Legacy of Secrets

by Ridley Pearson

  “Wait a second!” Philby lifted the nameplate higher into the light. Charlene swatted it out of his hands.

  “Are you crazy?” she asked hoarsely. “We need to get out of here.”

  “We need Maybeck to memorize this,” he said. “Go get him.”

  “It’s probably a serial number or something. We are not sticking around for that.”

  “Tell Maybeck I need him, Charlie. Then you, Finn, and Willa get back to Wayne’s truck. We’ll meet you.”

  “That’s not going to happen, and you know it.” Charlene scurried off on hands and knees toward Maybeck’s hiding spot.

  Philby angled the nameplate to catch the light, allowing him to more clearly see the words inscribed on the back.

  It was not a serial number.

  INSIDE WAYNE’S WORKSHOP, under the dim illumination of three flashlights, Wayne and Philby worked late into the night. On the table before them was a flickering image, mostly blue and white and black, courtesy of a small, battery-powered transistor radio Wayne had rewired to transmit. The device was just strong enough to project the sparkling hologram of what looked like a piece of paper. The same piece of paper that had been discovered attached to the neck of Jingles.

  “It’s no surprise this arrived,” Wayne said. “After all, you five made it through. The challenge will be to send something back.”

  “We have analog transmission,” Philby said. Wayne looked at him, confused; he backtracked, trying to explain. “Basically, it’s this: climbing onto Jingles ourselves would kill whoever tries it. We can maybe send a few small objects, but we have nowhere near the bandwidth we need to transmit a human.”

  “I don’t get it,” Maybeck said.

  “I don’t think anyone does,” Wayne said. “It seems that by carving his initials, Finn created a change in the present that carried into the future. This note isn’t like that. It came from the future, where the technology exists to allow its transmission. Gee whiz, we’re barely able to see what they sent, much less duplicate the process in reverse. But we’re working on it.”

  “We’re thinking,” Philby said, “that it’s just unstable. Wayne thinks he can fix that. Let’s give it a try.”

  Wayne pointed at the floating image. It looked like a magic trick, the way it hovered a quarter inch off the worktable. The piece of tape and the torn bit of note hovered at the top. Wayne continued to work, a tiny screwdriver in one hand, the oversize knob of some kind of power supply he called a rheostat in the other. The equipment hummed and buzzed loudly.

  “I love that smell,” Philby said, mostly to himself. “Like after a thunderstorm.”

  “Or a burning wire, but yes, it is rather pleasant.” Wayne continued to tinker. Philby watched as the scratches on the hologram began to connect. Another few adjustments by Wayne and the lines became fuzzy and indistinct. Philby wanted to coach him—A little more this way! Now that!—but knew firsthand how annoying such advice could be.

  A final adjustment…and it was like a PowerPoint projector’s lens focusing. The note came suddenly into view.

  Message received. Castle has sparkling spires. Missing you and our four friends. Beware of A.H. Mattie read Joe. A.H. has been Public Enemy #1 since your time. Joe’s thoughts about A.H. are woven in with OTs. Be careful! How can we help you return?—A

  Wayne couldn’t hold it; the image vanished.

  “That’s okay! I’ve got it!” Philby said, lifting a pen from the back of a sheet of sandpaper. He’d written it all down.

  “What does it mean—‘Castle has sparkling spires’?” Wayne asked.

  “She’s telling us the date. For the sixtieth anniversary of Disneyland,” Philby said, “they changed the castle. She’s just telling us it’s the sixtieth. If the note had been found by someone else, they wouldn’t understand. Call it code.”

  “Amazing.” Wayne stepped back and sat on a high stool. He stayed silent for a long time. “I keep waiting to wake up,” he said eventually, his voice very soft.

  “You and me both.”

  “I just read a message written in 2015? Am I supposed to believe this?”

  “It’s up to you, I suppose. The first time you brought Finn back here, it was in the 1960s. You brought him through a television set. He returned the same way.”

  “No idea how I did that.”

  “You’ll figure it out.”

  “Not without a lot of help from Philby,” Wayne said.

  “It’s weird to me, too,” Philby said. “I’m not saying it makes sense in terms of physics.”

  “A.H.,” Wayne said. “It’s Mr. Hollingsworth, isn’t it? Amery Hollingsworth.”

  “Must be?”

  “‘Beware of A.H.’ We all know him. The same Mr. Hollingsworth who gave that speech in the Golden Horseshoe. The same man fired by Mr. Disney for stealing animation cells from the studios. He said he was innocent, of course, and he made up all sorts of lies about Mr. Disney stealing his ideas. Foolishness! There were other people in those meetings! Mr. Disney didn’t steal anything. Some of his villains and stories go back to the European fairy tales, but golly, who cares about that? Mr. Hollingsworth’s lies never made sense. There were lawsuits. Mr. Hollingsworth never won. But he doesn’t stop trying. He’s jealous, that’s all. The people who work here, we all love Mr. Disney like a father. Other people don’t get it. There will always be sore folks like Mr. Hollingsworth, I guess, but it’s not fair to great men like Mr. Disney. Not one bit.”

  “I agree completely. But let me get something straight: Amery Hollingsworth is alive and kicking in 1955?”

  “Very much so. Why? And who is O.T., anyway? I can’t think of anyone with those initials.”

  “It’s not a person. It’s more like a group.”

  “And you know this group?” Wayne asked.

  “I know this group,” Philby whispered, wondering at the message Amanda had been trying to deliver.

  THE THREE FAIRLIES SAT in Amanda and Jess’s dorm room with the door closed. Jess was on the bed, Mattie and Amanda in desk chairs. A grim air filled the room, the kind of silence that follows a team loss in a championship match.

  “When Finn described his first time travel experience, after he got his memory back about what had happened, he talked about being chased into the TV set by a Dapper. What if it was the same guy? What if he was trying to help Finn, not hurt him?”

  Amanda spoke first. “We need to find the Dapper Dan. This guy Ezekiel.”

  “Overtakers play all sorts of tricks,” Jess said. “You put any faith in that?”

  “This is my fault,” Mattie said. “It all happened so quickly.”

  “Tell us again,” Jess said.

  “I’ve told you three times!”

  “Once more. Please.”

  “I touched Joe right as Hollingsworth was mentioned. Things went crazy. His mind went all frantic, which makes it so difficult to read. He was inside a vault, like a bank vault. He reached for a drawer—second row, third from the left. There was a brown folder inside with Hollingsworth’s name. A black-and-white photograph of a man. There were Disney villains like Maleficent and the Evil Queen, too. Superclear and colorful. Animated, for sure, not the characters in the parks. There was a photo of a gravestone. And yeah, he was thinking about a Dapper Dan—a thought, not a photograph—Ezekiel? Ebsy? Some name like that. And a businessman of some sort, and this other guy I can’t really describe except to say he was maybe the same age as the others. I don’t know.”

  Mattie took a deep breath, eyes half-closed, hand slightly lifted as if she were physically reaching back into her memories.

  “To reach the vault, there was a curtain,” she said. “When you mentioned Finn crossing over, I saw steep stairs, a jukebox or an old record player, and the King Arthur Carrousel—especially this wild-eyed horse.”

  “That last part matches what our friend Emily saw when she was spying in Walt’s apartment,” Jess said. “The music box. King Arthur. That’s how Finn crossed over into the
past. We should be able to duplicate it.”

  “Don’t change the subject, Jess,” Amanda said. “Joe saw a Dapper Dan. Mattie got a look at his face.” She aimed the words at her friend, eyebrows raised, expecting an answer.

  “That’s true,” Mattie said.

  “He doesn’t know us,” Amanda said. “The Keepers, maybe. Willa and Philby for sure. But not us. We find him, and maybe we find someone willing to help us like he offered to help them.”

  “And maybe we get caught and are never heard from again,” Jess said. “Look, I know you want to get Finn back, but—”

  “They…need…us!”

  “But he could be Barracks 14, right?” Mattie said. “Maybe the thing to do is find him and let me read him. There’s no way he knows me.”

  “It’s a risk,” Jess said.

  “Worth taking,” Amanda said, her face alight with hope for the first time.

  “Easy for you to say,” Jess said.

  “I don’t mind,” Mattie said. “I want to help.”

  “We can play backup,” Amanda proposed. “Something goes down, we’re there to stop it.”

  “AMANDA LOCKHART, YOU HAVE A VISITOR IN THE LOBBY.” The announcement rang out through the dorm’s hallway.

  “That’s interesting,” said Jess.

  “That’s Nick,” said Amanda. “Who else?”

  NICK PERKINS WAITED, legs crossed, arms outstretched across the back of the red-velvet couch in the dorm’s throwback lobby. He carried a thin briefcase, making him look official despite his youth. The three girls sat down, facing him.

  “Mr. Mystery makes an appearance,” Amanda said.

  “Mr. Mystery figured it out,” Nick said. “At least he thinks he did.”

  “We’re listening,” said Jess.

  “There are two Amery Hollingsworths,” Nick said. “Amery the first, and Amery Jr. A. the first was fired from Disney for stealing animation cells. You want to guess which ones?”

  “Surprise us,” Amanda said.

  “Villains.” The word exploded in their ears, hanging in the air, filling the room like a shock-and-awe grenade.

  “He killed himself,” Nick said. “Amery the first. That angered his sons, as you can imagine, especially firstborn Amery Jr., who never liked being called Junior. He blamed it all on Disney. He moved to Baltimore.”

  Nick opened the briefcase and withdrew a number of sheets of paper, some stapled, some not. “I ran some background information. The usual stuff: Web searches, credit scores, public company financials, investments. You can’t get everything, but no one can hide completely.”

  He held one of the stapled stacks of papers to his chest, taking a moment to look at each of the three Fairlies. “You may find this painful, but I think between the three—four!—of us, we should be able to figure stuff out that we couldn’t decipher on our own.”

  “Nick,” Amanda said, not bothering to hide her irritation, “just show us, would you?”

  He passed her the information. “One of Junior’s companies entered a government auction twelve years ago. They won the bidding. It was for a piece of property, a former—”

  “Army barracks and training facility,” Amanda said. She flipped pages, reading more quickly with each one. “Photos…” she muttered.

  “Look! Look!” Jess said. “The number on that building!”

  Mattie snatched the sheets of paper away. “Fourteen.”

  PHILBY READ WHAT HE’D scribbled down from the encounter in Walt Disney’s backyard, the words inscribed on the back of Lilly Belle’s sign.

  “‘Within the park

  a day’s not done

  Until our guests

  “read for fun”

  Letters make up words of three

  dnaehtnepnactifoot

  easily

  into one of these so freely’”

  “What’s that even supposed to mean?” Finn complained to Philby as they walked toward the Jungle Cruise, dodging crowds as best they could.

  “Focus on the first half, remember? One step at a time.”

  “None of this makes sense.”

  “It must mean something. It wasn’t hidden on the back of the sign for nothing, you know. Esmeralda’s fortune led us straight there! It’s Walt’s next clue.”

  The first half of the riddle had led them here, to the Jungle Cruise. “Read for fun,” the Keepers had concluded, had to mean the things people read in the parks: signs, maps, souvenir books highlighting the attractions. To cover as much ground as possible, the five of them had split up. Finn and Philby went to check out Jungle Cruise and Snow White’s Adventures, while the girls and Maybeck headed to Mad Tea Party and King Arthur Carrousel.

  Finn and Philby boarded a boat at the last second, doing their best not to attract the attention of their fellow passengers, though two Cast Members their age gave them an extra-long look.

  The boat set off, the Cast Member “skipper” at the helm yelling his spiel through a megaphone. He warned his passengers about the “dangerous voyage” they were about to embark upon. To Finn’s surprise, no one laughed at his serious tone. It dawned on Finn then that it wasn’t meant to be a joke, that the audience was really buying into the idea that the animals lining the banks were real and ready to attack the boat. Such a strange thing to witness on an attraction that would become known for its comedy!

  “Look for clues,” Finn whispered to Philby. “Remember the Stonecutter’s Quill; it’ll be tough. Keep your eyes peeled. Anything that can be read.”

  The boat floated by Audio-Animatronics of tigers, a wrecked campsite. There were words on the side of some of the crates there, but none big enough to read. Throughout, to Finn and Philby’s amazement, the guests acted as though they were actually on a treacherous journey through the jungle.

  Before the boys knew it, the boat had passed a shrunken-head trader and returned to the dock. Neither boy was any closer to solving the riddle.

  “Well, that was a bust.” Philby sighed.

  Together they set off toward Snow White’s Adventures. They were halfway across the hub of the park when Philby nudged Finn.

  “Behind us.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Those Cast Members, they were on the Jungle Cruise with us.”

  “Are you sure?” Finn glanced backward, trying to catch a glimpse.

  “Absolutely. Besides, what are Cast Members in Frontierland costumes doing on the bridge to Fantasy-land? It doesn’t make sense. So what do they want?”

  “We’re not going to stick around to find out.”

  “Who knows? They could be on our side.”

  “Philby, since when has any suspicious behavior ever been an indication that someone’s on our side?”

  Philby shrugged at that. They were almost through the castle by now, and the Cast Members had shown no signs of wavering from their tail.

  “We’re almost there,” Finn said. “Stick close and don’t get lost.”

  They cut immediately left, past the castle, and stepped their holograms through the wall into the Snow White attraction, sliding into the empty backseat of a car departing the station.

  The ride flew by in a blur of colors and lights, but no words. Emerging back into the daylight, Finn and Philby still had no more clue as to the riddle’s answer than when they’d begun.

  What they did know was this: someone wanted them followed.

  SINCE THEY’D SOLVED the Stonecutter’s Quill, the five Keepers had worked out the puzzles and mysteries that challenged them as a group. With this one still baffling them, they reconvened at an empty table, wedged in a cor-ner outside the Red Wagon Inn. Their attempts at getting some food had failed miserably. They were starving.

  “You know what’s crazy?” Maybeck said. “Fifty years from now, we’re going to be seven years younger, sitting in a restaurant right next door to this one in Florida, and we’ll still be trying to solve crazy riddles that Wayne and Walt left us.”

  “Shush. You’re making my head
hurt,” Charlene said, playfully tapping him on the arm.

  “Yeah, well, no veggie burgers in 1955, but we have everything we really need. Pen, paper, and the five of us,” Philby said.

  “Let’s focus,” Finn said, grabbing their attention. “Charlene, Willa, Maybeck what did you find?”

  “Nothing,” Willa reported. “We kept our eyes peeled for every little detail, but nothing stood out. I wrote some stuff down. None of it matters. I’d have thought after all these years, we’d be a lot better at this, but here we are. The carousel and Mad Tea Party don’t even have writing on them.”

  “There was some writing on the Jungle Cruise, and books in Snow White’s Adventures,” Philby offered. “But I agree with Willa—nothing that mattered.”

  He pulled out his ticket stubs and laid them on the table, fanning them back and forth as if they held the answers.

  “So no one saw anything?” Finn asked.

  “What if we’re too focused on the attractions themselves?” Willa said, brow wrinkled. “These puzzles are always about the bigger picture. So what led us to the attractions?”

  Charlene was playing with Philby’s ticket booklet, spinning it on the table. Giving it an extra spin, she stopped—and gasped. “Wait a second! Check it out! The clue is ‘Until our guests read for fun.’”

  “Yeah? So?” said Maybeck.

  “‘Read for fun,’” she repeated, and tapped the table. “Get it?”

  “Maybe not,” said Maybeck in a snarky voice. “I wouldn’t ask otherwise.”

  Charlene tapped again, her fingers flicking the pages of Philby’s ticket book. A light went on in the professor’s eyes.

  “It’s not about the attractions!” Philby cried. “It’s about the ticket books. You read to have fun. On opening day you bought different tickets for different rides. A-tickets, B-tickets, C-tickets! That’s brilliant, Charlie!”

  Charlene smiled proudly. “But what exactly is the clue saying? I have no idea.”

  “Anagrams,” said Willa. “It’s always anagrams when it comes down to a few letters. Remember Stonecutter’s?”