Kingdom Keepers the Return Book 3

by Ridley Pearson

  The woman chuckled. She made another note, then asked, “Are you afraid for your safety? I want you to think clearly about that before answering. It’s important. It’s all that’s important.”

  “I’m good.” She paused. “Seriously, I am.”

  The Imagineer regarded her thoughtfully, then nodded. “If you’re sure. Mattie, I need you to count stair steps next time. Remember everything you can. Sounds. Smells. Especially sounds inside and out.”

  “Okay.”

  “You can pass a note to Teresa.”

  Mattie blinked, stunned. “She’s one of yours?”

  “Ours. Yes. She will pass along anything you want us to know. Spoken or written.”

  “Will it be you, tomorrow night?”

  “If you’re still at it. If Joe doesn’t call it off. Cancel your DHI.”

  “Why would he do that?” Mattie questioned indignantly. “I made contact! That’s what I was supposed to do.” She wasn’t saying what was really on her mind: she wanted to experience the thrill of crossing over again; she didn’t want Joe taking away her DHI. She was just getting into this. Being a hologram was such a different sense, a magical, almost invisible feeling. She felt important, mysterious, but without the baggage of her ability. She felt connected to the Keepers. How could Joe even consider taking that away?

  The woman’s eyebrows flared in a way Mattie didn’t think she meant them to.

  “Twelve of them,” Mattie said. “That’s what worries you. It’s a lot, twelve abilities. As someone who knows what she’s talking about: that’s a lot. But it’s not the threat to me that should concern Joe, it’s the threat to the park. Those Fairlies and their abilities are all the more reason to worry. Joe needs to know what they’re up to and who’s behind it.”

  The woman said nothing.

  “Please. Talk to him.”

  “None of that’s up to me,” the woman said. “I’m just the messenger.”

  “Not really. That’s my job. I’m the messenger. You mess up delivering the right message and this park is going to come undone. And that’s going to be on you. Not me, not Joe.”

  The woman looked like Mattie had slapped her.

  “So deliver the right message.”

  JESS’S DESCRIPTION OF HER Pinocchio dream left Amanda and the Keepers puzzled. What was its significance? No one dared suggest that it might not mean anything, but Jess could see doubt in the faces surrounding her, concern in their sideways glances as they strived to connect with each other.

  “I know it sounds weird,” she said, “but I’m sure it’s one of the real ones.”

  “Me too,” said Wayne, coming out from behind his workshop table. “There’s a Pinocchio project under way. A moving puppet. Mechanical. Golly, I was asked to help on that, but I skipped it. Feels silly, I guess, now that we’re here. But I know a couple of the guys, good fellows. I’m sure they’d give me a peek.”

  “You think there’s a connection?” Finn glanced over at Amanda. Despite everything, despite the chaos around them, he couldn’t stop thinking about her jumping onto the carousel to join them. What courage that had taken. What a risk. They had barely talked, just the two of them, since her arrival, and things were beginning to feel strained between them as a result. He didn’t want that. He only wanted that look she’d just given him, wanted it in his mind like a photograph.

  “They told me they were wanting to work from the acetates, the cels, but that someone had misplaced them. They needed folks like me to dig through the vaults up at the Studios. No such luck! Not for me, bub, I’ll tell you what! I’m perfectly happy here where I am.”

  “Misplaced, as in missing?” Philby asked.

  “Yeah, so?”

  Philby stared down Jess, long and hard. “So? How does Jess dream about something that’s gone missing, unless—” He let it hang there for the others to consider. “Right?” he asked.

  Finn nodded. Maybeck looked a little lost. Charlene was raising and lowering her heels, as if ready to sprint, her mind elsewhere.

  “Acetate is highly flammable,” Philby said softly.

  “Wait!” Maybeck said a little too loudly. Wayne startled. “Philabuster, are you saying someone stole these acetates and that Jess dreamed about whoever it was?”

  “And that whoever it was, for reasons unknown, was setting the acetates on fire? Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  “Hollingsworth,” said Willa. As was often her way, she’d been hovering on the outskirts of the conversation. “Remember what Nick told us about the man’s grudge with the company? Hollingsworth was fired for—”

  “Stealing animation cels,” Philby said.

  “Good grief,” Wayne coughed out. “I know all about that. But…I mean…Jess’s dream is connected to that? That’s impossible, isn’t it?”

  “Nothing is impossible,” Finn said, stealing a look in Amanda’s direction, wishing she would glance over at him again.

  “It’s impossible they aren’t connected.” Professor Philby sounded as if he’d stepped up to the whiteboard. “Mathematically speaking, I mean. But it’s entirely un-realistic to believe two such identical incidences, both connecting to the disappearance of the cels, could nonetheless be unconnected.”

  “Did anybody get that?” Maybeck asked.

  Philby continued, his voice suddenly tentative. “Jess dreams the future. So, Hollingsworth is going to burn an acetate of Pinocchio sometime in the near future. We don’t know when, or why. But it’s going to happen.”

  “We need to know what’s going on,” Willa said softly.

  “All of that is well and good, but someone please explain why people are breaking the arms off corpses with shovels,” Finn said. “Jess had a vision of that happening as well. Can we take one dream at a time?”

  Wayne was pacing back and forth, thinking furiously. “Do we actually believe the two dreams are connected? Jess dreamed them both, but…Yes, we know Hollingsworth is guilty of the theft of the cels. But we have no proof he’s also connected to the graveyard and morgue.”

  “You haven’t been at this as long as we have,” Charlene said.

  “Feels like sixty years,” Maybeck said.

  The group burst into laughter.

  MATTIE AWOKE, SITTING UP HARD, as if someone had punched her in the gut. She blinked in the dark, taking a moment to identify the thin slice of light at the bottom of the closet door in front of her. The locked closet door.

  Her heart raced, her body overly warm; she felt as if she’d run a long-distance race. She lay back down, the thin sleeping bag the Fairlies had provided barely cushioning the hard floor. It took a while for her to find sleep. Later, when she awoke again, she heard noises in the hallway, more activity than previously. She pounded on the door, tried to shout through it, but the sounds passed and faded, replaced by an uneasy silence.

  Mattie crossed her legs yoga-style, and waited. No stranger to the dark, she nonetheless felt claustrophobic and agitated, reminded of her captivity at Barracks 14. Life in the Barracks had taught her to manage expectations, to not set unrealistic goals, to keep a measure of acceptance balanced with her dreams of what was possible.

  By the time her door was unlocked and open she forced back her anger and stayed in character. “Look,” she said to Antonella, “I work at the Disney store today. I need to show up. I need to do my job.”

  “They want to see you,” was all the girl said. She blindfolded Mattie and led her through faint voices in the hallway and, far in the distance, muted traffic sounds. Mattie stumbled quite by accident and, as she did, made contact with Antonella. She read the girl—it was as if a movie streamed through her: bits of conversation, faces, a gate, stairs. By the time Mattie found her balance, she knew what this girl had eaten for breakfast—oatmeal; what the girl looked like in front of a mirror—more ribs than flesh, pale skin reddened by mosquito or bedbug bites; that she’d recently stood on a balcony with a view of a parking lot and a piece of Space Mountain. Mattie saw a gr
oup meeting where Humphrey and a girl stood before the Fairlies like generals. She read that this girl had a crush on Humphrey.

  “What do you think of Humphrey?” Mattie asked. She had the edge now.

  “He’s okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “Smart. Fair. I like him.”

  “Osanna?”

  “She’s my sister. What do you want me to say?”

  “Do you think they’ll let me join you guys?”

  “You work for them. Disney. We could use someone on the inside. But I should warn you: this is bigger than any one of us.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We’re here for a reason.” This time Mattie tripped intentionally, hoping Antonella would be thinking about that mission. As the girl steadied Mattie, and the images flashed through Mattie’s mind, she saw the Disneyland entrance jammed with guests trying to get out, Central Plaza with a massive amount of wild fireworks exploding above the castle in the daytime, a map with six oversize handwritten numbers on it, one of them—number 6—the Matterhorn.

  Then, nothing. Her mental canvas went blank.

  Mattie was led into a neatly ordered room where the girl Fairlies outnumbered the boys two to one. She counted ten in all, so two were elsewhere. Humphrey came over to her.

  “I need to get to work,” Mattie told him. “I’m going to be late!”

  “We all do. You go when we say you go.”

  “Then please say it soon or I’ll be late.”

  Humphrey glared at her disapprovingly.

  “Look, I’m glad I found you guys, or you found me,” Mattie said. “We’re family. Yahoo. But I’ve got a good job and I want to keep it.”

  “We all have good jobs. Yours will depend on what you’re willing to do for us.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? Do what?”

  Humphrey explained, “We need you to read someone for us.”

  “For me to what?” Mattie gasped.

  “You read Antonella just now, didn’t you? Look, we need you to prove yourself. Maybe read a higher-up in the company. Maybe get that minute-by-minute schedule of theirs. Something like that.”

  Mattie felt as if she’d been punched in the throat. She coughed.

  “Don’t sweat it. We’ll let you know when the time comes. And just so we’re clear, I’m not worried about Antonella. She doesn’t know enough to harm us by your reading her. But you’re not touching me, and if you try again, I’ll know you’re a traitor. You got that? Curiosity? I understand. But you’re on notice. Wear these, or we’ll lock you back in that closet.” He pulled a pair of black knit Minnie Mouse winter gloves from his back pocket. Mattie pulled them on, trying to appear as if she didn’t care about the requirement. In fact, she was devastated.

  “I’ve got to get to work,” she said, caustically.

  “Wait here.” Humphrey left the room.

  She considered searching through the belongings on the floor, but it wasn’t worth the risk. If she remained part of their group, she’d find out everyone’s name soon enough.

  When Humphrey returned, he blindfolded her again, passed her off, and someone—Antonella?—led her downstairs. She counted nine landings as she descended. Once outside, Mattie could tell by the quiet that the park hadn’t opened yet. That put the time before 9:00 a.m. She was still wearing her World of Disney costume, a look that wouldn’t cause concern.

  Mattie counted 317 steps to reach what she took to be an exit from one of the two parks. That, combined with the 254 steps last night, might allow her to triangulate a location for where they’d locked her up. Outside the park, they moved to the left, in the direction of Downtown Disney. That meant they’d exited California Adventure, not Disneyland. She continued to count steps before realizing Antonella had let go of her arm.

  “Hello? Are you there?” she said, standing perfectly still. She repeated it more loudly this time. “Hello? Are you there?” The sound of running. The park had opened.

  “Is who there? There are a lot of us here.”

  Mattie reached up and tentatively—so carefully!—untied the knot of the blindfold, expecting Antonella to stop her. She found herself face-to-face with a Disneyland guest, whose excess weight stretched out the red Mater T-shirt he wore.

  “What’s with the blindfold?” the man asked. “That looks like fun!”

  “Not so much,” Mattie said, stuffing it into her pocket. “Do you happen to have the time?”

  “Eight forty,” the man reported.

  “Late,” Mattie said. Thanking the man, she hurried off to World of Disney.

  * * *

  Mattie was in the midst of getting chewed out by a Cast Member for the horrendous condition of the storeroom when her supervisor, Teresa, intervened.

  “It wasn’t Mattie’s fault,” Teresa told the man. “Besides, it’s being cleaned up as we speak.”

  “I can help clean,” Mattie offered.

  “Please.”

  Fifteen minutes later, a tired-looking Teresa joined Mattie in the disaster zone stockroom.

  “He means well,” she said. “It was a mess and he blamed you.”

  “Which is accurate! I’m sorry. I left in a hurry and didn’t have time to clean up.”

  “Never seen so many hangers on the floor.”

  “Funny, right? I’ll pick them up, promise,” Mattie said. She looked around.

  There were still several hundred hangers scattered about, caught on clothing, on the walls, the floor. Mattie lowered her voice. “If I give you a note?” She waited, her heart pounding. This would confirm whether Teresa could be trusted.

  A Latina, today with a waterfall of gorgeous hair, Teresa looked pretty even when deadly serious. She nodded faintly, barely dipping her chin.

  Mattie didn’t know whether to scream or faint or call 911. “Oh my gosh!” she whispered. “I need a pen.”

  HOLLINGSWORTH FOLLOWED the Traveler down a well-lit, nondescript corridor. The vinyl tiles beneath their mud-caked shoes were marked with green and blue directional lines. At the end of the green track, two oversize swinging doors opened into a reception area.

  The Traveler’s fleshless bones propped up his baggy brown suit, making him look like something that should have been hanging from a line in a department store window display. He walked up to the woman receptionist and waved his hand. For an instant, the air seemed oily, like the Traveler had opened a window to swirling water deep under the sea. Then it shifted, as powdery and misty as a chalk eraser banged against a blackboard. The woman’s expression never altered.

  “Thank you,” the Traveler said, though the woman had not spoken. She had not moved or even blinked. Without bothering to check if Hollingsworth was trailing him, the Traveler pushed through a second set of swinging doors. “Lights, please,” he said. Hollingsworth’s trembling finger found the switch.

  The room held an abundance of stainless steel. Plastic tubes led from tables into drains, each one illuminated by a powerful lighting fixture. It was cold and quiet.

  “Supply and demand,” the Traveler said in his deep Cajun growl. “Ain’t that the rule of law in these parts?”

  “It’s a law of free-market economies,” Hollingsworth said. “Good old capitalism.”

  “Same thing, as far as I’m concerned. I demand, they supply.”

  “What did you do to that woman?” Hollingsworth wasn’t sure he wanted the answer.

  “Best stop your sniveling and get to work. We have fires to feed. We need us some kindling.”

  “Will she survive?”

  The Traveler spun around, fast as a flash of lightning. “If I’d wanted her spirits to pass, then they’d ’a passed, friend. If I’d wanted you asking nincompoop questions, then I’d ’a told you so. You best learn to accept what you gone and asked for. Ain’t that right? Yes, sir. You answer me: Yes, sir.”

  Hollingsworth wasn’t in the habit of answering to anyone that way. But he was in no mind to test this creature’s powers; he had a feeling he’d on
ly seen a small sample of what this monstrous man could do. “Yes, sir.”

  “A vehicle set in motion stays in motion. Ain’t that right?”

  “Not exactly,” Hollingsworth said.

  But the Traveler didn’t want an answer. He didn’t want Hollingsworth speaking at all. The sticklike man slid open a heavy steel drawer and took hold of a cold, limp hand. A loud snap echoed throughout the room. Hollingsworth looked away, fighting to keep himself from throwing up.

  “Fingers keep us alive, ney? They is what makes our fire come to life, youse see?” said the wraith. “In life there is death and in death there is life.” Another loud crack. “Find me some shears,” he instructed. “I’m going to need a snip here and there if I’m to collect us our kindling.”

  MATTIE’S THIRD DAY with the Fairlies went much like the first: blindfolded, released before opening hour so she could work, meet back up with an escort after work. Each night around 1:00 a.m., she found herself lying near the Partners statue. With little to report, she typically spoke briefly to the Imagineer waiting for her, and then returned. The return jolted her awake, shook her to the core. But she was getting used to it, even enjoyed it. She’d come to accept and understand what was happening to her instead of questioning it. She was a DHI. In her own way she was now a Kingdom Keeper. With this mystique came a responsibility. Joe had put her into the parks for a reason.

  “If you’re going to keep treating me like a prisoner,” she told Humphrey on the morning of the fourth day, “I’ll take a pass. Don’t bother sending anyone for me tonight. I’m sick of this.”

  “We had to make sure no one was watching you. That we were safe. No one person can jeopardize the team.”

  The last part sounded memorized or programmed, like Humphrey had been hypnotized before being sent. Mattie wondered if that might explain the team, as he called it, and their willingness to go after Disneyland. That, in turn, caused her to question if there wasn’t some small piece of each Fairlie that objected to the mission.