY?” Charlene suggested.

“No way,” Philby said. “We’ll try again.” He reshuffled the ten letters.

E

N P

S T M

Y F R I

“I’m killer at Scrabble,” Charlene announced, “if I do say so myself.”

“Have at it,” Philby said.

Charlene arranged the letters into groups, broke up those groups and tried again. Her hands moved very fast, like a card dealer.

She assembled them into:

M Y P I T F E R N S.

“Very good!” Willa said encouragingly.

M Y T I P F E R N S

“Again,” Philby said. Finn kept track, writing down all the variations.

F I R M S P Y N E T

“That’s an interesting one,” Philby said.

Finn made sure to get it down.

M E N F I S T P R Y

“You
are
good at this!” Willa said, impressed.

“We all have our talents,” Charlene quipped.

Then, two right in a row:

MET FRY SPIN, MY PINS FRET.

Suddenly Maybeck sneezed, sending the letters airborne. Finn and Philby snagged a few of them and returned them to the table.

Others floated down like large snowflakes. They settled, one by one.

“Wait!” Finn called out. He gasped as he saw what the letters were spelling all by themselves:
W Y

F IR S T

P EN

Finn licked the tip of his finger, touched the
W
and turned it over. He then neatened the rest:
MY FIRST PEN

“The Stonecutter’s
Quill.
It’s Walt Disney’s first pen,” Philby said. “Oh my gosh!”

“But what does it mean?” Charlene said.

“It’s the next clue. It means we’ve got to find Walt’s first pen,” Philby answered.

Maybeck groaned, “You have got to be kidding me.”

“But where?” Charlene asked.

Silence.

“Is there a museum or something?” Finn asked.

The kids all shook their heads.

“There’s that thing, One Man’s Dream,” Willa stated. “Over in Disney-MGM. It’s kind of like a museum, I suppose.”

Philby said, “That sounds…relevant.”

“What are you, a lawyer?” Maybeck said.

Willa continued, “As I remember, there’s stuff there, like an old desk and models and things like that.”

“Worth a try,” Finn muttered softly.

“Wayne,” Philby said, drawing everyone’s attention. “This is a question for Wayne.”

Maybeck said, “I paid him a visit. Asked him to join us in the apartment. He said his hip was bothering him, and that if we wanted to see him, it would have to be at his place.”

“Well, then,” Finn said. “I guess that’s that.”

They split up into two groups—Finn with Willa; Maybeck and Philby with Charlene—and left the restaurant five minutes apart.

The area of greatest risk was Main Street, which was the park’s sole entrance and exit. You couldn’t leave or enter the Magic Kingdom without walking down Main Street. The fire station was up at Town Square, at the opposite end of the street from where they were.

When Finn and Willa reached the park end of Main Street—the area near the castle—they stayed close to the storefronts, ducking into doorways and sneaking glances out onto the empty street. Twice they hid in the shadows against a door as Finn spotted the taillights of golf carts in the distance. He checked his watch: in two minutes the other three would leave the restaurant. The idea had been for Finn and Willa to be safely inside Wayne’s by then.

The most risk came with crossing the street. Finn signaled to Willa and counted down with his fingers.
Three…two…one…

They took off across the street, two blurs of dull, colorful light. As they did, Finn had the pronounced feeling that someone was watching him. He glanced over his shoulder and thought he saw a shadow move in one of the doorways. But who?

Door to door they moved up Main Street. Finn looked back, but there was no more sign of anyone following. When he was sure they were in the clear, he led Willa toward the fire station and up the back stairs. Wayne answered the door as if he’d been waiting for them.

“I think you’ve done it,” Wayne said, with all five DHIs gathered in his apartment. Philby and Finn had explained their solution to the fable.

Wayne continued, “It was the glasses, you see? That reference to perspective was where we failed all these years. You should be very proud of yourselves.”

“Is that it?” Maybeck asked. “Can we start sleeping again, for real?”

“You can try,” Wayne answered, “but I’m willing to think you’ll have to see it through.”

“See
what
through?” Maybeck complained. “You wanted us to solve the fable, and we did.”

Wayne stared at Finn until the boy said, “It’s not solved. Maybe the pen is the end of it.”

“It’s possible,” Wayne said, “but I wouldn’t count on it.”

“Why can’t you take it from here?” Maybeck asked.

“I could try,” Wayne answered. “But I’m not sure that would solve your crossing-over problem.”

“You designed us to cross over. So
un
-design us,” Charlene said.

“If only it were that easy. No, I’m afraid Finn’s right: you’ll need to see this through.”

“You’re after
her
,” Maybeck said, finally understanding. “Was this ever about the fable? Or is that just a way to smoke her out?”

“It’s very much about the fable,” Wayne answered. “I sense some hostility in you, Terry”

“Do you really?” Maybeck snorted and crossed his arms. “That wouldn’t be because I was kidnapped, would it? And now you want me coming back for
more
?”

Willa asked, “Is he right? Are we supposed to…deliver…that
thing.
Maleficent? How do we do that?”

“You take things one at a time,” Wayne replied. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

“One Man’s Dream,” Finn said.

“You can go in as a DHI, but you won’t get out with what you want,” Wayne stated, surprising them. “Think about it. You might get inside, but the pen would not come out with you. The pen is material and real, whereas you—”

“Are not,” Philby answered.

“So we have to steal it?” Finn asked.

“You are going to borrow it, I suppose.”

“Why can’t
you
do that?” Maybeck challenged.

“I wasn’t the one to solve the fable. I’m not the one brought here to fix things. You are. All five of you.

“But you could get the pen if you wanted.”

“Could I? If an old goat like me from Imagineering asked to get inside a display in One Man’s Dream, they’d probably fire me. I have no business there.”

“Which display?” Philby asked. “You know which display, don’t you?”

“I have an idea,” Wayne admitted.

“Sheesh!” Maybeck huffed, fed up.

“There are several replicas. A drafting table. His school desk. Even Walt’s original office. A pen…it’s conceivable it could be in any of these. You must bring me the pen the moment you have it. And understand the threat you now pose to the Overtakers. Don’t underestimate that. Not for a minute. You’ve solved the fable. They may know that, or at least suspect it. If the pen is valuable enough, powerful enough, to hide inside a fable, then one can imagine we are not the only ones after it.”

“You’re afraid of her,” Willa said softly. “You created us because you’re afraid of her.”

“Are you old enough to understand the saying ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’?” Wayne asked.

Finn had heard the expression before, and judging by the faces of the others, they had too.

He thought he understood Wayne’s message. “You’re not the one who created us,” he said. “So who did?”

Voices came loudly up the back stairs from outside. Several men. One of them said, “Was this where you saw them?”