Disney After Dark (25 page)

“It’s a…prison,” Maybeck said.

Finn stopped and examined a shiny piece of metal that hung from one of the doors. It turned out to be a padlock. A sparkling
new
padlock. Each of the cells was secured with a similar lock, all brand new. On further inspection, many of the hinges to the cell doors had been recently repaired.

Fresh weld marks abounded.

“This has all been fixed up,” Philby said. “And recently. What’s with that?”

“Padlocks,” Finn said. “A hundred padlocks stolen. Remember what Wayne said?” He recalled his father mentioning welding gear being stolen. The Overtakers.

Philby handled one of the padlocks. “You’re not saying—”

“You want to explain it? Go ahead!” Finn said.

Maybeck said, “Listen, this makes sense. These cells are huge. Each cell could hold what, ten, maybe twenty people?”

The boys continued through the gloomy jail.

Philby did the math. “That means you could lock up
hundreds
of people down here. You realize that?”

Finn said, “Park employees.”

“They’re planning a takeover,” Philby said. “They stole the locks. They fixed up the cells.”

Finn stated, “They obviously plan to use these.”

“This is exactly what Wayne is afraid of,” Philby said. “Now I get it: if they organize, and if they have real powers, it’s possible they could take over the park.”

“And once they did,” Finn said, “what would happen to the guests who arrived?”

“It’s not just a jail, guys. Welcome to the dungeon.” Maybeck pointed to a door at the end of the jails. The door hung open, revealing a tomblike darkness beyond. “And yes,” he added quickly,

“I realize how stupid this sounds.”

Finn reminded, “Remember, we’re not crossed over. We’re not going to turn invisible. We’re not going to glow. We’re not going to walk through walls. So if we run, we run.”

“I’m all over that,” Maybeck said.

They paused at the door and listened to high-pitched voices faintly coming through the darkness.

Philby whispered, “I suggest we stick to the shadows.”

“Shadows?” Maybeck questioned. “It’s pitch-black in there.”

“It won’t be,” Philby assured him.

Maybeck said, “No matter what, we hang together. You do
not
want to go one-on-one with these people.”

“If they are people,” Philby said, meaning it as a joke. No one laughed.

“Any advice?” Finn asked.

“Don’t underestimate their power over you,” Maybeck said. “You don’t want to look into their eyes. I remember looking into a pair of eyes—the cold got much more intense.”

“So…try to think of other things, or what?” Finn asked.

“Yeah. They definitely put thoughts into your head, which feel like your own ideas. But they aren’t your ideas at all. They’re like orders. We ought to go through that door with our minds already occupied,” Maybeck suggested. “If we go through at all.”

“Occupied with
what
?” Philby asked.

Maybeck answered, “What’s the ugliest, weirdest monster you’ve ever seen? In a movie, in your imagination, in your sleep? Try that. And don’t let go of it. Fight fire with fire.” He added, “Jez is so nice, it’s hard to see her as dangerous. That’s when you start losing power, when the cold really gets going.”

“And you couldn’t have told us this before we decided to come here?” Philby asked, annoyed.

“I didn’t remember any of this. Swear I didn’t. Not until just now. But man, I’m telling you, it’s all coming back in a big way.”

“Are we all set?” Finn asked.

The boys nodded.

Finn led the way through the door, his feet feeling the way in front of him. The darkness gave way to a descending stone staircase. Partway down, the stairs turned left and a dim electric light shone overhead. More lights up ahead.

The stagnant, musty air grew quickly cool. The walls dripped and green slime ran down them like thick paint. The boys sloshed through several shallow puddles. Finn followed two sets of wet shoe prints now, from puddle to puddle.

All at once the space opened into a square room. The stone ceiling was supported by four enormous stone pillars, each with a different animal head carved onto it. The carvings were of ghoulish, evil faces, half animal, half human—hideous, with bug eyes and tongues sticking out.

Stone benches ran along the walls. This was some kind of gathering place.

The air felt even colder now.

Finn counted three dark doorways leading from the room. Jez and the woman could have gone through any one of them.

Philby dropped to one knee, looking for wet prints to follow. He crawled forward on his hands and knees and ended facing the middle of the three doorways. He pointed silently.

Finn nodded.

The boys entered a dank, narrow tunnel with walls close enough to touch on both sides at the same time. It grew ever gloomier. There was barely any light. A suffocating staleness hung in the air.

Finn toed his way carefully ahead, encountering yet another short flight of stone steps. A single bare bulb lit the place where the tight passageway ended at a second, vast open space, a room carved from sandstone. A half dozen columns, all connected by carved arches, rose like tree trunks from the floor.

It reminded Finn of Escher’s Keep. It was almost as if Escher himself had once been here.

Many similar patterns and designs adorned the room. Had Walt Disney once shown this room to the great artist?

Maybeck crossed his arms tightly. “Temperature alert,” he whispered. “Arctic air mass.”

It was an unnatural cold. A far too familiar cold. They were drawing closer to the source.

Philby, in the lead, led them to the right. Noticing that the chill was reduced here, they reversed directions, following the cold like a bloodhound follows a scent.

A tremor of terror ran through Finn. What were they thinking in coming here? A spiral staircase that looked like a hermit crab’s shell rose to his left. Another set of narrow stone steps descended straight ahead. This place was a labyrinth. But more strangely, it was also a forced-perspective hallway. The deeper they penetrated into the room, the lower the ceiling. The effect made the room appear much longer than it actually was.

Finn, no giant himself, ducked as the moist sandstone caught his hair. Spiderwebs stuck to his face. He clawed at them.

The boys heard hushed voices to their right. They changed direction, hunched, and stooped by the sloped ceiling.

“Valor is such a dangerous thing.” The same voice from the teepee: Maleficent.

The boys stopped and turned in unison.

She stood alongside a column. She’d hidden behind it. They’d walked right past her. “Like bees to sugar water,” she said.

She now blocked their return route.

She said, “If you didn’t care so much about your two girlfriends up there, you wouldn’t have followed us down here. And if you didn’t follow us, then how would we ever get you to give us the pen?”

They’d been tricked. Jez and Maleficent had
wanted
to be followed.

Maybeck made a quick move to his left, but with a simple wave of her gloved hand Maleficent threw up a series of white vibrating lines that connected one column to the next. A cage of light.

The lines hummed and sparked with electricity. They added light to the gloominess.

A second wave of her hands erected more lines, intricately connected. She had created a complex fence around the boys.

She said, “You’re familiar with shock collars for dogs? Wireless fences? Same concept. I don’t advise testing it, but be my guests, if you must.”

The light allowed Finn to see the purple of her robes. Too scared to talk, he summoned his courage, refusing to look directly at her while at the same time keeping a monstrous image in his mind’s eye.

“We know you have it on you,” she said, “you clever child. Now…place the pen down on the floor there. As soon as you do, your girlfriends will feel fine.”

Silence. Not even Maybeck responded with his usual sarcasm.

Philby’s eyes danced toward the sparking white lines that caged them. Finn could feel him plotting escape.

Finn felt it worth a lie. “It might help if I knew what you were talking about.”

“You insolent young man.”

“We were there. One Man’s Dream.” Jez stepped out from behind another column.

“One Witch’s Dream, too,” Maleficent said. “These parks grow so…claustrophobic—don’t you think?”

Seeing these two side by side, Finn realized how different they looked. It was hard to believe Jez was this woman’s daughter. And now he felt awful for doubting Amanda. Now she sat semiconscious somewhere above them.

“You two can go,” Maleficent said to Philby and Maybeck. She swept her hand to one side and the fence sputtered and vanished. “
Omnia haec obliviscantur
!” she chanted musically, then said, “When you reach the surface, you will remember none of what has gone on here. Neither the events nor the way down. All you will recall is going to the restroom together. You don’t know where Finn is. Haven’t seen him in a while. Now go.”

The two boys remained rooted firmly in place. “No way!” Philby said.

“Silly, silly boy.” She clapped her gloved hands together. Philby seemed to lose every bone in his body. He fell to the floor in a heap of unwilling limbs and muscle, a lump of flesh.

“I’m giving you a very generous opportunity here. Terry knows better than to disobey, don’t you, Terry?”

Maybeck’s lips moved, but no sound came out.

“I can add some pain, if you like,” she said to Philby.

“No!” Maybeck said, reaching for Philby.

“Go!” Finn instructed them.

They looked pained to hear this from him.

“Go,” he repeated.

Losing her patience, Maleficent asked, “Or do you prefer fire?”

Her left hand suddenly held a ball of flame. She blew it out.

“Or wind?” The room swirled with a gale force that blew dust into their eyes and knocked the boys off their feet. Neither Jez’s robes nor her mother’s so much as fluttered.

“Want to play some more?” she asked.

Maleficent lit another ball of flame in her hand. She blew on it, sending it rolling directly for Maybeck. It exploded in a puff of black smoke just before reaching him.

Helping Philby up, Finn leaned in and whispered, “Keep an image in your head. Focus on something. Protect your memory.” He gave him a little shove. “Now, go!” he said more loudly.

Maybeck led Philby by the arm. They hurried out of the room.

When they were gone, Finn said to the witch, “You’re head of the Overtakers.”

She cackled an edgy laugh. “Me? Head? False compliments will get you nowhere with me, young man. I am but a humble servant to she who lives within. My powers are so small and insignificant. Do not waste your breath. I’m an errand runner, that’s all.”

Finn felt his knees go weak. There was something more powerful than she was?

She instructed him: “Now, put it on the floor. Do so, or suffer. Your choice.”

“Make me,” Finn said.

Maleficent waved her right hand and Finn’s cape blew open. The assortment of pens and pencils taken from Walt’s desk stuck out from the cape’s inside pocket. The witch turned away and the cape fell shut.

“If you could make me hand it over, you would have,” he told her. “But you can’t. For some reason, you need me to cooperate. Why is that?”

He flashed open the cape again. And again, she averted her gaze.

“He protected against this, didn’t he? Walt Disney,” Finn said as he concealed the pens and pencils again.

Maleficent dared to venture a look at the pens, her eyes sparkling, as if Finn were holding a million dollars in gold.

He took hold of the pens and held them out toward her. Maleficent cowered away from him.

“Interesting,” Finn said. “You need one of these pens or pencils, don’t you? But which one?”

He stepped forward. She moved back, and away, ducking behind the nearest column. “The real quill can
hurt
you, can’t it? Dull your powers?” He understood then. This was how Wayne could stop the Overtakers.

“It can stop your plans, this pen, can’t it? You need to get rid of it. Destroy it. Even just its existence has threatened you all these years.”

“What do you know? You’re just a boy! And we all know little boys shouldn’t play with fire.”

With that, she pretended she was bowling. A large ball of fire rolled from her hand and across the floor at Finn. He dodged it easily enough, but then came a second, and a third.

Jez “caught” the balls of fire on the opposite side and bowled them back toward Maleficent.

Finn, trapped in the middle, danced to avoid the flames.

A ball singed his cape. He couldn’t keep this up for long. He found himself hopping around like an Irish step dancer.

“You will do exactly as I say,” Maleficent instructed him, still bowling her fireballs at him.

Finn understood what he had to do. Dodging the fire as he landed, he scattered several of the pens across the stone floor. A ball of fire tumbled toward the pens.

“No!” the witch shouted. With a wave of her hand, the flaming balls vanished into wisps of black smoke and the tangy smell that follows a lightning storm.

So, Finn thought, she doesn’t want to destroy the pen, and she can’t touch it herself. She has a use for it, but is also afraid of its power.

“You think yourself so clever?” she called out angrily. She walked right through his electric cage, straight for the pens.

Finn dove across the floor, swept them up into his hand, and sprinted for the white sparking fence. She had passed through without so much as a spark.

When he was crossed over, Finn had been able to walk through walls and counter the currents of Splash Mountain by concentrating on the DHI essence of his crossed-over body. So why not pass through this electric fence unharmed?

He focused on the single idea: I am light. I am nothing but light. Nothing can stop me if I’m nothing but light. Nothing can harm me if I’m—

Wham!

Reaching the fence at full stride, he was knocked back off his feet and onto the floor. He felt as if he’d been stabbed in the chest.