Amanda lowered her head to her pillow and stared at the ceiling. Three glow-in-the-dark stick-on stars gave her dull green images to focus on. Patience was everything. The persistent scratching of pencil point on paper was all she heard…and the occasional dull rubbing sound of the eraser.
The eraser meant a lack of confidence; it was the sound of Jess changing her mind or not liking the way something had come out. Amanda knew her to be an expert illustrator. Her crude drawings of a year or two earlier had evolved into sophisticated realism.
The sounds of sketching finally stopped. Jess sighed, as if she had held her breath for the past ten minutes—an unintentional signal. Amanda slipped off the top bunk.
“Can I see?” she whispered, painfully aware of Jeannie Pucket sleeping only a few feet away.
“I’m not sure what was going on. A boy.”
Amanda knew not to force her. “Any hints as to who it was?”
“No.”
“A shadow,” Amanda said, studying the superbly sketched image.
“Yes. A boy.”
“It’s a cave.”
“More like a tunnel,” Jess said. “See the square walls?”
“We need to get this to Finn.”
“We will.”
“I mean right now.”
“Why the hurry?” Jess asked.
“Because the Dream docks in Aruba this morning. They’re heading to the caves.”
“I’m not so sure this is a cave.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Amanda couldn’t take her eyes off the sketch. “They need to see it.”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel complete. I heard water, but I didn’t see any.”
Amanda felt sorry for Jess, who bore the burden of her dreams and the messages they contained. Jess occasionally rebelled against the significance Finn and Philby attributed to her visions. To her, they were just dreams, sometimes accurate projections into the future, sometimes not. She didn’t like her friends basing their plans—or worse, risking their lives—on something so ephemeral.
Amanda said, “I’ll get this to Philby, make sure he sees it before they leave the ship.” She forced her eyes off the page. The edge of the window casement was glowing yellow with the flush of dawn. “I hope we’re not too late.”
IN THE EARLY HOURS of Thursday morning, Clayton Freeman, a handsome African American man who shaved his head to a spit polish, found himself heading backstage in the Walt Disney Theatre. He blamed the two Kingdom Keeper boys for making him lose sleep. But he also found himself at least slightly believing what Bob had told him.
Maybe it was because he was younger than Bob. Maybe it was due to inexperience. Maybe it was because he’d come through college on the fringe end of Harry Potter, and he still had a thing for Artemis Fowl, Percy Jackson, and Legend, but he didn’t immediately dismiss the improbable the way his boss did.
Certainly what the boys reported seeing backstage was a stretch. Clayton Freeman would rank it as highly unlikely. But impossible? He worked for Disney; was anything beyond the scope of imagination?
Clayton had heard the stories from fellow security personnel within the Disney World parks, stories that Bob had no time for. He’d seen the damage inside the It’s a Small World ride—dolls broken off the scenes, others floating in the water; he’d heard it called vandalism. He’d also heard rumors that the dolls appeared to have broken free of their platforms, as if marching like an army. Clayton didn’t know what to make of any of it.
He approached the backstage prop storage, his mind weighed down by the disappearance of a second Mickey Mouse who had been spotted on board; the vandalism done to some security cameras during the Castaway Cay stop; and Maleficent’s unscheduled video just before the lights sparked and shattered.
Too many unanswered questions…
Clayton stopped. As they’d been told, the Buzz Lightyear balloon lay on the stage floor, deflated, collapsed. It was his job to inspect it. Indeed, it appeared to have been cut open with a sharp blade.
Like Bob, he wanted to fob this off on the two boys who reported it. They goof around backstage, a bit of mischief leads to vandalism. The boys—both VIPs!—report the incident as something much bigger.
But the balloon had not popped by accident. It had been cut open intentionally. Try as he might, Clayton couldn’t see the boys doing that. Physically, it would have been nearly impossible.
He kneeled and inspected the cut seam. There was a bead of dried glue, implying it had been opened previously and then repaired.
The boys claimed the Buzz Lightyear balloon had contained Chernabog. The creepy thing from Fantasia? As if! Clayton nearly laughed aloud.