Kingdom Keepers the Return Book 3 Read online

  “Where are they, these friends?”

  “A long way off.” Jess wondered if Marty believed any of what he was hearing, or if he was just going along with her. People couldn’t wrap their minds around time travel. She’d experienced it, was living it, and even to her it felt more dreamlike than real.

  The Plaza teemed with hundreds of people dressed in oddly formal clothes—pressed trousers and shirts, dresses and skirts, hardly a sneaker in sight. The park guests seemed less in a hurry, though no less excited and fascinated by their surroundings. The lack of mature landscaping, the absence of anything plastic, smartphones or FitBits, made her feel like she was on a film set, absented from real life.

  The sky was perfect, too, not a speck of air pollution. When the breeze blew from a certain direction, it carried the scent of fresh oranges. Jess breathed deep; she felt both thirsty and hungry.

  “You look like you’re a long way off,” Marty said. He was looking at her thoughtfully. “Can you do anything with this information? What d’you mean by research? And when do I get to meet this Philby character?”

  “I’ll talk to the others.” He was a stranger. Could she really trust him with their plans?

  But she knew all too well what they were.

  The Keepers were going to visit the graveyard.

  DUE TO WHAT PHILBY CALLED “limited transmission distance,” the 1955 holograms disappeared a short distance outside Disneyland. This vanishing threatened their survival, so as holograms, the Keepers remained within the confines of the park. To leave, they had to wait till closing time, at which point they lost their holograms and gained their real bodies.

  * * *

  A day, a night, and another day had passed since Jess’s meeting with Marty, hours spent by the Keepers organizing and planning. By the time the group piled into Wayne’s old pickup truck that night, the air blew chilly on a light wind, car exhaust filled the streets, and apprehension cloaked the Keepers.

  Wayne drove them through a Hollywood of yester-year in his red Ford pickup. The three boys were in the truck’s open bed, hair whipping, eyes wide open. If Disneyland was the G-rated 1950s, Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard was off the charts. Older women dressed as schoolgirls in short plaid skirts and white kneesocks leaned against buildings. Young women the same age as the Keepers wore scoop-necked party dresses and black patent leather shoes with ankle socks. The men, young and old, had on suits, fedoras, and boater hats. The boys their age had buzz cuts and deep tans. People of all ages smoked cigarettes and laughed loudly.

  Bushy-topped palm trees lined one side of Sunset Boulevard. A fire-engine-red city bus with a white top choked along behind them. Cool old cars—old only to the Keepers—drove slowly, windows down. A pair of mangy-looking dogs crossed the street; the Keeper boys heard Wayne tell the girls, inside the cab, that they were coyotes.

  Most of all, the signs stood out. Big, small, electric, neon, hand-painted. Everywhere, signs. If they could have spoken, it would have been a cacophony. They competed for one’s attention at all elevations, barking out brands, begging for business. Bikini-clad women and T-shirted, muscular men pushed products of every kind: movies, watches, liquor, cigarettes. Restaurants and businesses shouted their names in colorful fonts, trying hard to impress. There were NO PARKING signs, street signs, and speed limit signs. The onslaught of visual noise reminded Finn of Las Vegas or New York’s Times Square in modern days.

  Finn didn’t want it to end, but the moment the truck turned into the hills, the visual noise went silent. There wasn’t a sign in sight. Just small houses, windows dark, palm trees, and plants of every variety—flowers, vines, shrubs, cacti—swarming wild or held back by a gardener’s vigilant trowel. The smell of fresh-cut grass battled the perfume of bougainvillea. Within a block, Sunset Boulevard might as well have been miles away.

  Wayne ground a few gears, chugged the pickup up the hill, and turned left into a street marked DEAD END. Deader than most people knew, Finn thought; the Keepers’ destination was a certain private cemetery.

  * * *

  The suffocating silence enveloped Willa. Though a city hum wafted up the hill from Sunset like a thin fog and the occasional confused or angry dog released a volley of complaints somewhere in the distance, none of this could dispel her sense of this place’s emptiness. Pale lamps burned from inside a few houses, but these seemed more like set decoration than signs of life. It felt as if an evacuation order had been issued, that residents had fled suddenly and perhaps permanently.

  “Do we know where, exactly?” she asked Philby.

  Wayne had killed the headlights, leaving Philby to study his crinkled road map, using the truck cab’s faint interior light. The pickup was parked at the side of the road, under a canopy of tree limbs and vines. The Keepers had agreed that it was essential to stay hidden.

  Philby pointed to the end of the narrow lane and down the hill into an inky reservoir, jet-black and unnerving.

  “Not really…” Willa said.

  “Afraid so.”

  The Keepers gathered their equipment from the back of the pickup: flashlights, two shovels, a cloth tarpaulin. The shovels were made of heavy oak and iron, the flashlights bulky and cumbersome, both different from those sold in the future. Maybeck collected three road flares, the phosphorus kind that looked like sticks of dynamite. Wayne carried a portrait-size mirror, saying only, “I hear ghosts don’t like mirrors.” Philby hung a length of chain around his neck like a long scarf. He told the others he’d read a series of books called Lockwood & Co. in which chains were used as boundaries between ghosts and mortals. It couldn’t hurt to try.

  “Just because Jess dreamed it,” Willa said, “doesn’t mean we’re going to run into trouble. But the news-paper articles supported this. If Wayne’s right about the weather, then her dream is in the past now.”

  “It’s a cemetery, Willa. Think about that. People, digging in a cemetery. What do you think is the best that can happen?”

  Willa nodded. “Yeah, okay. Every precaution. I get it.” Being a Keeper had shown her that anything was possible.

  * * *

  The group descended a steep hill of knee-high dry grass. Willa slipped, but Philby caught her. Maybeck and Charlene trekked hand in hand. Amanda and Jess held hands too, steadying each other. Finally, they reached a once decorative, now rusted, wrought-iron fence encircling an area about the size of a baseball diamond. Wayne flooded the area with light.

  They stood on a flat section of ground, a small grassy meadow. Below and to both sides could be seen roofs, a chimney on one, a lighted window or two. The houses were quite close, easily within earshot.

  Inside the fence, the grass gave way to sprays of wilted weeds, tipped over like bowing children. Inter-spersed among the clumps, the old gray gravestones struggled to stand. A tree had taken root in the nearest corner, so long ago that it absorbed part of the fence, which ran through its formidable trunk and emerged on the other side.

  “Freaky,” Charlene whispered.

  A gate hung open to their right, clinging to one remaining hinge.

  “This is the place,” Wayne said. “Let’s go.”

  “Might I suggest,” Philby said, “that two of us work with the chain? Finn and me. We will stay inside it as much as possible while the rest of you stand guard, two on each of the three remaining sections of fence. We’ll use the flares only if necessary, as there’s a huge risk of wildfire. Whatever happens, if you light a flare, do not drop it. Keep hold and stomp out any hot ash that falls.”

  Finn blinked. He wasn’t leading, at least not for the moment. It felt odd, as if Philby had borrowed something without permission. He, Finn, was the one who made most of the plans, and though he didn’t mind sharing responsibilities, a degree of competition always hovered between him and Philby. He briefly recoiled. Hopefully nobody saw.

  Nobody did but Amanda, who saw everything to do with him.

  “The shovels and tarps?” Willa asked, holding one of the tools.
<
br />   “Once Finn and I find the graves that were messed with, we’ll decide what to do. First, we make sure this place isn’t haunted.”

  “You’re getting carried away,” Wayne said. “Such imagination!”

  “We’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe,” Philby replied. “We take nothing for granted.”

  Wayne nodded. The flashlight beam dipped along with his head and caught two yellow eyes peering back at them from the middle of the fenced area. Charlene let out a kind of squeaky scream that sounded like a dog getting kicked. The eyes vanished, and everyone heard an animal scampering away.

  “Coyote,” Wayne said. “And that’s all!”

  “Let’s get this over with,” Philby said.

  Everyone split up to assume his or her post. Philby and Finn created a semicircle of chain inside the gate, stepped into it, and redistributed the links into a full circle in front of them. They moved this way into the heart of the cemetery, careful to keep their bodies contained within the circle of iron.

  “How do you know this Lockwood book you read was right?” Finn asked.

  “I don’t,” Philby said. “And I don’t believe in ghosts either. But you know…”

  “Yeah, believe me: I know.”

  “There’s fresh dirt closer to me,” Amanda said, shining a flashlight.

  “Some over here as well,” Maybeck called in a hushed voice. “Looks like a grave.”

  Jess stood a few yards from Wayne. He blinked, concerned by her rigidity. “You okay, Jessica?”

  When she failed to move, he tried again, a little louder.

  Jess moved her head slowly in Wayne’s direction. “He’s like Jack Skellington, only human and way creepier.”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “He oversaw the digging,” she said, very confident. “It was him and at least two others.”

  “Are you okay?” he repeated.

  “I’m having a moment.”

  “I’m not sure what that means,” Wayne said. His eyes were wide and frightened.

  “I can see him out there,” Jess said. “Faintly. Not like a ghost; more like the kind of thing you see when you shut your eyes after a bright light. You might call it an afterglow.”

  “Energy,” Wayne said.

  “Yes! Energy. Like that. Psychic energy, I’m thinking.”

  “Doesn’t sound good.”

  “It wasn’t vandalism,” Jess said. “Not like we read about. What I’m seeing is so close to my dream. But it isn’t the same. Not exactly. And I think that means it happened. I think it really happened.”

  “Guys!” Wayne called out, slightly louder. “Jack be nimble. Easy does it. Jess here is having a moment.”

  Philby waved. He and Finn had reached the area of disturbed dirt spotted by Amanda. It was a full grave of heaped, raw earth. Philby bent down and picked some up. Freshly dug, it crumbled in his hand, still a bit moist.

  “This is not right,” Philby said.

  “No kidding,” Finn agreed. A chilly breeze swept across his skin, raising gooseflesh. “You feel that?”

  “That would be: yes.”

  “What do you—?”

  “Incoming!” Maybeck called out sharply. “Tree!” He muttered a string of bad words.

  Philby and Finn bolted back, eyes darting up. The towering tree was only a few yards away. It looked to Finn as if a branch was loose and swaying in the wind. Two branches, now that he looked more carefully. No, four, he realized.

  There was no wind.

  “Legs,” Finn whispered dryly. Not that he meant to speak softly; his voice wouldn’t go any louder.

  “Interesting,” Philby said.

  “Really? That’s all you’ve got? ‘Interesting’? How about ‘freaky’? The cold is no coincidence.”

  “Agreed.”

  The legs belonged to two figures—men? Finn wondered—sitting on a lower limb. Swinging their legs. Along with the chill came a putrefied smell that reminded Finn of the time his father had found a dead rabbit, a wild one, in a pile of lumber in their backyard. It was just splotchy fur and the shape of something that resembled an ear. Another something was most definitely a rabbit’s foot, all out of luck. It was the smell of something scary and sad, something gone and something else remaining. It was death, he thought, or a particular thing that came along with it, like how a long shadow follows a light.

  The two men came out of the tree with the ease of mountain lions, nimble and weightless as they hit the ground. But from there it was all awkward, stiff-legged movement, as if they were wearing knee braces and their arms were wrapped tightly to prevent the elbows from bending.

  “Chain,” Philby said, never taking his eyes off them. He toed the metal links, pushing out and extending the circumference to give him and Finn and the Fairlies more room inside. “Check where the ends meet. Make sure they overlap.”

  Finn did. And he raised his shovel like a weapon. “Excuse me, but do you see any eyes?”

  Philby answered with his flashlight. Both Philby and Finn screamed at the same time. Then they turned and ran out of the chain circle, not in the direction of the gate but precisely 180 degrees away from the two…

  “Zombies!” Finn shouted.

  “Flare!” called Philby.

  “Catch!” shouted Maybeck. Despite his terror, he vaulted the fence and ran toward his friends.

  Philby missed the flare. It landed in the weeds to his right. “Dang!”

  Finn stopped, hesitated a moment, and then sprinted back to Philby’s side. He dug through the weeds to Philby’s left.

  The two strangers walked stiffly forward.

  “No eyes, right?”

  “Right,” Philby answered. “And dirty as all get-out.”

  “Grave diggers.”

  “You said that, I didn’t.”

  Red-white light flashed all around them, defining shadows and turning the landscape surreal. Maybeck had lit a flare and was holding it out like a sword aimed at the two men. The disgusting things trudged on toward the three boys as if an enormous weight pushed down on their shoulders.

  “No teeth.” Finn.

  “I noticed.” Philby.

  Maybeck swore.

  Philby located the missing flare.

  “What if they aren’t afraid of fire?” Maybeck asked.

  “Then we burn them,” Philby answered, “and hope they reconsider.”

  “ARE THEY…ALIVE?” Maybeck asked. “How is that even possible?”

  “Technically,” Professor Philby replied, “I think Finn nailed it. I believe the correct term is undead. Soulless creatures. Zombies.”

  “Stop!” Finn shouted at the two approaching figures.

  They didn’t. Finn swung his shovel and hit one of them. Hard. The thing stumbled to one knee, but got up again, unfazed.

  “This is not good,” Maybeck said. He thrust forward with the fire-spitting road flare.

  The two men stopped.

  “That’s better,” said Philby, and lit the flare he’d recovered as well. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  The two things stood ten feet away, unmoving. Unblinking.

  “They…aren’t…breathing,” Finn muttered.

  “Get back! Go away!” Maybeck said, lunging bravely forward with the flare. The undead did not move. “They don’t exactly seem terrified,” he said to Philby and Finn in a low whisper.

  “Well, I am,” Finn said. He was the only one without a flare, and felt the absence powerfully. “Did you see how hard I hit him?”

  Philby addressed the two figures. “You’re guarding the graveyard?”

  One of the two undead groaned. It sounded almost as if he were trying to speak.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Philby said. “For whom? A businessman?”

  The man Finn had struck shook his head no.

  “A skinny man in a dark suit!” Jess shouted. By now everyone on the other side of the fence was leaning forward, straining to hear every word.

  The ot
her undead turned toward Jess.

  And then he started moving through the grass toward her.

  “Stop!” Philby shouted. The thing was unresponsive.

  With Finn’s attention divided, the other weirdo grabbed hold of the shovel and yanked it from Finn. Maybeck attacked, waving the flare. The flame touched the silent man’s clothing. Nothing happened.

  “Dude,” Maybeck said in a panic, “I think he’s fireproof.”

  The grave digger tossed the shovel aside.

  Philby, out in front of the undead staggering around the fence, drove him back with the flare. The creature wailed, still focused on Jess.

  Charlene and Willa jumped the low fence and boldly closed in behind the thing threatening Finn and Maybeck. The girls barked rude comments, trying to distract it. Maybeck used the moment to try to set fire to the creature. Again, to no effect.

  Jess shouted, “Who did this to you? Who changed you? The skeleton?”

  The grave digger roared, chin to the sky.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Philby cried.

  “Immediately, if not sooner,” said Wayne, who’d raced back down the hill as the flares turned the treetops orange.

  The Keepers backed away from the grave diggers in unison.

  “On three,” Finn directed. Even in the midst of chaos, it felt right to be leading again. The confidence was clear in his voice. “These things are slow. We turn and hightail it to the truck. Pair up! No one flies solo,” he said, nodding at Maybeck. “And no one gets left behind.”

  He waited for someone to argue. When there were no objections, he began counting. “One…Two…”

  “I HAVE THE SUPPORT YOU NEED. With your help, we can rid the park of what I’m calling the radical Fairlies.”

  Joe had come around from behind his desk. He wore a blue-and-gold Hawaiian shirt, shorts, and leather sandals. A faded friendship bracelet hugged his left wrist, right where most executives of a large international company would have worn a watch. “Your support team will need some instruction and leadership, but I think you’ll find there’s no lack of confidence among them. You won’t need to be too rah-rah.”