Kingdom Keepers: The Syndrome Read online

  I stared at her, long and hard. “That can’t be. You must have read him wrong. He’s just never been fully deprogrammed like we thought.”

  Mattie shook her head slowly. Defiantly. “No, Mandy. He’s on orders. He believes Maleficent told him to do this.”

  “But that’s impossible. She’s dead. Maleficent is dead.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought, too.”

  JESS

  The forty-eight hours Amanda had been gone felt more like a week. Returning to Disneyland after hours, hoping for inspiration to explain my strange dreams, I entered the dark wood interior of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Its look matched with my dream from the Dream Suite. I glanced again at the sketch on the back of the Chick-fil-A receipt, hoping to connect a significance to Amanda’s possible upcoming capture.

  I walked through the attraction’s short queue on tiptoe, hoping to see something that would connect my dream to reality. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride was one of the original Opening Day attractions, which meant that the ride system was one of the most basic in the park. Ride vehicles fashioned to look like antique cartoon cars went through the ride on flat ground, guided only by a thin metal rail. So long as I avoided tripping over the rail, I would be able to make a quick escape should I run into any trouble.

  I stepped off the loading platform onto the ground, prepared to run if an alarm went off. The attraction stayed silent, save for the blood rushing in my ears. I just hoped I hadn’t set off a silent alarm.

  The old attraction was eerie and quiet. The ride hadn’t been updated much in the past sixty years, which meant that the characters were closer to cardboard cutouts than the moving, talking Audio-Animatronics found in the newer attractions. I bypassed the first room, a library, and moved down a dark hallway. Above me, two-dimensional weasels painted in garish colors hung from similarly styled chandeliers, paused mid-swing.

  I turned a corner and found myself facing a legion of cardboard cops, glowing menacingly under the emergency lighting. Moving past them, I made my way through a field of painted foliage before arriving at the wharf.

  Looking around, I realized I wasn’t seeing anything that reminded me of my dream.

  Something had drawn me here. Something was important about it. Squinting at my paper in the dim lighting, I then studied the scene around me.

  I turned and walked back through the scene. I counted the crate stacks and checked behind them for a written clue, some evidence of why my dream had led me here.

  Nothing.

  I counted the slats on the dock, the positioning of lights in the background. I pointed my phone into the darkness on either side of the track, looking for anything out of place. But it wasn’t until I explored the tunnel for the third time that I recalled the block lettering of CAT. No cats in Mr. Toad’s ride. I had to be in the wrong place.

  Voices from the next room interrupted my train of thought. I scrambled to hide behind a stack of crates around the corner. The Overtakers were annoying, but they weren’t stupid. If they were here for me, they’d be stealthy—as would Disney Security. That left Disney employees, Cast Members, or Imagineers.

  The voices grew louder, and then stopped with the sound of a low rumble. I cautiously peeked out from behind the crate, grateful for once that I was not in DHI form; there was no glow to give me away.

  I saw Imagineer Joe Garlington and a woman in a wheelchair. The rumbling had been the sound of the wheelchair moving across the dock. What a late hour to be showing someone around!

  “Has this anything here changed?” Joe asked the elderly woman, his voice echoing through the tunnel.

  The woman took her time before replying.

  “Not that I can see. But it doesn’t mean I’m correct.” She sounded hesitant as she probed him. “Have you considered why or how pieces of the attraction might change?”

  “Honestly, we can’t make sense of it.”

  “A prank of some kind?” the woman asked. “I know how you Imagineers are always tricking the Cast Members.”

  “It’s not internal. We’re certain of that. They’ve just started. Little things. A piece of paper in a window display. A photograph hung where there wasn’t one.”

  “Maybe some of the retired Imagineers?”

  “Well, I suppose that could be. But it wouldn’t be any fun to do if you weren’t gauging your victim’s reaction. No one is testing us about it.”

  “It couldn’t be the villains, could it? They’re taken care of once and for all. Correct?”

  Joe didn’t answer, which seemed strange to me. I wasn’t alone.

  “Joe,” she said, “it’s over, correct?”

  “This is Disney,” was all he said.

  They moved on, passing within inches of me. I sat still, not daring to breathe. My legs tensed. I willed my figure to blend into the darkness, praying they didn’t turn around.

  I stayed in my crouch. Five minutes. Ten. After fifteen minutes of silence, I stood, my calves screaming. I left by the nearest emergency exit. I’d come for one thing; I was leaving with another.

  This is Disney.

  Joe Garlington wasn’t convinced the Overtakers were gone for good.

  The battle we’d fought so hard to win wasn’t over.

  LUOWSKI

  I paced in back of the old apartment buildings near the abandoned church. I didn’t have to think about it anymore. I’d come here so many times already. Spying on Weaver, hoping to gain information about Whitman and the Kingdom Losers.

  Every time I laid an eye on Weaver I wondered what she’d done to me on that ship. I could destroy her easily. I’d been given the powers. But she was far more useful as a link to the others.

  I felt impatient. Something was up. Something was different. I forced myself to shake off the unease, but it wouldn’t leave me.

  “Maintain control,” I muttered.

  “But you aren’t in control, Greg…You’ve never been in control,” whispered the cold voice of a woman.

  Not just any woman. Her!

  I whipped around. And around. Nowhere. She was in my head. No, she was in the glass of the window in front of me. A pair of icy green eyes. I went as cold as that voice before staggering forward and falling onto my knees. Maleficent. Inescapable.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, expecting her snarl. She’d gone silent. It’s own kind of torture.

  “I…I’m trying,” I gasped like a crazy man. “I have a plan! Tonight, I’ll crush him tonight. He will be no more. This girl will help me. I will make her help me.”

  Again: the dreaded silence.

  Where the eyes had been I saw a massive boy of eighteen with red hair and alien green eyes. Me. I stood, glancing around to make sure no one else had seen me. Furious, I glared at my own eyes and they mocked me. I felt slightly unglued. What was happening to me?

  I swung out and punched the reflection with my full force. Glass shattered. Shards rained to the concrete, sounding like broken icicles.

  A mother and her child hurried past on the sidewalk. The little girl tugged on her mom’s hand and pointed at me.

  “Look away now, Mia. He’s…crazy!” She thought she’d whispered to her daughter, but I’d heard. She was lucky I didn’t make her pay for that comment.

  I let my hatred of Whitman own me instead. Ever since freshman year, I’d despised him. He made Amanda like him without even trying. No matter how I pushed him, he didn’t give. Not like the other kids. He always gave me the feeling he thought he was better than me. And then his superhero image with the Kingdom Losers made him a big deal all over school. I joined Maleficent because of him—to put Finn in his place. Her YouTube was genius. Impossible to resist.

  The YouTube videos had proven irresistible. Her glowing green eyes she gave to me. The promise and delivery of unexpected powers. Later, after I’d let her put her spell on me and a few others, people had feared us. I no longer felt pain the same way. What Maleficent promised, she followed through with, unlike a million other grown-ups I knew.

&n
bsp; I recalled her words to us, before she’d been taken by them. “The end is near. The beginning is only a beginning.”

  Whatever that meant.

  The sound of a door opening caught my attention. I narrowed my eyes and backed into the shadow of the church dome. I hoped no one had heard the window shatter.

  A shadow came closer, stretched and thin. A girl. Weaver, I could tell by her silhouette; I had followed her so many times. Too many times. I knew she was my ticket to the Losers, that she was all I had, but the voice and the eyes in the glass and my bloody hand told me it was time to do something, not just follow.

  I jumped out. She screamed, but I cupped her mouth and heaved her against the brick wall of the church.

  “Where is he?” I demanded, pressing her harder against the apartment wall.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’d better.” I grabbed her bare elbow as she tried to swing at me. I suddenly felt—empty. Drained. I released her. She tried to escape but I threw her to the wall.

  I heard a thud. Her head on the brick.

  She sagged slowly to the burned grass and folded down into a heap.

  “Get up!”

  She wasn’t moving.

  “I said: Get up!” I kicked her. Hard enough she’d remember it.

  She didn’t move.

  “No one’s going to save you now, Weaver. No one’s going to save Whitman either! You hear me?”

  I didn’t think she did. I was beginning to freak.

  “Hey! What are you doing there?” A short, slender girl approached with a boy on her arm. They started running toward me.

  I took off. People didn’t take kindly to boys hurting girls, even for the right reason.

  They’d didn’t know Greg Luowski, the boy with the green eyes. They didn’t know me.

  AMANDA

  “I can come in with you, if you like?” Wanda spoke from behind the wheel of her car. We were back at the Whitman’s house. My third visit in three days.

  “You’ve helped so much already. Jelly says we should keep Finn hydrated. Wet sponges in his mouth. She says when Terry was in SBS he even drank from a straw once or twice despite being totally out…” I trailed off, fingering invisible figures onto the faux-suede car interior. My stupid eyes released tears at the same time, making my feelings impossible to hide.

  “Hang in there. We know this is bigger than Finn. We can assume by the fact they aren’t answering that it involves them all. We’re doing the right thing. One at a time.” Wanda pulled me toward her, battling the seat belt. We did an awkward hug, me with my head on her shoulder.

  “I’m so scared for him,” I said. “For them all! It’s been days!”

  “Go on. Talk to her. I’ll wait here. I’m right here.”

  “Thank you!” I gathered the plastic bag from the car floor. I was off.

  Knowingly repeating a mistake is one definition of insanity and was not something I felt comfortable doing. Maybe it was because of my different (think: lost) childhood, my being forced to grow up so quickly, but I’d also learned mistakes were a useful, even necessary, part of figuring things out. Approaching the Whitmans’ front door for the third time was no cakewalk for me.

  It was up to me to negotiate a truce with the Whitmans.

  I had stopped trusting all adults a long time ago. Wayne and Wanda weren’t exactly exceptions, but I trusted them more than I would admit.

  Finn’s parents were not exceptions. For me, knocking on this door was asking for trouble. The question wasn’t if, but how much.

  “Please, Amanda!” Mrs. Whitman greeted me with a look of disdain. “We’ve had enough.”

  “He might drink from a straw if you offer it. Gatorade is best.” I handed her the bag. It contained two bottles of red Gatorade and a box of flex-straws. “He needs a damp sponge, water; you run it around his lips and over his tongue every hour. It’s best if you put bright bulbs in all the lamps of his room, maybe bring in extras and leave them on at all times. It helps stimulate rapid eye movement.”

  Tears sprang to Mrs. Whitman’s eyes. She showed me inside.

  I whispered to Mrs. Whitman in order to keep Mr. Whitman from overhearing. “Which floor?” Finn had moved to the ground level the year before, but I didn’t want to seem presumptuous to know that.

  “Upstairs.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “She’s terribly upset. Her room is also upstairs.”

  “She needs to leave the house tonight. Can you have her stay with a friend?”

  Mrs. Whitman turned sharply. “What’s that mean?”

  “I think you know. I think it happened before.”

  “That beast of a boy, force-feeding…” She half sat, half collapsed onto the living room couch. She sank her head into her hands, her back shaking with the force of her sobs. Maybe she’d been waiting to get that out, because she continued for several long minutes.

  “Why is this happening to us?” She lifted her head.

  I took her literally. A mistake. “There’s some evidence that the boy, Greg Luowski, is under a spell again.”

  She glared at me. An affront. It felt like she’d punched me.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “I do not need all the voodoo-hoodoo you kids are so obsessed with.”

  “I understand.”

  “No. You have no idea. None.” She took a moment. Gathered herself. “Amanda, I’m sorry. That was unfair and uncalled for on my part. I apologize. I know you care.”

  “Very much,” I said.

  “But at your age…never mind.”

  “All I want…all I want, is to help Finn. To help him get better. To protect him. To keep him out of the hospital.”

  Her eyes brimmed with more tears. “That won’t be good for him, will it?”

  “If your husband could talk to Philby’s mother, his parents, I think he might believe them more than me.”

  “I’m not sure he’ll do that.”

  “He has to!”

  “That’s a matter of opinion, young lady. He’s Finn’s father. You can’t understand the agony of sitting, waiting. It gets worse, too. There are…unspeakable things. But you need to earn my trust if you hope to be included in any of that. Believe me, we are terrified of what’s happening.”

  “A sponge. A glass. Maybe some ice?”

  “I have to talk to my husband first. He’s not going to like this.”

  “I would offer to leave, but you need me. I can help you. I have…well, I’m strong. I know I don’t look it, but I’m very strong. Greg Luowski is afraid of me, and he’s not expecting me to be here. That’s our advantage.”

  “You make it sound like a battle, Amanda.”

  “If there was time, I’d try to sugarcoat it,” I said. “But there isn’t, and this is a battle. Or it will be. And it’s coming tonight.”

  I climbed the stairs timidly. Finn was up there. Vulnerable. Half dead. Stuck in a limbo that no one, not even the Imagineers, fully understood. There was no science to explain the transfer of consciousness. I couldn’t scare Mrs. Whitman with talk of such things, but I wore the knowledge like a stone around my neck.

  “He’s not happy about this,” Mrs. Whitman said. She didn’t mean Finn.

  “But I can stay?”

  “I wasn’t about to tell him about that boy. And we can’t call the police until he actually does something. Do you have proof of any of this? Anything at all?”

  “No. I could be wrong, but I’m not. If that makes any sense.”

  “Not to me, it doesn’t.”

  “No. I didn’t expect it would.”

  She swung open the door. I’d seen this upstairs bedroom before—there had been meetings here. We would huddle around his computer or talk strategy, sometimes for hours. Always with the door open, always with Mrs. Whitman bringing snacks and making conversation. So I knew what to expect. I knew what I’d see.

  And still I fell to the floor, bawling. Nothing had prepared me for seeing Finn in SBS. I
felt like a baby. An idiot. A fool. But I couldn’t stop sobbing. Mrs. Whitman placed her hand on my back, and I cried all the harder. No one ever gave me sympathy like that. Jess could console me, and did, but she was my age, my friend. Having an adult like Wanda or Mrs. Whitman actually care devastated me.

  Taking big, shuddering breaths, I pulled myself together and drew closer.

  Finn looked peaceful, but too still. I knew him; he was always filled with energy and determination. Always moving, he epitomized the deep thinking, overly aware leader he’d proven himself to be. Wayne had molded him, starting with a quiet, introverted boy who had a love of Disney, a little sister he adored, and parents from whom he felt himself growing away. We’d talked for hours about all this—and more. I knew him in ways Mrs. Whitman never would, and she knew him as only a mother could.

  It explained why, when I looked over at her, she was crying, too. Then we both started laughing nervously, self-consciously. Two people cherishing the same boy, made sad by his present state.

  We worked as a team after that, Mrs. Whitman’s animosity washed away by our shared tears. My inbred suspicion of adults melted away, too. While Mrs. Whitman dabbed Finn’s lips and tried to provoke the sleeping boy to open his mouth, I held a face towel below his chin, collecting the runoff. At first, our effort was a failure. The water cascading down Finn’s chin made him look pitiful, infantile. I closed my eyes, unable to watch.

  It wasn’t until Mrs. Whitman pulled the sponge away that we had our first real success: Finn’s lips twitched and kissed, as if reaching for the fresh water. His mother stabbed the sponge into his mouth, but then backed off, barely wetting his lips. Bit by bit, drop by drop, the slumbering Finn took to the idea of water. Within minutes, the sponge was making sucking noises.

  I prepared the Gatorade. We slipped him a substitute. I provoked him to “Sip!” and eventually, after a good number of tries and another fifteen minutes, Finn drank an ounce or two of the red lifesaver. It wasn’t much, probably not enough, but I was elated and Mrs. Whitman was beside herself with joy.

  It was late and getting later by the time she could no longer contain her delight and sought out her husband to share the news.