Kingdom Keepers III(120)
As they lifted him, not a muscle responded. He looked…she couldn’t bring herself to think it. But that was the way he looked, and there was no holding back the tears.
Her husband came out of the room. “Okay, they’ve got him ready to move. They’ve started an IV. They’ve got monitors on him. They’ll be in touch with doctors from the back of the ambulance and may give him something on the way. I signed a release allowing them to treat him. If it’s…you know….”
“Drugs?”
“Then the IV should help. In any case, they’ll do blood tests at the hospital and figure this out soon enough. One of us can go in the ambulance with him, but I told them I wanted to stay with you. We should change—quickly—and try to follow them to the hospital.”
She nodded. She couldn’t get any words out.
“I know it doesn’t help much, but they say his vitals—it isn’t a deep coma. They say it’s more like…he’s just sleeping soundly.”
Now she found the strength to speak. “Do not tell me that you believe for one second all this nonsense about—”
“I didn’t say that, Gladis. All I said is, he seems okay. We need to change and get in the car. The best way to help him now is to be with him.”
She nodded again, but Mrs. Whitman’s words flew through her thought like a wounded bird: We can’t just sit by and do nothing, you see?
“Frank,” she said to her husband, “they’ll be testing him for an hour or more, don’t you think?”
“Yes, two or three, I suppose. It’s never fast. Why?”
“And you say he’s sleeping comfortably.”
“What is it, dearest?”
“I want to be with him, it isn’t that. I’m his mother. But more than anything I want him free of this.”
“Gladis?”
“I think…I’m not saying I believe any of this, you understand. But I think for the time being we can put ourselves to better use than sitting around a hospital waiting room.”
“Whatever are you talking about?”
“There’s a phone call I have to make.”
“At this hour?”
She drew in a large breath, swelling the housedress and filling her face with color for the first time since she had discovered her unresponsive son.
“We’re going to Disney World.”
44
JESS HAD NO IDEA what she was doing. Dressed in a black T-shirt, a black fleece, and black jeans—all courtesy of the Studios’ costume shop—and wearing a black baseball cap and a headset, she was currently wandering the maze of hallways and staircases at the back of the Fantasmic! stage. The black clothing helped reduce the glow from her DHI. Every so often she paused and closed her eyes and tried to summon whatever it was that allowed her dreams to turn to visions. If you’d asked her a week or two earlier if she could bring on this state she would have answered an emphatic no. But since the visions of Wayne had begun, since she’d picked up something while awake in the middle of walking around Epcot, she’d convinced herself otherwise. Why should such “powers” be limited to sleep? Besides, she had a secret weapon working for her: technically she was currently asleep; her body was lying in bed at Mrs. Nash’s, snoring softly, no doubt. Being a DHI didn’t count as being awake; it didn’t even feel like being awake. So why, if her sleeping self could imagine and dream, couldn’t she tap into that as a DHI and experience it here, now, wandering the hallways of Fantasmic!—why?
Jess understood the potential risk of her efforts. You didn’t summon the dark thoughts of someone—something—like Maleficent without uncertainty. Who knew the depth of her darkness, the gravitational pull of her menace? What if once Jess got inside Maleficent’s mind there was no way out—what if it was a mental maze that took you prisoner and never relinquished you? What if Maleficent had been waiting for just such an opportunity? What if she were powerful enough to manipulate her own thought so skillfully that she could send an image to Jess that was a lie? What if she could use such a lie as a tool to mislead the Kingdom Keepers? Wouldn’t she, Jess, then qualify as the traitor?
Layer upon layer her doubts began to accumulate. Jess felt like she had worms in her stomach and wondered if she possessed enough strength for this task. Maleficent had feared her, had captured and imprisoned her—twice!—had made her a target for some time now. Maleficent saw Jess as the obstacle to the Overtakers’ success, whether because of Jess’s ability to see the future, or because of some other quality Jess had yet to recognize in herself. But actively seeking a way into an evil fairy’s thoughts suddenly struck Jess as crazy. What had she been thinking? Worse: how had the others allowed her to do this?