Текст книги "Disney after Dark"

The following are some of the trademarks, registered marks, and service marks owned by Disney Enterprises, Inc.: Adventureland® Area, Audio-Animatronics® Figure, Big Thunder Mountain®

Railroad Disneyland®, Disney’s Hol ywood Studios, Disney’s Animal Kingdom® Theme Park, Epcot®, Fantasyland® Area, FASTPASS® Service, Fort Wilderness, Frontierland® Area, Imagineering, Imagineers, “it’s a smal world,” Magic Kingdom® Park, Main Street, U.S.A. Area, Mickey’s Toontown®, monorail, New Orleans Square, Space Mountain® Attraction, Splash Mountain® Attraction, Tomorrowland® Area, Walt Disney World® Resort

“It’s A Smal World” Words and Music by Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman © 1963

Wonderland Music Company, Inc.

Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters © Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar Animation Studios Toy Story characters © Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar Animation Studios Winnie the Pooh characters based on the “Winnie the Pooh” works by A. A. Milne and E. H.

Shepard

Copyright © 2005 Page One, Inc.

Il ustration © 2005 by David Frankland

Al rights reserved. Published by Disney•Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

For information address Disney•Hyperion Books, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.

Printed in the United States of America

New Disney•Hyperion paperback edition, 2009

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.

ISBN 978-1-4231-4112-9

This book is dedicated to 

anyone and everyone 

who ever wondered what happens when the gates are closed 

and the lights go out.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To whoever invented holograms, thanks for the ride.

Without people who make books come true, like Al Zuckerman and Amy Berkower at Writers House, and Wendy Lefkon, my editor at Disney • Hyperion, projects like this would never happen.

Thanks to you all.

Thanks also to Laurel and David, who read this far too many times, red pens in hand. And to Christopher Caines for his keen eye and great suggestions.

And thanks to Jason Surrell, a Disney Imagineer who has the “keys to the kingdom.” He toured me through an empty Magic Kingdom on more than one occasion, and helped to make magic out of reality. Jason repeatedly served up the history of and little-known facts about the park, though he’ll probably deny it in order to keep his job.

Thanks, too, to Wayne and Christina—and a dozen more who shall remain nameless—who live this fiction. Wayne works behind the scenes at Splash Mountain, and the lovely Christina at Space Mountain. They provided mountains of help.

Special thanks to Paige, Storey, and Sophie, through whose eyes I’ve seen the Magic Kingdom so many times now, and who got me wondering what it must be like at night after everyone’s departed…or almost everyone.

And thanks to Dave, who teased me relentlessly for my study of the trash evacuation system during one of our secret tours of the tunnels. This is for you. There really is method to this madness. Or sort of.

—R.P.

February 28, 2005

St. Louis, Missouri

1

He found himself standing next to the flagpole in Town Square, in the heart of the Magic Kingdom. In his pajamas. How he’d gotten here, he had no idea. His last memory was climbing into bed—it felt like only minutes earlier.

Gripped by a sense of panic, awed by the sight of the Cinderella Castle at night, Finn Whitman briefly recalled that he’d had other, similar dreams recendy—always in the Magic Kingdom, always at night. But in his thirteen years, none so real, so vivid as this: he felt a breeze on his face; he smelled the wet earth of a flower bed not far away; he heard the distant whine of traffic and the buzz of a motorboat on the lake behind him.

“It looks so different,” he thought, only to realize he’d spoken out loud. Main Street stood empty, not a person in sight. He glanced around and quickly saw that he was all alone.

“Not so different as all that,” came a man’s voice. Though faint, it startled Finn. He looked around again, this time trying to find the source of that voice.

There! An old guy with white hair, on a bench in front of the Exhibition Hall. He sat so close to a seated sculpture of Goofy that Finn hadn’t noticed him.

Finn moved toward the man, crossing the empty street. He felt unusually light, almost buoyant.

The old man wore khakis, a collared shirt, and a name tag: WAYNE.

“Where is everybody?” Finn asked, struck by the electronic sound of his own voice.

“Is it empty?” the man asked, looking up anxiously. “Tell me what you see.”

Finn wondered if the old guy was blind. He seemed to be looking right at Finn; his blue eyes looked perfectly normal. Still, maybe he couldn’t see.

“Well,” Finn said politely, “it’s like…empty. And it’s dark out. And it’s just the two of us.”

Wayne’s expression changed to disappointment.

“What am I supposed to see, exactly?” Finn asked.

“You’re only supposed to see what you can see.”

“Whatever that means,” Finn said.

“It means exactly what it says.”

“If you say so.”

“Listen, young man, I’ve been around here since long before any of them were even created. I live in the apartment above the fire station.” He pointed right at the firehouse and then looked back at Finn. “That takes some seniority, believe me.”

Seniority or senility? Finn wondered. Living above the firehouse? Finn doubted it.

“Nice pajamas,” the old guy said.

Finn looked at himself. His pajamas seemed to be…glowing. What was with that? He said, “I don’t mean to be rude, but if you can see, if you’re not blind, then why’d you ask me about the park being empty?”

Wayne’s ice-blue eyes drilled into him. “How do you think you got here, young man?”

“That depends on where I am,” Finn answered honestly. This felt like no dream he’d ever experienced.

“Very good answer. I expected no less of you.”

“Excuse me?”

“I assumed that you’d question this—that’s only natural—but ultimately there’s only one explanation, isn’t there?”

“Is there?” Finn asked, confused.

“The other ones I wasn’t so sure about. But you, Finn Whitman. By the way, that’s a fine name you have. A name with real potential.”

Finn took a step back. How did this old guy know his name?

“What other ones?” Finn asked. He studied Town Square and Main Street. The street lamps shone yellow. The Cinderella Castle glowed in the distance. All the familiar streets and paths and attractions, but empty. “I told you, there’s no one here. No one but us. It’s empty.”

Wayne said nothing as he stood and walked up Main Street, past the shops and toward the castle. Finn found himself following right along. They reached Central Plaza, an island in the center of a traffic circle, the spokes of which led to the Magic Kingdom’s various lands—Tomorrowland, Frontierland, Liberty Square. They stopped in front of a statue of Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse.

The castle rose majestically into the night sky.

“What time is it?” Wayne asked.

As Finn brought his arm up to look at his watch, he saw that his arm wasn’t exactly his arm. It was…glowing. Not only glowing, but he could almost see through it. As if—

“What’s going on?” Finn asked. “What’s with my arm?”

Wayne sounded critical as he said, “Figure it out.” He then reached into his pocket and removed what looked like a remote control for a car: a small black plastic fob with a single red button. It looked like a garage-door opener.

“What’s with that thing?” Finn asked.

“This button will send you back.”

“Back where?” Finn felt a jolt of fear. What if this wasn’t a dream? He studied his arm again.

Then his other arm. He looked down at his legs. His whole body was glowing and vaguely translucent.

“Back to bed,” Wayne answered.

“So it is a dream? I thought so.”

“It’s not a dream.”

Finn saw a pair of four-foot-tall chipmunks come out of the castle. They walked down a path and turned left, toward Toontown. He felt himself staring. He recognized them.

“What?” Wayne asked excitedly.

“Nothing,” Finn answered.

“You saw something!” he practically shouted into Finn’s ear, causing Finn to jump back, startled.

Wayne leaped up, suddenly years younger. He pulled Finn to his feet.

“You saw something!” he thundered.

“Hey! What’s the big deal?”

“Tell me what you saw.”

“You saw it too!” Finn told him.

“Which character?”

Finn felt relief. Wayne knew Finn had seen a character, which had to mean he’d seen it too.

He was clearly playing some kind of game, making Finn actually name the character, but Finn was good at games.

“Which character did you see?” Finn asked.

“You want me to push this button?” Wayne threatened.

Did he? Finn wasn’t sure. If it was a dream, the black remote-control fob represented a way out. When was the right time to use it? He hoped to stretch this out a minute longer. It was fun here.

He glanced around at the sound of footsteps. Goofy went tearing past them, not thirty feet away, and headed into Frontierland.

Wayne never moved. Never looked in Goofy’s direction.

“You’re playing head games with me,” Finn said.

“Am I?”

“Goofy,” Finn said.

“Are you asking me if I’m goofy? I’ve been called worse.” Wayne studied Finn. His old leathery face brightened as he said, “You saw Goofy!”

Maybe Wayne needed a hearing aid—he seemed prone to fits of shouting.

Finn backed off. “Yeah. So what? You would have too, if you’d bothered to look.”

Wayne probably couldn’t hear all that well. He obviously hadn’t heard Goofy’s footsteps, because he hadn’t turned toward the sound.

Finn decided to test Wayne. “Chip and Dale,” he said. “You saw them, right?”

“You saw Chip and Dale?” He made it sound like Finn had won the lottery. What was with that?

“I, ah…This is getting a little weird. I think I want to go back now.” Finn heard himself repeat some of what Wayne had told him, though the words didn’t fit in his mouth all that well. It sounded to him like someone else doing the talking.

“I’ll push the button, if you like. But I have to warn you….” Wayne fiddled with the nametag pinned to his uniform.

“Warn me about what?”

“What you’ll be missing. The park after dark. Basically all to yourself. The attractions operate day and night. Not many people know that.”

“Now I know I’m dreaming.”

“But you aren’t,” Wayne explained. “Are you forgetting your arm?”

Finn studied his arm once more. “I’ll admit, that is…interesting. It’s almost like—” Finn caught himself.

“Like you’re glowing,” Wayne said in an all-knowing, I-told-you-so tone of voice.

“Am I?”

“What might account for that?” Wayne inquired.

Finn understood somehow that a lot hung on his answer—his imagining this place, or dreaming it, or whatever was happening to him. His ability to stay here. To return. He wasn’t quick to answer. He didn’t want to face what Wayne was suggesting.

“I give up,” he said.

“No, you don’t,” Wayne protested. “You never would have been chosen for this if you were the kind who gives up on things. You’re a finisher, Finn. That’s what I liked about you from your first audition tape.”

Stunned by what the old guy had just said, Finn felt his mouth go dry. How did Wayne know about his audition tape? Exactly how complicated could a dream get?

“Who are you?” Finn blurted out.

“I’m Wayne. I work here. I was one of the first people hired by Walt Disney to imagine this park. The rides, the attractions. They call us Imagineers.”

“You knew Walt Disney?” Finn tried not to sound impressed.

“He was my boss, you might say. At any rate, he’s the reason I’m here. The reason you’re here.”

“Me?”

“I know this can’t be easy.”

“It’s a dream,” Finn said, thinking, What’s so hard about a dream?

“No, it’s not a dream,” Wayne said. “Take a look at the moon.” Finn didn’t move. Wayne’s voice became more severe. “I said: look at the moon.”

Finn had to turn around to locate the moon. A half-moon, like a crooked smile, hung well above the horizon.

“When you wake up—when you think you wake up—take a look out the window. You’ll see the same moon, and you’ll know.”

“Know what?” Finn asked.

“That you were here. Sitting here in Disney World with an old guy named Wayne.”

“You’re telling me this isn’t a dream?” Finn felt his words catch in his throat.

“We’ve got a problem. A big problem. A problem that affects not only the park, but the world outside the park. We call them the Overtakers.”

“The what?” Finn didn’t like the sound of that.

Wayne said urgently, “You need to contact the other hosts. All four. Arrange to meet them here at the same time. That will mean all of you going to bed, going to sleep, fairly close to the same time. Within a half hour of one another. Tell them that. That should work, I think.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a fable, a story, a puzzle of sorts that was left in case of a problem like this. It’s called the Stonecutter’s Quill.”

“A problem like what?” Finn felt totally confused. The Stonecutter’s Quill—the title had an eerie sound.

Just then, Tom Sawyer came out of Frontierland and headed up a long ramp into the castle.

Is that really the Tom Sawyer? Finn wondered. The barefoot boy was smoking a pipe with a long stem. Wayne did a good job of not reacting, of pretending he didn’t see the kid.

Wayne said, “The puzzle has to be solved to be understood. It has to be understood to be of any use to us.” He paused and looked over at Finn. It felt to Finn as if Wayne were looking right through him. “You’re going to solve it.”

“Me?”

“The five of you,” Wayne said.

Finn jumped away from the man. Again he thought: how complicated can a dream get? If Wayne was only a part of the dream, how could he possibly know about the four other hosts? How could he talk about Finn’s audition tape the way he had? It was all related, all rolled into one, but Finn couldn’t sort it out.

Finn said, “You’re talking about MGM Studios.”

“Of course I am,” Wayne said. “You see? I knew you were the right one. You’re the leader, Finn.”

“I don’t have the slightest clue what you’re talking about,” Finn said.

“Nice try. But of course you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You just don’t want to face it. Perfectly understandable. That will change.”

“A fable,” Finn said, testing him again. Could a dream remember itself?

“The moon,” Wayne reminded him. “Don’t forget the moon.”

I won’t.”

“All five of you. I need you together. Here. All in the same place at the same time. I can explain it to you then. Once. As a group. Just the one time. You can decide—as a group—to help us or not.”

“Us?” Finn said.

“I’ll explain that as well .”

“This is the weirdest dream I’ve ever had!” Finn said, not realizing he was shouting.

“You’ll get over it,” Wayne said. He raised his right hand—the one carrying the black remote-control fob—and pressed the button with his thumb.

Finn awoke, sitting up in bed. His bedside clock read 2:07 A.M. He collected himself, checked his surroundings. He reached out and touched the glass of water next to the clock. Just the feel of it was reassuring. Thank goodness, he thought.

A dream? he wondered. “Whoa,” he heard himself say aloud. “What a dream!” This time his voice sounded more the way it always sounded, which reminded him of how thin and electronic it had sounded in the park.

“Whoa,” he repeated, just to hear himself say it. He scratched an itch on his head, and another on his belly. That felt better. He lay back down, his head on the pillow, his green eyes wide open to the dark room.

All at once Finn spotted a shaft of light—bluish light—on his ceiling. It was in the shape of a knife blade. Moonlight.

Finn slipped out of bed with trepidation. He crept toward the window, afraid to look. The closer he got to it, the more his face was bathed in that pale light seeping through a small crack in the curtains.

Finn raised his arm and caught sight of his watch. His arm appeared solid. It did not glow and shimmer the way it had while he was with Wayne. That came as a relief.

Finn parted the curtains.

There, out the window, hanging in the exact same place in the sky, where Wayne had pointed it out to him, Finn saw the curving smile of a half-moon. Could he have known that in his sleep? How? He looked again.

The moon seemed to be laughing at him.

2

The halways of Finn’s middle school could sometimes feel as long as runways. Late for class, he found this to be one of those times. Steel lockers occupied most of the space between the doors to the classrooms. The lockers were covered with stickers and pictures of movie stars or pro athletes, which instantly distinguished a girl’s locker from a boy’s. Fluorescent-tube lighting cast a sickly glow over everything, and made human skin look vaguely greenish.

“He said there was a fable. A story of some kind,” Finn said to the boy standing next to him.

“That my friends and I are supposed to save the park, or something.” He realized how ridiculous this sounded. “Whatever that means.”

“By ‘friends’ you mean like, me?” Dillard Cole asked. Dillard ate enough for two kids and had the body to show for it.

“He didn’t mean you, Dillard,” Finn said gently, trying not to hurt the guy’s feelings. “Not exactly. He meant the other…the hosts. At Disney World. The DHIs.”

“No way.”

“Way,” Finn said, hurrying off to his fourth-period classroom.

“It was only a dream!” Dillard shouted after him.

Finn wasn’t so sure about that.

“We’re honored you could join us, Mr. Whitman,” said Mr. Richardson as Finn rushed in to his world history class. Mr. Richardson was probably the most boring teacher in the entire school.

He’d lived in the U.S. for twenty-some years, but still spoke with a thick British accent. He sounded like a pompous snob.

Finn checked the wall clock; he was eight minutes late, just under the ten-minute deadline when Richardson would have given him a tardy. Three tardies meant after-school study hall. Finn already had collected two others, both from science class.

“You’ll sit up front, please,” Mr. Richardson said, indicating an empty chair. Torture on top of humiliation. “For the record, your notoriety pulls no weight in my class. I beg you to remember that when grades are issued. I find the idea of child actors tedious at best.”

“Sorry I’m late,” Finn said, sliding down into the chair, resentful that he’d been made to apologize.

He’d taken the job at Disney World somewhat against his will, mostly at his mother’s urging.

At the time she’d had no idea she was making him into a middle-school rock star. He remembered it well.

* * *

“There will be money in it,” his mother had said. “Your father and I can put a little something away for your college.”

“I don’t know, Mom,” Finn had complained.

“This is Walt Disney World, don’t forget. You would be a host, like a guide, in Walt Disney World.”

“It’s not exactly me. ”

“It’ll look like you. Sound like you. It’ll seem like you to everyone but you. You’d be there for years, Finn Whitman. Maybe forever. You can’t get any ‘cooler’ than Disney World.”

His mother didn’t know everything, but when she was right she was right. Finn loved the Disney parks. So did his friends. Even though they lived in Orlando, they all went to the parks whenever they could afford it. “But the Magic Kingdom, Mom? It’s for little kids. At Disney-MGM, sure! Animal Kingdom would be awesome. But the Magic Kingdom?”

“You love the Magic Kingdom, and you know it. Besides, the rest of your family would get complimentary passes—several a year, every year, for life. As in, forever. We could basically go whenever we want.”

“Without me.”

“I thought you just said you’re too old for the Magic Kingdom.” Finn’s mom could twist almost anything he said. He picked his arguments carefully with her. She had explained the terms of the contract to him, but Finn hadn’t really paid attention.

“Tell me about the disguise stuff again,” he said.

“You would only be allowed to visit the Magic Kingdom with prior approval. Once permission is granted, you’d still have to go in disguise. But a hat and sunglasses would be enough. You’d only have to wear them when you’re in the Magic Kingdom. They can’t have two of you running around, the real you and the hologram-host you. It makes sense if you think about it.”

It did make sense, but he wasn’t about to admit that.

She said, “It sounds so easy. All you do is let them film you walking and gesturing. You read the script a couple times into a microphone. They process the film, or whatever, and, presto!

You’re a hologram-host at the Magic Kingdom. With a college nest egg and lifetime complimentary passes. Finn, you love special effects! What they’re offering is for you to be the special effect. How much cooler can that be?” She was right again, but he resisted an all-out agreement. His mother had once called a new toaster “high-tech.” What did she know?

“All I have to do is audition?” he asked, testing her.

“That’s right! They might not even take you.”

“Mom,” Finn said, “this is me we’re talking about. Of course they’ll take me.”

“Excuse me, Mr. Hotshot, but I do not want to hear you talking that way, and you know it. If this is going to go to your head, we are not doing this.”

Actually, Finn’s mom loved to hear him talk that way, though she pretended otherwise. She had schooled him in self-confidence. He’d auditioned for several things and never won a part yet, but not because he lacked confidence.

“Okay. I’ll do it,” he said.

She beamed. He loved to see her like that—bright-eyed and childlike.

A month after Finn had passed the final audition and won a place as a Disney Host Interactive, or DHI, he arrived at an enormous soundstage at Disney-MGM Studios.

The size of a jet aircraft hangar, the soundstage was rigged with hundreds of film lights, a green screen that filled one entire wall, trampolines, cameras, boom microphones, and dozens of scruffily dressed crew members. He’d never seen anything like it, except in movies, though he did his best to pretend otherwise. A college-age girl dressed in black and gray wore a headset with a microphone mouthpiece, a fuzzy black ball by her lips. She called herself a “PA.” It took Finn four days to realize that that stood for production assistant. Her boss was a guy named Brad, from Disney Imagineering.

Brad made Finn dress in green tights and a green stretchy top and walk around on a green stage. The costume had small metal sensors, like thin coins, stuck to the tights on every joint of his body—dozens of the things. Cameras hooked up to a computer recorded the movement of the small metal disks. In the cameras’ eyes, the green costume, moving against the green background, basically made Finn’s body disappear. The computer saw him instead as a floating cloud of shiny points. The engineers would later use the recordings of Finn’s movements to animate the holograms of Finn and the other kids. Brad explained that this process was called “motion capture.”

There were five kids in all. One very pretty girl, Charlene, had sandy blond hair and blue eyes, with pale skin. The other girl, Willa, struck him as a little geeky, but extremely smart. She was sweet, but not knockout gorgeous like Charlene. Not many girls looked like Charlene. Willa struck him as moody. With her hooded brown eyes and dark, braided hair, she might have been Asian or Native American. Maybeck, an African American kid, was taller than Finn by a full head and had the big-guy attitude to go along with it. For some reason he made a point of telling Finn that he was a Baptist. Finn, who wasn’t terribly religious, wasn’t sure what to do with that information, nor even what it meant.

On a break, Finn hung out with Maybeck and the last of the five, a boy who introduced himself as Philby. Like Maybeck, he obviously preferred to be called by his last name.

Philby looked older than all of them, but was in fact the same age. He had a British accent or something close to it—Australia or New Zealand, Finn guessed.

“Quite the motley group,” Philby said.

“We’re the Orlando assortment pack,” Maybeck quipped. “One of every flavor.”

Finn said, “We’re all from different schools, right? What’s with that? It’s like they wanted to make sure none of us knew each other. Why would they do that?”

“Control,” Maybeck answered. “These kinds of guys…with them it’s all about control. That guy, Brad? I don’t trust him. He’s keeping stuff from us. Count on it.”

Finn liked Brad, but he knew what Maybeck was talking about. It did feel like they weren’t being told everything.

“We’d better be able to trust him,” Finn suggested. “He’s the one turning us into holograms.”

“I don’t know about you,” Maybeck answered, “but I never trust anyone but myself.” He added a little late, “No offense.”

Finn wanted out of his tights.

Philby said, “Did you know that DHI—Disney Host Interactive—also stands for Daylight Hologram Imaging?”

“Seriously?” Finn asked.

“Totally.”

“See?” Maybeck said. “That’s what I’m talking about—right there. First I’ve heard of it.”

Philby continued, “This has never been done before. DHIs. Not like this. We’re going to be turned into absolutely perfect three-dimensional images. Duplicates of ourselves. We’ll look real, but we’ll be made of nothing but light. It’s pretty cool technology, actually.”

“But if it’s never been done before,” Finn said, “how do we know it’s safe?”

The boys glanced back and forth between themselves. Philby said, “It’s like taking pictures, that’s all. How can it not be safe?”

“It pays,” Maybeck said harshly. “That’s all I care about. My aunt could use the extra money.”

“Your aunt?” Finn said, before he took the time to think that his question might sound rude.

“Yeah,” Maybeck said. “I live with my aunt. My parents…They aren’t around.”

Finn felt awful for having asked. Maybeck grew silent. He seemed less tough all of a sudden.

“Sorry,” Finn said, “for asking.”

“Not your problem,” Maybeck said in a softer voice. “My aunt’s cool. She tried to get me in a toothpaste ad, but I lost out. Then this thing came up. Brad told me that if I’d gotten that ad I’d never have been asked to be a host. They want nothing but fresh faces.”

“So you got lucky,” Finn said.

“We all got lucky,” Maybeck agreed. “A DHI in the Magic Kingdom? We’re going to be famous.”

“We’re going to be ghosts,” Philby corrected. “Electronic ghosts, provided that this technology actually works.”

“Don’t say stuff like that,” Maybeck pleaded. “Of course it works.”

“Of course,” Philby said. “My bad.” But he sounded less than convinced.