Disney after Dark

The next scene looked like Yellowstone Park. Geysers spit into the air. There were pools of water in luminous shades of green and yellow.

The ground beneath them shook. Philby touched the rail to see if it was vibrating, meaning that the ride had turned itself on. He shook his head.

“Maybe it’s just an effect. You know: Yellowstone. Earthquakes and stuff like that.”

“I’d have read about that,” Philby declared. “I don’t think so.”

The ground shook even more furiously, and now Fi

A few yards down the track, Fi

“Philby!”

“Yeah, I feel it too,” Philby answered.

With his legs going numb, Fi

“Maleficent,” Philby answered.

“Yeah.”

Water at the top of the geysers turned first to ice and then snow, which fell thickly.

Fi

Philby stopped them both and said, “Listen to that!”

Like something cracking apart, Fi

“We’ve got to hurry!” Philby barked out.

“Hurry? I can barely move.”

The cracking sound grew frighteningly loud. It came from the scene behind them—the Utah desert scene they’d just left.

They cautiously climbed back up the small rise in the track, to look back from where they’d just come. They peered over the rails, following that loud cracking sound.

Across the way, rock splintered around the enormous dinosaur fossil.

“That’s a T. rex,” Philby whispered. “Forty feet long. Eighteen feet high. Fifty-eight teeth. Runs forty miles an hour.”

Fi

The two boys watched in horror as, one by one, the bones vibrated and broke free from the rock. They did not fall. They did not break. They held together as one…giant…

“Run!” Philby shouted.

A cloud of dust rose behind them as the ground trembled with a rhythmic clomp, clomp, clomp.

Footsteps. Big footsteps.

All at once, the T. rex skeleton came over the hill, following the tracks. The thing was huge.

The dinosaur had all its bones, with no eyes, no skin, no flesh—but all its teeth.

Philby shouted, “Keep ru

Fi

Clomp! Clomp! Clomp!

The ground shook so violently that Fi

The bones clattered as the dinosaur charged. The boys climbed the next rise and jumped over. The beast moved faster.

Fi

Fi

The track leveled off here, giving the dinosaur the advantage. It snapped and caught a piece of Fi

The track curved ahead. Fi

“Physics class!” shouted Philby back at him. “The track is banked.”

“What do I care?”

The T. rex stumbled and lost a few yards. The boys hurried up the slight rise into the steep turn.

“The track is banked!” Philby repeated.

Fi

“Come and get it!” he shouted at the T. rex.

He waved his arms like a matador taunting the bull.

The huge mass of rattling bones, surrounded by a cloud of dust, bore down on him. Faster and faster it came.

Fi

The T. rex charged.

Just as the skeleton’s teeth were a foot away from his chest, Fi

The beast faltered, lurched, and tipped to its left when the track suddenly curved to the right.

The bones of an outer leg splintered and snapped at the knee. The monster rolled, broke through the plywood of the scene’s mountain backdrop, and tumbled over the side.

Fi

Philby, who had also stopped, looked down at Fi

“Wait til they see that on their cameras!”

The boys turned and hurried off into the night.

27

Since all of the kids were hungry, they left the apartment together and reconvened at Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Cafe. Fi

Maybeck surprised the others by cooking up decent-tasting turkey burgers. They stayed in the kitchen area and kept the lights off so as not to be seen. Exit signs and a few overhead security lights provided the only illumination. Fi

Philby placed a paper napkin in front of them.

“This is everything we have,” he explained, jotting down the letters they’d acquired by following the clues in the fable:

F M E Y I R S T P N

“They must spell something,” Charlene said.

“If I was at a computer…If I had an anagram generator,” Philby said.

He wrote the letters out again, this time leaving more room around each one. He tore the letters apart. A few minutes later they had Scrabble letters made out of a torn napkin.

The kids studied the letters, calling out words they saw.

“MEN,” Charlene said.

“Leave that to you!” Willa quipped.

Philby set the letters aside.

Fi

He pulled these out as well.

“FRY is left,” Philby pointed out.

“MEN FRY SPIT?” Willa asked.

“MEN SPIT FRY?” Charlene suggested.

“No way,” Philby said. “We’ll try again.” He reshuffled the ten letters.

E

N P

S T M

Y F R I

“I’m killer at Scrabble,” Charlene a

“Have at it,” Philby said.

Charlene arranged the letters into groups, broke up those groups and tried again. Her hands moved very fast, like a card dealer.

She assembled them into:

M Y P I T F E R N S.

“Very good!” Willa said encouragingly.

M Y T I P F E R N S

“Again,” Philby said. Fi

F I R M S P Y N E T

“That’s an interesting one,” Philby said.

Fi

M E N F I S T P R Y

“You are good at this!” Willa said, impressed.

“We all have our talents,” Charlene quipped.

Then, two right in a row:

MET FRY SPIN, MY PINS FRET.