Kingdom Keepers VII (12 page)

“Got it,” she says softly.

It feels good having some sort of fallback plan in place. Finn takes a deep breath. “We need to separate now, spread apart, so we don’t make for an easy target.”

“I don’t like that word,” she says.

“Just remember the plan,” he says.

“Yeah. I got it. I still don’t like that word.”

Finn lets go of her hand, but Willa fights to stay connected as long as possible, her fingertips tickling his palm, then the tips of his fingers.

He doesn’t like it. If he’s ticklish, it means he’s feeling. And if he’s feeling, then he still isn’t pure DHI.

And if he isn’t pure DHI…

* * *

“I’ve never been a big fan,” Charlene says. Hidden behind a table in the Mint Julep Bar across the open expanse of terrace from the Haunted Mansion, she moves closer to Maybeck so that their arms touch. He doesn’t seem to notice.

“It’s so different,” Maybeck says, his artist’s eye at work. “The tall columns. The whole New Orleans antebellum look. It looks like a plantation home.”

“Same as Florida.”

“Not at all. In Florida, it looks more like a museum. It’s brick and up on a hill. This is just…creepy.”

“That’s the point, I think.”

“You’re funny.” But he’s not amused. The hologram of his arm is partially degraded and sparking. His left side from his hip down is much the same.

“You don’t look so hot,” she says.

“You’re missing half your face, Sleeping Beauty.”

“What?” Charlene takes great pride in her looks. People have been telling her how pretty she is for as long as she can remember. There’s a mirror behind the bar.

“Don’t you dare,” Maybeck says. “Take my word for it: You look like the mayor in the second Batman movie.”

“The guy with the rotting face? Oh, way to help out!”

“We’ll fit right in,” he says. “We look like zombies, right?”

She looks him over. “I see what you mean.”

“We’re perfect. Trust me.”

“I do trust you.”

She wins Maybeck’s attention. For a moment he seems to be on the verge of saying something serious to her—a rare event for him. But what comes out is, “You look so disgusting.”

She wishes he wasn’t so predictable, but then again that’s what she finds reassuring. You never know what’s going to come out of his mouth and yet you can count on it being sarcastic and amusing. “I guess if we’re going to do this…”

Maybeck follows her as she hugs the wall of the train station and cuts through the cemetery. Charlene ducks under a waiting-line tape.

“What’s up?” Maybeck says.

“In Disneyland the stretching room is actually an elevator. It won’t be turned on. We have to go around.”

“How can you possibly know all that?”

“I do what’s impossible for you: I read.”

“Ha-ha.” He’s not laughing.

She hurries up the small rise through the trees and around the house, cutting in to the exit. They enter the ride from this side, walking the mansion backward. This approach means they start out in the hitchhiking ghost tunnel, dodging their way through the frozen Doom Buggies, before entering the climax of the attraction: the graveyard. Charlene, in the lead, slows down, walking tentatively.

There’s no music and virtually no light beyond the glow of their DHIs. Before them are crooked gravestones (some topped with carved heads), freestanding tombs, cobwebs, skeletons, and corpses. Nothing moves. There’s not a spit of wind or a click of sound. It’s as if the world has died and they have walked into the gray heart of it.

“This is freaking me out,” she says.

“Yeah, okay.” He sounds concerned. “There!” he says, causing Charlene to jump.

“Terry!”

“A tomb.” He points out a square stone structure low to the floor. “Check out the stones. The coloring.”

Charlene steps closer. “How’d you see that?”

“Because I respect the artwork that goes into these things. Wouldn’t mind being a Disney artist someday.”

He’s spotted a feathering of black soot spread in long fingers across the stones. The fat ends of the flares form a straight line where the stones intersect. Charlene studies the pattern more closely.

“It’s like a wind or something.”

“Or…a door,” Maybeck says. “Something came out of there with a wind behind it. A strong wind that carried the dust.” He wipes his fingers on the stone, cutting a line through the feathered soot as if he’s dragging a finger through colored writing on a white board at school. “A trapdoor.”

“A hidden door,” she whispers.

“Agreed.” Equally soft.

“As in: maybe we leave it that way.”

“Maybe not,” Maybeck says. He eases her aside. Their imperfect DHIs sputter and turn grainy and transparent.

“I—am—not—liking—this,” Charlene says.

Maybeck hoists his one decent hand. It moves more slowly than he intends, making the motion awkward and unpredictable. He opens his palm—slowly—against the tomb’s stacked stones and feels for a hidden trigger to unlock the door.

All at once the ride turns on: lights, motion, music. Charlene lets out a yip of terror. Maybeck falls back and bumps into a gravestone. It’s the bumping he doesn’t like—the shock and associated scare of the ride coming alive knocks him out of pure v1.6 DHI and into the mix of human and hologram that makes v1.6 so dangerous.

An eerie song blares from unseen speakers. A row of ghost heads sings. The explosion of action and noise makes it difficult for Maybeck and Charlene to recover.

“Terry! The—”

“Trapdoor!” Maybeck says.

Add to the music the sound of grinding stone.

The tomb door is coming open.

* * *

Finn hears what sounds like wind through branches. But there are no trees here, no breeze.

“Finn!” Willa calls breathlessly.

“I hear it,” he says. Whatever it is, it’s coming toward them. “Don’t let it scare you.”

“Oh, sure!”

Not a wind. Not exactly. More like…
slithering
.

“Version 1.6,” he reminds them both. “Keep yourself pure.”

Finn calms his thoughts. As a projected image, no harm can come to him. But in the back of his mind lurks a more virulent thought: they are not fully 1.6. Philby managed to cross them over, but with obvious design flaws, improperly rendered movement, and lower resolution. What if these inherent problems with their current projections also prevent them from being fully transparent? What if, no matter how hard they try for all clear, it’s an unattainable condition?

Eels! The oddly colored pinprick eyes of Flotsam and Jetsam penetrate the dark. The twins are
on land
, moving like a combination of python and cobra.

The eels move closer. Easily four feet long and thicker than Finn’s arm, the two creatures look perfectly comfortable out of water. Finn never liked them in the movie; in the flesh, he realizes they were given a makeover for film. They’re green skinned, reminding him of Maleficent, but scars and poorly healed wounds cover their slimy hides. They’re mouth breathers; their ugly lips turn down in disgusted frowns to reveal rows of spiked narrow teeth, sharp as needles. Their eerie, serpentine movement is deceptive and hypnotic.

Finn imagines himself in deep space: no sound, no gravity. He tingles all over, suggesting all clear. He’s safe—for now. He steps forward, putting himself between the eels and Willa.

Flotsam strikes at Finn’s ankle, deceptively fast, his jaws opening wide. The eel chomps down, with a clap of teeth as they bite into nothing but light.

Willa lets out a shriek.

For Finn, the trick is control: when to be transparent, and when to solidify to grab or touch or…
kick.
Flotsam works to make a second attack on Finn.

Willa’s high-speed brain computes Flotsam’s course. She kicks the eel as if it were a lawn hose and sends it flying.

Faced with fight or flight, Jetsam flows the short distance across the floor, aiming himself at Willa. Finn turns to intercept it, but too late. The green moray unlocks its jaw, aiming for Willa’s knee. She hasn’t had time to make sure she’s pure hologram. She’s going to lose her leg from the knee down. Worse: injuries sustained as DHIs typically transfer back to bed with you. If she loses her leg here…

The eel’s teeth mere inches from Willa’s knee, Jetsam’s head slams to the floor with a loud report. Willa has sagged, nearly fainted with fear, but Finn catches her.

The bent tines of a trident pin the eel’s head to the ground. Finn follows the shaft of the trident to a girl’s hand, the hand to an arm.

“Storey!” he whispers with such gratitude that the name sounds worshipful.

* * *

Wraiths!

The ghostly aliens flow from the opened tomb like smoke. The music, lights, and ghoulish sounds overwhelm Maybeck and Charlene, who are briefly transfixed.

The smoky trail coils high above, circles, and turns. The lead wraith dives for the Keepers.

In a flash, Charlene scoops up a pile of cemetery soil and tosses it high into the air, blinding the lead wraith. Its dreadful screech is louder than the attraction’s theme song. Maybeck pivots and pulls on a smaller tombstone, heaving it forward and back until it’s dislodged. Lifting it in both hands like a swimming pool paddleboard, he swings it with perfect timing. The lead wraith loops overhead and dives; Maybeck connects. It vaporizes into black dust. He takes out the second wraith with his backhand, and the third with another forehand strike.

Charlene remains collected and strains to pull the tomb’s stone door further open. Despite his early successes, Maybeck is losing the battle behind her; the wraiths separate and attack from all directions. One attaches to Maybeck’s back; his DHI drains of color. Charlene picks up a brick and lays into the hooded head of the parasite, clobbering it and winning a glass-shattering cry. It lets go of Maybeck and thrusts its skull face out of the shadow, smack into Charlene’s face.

She screams, swings, and splits its skull with the brick. It decomposes to powder and rains down on her like charcoal ash.

“In here!” she hollers, widening the gap in the door with one heroic tug.

“You—have—got—to be kidding!” Maybeck vaporizes two more wraiths, but it’s a losing battle.

Charlene grabs Maybeck by the arm and hauls him through the square black hole. She hears him land a good distance below. With a mighty heave, she pulls the tomb’s trapdoor shut. Sudden silence. They can hear nothing but the dull thumping of the music.

“Terry?”

Her foot catches on a ladder’s rung. She climbs down.

Maybeck’s glowing DHI lies prostrate on the cellar floor.

“If I’d been fully myself,” Maybeck says, “I’d have broken my neck with that fall, and you would have killed me.”

“If you’d been fully yourself, that wraith on your back would have killed you, and I’d have been hauling your corpse through that door.”

They’re both out of breath. Charlene wipes sweat from her eyes.

“I always thought this place was haunted for real,” Maybeck says.

“We’re in the cellar of the old house.”

“Yep.”

Stacks of antiques clutter the whole space. Civil War artifacts, tintypes, hat stands, and a boar’s head are piled in heaps beneath the rusted pipes suspended from the overhead floor joists. A pale light bleeds from a rectangular shape—a doorway?—a good distance away.

“Suppose that leads outside?” he asks.

“Worth a look.”

Charlene helps Maybeck to his feet. He takes the lead, breaking some cobwebs for her. The two pass an antique vanity with an oval mirror. On the vanity, a pair of scissors glints in the light. There’s an ivory-handled hairbrush, a box of face powder. A collection of pearls and other jewelry hangs from an ornate stand. Along the wall is an army cot, and next to it an old steamer trunk.

Charlene approaches the vanity. Touches the hairbrush. She pulls a strand of hair away.

“It’s black.”

“Save the estate sale shopping for another time.”

“That would be Leota.”

“Who?”

“In the Haunted Mansion. The story. Madame Leota was in love with Master Gracey. She killed Constance, his blond bride, and stuck her in a trunk in the attic, hoping that with Constance gone, Master Gracey would love her instead. But it backfired. Gracey hanged himself. People think Leota died of old age and returned to haunt the mansion.”

“Don’t talk like this is real.”

“Because?” Charlene asks. “It’s obvious a bunch of kids can’t become holograms. A bunch of Disney villains couldn’t possibly be responsible for
killing Dillard Cole
.”

“Okay…okay! Sorry.”

“There’s no dust on the vanity. The mirror has been wiped clean.”

“Listen to you! You’re trying to freak me out—
and it’s
working
.”

Charlene points to the trunk. “That’s a trunk. It’s big enough for—”

“Now you’re just being mean,” Maybeck says.

A woman’s laugh coos out of the dark. It grows to a cackle.

Charlene whispers hoarsely, “What if the wraiths
wanted
us down here?”

“What if ghost stories are real?” comes the voice from the dark. “You clever girl.”

“I know that voice!” Charlene says in a hush. “It’s Madame Leota!”

Maybeck’s DHI stretches out, reaching for what was once a wall decoration of two crossed Civil War sabers. He concentrates, allowing his DHI to physically grab the handle of one of the swords and wrestle it free of its scabbard. He hoists it two-handed, prepared to do battle.

An emaciated form with an ancient, withered face appears out of the dark. The deeply creased skin is sucked back over high cheekbones like fruit left too long in the sun. The eyes are the gray-blue of lake ice, the nose withered to a black hole beneath what appears to be a shriveled red chili pepper. The specter’s cracked lips have been smeared with red greasepaint, forming a hideous cavity absent of teeth but occupied by a black tongue that ticks back and forth like a clock’s pendulum.

“That’s…her.” Charlene can barely speak.

With fingers like her former nose and a neck like a turkey’s, Madame Leota is the single most hideous human, female or male, the two have ever seen.

“Wait! He didn’t want to marry
her
?” Maybeck says to Charlene. “Go figure.”