Kingdom Keepers VII (35 page)

Brooke, riding shotgun, has been running searches on her smartphone since they left Pepperdine, muttering in disgust at the lack of available information. They’re passing through a small hillside town called Sleepy Hollow when she lets out a squeal.

“Four miles directly east is an entire oil
field
! The fastest way there is to hang a U-turn!”

Austin swings the car around in the parking lot of Canyon Market, which advertises liquor, beer, and free deliveries. In the backseat, Willa wedges her hands nervously between her knees.

“What’s wrong?” Philby asks. “You look like you’re about to implode.”

“Sleepy Hollow,” she says softly, embarrassed. “Don’t make me talk about this.”

“About what?”

“What I’m talking about, Dell!”

“The teepees,” he says.

“The teepees,” she agrees.

“The Headless Horseman.”

“If you’d been there, you wouldn’t be grinning like that. Sleepy Hollow is where he comes from…I’m sorry. I know it’s stupid.”

“Not even close,” Philby says, and then raises his voice. “Brooke, Austin, keep an eye out for anything unusual.”

Brooke looks at the backseat. “Meaning?”

“Out of the ordinary.”

“Overtakers?”

“Say, what?” Austin says. “What’s that about an overeater?”

“Over
takers
,” Brooke says.

But Philby signals her not to go there, worried Austin will think they’re raving maniacs if they attempt to describe how they have reached this particular moment in time. Brooke doesn’t know the half of it, and at this point, she already knows more than only the Imagineers, the Cryptos, and the Kingdom Keepers themselves.

“Think outlaw,” she says to Austin, obeying Philby’s wishes. “You know, like thieves. Highwaymen.”

“In Southern California in broad daylight.” Austin cannot contain his skepticism.

“I’m just saying.”

“But what are you saying? That bandits are going to carjack us? This is a country club ’hood, like a hangout for old hippies.”

“Just keep an eye out,” Brooke says.

“Fine; I’ll keep my six-gun handy, pardner.”

“Wish I had one,” Willa mutters, her hands still pinched between her knees, her body folded in on itself.

Philby presses his face to the window; Brooke cranes forward to search the landscape. A shadow flitters across the grassland, and Philby twists to look up at the sky. He sees a jet on approach to landing—and catches the darting black triangle of a bird’s wing.

“Nothing but a bunch of crows,” Brooke says.

“Define ‘bunch,’” Philby says, pressing his face against the glass as he tries to see upward. It’s useless. Only pure blue California sky interrupted by a few soft cumulus clouds looks back at him.

“Yeah,” Austin says. “I see ’em too.”

“Eyes on the road!” Brooke says, bumping his shoulder with her hand.

“Shut up.”

“How many?” Philby unbuckles, leans across Willa and, as she lowers the window, looks outside with her—to see a black bird dive-bombing. Philby can’t get his head inside as fast as Willa; the bird’s beak and talons scratch his forehead.

“Oh, Philby!” Willa exclaims. “You’re bleeding!”

“Cripes,” Brooke says, her face pressed to the windshield. “There are tons of them.”

In fact, there are so many birds overhead, they block out the sun, making the car’s interior dark.

“Those aren’t crows,” Philby says, mopping his forehead with his sleeve. “They’re ravens.”

“What’s it matter what they are?” Austin asks.

“It matters,” Brooke tells him. “Because Maleficent and the Evil Queen have pet ravens.”

“Disney characters? Give me a break!” Austin says.

He might as well have signaled the birds. Within seconds, the unkindness of ravens envelops the car like a blanket dropped suddenly over the roof. Outside, it’s a blur of feathers and beaks. Bird poop smears the windshield.

Willa is pressing the button to close her window—it will only ascend as fast as its electric motor allows. Before the window is all the way up, a head and beak stab through. Willa screams instinctively. Philby pulls her toward him, out of reach of the bug-eyed bird’s menacing beak. He kicks with one foot at the bird while trying to reach the window control, but nothing happens.

“Ew!” Willa cries, stretching to reach for the window-control button while keeping her head in Philby’s lap. She pushes the control up accidentally and the window squeezes the bird, forcing its black tongue from its beak. Willa quickly reverses the window, but the bird drops and falls to the highway, its neck broken. It is immediately replaced by a dozen more ravens, forcing their heads and beaks in and out of the closing window. As it shuts, the ravens begin to peck the glass. It sounds like machine gun fire.

Unable to see, Austin slams on the brakes. The kids lurch against their seatbelts and rebound off the seats. The drumming attack on every surface is deafening. Covering their ears, the kids shout at one another simultaneously so that no one can understand anything. It’s chaos. Austin engages the windshield wipers and fires the wiper washer jets, diluting the mess on the windshield and startling the ravens.

Yet still the thunder grows. It sounds as though several tons of gravel are being dumped on the car. Willa resorts to singing a single note, trying to overcome the sound with her own. Austin leans on the horn, futilely trying to scare off the ravens.

Philby slips out of his shoulder belt and cranes forward between the front bucket seats, pointing off-road. “Bushes!”

Austin drops the car into low gear, bouncing off the asphalt, across the hardpack, and into a stand of tall bushes. The screeching of branches against the sides of the car is nearly indistinguishable from the noise of the attacking ravens.

Finally, the car comes to a stop. Then it’s just the deep cawing of birds, held at bay by the bushes that surround the vehicle. The abnormal dark returns as hundreds of ravens swirl overhead and cluster nearby.

But the kids can hear again. Austin curses. Brooke whispers to him, “I’m sorry I got you into this.”

“What exactly are we into?” he says to her privately. “Look, I admit it, I wanted to impress you. I like you, Brooke. But who are these two?
What
are they?”

Outside, the birds fight desperately to reach the car. Their black feathers become streaked with red blood as they flap and claw through the thorny shrubs.

“They’re not going to give up!” Brooke says. One poor bird strikes her window, leaving behind a red smear as it sinks out of sight.

“They’re enchanted, under a spell,” Philby says. “They’re not going to quit.”

“Okay! Time out!” says Austin. “
Now
I need an explanation.”

“Later,” Brooke says.

“Never,”
says Philby. “If we get out of this, you’ll just have to forget it happened.”

“As if! Is this like reality TV or something?”

The dark inside the car, the relentless efforts of the birds, and the terrible self-inflicted wounds they’re incurring combine to break Willa. She covers her eyes and screams, “Stop it! Stop it!”

Philby shakes her, but it’s no use. The windows are disgusting—a true horror show.

“I smell smoke!” Austin shouts.

The interior of the car falls silent. Willa drops her hands from her face; all the kids sniff at once.

“You’re right,” Brooke says. “Is the car—”

“It’s wood smoke,” Philby says. “Not oil.”

“Not for long,” Austin says. “And, oh, by the way, somebody owes me
an explanation
!” He looks intensely at Brooke, who purses her lips and squints uncomfortably.

“The catalytic converter,” Professor Philby says. “There’s your explanation!”

The fire rises from beneath the car, ignited by underbrush coming into contact with the extreme heat of the vehicle’s emission control device. Austin is quick to back up and drive; as he does, they see that the tall bushes are black from the hundreds of ravens impaled on their thorns. The fire rises, feathers lifting with the smoke. Brooke turns away, averting her eyes as the conflagration consumes all but a handful of the birds.

Austin silently navigates the car back to the road as Philby watches coils of gray-black smoke billow from the pyre. Out of that smoke flies a single raven with a five-foot wingspan. It circles once, dives for the moving car, and comes within a few feet of Philby’s window before rising again. Then it flies off to the southwest—the direction of Disneyland.

All but Austin watch it go.

“That’s hers,” Philby says.

Neither Willa nor Brooke has to ask who he means.

* * *

The steel structure housing Disneyland’s trains looks as if it covers several acres. Inside, six rows of train cars and locomotives span its width, some polished and perfect, others disassembled for maintenance. It’s longer than a football field, with a gray-painted floor as clean as a freshly scrubbed hallway. Lit by both electricity and skylights, the polished paint sparkles, the glass glimmers.

One of the Cast Members recognizes Finn, and fawns over him in that odd way all the Keepers have had to get used to. The guy introduces himself as Craig. He couldn’t be nicer, telling Finn how his kids had been dying for the DHIs to finally arrive in Disneyland; they were part of the lottery offered to win the first DHI guiding experience when the system was still in beta. When the moment is right, Finn asks if he might have a look around. Craig is delighted.

Throughout the early going, Finn’s looking for grease or oil. He’s disappointed by the cleanliness of the place. Even the disassembled train cars look like museum pieces on display.

“Is there a place you grease them?” he asks Craig.

“Are you looking for something in particular?”

“Oil. Grease. Somewhere I might get my shoes dirty.”

“The greasiest old girl here is Lilly,” Craig says, and leads Finn to the back of the warehouse, where the multiple maintenance tracks merge into a single line heading out into the park. It’s slightly darker here, and the famous open-sided passenger cars are densely crowded together, with barely enough room to walk between the lines. The only way to access the cars in the middle of the array is to climb up and down, passing through the cars in the outer rows. Finn and Craig have gone through several cars before Craig’s phone acts like an intercom, summoning him to a meeting.

“Look, this’ll only take a few minutes,” he says apologetically. “Have a look around. Lilly Belle’s at the back of the line, one track over.”

“So not this track, the next?”

“Correct. We’ve rebuilt her, but she’s been known to cry a little.”

Finn looks at the man curiously.

“Her wheel journals.”

Finn nods as if he understands.

Craig pats him on his back. He’s surprised. “So…at the moment you’re not…?”

“No,” Finn answers. “This is the real me.”

“Pleasure.”

“Same.”

Craig climbs back down out of the car and is gone. Finn exits in the opposite direction, then grabs a rail to pull himself up and through the next passenger car. On the other side, he immediately spots Lilly Belle.

Unlike the open-sided passenger cars, Lilly Belle has the walls and windows of a real caboose. She has been impeccably restored, every detail spit-polished. Her tongue-in-groove paneling is painted a shiny burgundy with cherry trim and glossy black ironwork. Carved gold lettering proclaiming
DISNEYLAND RAILROAD
arcs across her side above the win-dows. She looks like a car from the Hogwarts Express.

Finn approaches cautiously. He sees no puddle of oil, no slick of grease. That alone should be enough to dissuade him from entering, but he’s drawn to climb Lilly Belle’s steps and face the impressive cherrywood door, which opens to reveal a miniature Victorian parlor with chairs and a couch all covered in red velvet and facing in toward the center. The drapes are pulled, dulling the luster of the interior’s surfaces. Finn makes out an inlaid walnut Queen Anne end table sitting near him, below one of six large windows that run the length of the car on either side. The red carpet matches the furniture, with twisting gold ivy and heraldic crests woven into its design. Even in the gloom, Finn can see that the space is truly befitting of royalty.

“Well, well,” a voice cackles from the dusk.

Finn jumps at the sound. Sitting on a settee at the far end of the car opposite him, unmoving, is Cruella de Vil. Her white fur coat, black dress, and black-and-white hair stand out in sharp contrast to the overwhelming red of the car’s decor.

“Nice to see I’ve still got it,” she chortles. “You hang around with these others for too long and you get discouraged.” She bats her eyes, their lashes as long as the bristles on a barbecue brush, and waves her turquoise cigarette holder in Finn’s direction. The pink cigarette is unlit, Finn notices; otherwise, he would have smelled the smoke.

Finn can’t catch his breath. There was a time when he could somehow even push his mortal self briefly to all clear—a feat he has never understood—but he’s out of practice.

“I think you should leave,” Cruella says, “before something bad happens.”

Finn spots a small stack of used paper plates and plastic sporks beneath her chair. She didn’t just get here, that’s for sure. The closed drapes make sense now, as does the car’s musty smell.

“Why can’t you children just play in the backyard or something?” Cruella moans. “You’re such a bother.”

As adrenaline floods his bloodstream, like jolts of electricity pulsing through him, Finn sees red—red that has nothing to do with the car’s color scheme. Without thinking, he steps forward and grabs a porcelain vase of fake flowers, intending to hurl it at her—only to find the vase glued to the end table. He staggers back. But it’s only a momentary setback. Blinded by rage and his instinctual desire to bring this woman to justice for Wayne’s death, Finn races the length of the car. Before Cruella has time to react, he has her by the throat. She retches, clawing at his face; Finn can feel the exceedingly long fingernails through her scarlet satin gloves.

But Finn extends his arms, locks his elbows, and leans back. His vision hazed by bloodlust, he doesn’t pause to contemplate his actions for a second. He squeezes tighter, and tighter still.