Kingdom Keepers VII(2)

With one hand she searches the rubble and makes contact with neither wood nor rock. She pulls hard, extricating what turns out to be a length of bone, her treasure found. Still, she has not let go of the twine. She twists it in her fingers as she reverses direction, begins collecting the twine around itself, the ball in her hand growing thicker as it directs her back along a route well traveled.





THROUGH THE WINDOWS, an image. At first, the Security guard—appropriately named Bert; he looks like a Bert, and was even named for the character in Mary Poppins—can hardly believe it. Here? At this hour? Waving to him like they’re old friends?

Bert glances at a photograph hanging on the interior wall of the Frank G. Wells building at the Disney Studios. In the photo is the the same man, much younger, standing with Becky Cline and Mickey Mouse at the grand opening of the Disney Archives. They call him a Disney Legend. In the courtyard terrace outside, this man’s palm prints and name adorn a ceramic-tile plaque on a pillar supporting the trellis. A child prodigy, he worked with Walt Disney himself, helped design Disneyland and later, Walt Disney World, overseeing the creation of attractions. He was a founding member of what would come to be called “the Imagineers”—those Cast Members whose job it is to have vision.

He is old now, his hair white as cotton, but his ruddy face is youthful and full of surprise. Bert feels better just seeing him out there. Wayne Kresky has the power of personality, of confidence and willful joy. It almost looks like he’s glowing.

Wayne motions for Bert to unlock the door. Later, this will strike Bert as odd; surely Wayne possesses every key, every code needed to access any building anywhere in the Disney kingdom—so why signal for Bert’s help?

But Bert does not hesitate. Who is he to deny Wayne Kresky anything? It might as well be a royal prince making the request. As Bert moves toward the door, he is once again struck by Wayne’s charisma. Against the backdrop of night, the man appears cloaked in incandescence—almost shimmering.

Bert bumps the door’s push bar and heaves it open with his hip.

“Good evening, sir.”

“I have business to attend to.…Do you mind?”

The two sentences seem—somehow—prerecorded, like two different pieces of dialogue edited together. But Bert is overcome by the man’s presence. Wayne Kresky, here! Bert doesn’t stop to question anything about the situation. Hindsight will help others fill in the blanks. For now, the Security man is awestruck. Albert Pujols or Kobe Bryant would have less of an impact upon him than Wayne Kresky.

“Of course!”

“The Archives.”

“I was just looking at the picture of you and—”

Wayne’s face is devoid of emotion as he pulls the door farther open and blocks it with his foot. It’s an aggressive act: so unexpected, it stops Bert cold, in midsentence.

“Welcome to Walt Disney World!” Wayne says in a theatrical voice different from any inflection he’s used thus far.

Bert thinks, But this is Burbank. South of here is Anaheim, home to Disneyland. Disney World? Why did he say that? Can the old dog no longer hunt?

Just above the courtyard, a string of specks appears in the night sky. If this wasn’t Southern California, Bert might think they were snowflakes. Fireflies, perhaps. Hummingbirds. The specks grow in size and proximity quickly—they are flying, flying fast, straight toward an openmouthed Bert, whose expression changes now from wonder to dread. Not snowflakes. Not hummingbirds. If he didn’t work for Disney, he would have thought, not possible!

The first three or four come into focus: brooms, brooms with buckets—the nemeses of Mickey in his role as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Flying brooms. No, not flying—the brooms are carried by ghosts, the ghosts followed by demons and monsters, hollow-eyed, horrid creatures from unseen graveyards, decayed and fetid, so grotesque that Bert averts his eyes, recoiling as they swoop under the courtyard’s trellis and flow inside the building driven by a ferocious wind.

“No!” Bert hollers. “Please! No!”

But who’s to hear? A demon hovers over him, gray and toothless with the shriveled, sunken cheeks of a two-thousand-year-old mummy and eyes like wrinkled dates. The demon points the bony nub of one long, skeletal finger at Bert as he floats lower…lower.…

Bert shrinks into a tight ball, moaning in terror. The finger pokes him.

And then…blackness.





WHY DOES SENIOR PROM have to be held at Disney World? In every other way, the evening is perfect: the hotel ballroom is decked out with life-size photographs of high school seniors set to graduate in three weeks, colorful crepe paper streamers, and a mirror ball suspended over the crowded dance floor; blue and gold lasers blast from each corner of the cavernous room; the two DJs are laying down jams that produce massive cheers as the thumping rhythms play nonstop. It’s dreamy, even for a boy.