Disney after Dark

Behind them, several dozen dolls had broken loose from the scene and were marching toward the water. Toward the boat.

The kids paddled, but the boat didn’t move any faster. It was locked onto a track and moved mechanically.

Behind them, the loose dolls banged into each other and tumbled over, but then stood up again. More and more of them leaned and wiggled and stretched and broke free from the various platforms. They marched down through the panoramas, throwing their legs forward like little soldiers, and fell over face-first into the water like lemmings.

The boat dragged slowly forward. The kids could not steer it right or left, nor move it any faster. More wide-eyed dolls fell off the platforms and plunged into the shining water. Miraculously, their arms began to stroke freestyle, and their feet to flutter kick. They were swimming.

“They’re coming right at us!” Willa shouted.

Fi

“This isn’t happening,” Maybeck said, trying to sound calm.

“Shut—up!” said Charlene. “Do something!”

There were more of the dolls now—maybe fifty or more, all swimming toward the boat, their national costumes reduced to wet rags. They converged on the boat, stacking one atop the next, higher and higher in a floating pile. One doll flopped over the rail and into the boat. Then another, and another.

The boat passed into the Asia scene. None of the kids was looking for clues now.

The dolls’ little singing mouths opened and shut, snapping viciously. A few more tumbled over and into the boat. They were climbing! As they landed, they rolled, crawled, and then pulled themselves up to standing.

One bit down onto Fi

Two other dolls attacked Philby. Maybeck pushed them off as if they were live lobsters, then picked one up and threw it. It struck the walland smashed into pieces.

The other kids cheered.

Charlene and Willa knocked the dolls off the edge of the boat before they could climb in. Fi

Maybe a hundred dolls were now swimming toward them. They were definitely losing the battle.

Fi

Maybeck shouted, “We’re losing the war, in case anyone’s keeping track!” His leg was bleeding from a bite. Willa smacked a doll back into the water. It rose to the surface, turned, and swam again for the boat.

Legions of dolls closed in from all sides.

That chorus of singing screamed in Fi

Fi

“There’s a way out of this! We’re missing something,” he cried. “Think! Everyone think!”

“An automatic weapon?” Maybeck suggested.

“A baseball bat,” Willa said, grabbing several more dolls and tossing them over the side.

“Form a circle!” Fi

Without argument the kids turned back to back, like the five points of a star.

“We must have whatever it is we need to beat them,” Fi

“Why?” asked the cynical Maybeck.

“Because good conquers evil,” Charlene a

“We’re missing something,” Fi

“An outboard motor?” Maybeck quipped. “A stick of dynamite?”

Fi

Fi

Willa heard Fi

The dolls kept advancing. Every kid bore a bruise or an open wound. They swept the dolls off the edge of the boat, but it was clearly a losing battle. Dolls jumped for the boat and held on to its sides.

Maybeck banged their little hands with his fists.

Charlene joined in singing:

“There is just one moon and one golden sun—”

Sun! Fi

“And a smile means friendship to ev’ryone—”

Smile! The sun had brought them here. The sun is often shown with a smile on its face.

Friendship, Fi

“It’s all about friendship!” Fi

“You’re out of your mind!” Maybeck roared, smashing an encroaching doll.

“A smile means friendship to everyone!” Willa cried. She considered this a moment while still battling the dolls. “We have to smile at them!”

Fi

Maybeck complained, “You have got to be kidding!”

“Smile!” Willa and Fi

And with that, all but Maybeck broke into massive fake smiles. They looked like jack-o-lanterns.

Fi

The expressions on the small faces changed from blood lust to surprise, then curiosity, and then outright affection.

The effect quickly spread through the faces of other dolls. Some stopped swimming. Others turned around.

“Keep smiling!” Fi

As the swimming dolls encountered the smiles, they fell back over the side of the boat, back into the water.

Fi

Dozens of dolls floated, lying still in the water.

It’s a Small World was going to be closed for “restoration” for quite some time.

The boat passed the giant sun at the end of the Americas scene.

Fi

17

Saturday midmorning found the sky without a cloud. A hot sun burned a yelow hole in the rich blue background, promising thunderstorms by late afternoon. The corner parking lot of Dangerous Dan’s Used Cars was marked by little red and yellow plastic flags on a string that ran from light pole to light pole, giving the school car wash the feel of a circus. A four-foot-long mock blimp and a big bunch of colorful balloons hovered fifty feet above the asphalt in an effort to draw attention.

That was also the job of the girls at the stoplight, who wore jean shorts over their bathing suits and held a sign proclaiming: GIRL SCOUT CAR WASH—$5.

Dan’s older-model Hyundais, Fords, and Buicks had been parked to the side, leaving a large area now covered with hoses, buckets, and lots of white foam, as ski

There was already a rumor going around that It’s a Small World had been vandalized the night before and would be closed for months. Police were investigating.

Fi

Fi