by Sarah Dreher
CHAPTER 7
“Now what?” Gwen asked as Stape trotted off through the crowd, to keep watching and make herself scarce.
Stoner shook her head slowly. “I don’t know.”
“Discouraged?”
“Frustrated. We’ve been at this for a whole day, and we haven’t come up with a thing. One minute I think we should go back to the room, the next I think I’ll go crazy just sitting there.”
“I know what you mean,” Gwen said. “Listen, I just had an idea. There’s one person we haven’t talked to, who might have seen something.”
“Who?”
“That woman she made the dinner reservations with. The one who called Security on you.”
“Possible.” She didn’t believe it, though. It was just another way of passing the time. Walt Disney World felt more and more like a big, hollow place filled with loneliness.
She looked over at Gwen, and wondered how she could feel lonely with her at her side.
But it wasn’t Gwen she was lonely for. It was Marylou, her crazy, irritating friend—the oldest friend she had, the one person she could say anything to, who had been with her through the awkwardness of growing up, the terror of being sent back to her parents, the almost-manic headiness of coming out... The one person in front of whom she could make a fool of herself, and it wouldn’t matter. Marylou was familiar. Marylou was comfortable.
Marylou was lost and she couldn’t do a thing to help her.
“Don’t,” Gwen said.
“Huh?”
“Don’t get down on yourself.”
Stoner raked her hair back from her forehead. “It’s just...”
“I know. But we’ll find her, Stoner. I know we will.” She smiled. “I’ve always been a little jealous of your friendship with Marylou. Oh, not jealous in the sense of being sad, or wanting to damage it. But it must be wonderful to have a friend who knows your heart.”
“Yeah.” She shook herself. “Let’s do something.”
“Okay. What?”
“Beats me,” Stoner said. “But as Marylou always says, ‘When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, yell and shout.’”
Gwen laughed. “She does? Really?”
“Absolutely.”
“You know, Stoner, there’s a part of me that feels a little sorry for her kidnappers.”
* * *
David was troubled. There was something about this whole situation that made him distinctly uneasy. The quarry, for instance, knew he could and would kill her if provoked. But she went right on provoking. As if she had little or no regard for whether she lived or died. He didn’t like that. Maybe she was on some kind of a death trip. If so, he didn’t want any part of it.
He shifted the plain brown paper bag under his arm and trudged through the abandoned tunnels. Built during the construction of the park, they had been emptied and sealed behind heavy fire doors. It had taken him many nights of working in the dark to find this one, to find an alternate entrance from above, to move in the necessary supplies. He didn’t like to brag, but he had to admit he’d done an outstanding job under risky circumstances. And now he was reduced to fetching tampons. Damn kid at the check-out in the drug store. Looking at him like he was some kind of nut. Smirking. What was so damn funny about buying tampons? People did it all the time, for Christ’s sake.
He kicked open a door, not caring if they heard it in the tunnels that housed the behind-the-scenes activities of Walt Disney World. They’d just think it was machinery noise, the way the washing machines and sewing machines and a thousand other machines were always banging away. There was a whole city down here. Like a city of ants or moles or something. It gave him the creeps, the thought of going to work down under the ground, day after day, mending those damn costumes. He knew what he’d do if that was his job—make a nice, weak seam right over old Mickey’s crotch, so when he started jumping around like a nut, with all those spoiled brats watching, that old seam’d give way and out would come his little mousey dick, right in front of Minnie and Cinderella and all the rest of those assholes.
David checked his watch. Nearly four thirty, and he hadn’t heard from his client. What was he supposed to do, snatch the woman, write one puny little note, and spend the rest of his life being laughed at by pimply-faced kids in drug stores?
And why all the secrecy? Why hadn’t the client told him who this person was and what was going on and what they wanted her for? “The lover of the woman with the mahogany hair and green eyes,” the client had said, and had gone on to detail the green-eyed one’s appearance. But not the lover’s. And it wasn’t even a very good description. Not good enough so he was certain when he’d spotted her at that Polynesian thing. He’d had to spend his own money buying her a drink, just so she’d turn around so he could confirm the I.D. He should have insisted on some behavioral characteristics. Next time he’d insist on that. He could have made a mistake. Mistakes were a waste of time.
Something was going on, and he wasn’t being let in on it. That smelled a lot like being used.
* * *
“Okay,” Stoner began in a businesslike way, and couldn’t think of anything to say. She cleared her throat. “We’ve checked out some of the rides, and Stape’s talked to vendors and Kathi from the reservations place hasn’t seen her and... Well, I guess our next move should be to...”
“To what?” Gwen asked.
“To…uh...”
“Run in circles, yell and shout?”
“Something positive,” Stoner said. “Something constructive.” She racked her brain. She could feel Gwen watching her, waiting.
“I don’t think there’s much we can do,” Gwen said at last, softly.
Stoner shook her head. “There has to be.”
“Well, I read a fair number of mysteries, even if you don’t…”
“The plots confuse me,” Stoner said.
“...and in all the mysteries I’ve read, there’s never been a suggestion of what to do at a time like this.”
“Well, what do they do?”
“Usually,” Gwen said, “end the chapter and start the next one the following morning.”
Stoner glanced at her. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
“I think,” Gwen said, and put her hand on Stoner’s wrist, “all we can do is do whatever we’d do if this hadn’t happened, and wait for the kidnappers to contact us.”
She leaned back against the wall. She knew Gwen was right. She hated this helplessness. Hated it, hated it, hated it.
Unreleased tears, she was reminded, were hot and tasted like metal.
“I know how you feel,” Gwen said. “But…”
“You don’t know how I feel.”
“All right, I don’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Stoner said.
“It’s okay to cry, you know.”
“No, it is not.”
“Sure. Look around. Half the people here are kids. They cry all the time. They’ll just think I wouldn’t let you go on Space Mountain.”
“If you make me go on Space Mountain, I’ll never forgive you.”
“Listen,” Gwen said, “when you agree to let someone love you, you accept certain responsibilities. And one of them is never, under any circumstances, to go on roller coasters.”
Stoner had to smile. It cleared her vision a little.
“So what would we be doing right now,” Gwen asked, “if Marylou hadn’t been kidnapped?”
She looked over at the line of people emerging from the Spaceship Earth ride. “Probably,” she said reluctantly, “going up in the Ball and reviewing the history of communication.”
“I thought you didn’t want to go up in the Ball and review the history of communication.”
“I don’t want to. I think I have to.”
Gwen sighed in an exasperated way. “The point of this, my dearest Stoner, is to do something you’ll enjoy. It is not to terrorize you.”
“I don’t want to do something I’ll enjoy. I want to do something that’l
l make me feel...”
“Good about yourself?”
“Brave.”
“In that case,” Gwen said, “the Ball it is.”
According to the guidebook, Spaceship Earth was a hollow, magically-engineered marvel that gave the appearance of hovering over the ground, light and buoyant.
According to Stoner McTavish, Spaceship Earth was an eighteen-story solid ball perched precariously on unstable feet and about to roll off and smash everyone in a fifty-yard radius.
The line moved quickly. All too quickly for her taste. Before she even had time to think, for God’s sake, they were being shoved into a plastic “time machine” and sucked up into musty-smelling darkness. She gripped the side of the car. They had come at the wrong time of year. They should have come in mid-summer, when the park was full of people and the lines were endless. An hour’s wait, that was what she needed. Maybe two. Maybe...
Gwen leaned against her. “I love this,” she whispered. “It’s so eerie.”
Stoner was about to comment on Gwen’s mental health when the Voice started up. She caught her breath. “Holy shit,” she said aloud.
“Where?” Gwen said, and glanced quickly around.
“The Voice,” Stoner said. “That’s the Voice!”
“It’s Walter Cronkite. He does the narration for this one.”
“It’s the voice on the phone. The voice in the background. She must be calling from here!”
“In the middle of the night? Do you think they run these things all night?”
“I don’t know,” Stoner said, “but it’s definitely what I heard.”
She glanced around. They were leaving Cro-Magnon man muttering in his cave and approaching ancient Egypt. Walter Cronkite faded into a deep voice intoning something that sounded like hieroglyphics. Outside the exhibits, everything was pitch black. But there had to be a way in, or out, or a telephone...
Gwen touched her arm. “Stop bouncing around. You’re upsetting the monks.”
Beside them, a 12th-Century Benedictine friar snored over the manuscript he was supposed to be copying.
“There must be a doorway somewhere.”
“I’m sure there is, but we won’t find it if you get us arrested.”
She sat back in the car and tried to be calm. They drifted past scenes of Gutenberg and his Bible, of a Florentine schoolmaster reading Virgil aloud—“at last, something I can identify with,” Gwen said of the school—room scene—of Renaissance artists at work. Then Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel… and suddenly they sped forward, rocketing through space, past printing press, telegraph, telephone, radio, movies, television, electronics, computers...to silence and blackness and a star-filled heaven. At the top of Spaceship Earth, the time machine slowed nearly to a halt.
And there, below, far away and very small, was Earth.
Stoner felt her heart expanding and pounding in her chest. A trick, an illusion, she tried to tell herself. But all the reason in the world didn’t stop the feeling of awe.
“All right, Mr. Disney,” she whispered. “You win. I believe.”
Now they were descending, past a crew of astronauts repairing a shuttle car, past…
The little car came to a stop. Walter Cronkite fell silent.
This is it, Stoner thought. This is what I was afraid of. Spaceship Earth has broken down, we can’t get out, we’re running out of air...
Claustrophobia got a good grip on her and started to squeeze.
“Gwen,” she said with a slightly-hysterical giggle, “the Earth has broken down. That’s it. All gone. Nice to have known you. It was kind of a lousy planet, though. The mental hospital of the Universe. Next time let’s go somewhere more civiliz...”
“It’s okay,” Gwen said.
Dim lights came on, and a very human-sounding voice explained that they were pausing in their journey through time, but would be moving ahead in a very few moments, so please remain seated.
“I wish they’d clue us in on why they stopped,” Stoner grumbled nervously.
“Probably to load a wheelchair,” Gwen explained. “They don’t want to make a big deal of it.”
That made sense. And Gwen, being a compulsive brochure reader, had probably picked up one of the Guidebooks. Gwen enjoyed what she called, “Knowing stuff.” Some of the “stuff” she had picked up along the way was truly mind-boggling. She was always coming up with startling and disturbing bits of information. Like the dimensions of the Michigan Fungus, reputed to be the world’s largest living thing. And the fact that, minuscule bugs lived in your eyelashes. And that most people who were allergic to dust weren’t really allergic to the dust, but to the feces of dust mites. And...
A red glow caught her eye. She looked ahead and to her left.
They had turned on the Exit signs.
“That’s it,” she said. “That’s how she gets in here.” She stood up.
Gwen grabbed for her. “Sit down, for God’s sake, Stoner.”
She hopped out of the car and slid along the wall to the exit. A door was cut in the black wall. She pushed through, and was nearly blinded by a downpour of light. It was a narrow stairwell. She started down.
Behind her, she heard the attendant’s voice, announcing that they were resuming their journey through time.
She’d have to meet up with Gwen at the end. Right now she wanted to follow the stairway and see where it led.
The ride through time had taken them to the top of the eighteen stories. They hadn’t descended more than two when the ride had stopped. Which left her trotting down sixteen floors.
At least, she told herself, she wasn’t trotting up sixteen floors.
All around her the light was dim. The ground trembled slightly from the motion of the ride going on inside. The drone of Walter Cronkite’s voice blended with a low rumble to mask all other sound.
The ride had been claustrophobic. The walk down the stairs was pure suffocation. Walls pressing close on either side. The whole thing vibrating.
Something exploded.
Stoner froze. Okay, this was it. The whole thing was coming down around her ears.
She held her breath.
Nothing happened.
Another explosion, this one not so close.
Hesitantly, she touched the outside wall.
Another explosion, and the wall shuddered.
The Ball was moving.
Get out of here, she told herself frantically. Run.
Her legs wouldn’t move. She couldn’t catch her breath.
Do it!
Another explosion, and this time she felt the whole structure shake.
Comeoncomeoncomeon.
She forced herself to step forward.
Okay, got ’em moving. Let’s make tracks.
One foot in front of the other—and—go!
Suddenly the air was filled with a hissing, swishing sound. Like wind or a waterfall heard from a distance.
Waterfall?
Waterfall.
Stoner laughed aloud. It was raining. Thundering and raining, just like it probably did nearly every afternoon in good old WDW. The rain was pouring down the sides of the geosphere. The explosions weren’t explosions at all, of course, but thunder.
Nevertheless, she’d be glad to get out of this oversized golf ball and back to buildings that made sense.
Her running shoes tapped little metallic sounds on the stairs.
She wished she’d counted the exit doors as she ran past. Maybe she’d have some idea of how much longer this would take.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.
Boring.
She must have been in this place for a good fifteen minutes now...
Tap tap tap tap tap tap tap.
Too bad she wasn’t going up. It’d be like the Stairmasters at the gym back home.
Tap tap tap tap tap tap.
The gerbil machines.
Tap tap tap tap tap.
Aerobicize!
Tap tap… oops.
&nb
sp; She’d nearly missed it. A door in the outside wall, leaking daylight.
And inside, the stairs continuing down.
She hesitated. Gwen would probably be waiting, maybe worrying. She really didn’t know how long she’d been in here. She should go out, find her, and come back.
And how would you get back in?
She was willing to bet the door was carefully disguised from the outside. Hidden in the seam of one of the aluminum panels that made up the outer skin of the Ball. Or she could end up on one of the concrete pylons that held the geosphere above the ground. And who know what that would lead to?
No, better check this out now.
She took a few tentative steps downward.
As a matter of fact, how did she know there was an exit from wherever she was going?
Of course there was an exit. Turn around and go back the way you came. That’s an exit.
A few more steps.
Oh, what the hell? Sooner or later she’d arrive somewhere, and if she couldn’t get out she’d just keep going until she blundered into some area visitors weren’t allowed in and get herself arrested, and she’d be out. Simple.
She kept going.
The light seemed to be dimming. The ride sounds and thunder and rushing water died away. She must be under the ground now.
There had to be an end to this soon. After all, how many stories of underground do you need?
And shouldn’t there be a door one of these days?
Deeper.
Things weren’t looking promising.
Pretty dim, as a matter of fact.
Real dim.
Nearly dark.
If she were Nancy Drew, now would be the time to take out her always-handy flashlight from her always-handy shoulder bag and shed a little light on the subject.
But she wasn’t Nancy Drew, and it was really getting very dark.
She had just about decided to turn back when the steps ended at a gray wall. A gray metal door was set into the wall. The door didn’t have a window, or a knob.
Oh, great.
She ran her hands around the frame. Secret button? Trick latch? Or does it only open from the inside?
She pushed against it. Slowly, silently, the door swung open.
She was about to step through when something made her stop. She looked down.