Disney in Shadow (7 page)

A
MANDA SAT UP IN HER BUNK
, Mrs. Nash’s voice ringing in her ears.

“Did you just hear that?” she asked Jess.

“Yeah,” Jess said, swinging her legs off her lower bunk. Her voice signaled her mutual surprise. Mrs. Nash
never
called for them. She scolded them. She bossed them around. But she never barked their names up the stairs—shouting at Nash House was strictly forbidden and universally punished.

Jess slid off her bunk. Both girls hit the floor at the same time. Jeannie, who had been given DS privileges, looked up from the device.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Who knows?” Amanda said, unable to keep the terror out of her voice. She didn’t know how to respond to Mrs. Nash calling them this way. The girls looked at each other; Jess shrugged; they both finger combed their hair (Mrs. Nash was a stickler about appearances) and hurried out of the room.

“Girls?” Mrs. Nash was calling from the bottom of the stairs. She sounded so…sweet.

“Maybe she’s had a stroke,” Jess said, cracking up Amanda.

Standing to the side of the stairs and sneaking a peek down, the girls saw a tall woman standing inside the front door. She was a woman of thirty, properly attired, hair perfectly coifed. She was too well dressed, too pretty, to be from Social Services.

“Oh, no,” Amanda gasped. She grabbed for the banister to steady herself.

“Amanda?” Jess said. “What is it?”

“It’s
her
. I mean she was way far away, so I suppose I can’t be sure, but I
am
sure. It’s the woman who was watching the school. The woman Finn said was following around the Kingdom Keepers. She’d been at Maybeck’s before.”

“You’re sure?”

“Pretty sure. And what’s Mrs. Nash doing accepting a visitor this late? Curfew’s in twenty minutes.”

“We can’t just hide up here,” Jess said.

“Girls?” Some of the sweetness was gone.

Jess took Amanda’s hand and the two descended the stairs together.

“You have a visitor,” Mrs. Nash said. “This is Ms. Alcott, from the Timmerand School in Charlottesville, Virginia.” She introduced both girls by first name only, and led the three into the small public room. She was just about to sit down when Ms. Alcott spoke for the first time.

“If I could visit with the girls in private…”

Mrs. Nash looked as if she’d been slapped in the face.

“Of course,” she said.

“The four of us can have a discussion just as soon as I’ve met the girls and had a chance to visit.”

“That’s fine,” Mrs. Nash said, clearly upset by the rebuke. She pulled the pocket doors separating the parlor from the hallway shut on her way out.

The woman calling herself Ms. Alcott looked over both girls carefully.

“You look terrified, child,” she said to Amanda. “Is it me scaring you? I promise you there’s nothing to fear.” She lowered her voice. “I’m not from Timmerand, though I am on their board of trustees, and I did go there, years ago. I find the telling of small lies is most convenient, though I do not advocate the practice as it’s an extremely delicate matter, an art form of sorts. Bending the truth is like pulling back a spring—more often than not it snaps back and hits you. Stings like the dickens when it does.”

“Why have you been following my friend?” Amanda asked, careful not to give Finn’s name, but also wanting this woman to know that she, Amanda, was aware of her recent actions.

“For the same reason I’ve come here,” Ms. Alcott answered. “Because I need your help. And you need mine.”

“I don’t understand.”

Jess looked on, saying nothing. Amanda expected her to join in, and was disappointed when Jess did not.

“Wayne,” she said, surprising both girls.

“What about him?” Amanda asked.

“Your friends are his only hope.”

Amanda said nothing. She had no way of knowing if this woman was an Overtaker posing as a friend, or an honest friend of Wayne’s desperate to find him.

“The Kingdom Keepers,” Ms. Alcott said. “Finn Whitman, Terry May—”

“We call him Donnie, by the way, not Terry, but we know who our friends are,” Amanda said.

“You have something of Wayne’s,” Jess said quietly. Her sudden participation surprised Amanda.

Ms. Alcott took a deep breath and sat back in her chair. “How could you possibly know that?”

“What is it?” Jess said.

“It’s something I need to get to Finn or one of the others. I’ve tried several times to make contact, but it hasn’t worked out.”

“You’ve been
stalking
them,” Amanda said.

“I’m an adult. You all are not. That makes things…difficult sometimes. Furthermore, I had to make sure the Overtakers were not following either of us—me or them—and I could never be absolutely sure.”

“Are there Overtakers outside the parks?” Amanda said.

“Wayne has always believed so. But he tends toward the paranoid when it comes to his enemies. I have no proof either way. But he warned me, and I’ve always taken his warnings seriously.”

“You’ve known him a long time,” Amanda said.

“You might say that,” she said. “I’m his daughter. Wanda. Get it? Like Mickey’s wand?”

“Aha,” Amanda said.

“What is it?” Jess repeated. “This thing you’ve brought?”

“My father has a very active imagination. It’s why he’s been such a successful Imagineer. That includes…well, I don’t know how to put this exactly, but he can ‘see’ things. Or he thinks he can. He claims it’s an extension of his imagination. Most of the time it’s little things: he’ll mention someone’s name and within a matter of minutes that person calls him—I’ve seen that happen a lot with him. Or he’ll know, five minutes before it happens, that all the lights are going to go out, that there’s going to be a power failure. It’s not that he talks about these things. But he’ll go get a flashlight out of the garage, and right then all the lights go out. That sort of thing. As a child I always considered these things coincidences. As I grew older I saw them more for what they were: prescient moments.
Prescient,
meaning—”

“We know all about prescience,” Amanda said. “‘Knowing beforehand.’”

“It’s a gift.”

“Or a curse,” said Jess, winning a sympathetic look from Amanda.

“Yes, I suppose,” said Wanda. “Though for my father, a definite gift. He would do things like pull over to the side of the road without explanation. A minute later a car would come zooming down the wrong lane head-on at all the traffic. That kind of thing. Quirky things.”

“You still haven’t told us what he gave you,” Jess said.

“I didn’t say he gave it to me,” Wanda said, correcting her. “I merely told you I had something of his.”

Amanda said, “Jess has a similar gift to your father’s.”

“I’d like to see it,” Jess said, sounding somewhat trancelike.

“Please,” said Amanda.

“Of course. I have no problem with that.” Wanda reached into her purse. “He made this the day before all that craziness at the Animal Kingdom, the day before he disappeared. He’d kept everything about your friends private until then. I hadn’t heard anything about it. But we spoke that day—he called me, not the other way around, which was the far more common occurrence. He told me in detail about the Overtakers, about Finn and Maybeck and the others. You two included. He’d not done that before and I knew just his talking about it meant it was significant. I’m now of the belief that he might have foreseen his being captured, that he called me because of this. He was laying the groundwork for your friends to save him, or at least to save the parks if it came to that.”

She withdrew the item from her purse, opening her palm to reveal a small, white cube made of typing paper. There were symbols written and drawn on the cube’s six surfaces.

Jess picked it up and studied it, spinning it and taking in the various images. She closed her eyes, opened them and looked over at Amanda. She shook her head slightly: she hadn’t immediately flashed on anything to do with the box.

“We can get it to Finn,” Jess said, not wanting to surrender it.

“Oh, yes! Could you, please? As soon as possible!”

“Tomorrow,” Amanda said. “I’ll see him tomorrow.”

“I can help your friends,” she offered. “I want to help.”

“We can show the box to Philby,” Jess said. “He’s smart. He might know what it means.”

“I looked up each symbol on the Internet,” Wanda said. “They were all easy enough to find. But none of it added up. And who can tell what order they’re supposed to be in? Without the order, the message—if there even is a message—keeps changing. But he didn’t intend it for me, did he? I don’t think so. I think it was for your friends. I think that’s what he was trying to tell me in the phone call, without actually saying it. He was always convinced the Overtakers were listening, watching. I think some of that rubbed off onto me, which is what made actually contacting Finn or Maybeck so difficult for me. But then it occurred to me to talk to you. They’ll believe you more than me, anyway.”

“We’ll make sure they get it,” Amanda said.

“I want to help,” the woman said. “There are any number of ways I can help your friends. Access to the parks. Research materials. I’m very close to my father. I know much more than I probably should—about the parks, the Overtakers, Maleficent, even Chernabog. I’m not claiming to be as useful as my father—there’s only one Wayne. But he called me for a reason that day, and I think the reason was for me to be involved in his rescue. I’m not saying I can take his place, but I want to help.”

“We’ll tell them what you’ve told us,” Amanda said.

“I want to leave you with my phone number,” she said, scribbling out a number and offering it first toward Jess, but then passing it to Amanda as Jess’s concentration remained fixed on the paper cube she held. “Day or night, doesn’t matter. Please call.”

“Okay.”

“I have access to all of my father’s things. His notebooks, keys, computer. There are any number of ways I can help.”

“We have to come up with something believable for Mrs. Nash,” Amanda said.

Mention of the woman’s name snapped Jess out of her trance. “Yes, there is that.”

“I can take care of it,” the woman said. “We’re recruiting you as boarding students. I’ll have the school mail some brochures and applications as a kind of follow-up. I’ll call you. I can make it convincing, I promise. I can be very convincing.”

“And so can your small lies,” said Amanda, who still didn’t know if she could trust this woman. She might not have anything to do with Wayne whatsoever.

If not, then what had been her purpose in coming to the Nash House, and what damage had they done by talking to her?

“I realize it may be asking a lot to expect you to trust me. My father has spent the past ten years training me in all things Disney. It’s a matter of pride for him. He loves the parks…well…like he loves his own children. And that’s me. With or without you, I’m going to do whatever it takes to find him, to rescue him.” Her voice choked and she looked down, breaking eye contact with Amanda. “My father has spent basically his whole life making the parks magical places—including creating the DHIs, I might add. The Overtakers will do whatever is necessary to corrupt the parks, to drive guests away, to ruin the experience for everyone. Whether or not they have ambitions beyond the parks, who knows? But I’m not going to allow everything my father has worked for to be taken away. At least, not without a fight. Maybe you don’t trust me—I can’t speak to that. But I can tell you it isn’t easy for me to put my faith in a bunch of kids. That may sound harsh, but that’s just being honest. That’s not a little lie, or a big lie, but the truth. But I don’t know where else to turn, and my father believes in your friends. He believes very deeply in them. He thinks they can accomplish what he has not been able to. I’ve never doubted my father, and I’m not going to start now. That’s about it. That’s about all I can tell you.”

“What’s it like?” Jess asked, her voice soft and comforting.

“Excuse me?” Wanda asked.

“Having a father?” Jess said. “We’ve…neither of us…” Her voice trailed off.

“It’s amazing. It’s the best there is.”

Amanda swallowed deeply. She had a decision to make that wasn’t easy. “I know where you can find them—our friends,” she said. “I think they could probably use your help.”

Wanda pursed her lips. Her eyes welled with tears. “Thank you! Thank you for trusting me! You won’t be sorry,” she said. “I promise.”

T
HE TRIP FROM THE MAGIC KINGDOM
to Hollywood Studios was a strange mixture of an eerie sense of nothingness combined with a heart-stopping awareness of imminent danger. Things Finn had taken for granted, like having a bus driver hold the door open, were not available to the invisible. Only he, Charlene, and Philby made it on board the first bus; Willa and Maybeck were left behind as the driver, seeing no one, shut the bus door, closing them out. For the fifteen-minute ride to the Transportation Center Finn hadn’t been sure which of them had made it on with him. Once at the center, he tried talking, only to discover that he had no voice. Sound, it turned out, was part of the projection process. Until he reached Hollywood Studios, he was not only invisible but wholly alone in a way he’d never experienced before. It was a condition, a state, he found unsettling and frightful: no one heard him; no one felt his presence.

“It was as if I didn’t exist,” he told Charlene once they were both through the turnstiles. Entering the Studios had been tricky. He’d had no idea when, or even if, the projectors would pick up and start displaying his DHI. To complicate matters, he spotted two night watchmen. They might allow characters their freedom, as Wayne had told him, but they wouldn’t appreciate kids running around.

He’d timed his entry until a guard passed. He made a run for it: straight up the street toward the Kodak shop. One second he was invisible, the next a glowing blur of colorful light. He could see his arms and legs. As it turned out, Charlene was right behind him. The two sprinted up the empty street together, their attention on the back of the guard who’d just passed.

“You!” came a man’s voice.

A different guard; one neither of them had seen.

He and Charlene skidded to a stop.

“Do as I do,” Finn said under his breath.

Suddenly Philby appeared from the turnstiles. Thankfully the guard’s attention had been on Finn and Charlene at the time, meaning that he missed a boy appearing out of thin air.

“Hello, there, park visitor! My name is Finn,” Finn said in an extraordinarily happy voice. “Can I help show you Disney’s Hollywood Studios?” He struck a pose—one hand out, the other on his hip.

Charlene caught on. Like Finn, she had little difficulty recalling the lines she had once said repeatedly during the DHI recording sessions.

“Hello, there, park visitor. I’m Charlene, a Disney Host Interactive. I’m sorry, but I’m not able to read your identification pin. Please recite the guest number on your Disney Pass and I’d be happy to show you around.”

The guard reached out. His hand swiped right through Finn, accompanied by an electronic buzzing.

“Dang,” the guard said. He ran his hand through Finn again. He reached for his radio. “Hey, Tim…it’s Tanner. Can you check—?”

“We…are experiencing a DHI server malfunction,” said Philby coming up from behind the guard. “Please…stand by.”

“Tanner?” It was a man’s voice over the handheld radio.

“Yeah, I’m here. Ahhh.…For some reason those host things didn’t shut down properly. You’d better ask tech services to look into it. I’ve got three of them out here talking to me.”

“Talking to you?” the radio voice said.

“Offering to show me around the Studios.”

“Okay. I’m on it,” the man’s voice replied over the radio.

Finn searched his memory and said, “I’m sorry you won’t be joining me today. Maybe another time. Advance reservations can be made through the dining hotline. Do you have any more questions?”

“Umm…that would be
no
,” the guard said.

“Have a star-filled day at Disney Hollywood Studios.” Finn walked mechanically toward the camera shop. He’d studied his real DHI enough to know that while the 3D projections were phenomenally lifelike, movement was not perfect. When walking slowly, the DHIs tended to have stiff knees. When running fast, they blurred.

A few minutes later, all five DHIs collected outside the Kodak shop. The guard had moved on from Finn, eyeing Maybeck and Willa as they arrived late. Finn didn’t feel like pushing his luck. “Split up in groups and meet over at Soundstage B in ten minutes. If you’re stopped by a guard, stick to the scripts we recorded for our DHIs.”

“Is that how you got around him?” Maybeck asked. “Willa and I saw you talking to him—”

“Later,” Finn said. “We can catch up later.” He and Charlene took off up the street, mapping out a route in his head to the soundstages.

“You were amazing back there,” Charlene said, running at his side.

“It’s amazing that he didn’t question the way we’re dressed, that we’re out of costume. He must not know the DHIs very well. He’s probably a night-duty guy.”

“Do you think they’re watching us now?” she asked.

“Could be,” Finn answered. “Philby would know about the security cameras, but we’ve got to assume they’re watching us.”

“Then what’ll we do?”

“It may make some kind of weird sense to them to see us all meet up outside the same soundstage where we were created. That may give us an excuse to get inside.”

“Isn’t that a little risky?” she asked.

“You saw what happened with his hand,” Finn said. “It went right through me.”

“Yeah. So?” she said. “That’s you. Most of the time our DHIs are kind of half and half. You know that. They can catch
me
. The rest of us. Besides, what if they shut down the projectors like that guy said…”

“The servers are always running,” Finn reminded her. “Philby said so and so did Wayne. They’ll close our programs and assume we’re shut down. If they see us after that they’ll file a maintenance ticket and forget about it.”

“If you say so.”

“Look, this is our chance to scout the soundstage. To see if we can figure a way inside and if Philby can figure out a way to shoot what we need to turn Amanda and Jess into DHIs. It was a hassle getting over here. You want to leave? We can leave. But—”

“I’m not up for leaving,” she said, “but I also don’t like the idea of their checking us out, knowing where we are. The Overtakers have guys in security. We all know that. Getting lucky once doesn’t mean it’s going to happen every time.”

“The cameras aren’t everywhere,” Finn said, as Soundstage B came into view. It was a large, sand-colored building, like a giant box. “The attractions, mostly. Philby will know exactly where. I get what you’re saying: it’s better if we don’t advertise. But at the moment they’re thinking we’re part of a computer glitch. We can use that to our advantage.”

“Behind us,” Charlene said, having glanced over her shoulder.

Finn looked back. Whoever, whatever it was, was tall, clearly an adult, and moved like a woman. She seemed in a hurry to reach them.

“What do we do?” Charlene asked.

His temptation was to run first, answer questions later. But they’d had success fooling the guard. To run was to look guilty of something.

“I think,” he said, “we just do like before. We play our DHIs.”

“You sure?”

The woman was closing the gap between them.

“Ah,” Finn said. “You know the woman I told you about? The one at the school? The one Maybeck saw?”

“Yes.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s her.”

“So what do we do?” Charlene asked.

“Walk faster,” Finn said.

He stole another look back: the woman was still gaining on them.

“Should we run?” Charlene asked.

“Where to? We can’t lead her to the soundstage, that’s for sure.”

“Then what?”

Finn stopped and turned around.

“Earth to Finn,” Charlene said nervously. “We’re supposed to be running away, not waiting for her to catch up.”

“I know. But we’re DHIs, not kids at school. What’s the worst she can do to us? Scold us? Shout at us?”

“How about bust us? What if she’s like park Security or something? What if it’s her job to verify violations and pull passes? What if she was at the school to keep an eye on you? I cannot get caught. My parents would kill me for being here.”

“Disney would never allow her to stalk me at school. She can’t be park Security. It’s got to be something else.”

“Like an Overtaker?”

“You take off,” he instructed her. “Go around the other end of the soundstage. Find the others and hide. I’ll stall her.”

“This is no time to get all heroic there, pal.” Charlene sounded concerned. “Why don’t we just both take off?”

“Because I’m done with her following me,” Finn said. “Go on!”

Charlene hesitated at first, but then took off at a run.

Finn waited. The mystery woman caught up. They were standing face-to-face, about five yards apart.

“You’re Finn,” she said. He could tell she was marveling at the realism of the DHI. Everyone did the same thing the first time they saw him or the others. He could feel her wanting to reach out and try to touch him.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Amanda told me I would probably find you here.”

“That’s a lie.”

“It’s not. Do you want to call her?” she reached out and offered him a phone.

He stepped forward and waved his arm through her.

She gasped.

“I’ve heard the technology described so many times.

But…in person…it’s really quite amazing.”

“What do you want?”
he repeated.

“It’s not about what I want, Finn,” she answered. “It’s about what Wayne wants.”

He wondered if somehow this was Maleficent in disguise—if he’d walked into a trap, if she’d figured out how to transform herself into things other than animals. He thought he should have listened to Charlene; he should have taken off with her. He wondered if it was too late.

“What do you know about Wayne?”

“That he’s missing,” she said. “That you and your friends are the key to finding him.”

“You think?”

“I’m his daughter. I’m Wanda. Wanda Alcott.”

“Wayne’s daughter?”

“You don’t have to sound so skeptical. Don’t I look at all familiar? Even vaguely familiar?”

“I saw you outside the school, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, it’s not. I meant, don’t I look even a little like my father? People say we do.”

“No. Not to me.”

“He said you were the natural leader, the smartest one of the group.”

Finn swallowed dryly. He remembered Wayne saying that about him—not that he believed it.

“Not the smartest. Not by a long shot,” Finn said. “That would be Phil—That would be one of my friends.”

“Philby,” she said. “He’s kind of your wired guy, isn’t he?”

He felt a chill. How did she know so much?

Charlene was gone. Out of sight. He’d bought her the time she’d needed to get away.

“Don’t do it,” Wanda Alcott said, reading his thoughts. “I can help you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re concerned I’m…her. Maleficent? No. Hardly. I’m as afraid of her as you are.” She answered his stunned expression. “Oh, yes. I know all about her. All about you. My father told me everything.”

“How am I supposed to believe you’re Wayne’s daughter?”

She smiled a small smile. “You’re going to have to decide if you trust me or not.”

“Not.”

“I thought the resemblance might help.”

“Nope, don’t see it.”

“The first time…the very first time, you ended up on a bench next to Goofy. My dad was there. He drove you around in a golf cart.”

Finn felt as if somehow all the oxygen had been sucked from the air. He thought he might faint.

“I can help you, Finn. You can help me, find him. Please.” She reached into her purse. “I showed this to Jessica earlier tonight. We agreed that you and Philby should see it.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said, but it was a lie. He did believe her—he just didn’t want to.

Her hand came out of the purse and opened.

Resting in her palm was a small white paper box.