Disney After Dark (10 page)

willatree: I’ll be there.

angelface 13: I’m having trouble falling asleep, but I’ll try.

philitup: I’m there.

Mybest: word.

Finn’s character stood up from the couch. He went to the corner and dropped the can into an open box—his makeshift trash can. Charlene followed his lead and did the same.

Mybest: we all play VMK, right? What if that’s got something to do with it?

He had a point, Finn thought. The game had an otherworldly quality.

Finn: we’ve got to talk to Wayne. How about 9:00 tonight?

Each of the characters agreed to the time, a text bubble appearing above their heads. Then, one by one, they checked out. Finn’s character stood alone in the empty room.

“You look kinda lonely just standing there,” Amanda said.

“I think I’m afraid,” Finn admitted. He couldn’t believe he’d said that aloud.

“I bet they all are too,” Amanda said. “Remember that fear is a human emotion. A DHI wouldn’t feel fear.”

The way she said it, so calm, and like she knew what she was talking about—really
knew
it—

gave Finn this strange tingling feeling. He thought how strange it was that Amanda had just showed up the way she had, become his friend right as he began crossing over. How could he ask for a better friend? And yet…Was there something she wasn’t telling him?

He caught a look in her eye as if she’d said too much and now regretted it. She looked away, breaking their eye contact.

“Finn?” It was his mother calling from downstairs. It disturbed the moment. Finn didn’t ask Amanda anything—but he’d wanted to.

He checked the time. It was going on eight o’clock.

“I can drive Amanda home now,” she hollered upstairs.

“I wish I could go,” Amanda said. She didn’t mean home.

“Yeah, that would be cool.” He caught himself using that word again. She’d teased him about it earlier, but not now.

“It’ll be all right,” she said, standing. “Remember everything so you can tell me.”

He walked her downstairs to the door, where his mother was waiting with a smile. The three of them walked out to the driveway. Finn took the backseat. Amanda and his mom talked about boring girl stuff: favorite shopping malls and places to get your hair cut.

She lived on the far edge of their school district, in what had once been a small church. There was a stained-glass window in the center of the roof’s peak: a blue background with a white angel.

Lit from inside, it looked as if the angel were flying. He didn’t know why, but it seemed appropriate for Amanda.

Finn hurried his mother to drive faster on the way back home.

She looked at him funny when he told her he was going to be late to bed.

It was like something from Star Trek, or Power Rangers, Finn thought. He was standing at Central Plaza, a circle of grass and sidewalks in front of the castle. Over the next several minutes, one by one, the other four DHIs appeared. Charlene first, lying on the grass to his left, wearing her nightgown. She stretched her arms as if waking up. Philby was next—his red hair electric as a DHI. He came hurrying in from Tomorrowland. Willa showed up on the road to Finn’s right. She also wore pajamas—shorts and a matching T-shirt.

Maybeck came walking up Main Street alongside Wayne, who drove a Disney golf cart.

“Well, well,” Wayne said. “The gang’s all here.” He climbed out of the cart and made a point of saying hello to Willa, whom he’d only met once before.

A loud crashing noise came from somewhere in Tomorrowland. Cheering followed this.

“Something wild’s going on over there,” Finn said, pointing.

A concerned Wayne said quickly, “Follow me! And not a word until I say.”

They followed Wayne and his cart up the ramp that led into the enormous castle. Finn noted that the DHIs glowed and shimmered once inside the shadow of the castle arches.

“Memorize all this carefully!” Wayne called back to the DHIs.

He led them through a gift shop and into a storage room, then through a heavy medieval-style door that he unlocked with a large key, and down a nondescript hall, through another door, and into a vast, cavernous space.

Finn stopped. Staircases led in every direction, interconnecting in impossible ways, some upside down. A variety of oddly shaped doors of all sizes faced him at every level. Each corridor and staircase connected to the next in the most unlikely, impossible ways. All interlocked. It was a giant puzzle that somehow all fit together. And yet it made no sense: inverted stairs?

“We call this Escher’s Keep. Walt admired M. C. Escher’s work,” Wayne said, climbing a staircase.

“Who’s Escher?” Finn asked.

“Do your homework,” Wayne admonished. “The keep was built as part of an Alice in Wonderland attraction. But it never opened.”

“Why not?”

“Walt decided to keep it for himself.”

Finn reached the top of some steep stairs, out of breath. He continued down a darkened hall and looked up to see Wayne standing
upside down
on a landing a few yards ahead.

Wayne said, “Don’t be fooled. You’re fine. But a single misstep and you’ll end up in a slide that will dump you into the moat. So stay to the left, and only step on the blue tiles, never the white or the red. Pass it along to the others.”

Finn repeated the weird instructions in a whisper. A moment later he stood with Wayne. To the others, now arriving, both Wayne and Finn appeared to be standing upside down.

He heard Maybeck say, “Okay! This is way cool.”

Wayne said, “This is a good place to come if you’re ever in trouble or trying to hide. Without a guide to show the way, no one makes it up the first time. Memorize it carefully. The castle has several secret entrances. I’ll show you if we have time. Once in here, you’re safe.”

It
isn’t safe
, Finn remembered Charlene saying. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go any farther.

Wayne continued, “The other place you should be safe is if you follow the tracks out of the Frontierland train station toward the Indian Encampment. There are some teepees out there that aren’t programmed for DHI projection.”

“Safe from what?” Finn asked.

“Ah!” Wayne said, ignoring Finn’s question. “Here come the others. Follow me! Memorize!”

he reminded. “The next two staircases are fakes.”

Finn was stunned by how incredibly real each of the many staircases appeared. The first staircase turned out to be nothing but paint on a wall. Wayne led him to the real staircase and together they climbed it.

Finn looked back, carefully committing the route to memory. He called ahead to Wayne. “If I’m half hologram, half human, as you said, how can I touch anything? Shouldn’t I only half touch it?”

“Have you studied Einstein, Finn?” Finn didn’t want to sound dumb, so he didn’t answer. “It’s time you did. There’s more space between atoms than there are atoms. And yet atoms hold together somehow and form what we think of as a solid. We can touch, smell, taste. It all comes down to what you believe. What you think you can do.”

The only thing Finn knew about Einstein had to do with bagels. He stuck to more practical matters. “How will we ever get back down?”

As he reached yet another landing, Finn realized Wayne was nowhere to be seen.

“Take the middle door,” Wayne’s voice instructed.

Finn faced half of a hexagon: three doors, all at angles. He walked through the middle door, which sprang shut behind him. He now stood in a pitch-black space. Being part hologram, Finn glowed, casting a bluish light into the absolute blackness. But the space seemed to swallow his light, to go on forever. He saw nothing.

Charlene came in next. Even when the door opened, Finn saw no walls, only blackness.

“I don’t exactly love this,” Charlene said, a pulsing blue light in the dark.

The way her voice sounded—so close and bright—told Finn that they were in a very small room.

“Look up,” he said.

“Are those stars for real?” Charlene asked.

“Is anything real here?”

The door opened. Philby, Willa, and Maybeck entered. As the door shut, the stars reappeared.

“Wow!” Philby said.

“Yeah,” Finn agreed.

“What’s this about?” Maybeck asked.

Finn jumped as Wayne said from behind him, “Move to the center, everyone.” He’d been standing there all along.

The kids crowded together into a group. Finn felt the old man’s hand grab his wrist and pull him toward what turned out to be a wall.

“Feel this?” Wayne asked.

“Yes.” It was a smooth, glassy button.

“And this?”

Another.

“Yes.”

“Push.”

Finn pushed. The floor vibrated and the stars grew closer.

It took a moment, but Willa understood before the others. “It’s an elevator!”

“An elevator without walls,” Finn said, for it wasn’t the floor that appeared to be moving, but the walls.

“It’s an elevator
floor
,” Maybeck said. “A platform.”

The overhead constellations grew closer. As they reached the Big Dipper, Finn could imagine it as a cleverly shaped door.

“You gotta love this,” Philby said.

“I don’t have to,” Charlene protested, sounding a little frightened.

The floor stopped. Finn heard a click. He pushed against the wall—the Big Dipper—and it opened.

They entered a small apartment, full of old furniture in pastel colors, like something from Finn’s grandparents’ house. A small drafting table occupied the far corner. Most of one wall was filled with books. A tiny galley kitchen wasi next to the room’s only window. Narrow and small, the slit window belonged in a castle. It was tinted with a blue theatrical lighting gel with a tiny hole cut into it to allow you to peer outside. Finn looked down over the entire Magic Kingdom. The view took his breath away. They were
very
high up.

“Welcome to Walt’s secret hideaway,” Wayne said.

Three phones hung from the wall: red, blue, and yellow. Philby studied them.

“Never touch any of those,” Wayne advised, eyeing each of the kids.

Charlene peered out the small hole in the window. “Beautiful,” she said. That led to each of the kids taking a turn, oohing and ahhing.

Wayne waited for them to face him. It was a small apartment with barely enough room for the six of them.

“You were each picked for a reason, or you wouldn’t be here,” he said. “Our selection of the DHIs was careful to the point of painstaking. We’ve brought you here to help us. I’m going to share a story with you. A fable. It’s something that has been in my care a long, long time. Walt entrusted me with this, and it has been in my head ever since. All fables have names. This one is called The Stonecutter and, as it turns out, has been around a few thousand years. But take note: Walt called it The Stonecutter’s Quill. It’s up to you to find out why he added
quill
to the name. But here’s the story. I believe it to be the key to stopping the forces that are gathering.”

The kids looked for places to sit. Willa took a chair. Charlene and Philby the couch. Maybeck sat on the floor. Finn stood.

No one said a word. Wayne had their full attention.

“It was a hot, sweltering day, and the stonecutter balanced on his haunches, chisel and hammer in hand, streams of sweat running down his back as he broke bits of rock away from the base of a wallof stone. It was hard, blistering work, and it felt like the sun had no mercy on him.

“How wonderful it must be to have the power of the sun, he thought. If I were the sun, no one could resist me! I wish I were the sun!

“In an instant, he found himself looking down on the earth, beating on it with his heat and energy. He was the sun, and he liked the way he touched everything and everyone below him without mercy. In his presence, people would be thirsty, they would be hot, and they would always know he was there.

“Suddenly, he realized that there was something impeding him. He could not touch the earth with his power. He looked down and saw that a cloud had interposed itself between him and the earth.

“Hmm, he thought. In spite of my great power, there is something that thwarts me. Surely this cloud is mightier than I am. I wish I were the cloud!

“And in an instant, he found he was the cloud, and he could block the sun all day long. What’s more, he could rain on those below him, bringing cold, eroding buildings, drowning what he pleased. Surely there was nothing more powerful than he was now!

“But he felt himself being swayed, and quite without his consent, he was being pushed and he could not resist the movement. He found that the wind was blowing him to the side, and he saw that because he could not defy it, it was mightier than him. How I wish I were the wind! he thought.

“And he was. Where he blew, huge trees bent. He could push great walls of water where he pleased. He could topple the tallest, most majestic buildings. Surely he was all-powerful now.

“But as he swept across the world, he came across something that stopped him. He looked and realized that the mountain before him could not be penetrated. As hard as he might blow against it, he could not push it to the side. Look how it resists me! he thought. Surely this mountain is mightier than me. I wish I were the mountain!

“And he was. He sat, imperial and bold, tall and proud, bolted to the earth, and he knew that there was nothing in all the world that could move him, could destroy him, or could overcome him.

He was the mightiest thing of all.

“But then he realized something. From somewhere far below, he felt he was being reduced.

He was being destroyed—torn apart—quite against his wishes, and he could do nothing about it.

What is there mightier than a mountain? he asked himself. Not the sun, the cloud, or the wind…

What could it be?

“With great effort, he looked down, and there, far below, at his very base…

“He saw a stonecutter.”

The kids said nothing, focused on Wayne expectantly.

Wayne said, “The things in the story you need to focus on are the
sun, cloud, wind, and
stone.
At least we’re pretty sure about that. Note the order. All four of these themes are seen repeatedly in the Magic Kingdom. Somehow they are meant to lead us to a solution, a way to defeat the darker powers that have begun to threaten the park.”