Disney after Dark

“So?”

“Remember, I need you to be honest. That’s more important to me than anything else.”

“Mom…”

“I’d rather not involve your father, but if you insist on lying to me, I most certainly will.” She paused and then said, “Your clothes are dirtier in the morning than they are when you go to bed. A week ago, they were damp and smelled like…well…awful.”

Evidence! He hadn’t thought about this aspect of his adventures. He had tried to keep himself looking the same: taking showers in the morning to get the dirt off. Yet he had just tossed his clothes into the hamper. Now he saw the stupidity of that.

“It’s not what you think, Mom.”

“Enlighten me.”

“I haven’t lied to you. Not exactly.”

“You either have or haven’t. There’s no in-between when it comes to the truth.”

“I have not snuck out of the house. I promise.”

He saw a tremendous relief in her eyes, but still her voice quavered, “Fi

“I swear. Mom, I have not snuck out of the house. I told you I wouldn’t, and I haven’t.”

“Fi

“I have worn my clothes to bed a few times in the past couple of weeks. If they look more wrinkled in the morning than they did when I went to bed—”

“Wrinkled? They’re filthy! Wet. With holes in them. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t sound like the truth to me. Let’s start over, one more time. Please, trust me. You can tell me whatever it is.

Whether or not we involve your father…well, we’ll see.”

“It stays between the two of us?” Fi

“It stays between the two of us,” she said.

“Okay, but you’re not going to like it.”

“Fi

Fi

The evidence had busted him; he needed to explain it without getting himself into more trouble.

He said, “Something crazy happened when they made the DHIs out of us—the five kids.” He watched her face grow curious and concerned. “When we go to sleep, we aren’t exactly asleep.

We wake up in Disney World…as DHIs—as holograms.” Now she seemed to be fighting a smile.

“Trouble is, whatever happens there, carries over here. So when I get all dirty there, I end up dirty back here. But you can’t tell Dad, remember? You promised.”

For a moment it didn’t appear she was breathing. Then, her lips unpuckered, her nostrils flared, and she gri

Fi

She tried to compose herself, lost it to a creeping smile, and then suddenly grew very serious as Fi

“The burn you saw on my arm? A laser fired at me inside the park, at night. I have a bruise on my leg where a doll bit me.”

“A doll?” There was that twitching smile again.

“It’s a Small World. One of those dolls.”

“I see.”

He couldn’t understand it. She didn’t believe him.

“You said you wanted the truth,” he reminded her. Maybe she thought he was losing his mind.

“No doctors,” Fi

“You actually believe this?”

“How do you explain my muddy clothes? Huh, Mom? I am not sneaking out. I knew you wouldn’t believe me!”

His reasoning clearly perplexed her.

“Let me get this straight,” she said.

He interrupted. “You won’t get it straight. Because we haven’t gotten it straight—the five of us.

You can’t stop it, Mom. I can’t stop it. None of us can. It just happens. And until we solve—There’s stuff that’s got to happen before this is going to stop.”

“Fi

“You promised you wouldn’t tell Dad.”

“But I thought…I don’t know what I thought.”

“You promised. Just remember you promised.” He added, “The wet clothes. Tom Sawyer Island. You know that lake around it?”

“This is not fu

“’There’s no in-between when it comes to the truth,'” he said, quoting her. “If you can’t handle the truth, it’s not my fault.”

“Fi

Fi

If Fi

Philby was the kind of smart that made other school kids ask him to do their homework. By now he would have done as much Internet research on the ride as possible. They’d both ridden it dozens of times. But climbing around the ride at night was altogether different, as they’d learned the hard way at It’s a Small World and Splash Mountain.

They stood at the entrance to the ride. Moonlight glinted on the tracks. Fi

“You got it.”

They were surrounded by maybe ten thousand rocks.

“Anything I should know before we start?” Fi

Philby said, “There are security cameras. A lot of them. Some are infrared and can see at night. And it’s like Splash Mountain: we can’t leave the track. That’s all we’ve got to worry about.”

Fi

The boys started down the roller coaster’s track. It rose and twisted and turned, extremely tricky to walk. They both wore their 3-D glasses and looked everywhere possible for clues. Philby, in the lead, occasionally stopped and listened and looked around. It made Fi

They continued along the empty roller coaster track, sometimes walking almost crablike.

They made it through two long climbs without incident. The roller coaster rose higher and higher.

“Where are we?” Fi

“A little over halfway, I’m thinking.”

They stopped to rest. The moonlight shone down onto the red rocks. Neither boy saw any letters written on the stone.

Fi

“That’s a sick joke.”

They entered a canyon with steep walls. It grew darker the farther in they went. Fi

The boys lowered themselves down a short drop in the tracks as the canyon widened. The scene was part desert floor, with cactuses and mining equipment, and part rock canyon. Massive stone walls rose on all sides.

“Too cool!” Philby said, lifting and dropping his glasses onto his nose and pointing.

At first, Fi

But then he looked more closely. The letters: T, P, N. Each letter appeared to be engraved on its own rock in the ride’s rockslide.

Fi

“Way to go! Okay, that’s it,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We’re closer to the end than the start of the ride. It’s over this next rise. We’ll get off the tracks there without being seen by the cameras.”

“Okay. Let’s just go,” Fi

They struggled up the roller coaster track, for it was suddenly much slipperier than before.

“Almost there!” Philby called from the top.