Disney After Dark (26 page)

Maleficent seemed to float, not walk, as she approached. She towered over him. Scowling, the witch raised her arm, about to deliver a spell. Finn clutched the pens and jumped toward her, lightning fast. He thrust the pens in her face. Sparks flew as the pens connected with Maleficent.

She flew back and fell to the stone floor.

“Your Grace?” Jez called out.

The witch lay on the stone floor, stunned. The electric fence sputtered.

Finn stepped closer to the fallen witch, the pens held in front of him like a sword. She recoiled, expecting him to strike again.

“Lower the fence!” he instructed Jez. He never took his eyes off Maleficent. She seemed to be gaining her strength back. “Lower the fence, or I’ll do it again,” Finn warned.

The bars of buzzing white lines sparked twice more and then vanished.

“Release Amanda and Charlene,” he told her. When Jez hesitated, he stepped closer to Maleficent. The feeling of cold increased. Her strength was indeed returning. He needed Jez to do this quickly, before her mother came to her senses.

He stabbed at Maleficent with the fistful of pens. A second burst of sparks threw her down again.

“Okay!” Jez exclaimed. She waved her hands. “It’s done.”

Finn backed up and reached the stairway.

A weakened Maleficent lifted her head and said, “We will meet again, young man. We have unfinished business, you and I.”

Finn turned and ran.

31

T
he kids needed the plans that had been stolen from Finn at One Man’s Dream, and no one had any doubts as to who had taken them. Maleficent would return for the pen—the Stonecutter’s Quil

—with a vengeance. Whatever powers the pen and the plans possessed when combined, each side had their reasons for wanting what the other now possessed.

Before he left Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party, Finn paid Wayne a visit to explain the night’s events.

“It’s always such a noisy night,” Wayne complained. He looked silly dressed in a pair of pajamas and a plaid robe. He wore Mickey and Minnie Mouse fuzzy slippers.

“We need your help.”

“So it would seem. So it would seem.” Wayne paced his small apartment over the fire station, glancing out the windows occasionally. Finn heard him mutter, “When will they go home?” Then he paced some more. “Two birds with one stone,” he said, now addressing Finn.

“How’s that?” Finn asked, impatient to hook back up with his friends and leave the park.

“I can help you—will help you—but it won’t come without additional risk to us all. She has to be desperate to be bowling fire at your feet. Revealing herself like that.” He studied the pens spread out on the small dining table, where Finn had put them. “You’ll keep all of these, because they’ve obviously come in handy. Tomorrow’s the day. They’ll be expecting you by night, of course, because that’s when you’re usually here. So it can’t be night. It must be day. Furthermore, if you’re to secure the plans, then you must be a boy, not crossed over.”

“But we can touch and hold things when we’re crossed over. I can get those plans back.”

“You can’t do that where I’m sending you,” Wayne countered. “You’ll have to be yourself. The others as well. And you’ll need disguises, or you’ll get caught.” Wayne paused, thinking hard.

“Cast-member costumes, you understand? Employees. Each of you. I can help there as well.”

“But why? Where are you sending us?”

“You showed me,” Wayne said. “I might have never figured this out by myself.”

“Showed you what?”

“Where’s the one place that a weakened Maleficent can hide without being questioned?”

“Here in the park.”

“I mean,
where
in the park?”

“Whatever ride, whatever attraction she’s part of.”

“But that’s the point. She isn’t part of one,” Wayne answered. “Her role is over at the studios.

She’s in Fantasmics. That’s all she does here—that one show. She turns herself into the dragon.

Maybe in real life as well.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m an old man talking to himself, that’s all. Back to the important question: where can she hide in the Magic Kingdom?”

“Out in the open?” Finn guessed.

“Precisely. And if I were her, if I’d stolen these plans and then led boys down to my secret lair, I would need someplace new to lay low. The boys might tell people about the dungeons. They could be searched. I could be caught. I need a place no one can find me.”

“But where?” Finn asked, feeling as if they were talking in circles.

“We’ll need all five of you to dress as cast members. You’ll meet me at the Transportation and Ticket Center, bus stop number five, at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. Can you make that?”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday. Probably. I suppose so.”

“Make sure you do,” he advised.

“What did you mean by ‘two birds with one stone’?”

“We’re going to use her own tactics against her. If you manage to get the plans, she’ll come after you. She’ll want to stop you from getting them to me, especially now that she knows you have the pen.”

“So?”

“You’re going to lead her into a trap.” His old eyes brightened.

“You’re going to use us as bait?”

Wayne looked at Finn. His features softened. “How terribly impolite of me. It has been so long, you see. We’re so close now. So very close.” He straightened up and looked Finn in the eye.

“I need your help—yours and the others’—in catching Maleficent. It is a task not without risk, but one I assure you well worth the effort, if you’re game. This is, I believe, what Walt had intended all along—the capture of an Overtaker, the beginning of the end for them.” He paused and allowed Finn to think through his proposal. Then he asked, “So? Will you help me?”

At nine the next morning, Finn stood with the others in line at bus stop number five at the Transportation and Ticket Center.

A large bus pulled up. The door swung open, and from behind the wheel Wayne motioned them inside. “Well?” the old guy said, “Hurry it up!”

The kids piled on, and Wayne shut the door and drove off. They were all alone in the otherwise empty bus.

“There isn’t time,” Wayne said. “There’s a bag for each of you.”

Finn’s name was written on one of five grocery bags. Inside was a costume.

“Put it on,” Wayne instructed. “Ladies to the back.”

Some blankets had been strung across the rear seats to provide the girls privacy.

“Gentlemen up front.”

Wayne turned the bus at the next corner, and the boys, all in various degrees of undress, had to hold on to keep their balance.

Wayne picked up the microphone and announced so the girls could hear as well, “I’ll bring you in around the back of the park at Frontierland. You’ll enter the tunnels from there.”

“Tunnels?” Finn asked.

“After that, it’s up to the five of you, I’m afraid.”

When the boys were dressed, Charlene and Willa came forward. Willa wore an old-fashioned blue-striped dress and a puffy-sleeved blouse printed with pastel flowers, the uniform of food-service workers in Frontierland. Charlene wore a skirt and top of a deckhand on the paddle wheel steamboat that circled Tom Sawyer Island.

“Listen, all of you! There’s a schedule in place we must keep to in order for this to work.”

Wayne was one of the worst drivers Finn had ever met. The bus nearly sideswiped two cars, then veered left and scraped its wheels against the curb, before smashing back down to the roadway.

“Okay, we’re listening,” Finn said, realizing that the old goat was agitated.

Philby was dressed as a boatman on the Jungle Cruise. Finn was a newspaper boy from Main Street. Maybeck wore a turban-topped outfit from the Magic Carpets of Aladdin.

Wayne pulled the bus over and threw open the door. Amanda boarded.

“She is necessary to our plans,” Wayne announced.

Amanda looked Finn in the eye and then, without saying anything, took a seat in the middle of the bus.

Wayne explained, “Amanda has the run of the place. She’s not on the DHI watch list. She’ll act as sentry and guide when you need her.”

Now inside the Magic Kingdom, Wayne slowed the bus next to a large white building that, according to its sign, had something to do with waste disposal. A wide metal tube, connected to the building, extended out from an earthen bank. A paved road led up the rise to a very large double gate in the wooden wall. Flowers and shrubs covered a small hill that bordered a tall wooden fence, which was behind Frontierland.

Wayne spun to face them, still behind the wheel. He nervously checked his wristwatch. “You’ll wear these ID tags around your necks at all times. But turn them so they face in, so the ID picture doesn’t show.” Wayne had borrowed some ID tags for them.

“What’s this building?” Maybeck asked. Dressed as Ali Baba, or whoever he was, Finn thought he looked pretty cool.

Wayne answered. “This is important to you, Finn. Have you ever seen a garbage bag being carried around inside the park?” Wayne asked.

All five shook their heads.

“This building is why. All the park’s trash travels underground through a series of steel tubes.

Those tubes terminate here, where the trash is compacted, and then shipped off to a dump. The process is automated. I’ve briefed Amanda.”

She remained in the back, silent and studious. Briefed Amanda about the trash? Finn wondered. He kept his mouth shut.

“Once I get you inside,” Wayne instructed, “you’re on your own. The Utilidor here—that’s what the park tunnels are called—is complicated and big. The corridors are more like underground roads than sidewalks. There are golf carts and electric buggies down there, so keep alert and don’t get hit. Cast members know the Utilidor well, and you’re cast members now. You’ll need to look comfortable.”

“What about Maleficent?” Finn asked. “The plans?”

“Terrence,” Wayne said to Maybeck, “what’s likely the coldest room in an office building?”

“The computer room,” Maybeck answered. “The server center.”

“So where’s the safest, most comfortable place for someone who likes the cold to spend time?”

“A refrigerator?” Charlene answered, not paying enough attention.

“One possibility, yes, and one that you and Willa will pursue. There’s an entire section of the Utilidor devoted to cold food storage.”

“The computer center,” Maybeck said, answering Wayne’s question.

“The servers are housed at the back of what we call the Control Room. That’s for you and the boys.” Wayne warned them, “Stay alert for a sudden drop in temperature. That’s what you’re looking for. The missing plans won’t be far away. We need those plans.” Wayne looked troubled and concerned. “The point is, from what Finn described, he wounded Maleficent. Weakened her.

He also made it impossible for her to remain below Pirates of the Caribbean. I believe she’s taken to the Utilidor, where, looking like a cast member, no one would question or detain her. Your job is to get those plans from her and to flush her out. To draw her out. We will handle the rest.”

“We?” Philby asked.

“You leave that to me, young man.” He looked between all six kids, for now Amanda was standing just behind Finn. “Are you ready?”

A moment of hesitation settled over the kids. Then, one by one, they nodded. Even Charlene.

Wayne’s face brightened again. “Once you’ve got the plans and you’re topside,” he said,

“that’s when the chase begins. I’m afraid you may literally need to run for your lives. Maleficent is not likely to be a good loser. Finn takes the plans. Amanda will guide him back here.” Again, Wayne took a moment to make eye contact with each of the kids. He ended with Finn. “You’ll do
exactly
as she says.”

Finn glanced back at Amanda.

He didn’t feel good about this. She revealed nothing of what she might be thinking.

Finn felt there was an unusually strong bond between Wayne and Amanda. Were they related somehow? Without question, Finn thought, Amanda was no ordinary girl.

Wayne threw the bus door open, and the kids hurried out.

32

I
nside the Magic Kingdom, the sun shone brightly. Finn’s costume warmed up. He thought the air smelled like Thanksgiving. It took him a minute to spot the turkey leg being gnawed on by a big man wearing a Hard Rock Cafe shirt.