Kingdom Keepers: The Syndrome (7 page)

And she did. This was not a coma. Grief snaked around my heart, and then pulled tight. Weighing it down was sadness and anger and fear. They were Mrs. Whitman’s emotions, but they felt as
real as if they were my own.

The images slowed. My entire body felt drained. Feeling another person’s emotions takes its toll. When I am reading someone, my eyes may be open, but I can only see the target’s
thoughts.

As my sight returned, I saw the horror plain on Mrs. Whitman’s face. She might not have understood, but she knew something was up. I had to give her credit for being sharp.

But there was no time to worry. The truth was worse than anything Amanda or I had suspected—or even imagined.

Finn was suspended in Sleeping Beauty Syndrome.

AMANDA

Mattie and I were soon to go different ways—I would head to Wanda’s; she, to the apartment above the church—and were therefore headed to different bus stops.
As I walked her through a park to reach her stop, we discussed her reads of Mr. and Mrs. Whitman.

“You know when you’re afraid to tell somebody something because you have no idea how they’ll react?” She sounded genuinely concerned.

“That is not a good way to start this discussion,” I said. “Out with it, Mattie.”

“Finn is in a coma. The Syndrome.”

I stopped walking, catching Mattie by surprise. She took a couple steps back to rejoin me.

She said, “His mom knows it’s Sleeping Beauty Syndrome. His dad has argued with her. He wants to take him to the hospital.”

“No!” When a DHI is stuck in a crossed-over state, the effects of any medical treatment performed on the sleeping subject are transferred to the DHI. Pain. Stimulation.
Drowsiness.

Mattie jumped back. “Hey! Easy.”

I couldn’t catch my breath. I felt like I had a food bubble in my throat. I’d been anticipating something bad, yet I was unprepared for the awfulness of the truth.

“How long?” I asked.

“It’s not like I interrogated them! When I read, I catch a few glimpses. I saw Finn in bed. I heard some arguments. It happens so fast—no, I’ve never been able to explain
this to anyone. I don’t know why I bother.”

“A couple days at least,” I said. “He stopped answering my texts.”

“Mr. Whitman wants the doctors. Wants him fed, whatever it is they do to coma people.”

“They can’t do that. I’ll have Wanda call the Whitmans,” I said.

“Yeah, and say what?”

It wasn’t Mattie’s voice. It was deep—but trying to sound deeper than it actually was. I spun around. There on the path, the three of us surrounded by only trees and benches,
stood a boy.

Greg Luowski had grown, which I would have said was impossible. Were there bigger physical specimens than Greg? Of course. But Greg had filled out; he looked like a different kid. Or not a kid
at all. A giant of a human being. His upper arms were probably the size of my thighs. I’d heard he was getting a full ride at Florida State. Looking at him, there was no reason to doubt it. A
guy his size wouldn’t need much athletic skill to tackle his opponents, and yet Luowski had the reactions of a cat and the speed of a jackrabbit.

I’d wondered why he’d stayed on the bus after Mattie read him. Now I was betting he’d only gone one more stop, had watched us heading into the Starbucks, and had likely been
following us ever since. Part of me didn’t believe that, because I’d taken precautions and I was good at taking precautions. Then I realized Luowski had been watching Finn’s
house. How thrilled he must have been when we came along.

“Get lost, Greg.” At one point I’d been certain he was crushing on me, had hated Finn because of it. I didn’t know if I still possessed that kind of pull or power over
him, but I had to try.

“You two are the ones looking lost.”

In fact, there was a lane bisecting the park. Mattie and I backed up to get closer to it. There were no cars on it, but if one came along we could cry out for help.

Greg was no National Merit Scholar. He tended to quote the latest villain from the newest action film. He learned their lines, practiced their postures, and then allowed them to inhabit him. A
person could almost not take him seriously, except for his size and the dramatic green eyes Maleficent had bestowed upon him. The Keepers had thought the green eyes were contact lenses—Greg
wasn’t the only kid in school to suddenly change his original eye color. Maybe they started out as lenses; maybe they still were, but they didn’t look it. They looked terrifyingly real,
and his green gaze sent both Mattie and me stumbling back in fear.

“We’re fine, thank you,” Mattie said.

“Stop where you are!”

“No,” I said, continuing to back toward the park lane.

Lousy Luowski dared not come too close. He understood my ability to push. If he made a move, it would be on me to stop him. He didn’t know Mattie well. Didn’t know whether or not to
fear her.

“We need to have a little talk,” he said in his best cinematic tone.

“I’ve always liked talking to you, Greg. You know that.” Back to testing him, seeing if any fragment of the crush remained. Boys get bigger. Boys grow up. But many carry their
crushes with them, just like girls do.

“Tell me what’s up with Witless.”

“You know I don’t like you calling him that.” I could charge him and push as I ran. Risky, but if I was successful he’d sail away like a grocery bag in the wind.

“I don’t care what you like.”

So much for the old crush. He struck me as an old, ornery dog—one with all had its teeth. I had no desire to tangle with him.

Mattie took several steps back. He looked at her with a flicker of recognition, but it was gone just as quickly.

“I haven’t seen him, Greg. Haven’t spoken to him, either. I can’t believe you’d hurt us, hurt a pair of girls, but bring it on. I haven’t seen Finn.
Period.”

“I don’t much mind hurting anything or anyone,” he said. “Whitless included.”

“It’s over,” Mattie said. “You know that, right? You know what happened in Disneyland? You’re not like one of those soldiers who think the war’s still going,
are you?”

A disturbing snarl twisted his face. A secretive, perverse smile, full of contempt.

“Finn said you had changed,” I blurted. “That you’d figured stuff out. That you’d realized the things they were asking of you—”

“Shut it!” He took a step forward, a mistake that delighted me. One or two more, please. I had to use his anger as bait. “He can’t change things.”

“He said you, the real Greg, was still in there somewhere, trying to get past the green-eyed Greg. We can help with that, you know. The magic in the Kingdom is only stronger now. Since the
victory.”

A nearly identical self-confident snarl blinked across his face. I felt cold. Nauseated. I had no idea what he meant about Finn not being able to change things, but combined with his claim that
he wanted to hurt Finn, it struck a chord of panic in me.

“I know what you’re doing.” He took another step. Actually, he was confirming my hunch that he had no idea.

“Talking?” I said.

“Trying to communicate?” said Mattie.

He moved with astonishing speed, grabbed Mattie in a chokehold, and dragged her back a step. “Do your thing,” he said to me, “and she goes with me.”

I looked around. “Greg. This is a public sidewalk. Two cars just went by. Three. How smart is this?”

He wore a T-shirt, meaning his inner elbow was touching Mattie’s neck. I hoped that explained her strangely fluttering eyelids. She was reading him—not a touch-read, but a long, deep
read. Like settling in with a good book.

A car drove by too fast on the deserted park lane. I turned. It screeched to a stop. Two college boys jumped out.

“Hey!” the driver hollered, running down the path.

Luowski dumped Mattie, turned, and sprinted away. The boys slowed as they reached us.

“You okay?” the driver asked.

“We are now. Thank you!” I nodded vigorously.

The other boy was holding Mattie by the shoulders. “Did he hurt you? Do you need to go to the hospital? We can take you to the emergency room.”

“I’m good,” she said, rubbing her neck.

“You sure?”

She nodded.

“Do you know him?” the driver asked. He pulled out his phone, presumably to call the police.

“I do. I’d rather not,” I said, looking at his phone.

“Because?”

I considered my words carefully. “I have issues with the authorities.”

“Me too,” Mattie said.

The driver smirked and chuckled. “Yeah. Well, me too, for that matter. But you just got mugged. That should be reported.”

“We were in school together a couple years ago,” I said. “He was the class bully. He plays tough, but he’s harmless.” I wasn’t a terrific liar.

“He didn’t look harmless.”

“Not at all,” the other boy said.

“Can we take you somewhere? Drop you off?”

“Could you? I mean, are you sure?” said Mattie.

“No, thank you,” I said. “We’re good.”

Mattie wasn’t going to challenge me. Neither, it turned out, was this boy.

“So, you live around here?” he said.

“Thanks for helping,” I said. “I really mean it. You saved us.”

“No problem.” At least he could take a hint.

Mattie and I thanked them repeatedly. They asked for our phone numbers. We declined.

As soon as they’d driven off, Mattie turned to me, ashen as a ghost.

“He—” she began, struggling to speak.

“Did he hurt you?” I stepped toward her. She shook her head.

“The whole time he was choking me, I was reading him. He believes Finn and the others are trying to change something. Amanda…” Her eyes were pleading. “He’s going to
hurt Finn, really hurt Finn. I mean, really! After running into us, he was panicked, because he’d planned to do it tonight.”

I stumbled. Mattie caught me, and I pulled gently away—I didn’t want her reading me, too. I had my privacy to protect.

“We have to warn everyone,” I muttered. “Wanda and I can do it. We’ll meet tomorrow—you and me. We’ll get through this.”

“The thing is…he’s on orders. Luowski’s on orders.”

I stared at her, long and hard. “That can’t be. You must have read him wrong. He’s just never been fully deprogrammed like we thought.”

Mattie shook her head slowly. Defiantly. “No, Mandy. He’s on orders. He believes Maleficent told him to do this.”

“But that’s impossible. She’s dead. Maleficent is
dead
.”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought, too.”

JESS

The forty-eight hours Amanda had been gone felt more like a week. Returning to Disneyland after hours, hoping for inspiration to explain my strange dreams, I entered the dark
wood interior of Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Its look matched with my dream from the Dream Suite. I glanced again at the sketch on the back of the Chick-fil-A receipt, hoping to connect a
significance to Amanda’s possible upcoming capture.

I walked through the attraction’s short queue on tiptoe, hoping to see something that would connect my dream to reality. Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride was one of the original Opening Day
attractions, which meant that the ride system was one of the most basic in the park. Ride vehicles fashioned to look like antique cartoon cars went through the ride on flat ground, guided only by a
thin metal rail. So long as I avoided tripping over the rail, I would be able to make a quick escape should I run into any trouble.

I stepped off the loading platform onto the ground, prepared to run if an alarm went off. The attraction stayed silent, save for the blood rushing in my ears. I just hoped I hadn’t set off
a silent alarm.

The old attraction was eerie and quiet. The ride hadn’t been updated much in the past sixty years, which meant that the characters were closer to cardboard cutouts than the moving, talking
Audio-Animatronics found in the newer attractions. I bypassed the first room, a library, and moved down a dark hallway. Above me, two-dimensional weasels painted in garish colors hung from
similarly styled chandeliers, paused mid-swing.

I turned a corner and found myself facing a legion of cardboard cops, glowing menacingly under the emergency lighting. Moving past them, I made my way through a field of painted foliage before
arriving at the wharf.

Looking around, I realized I wasn’t seeing anything that reminded me of my dream.

Something had drawn me here. Something was important about it. Squinting at my paper in the dim lighting, I then studied the scene around me.

I turned and walked back through the scene. I counted the crate stacks and checked behind them for a written clue, some evidence of why my dream had led me here.

Nothing.

I counted the slats on the dock, the positioning of lights in the background. I pointed my phone into the darkness on either side of the track, looking for anything out of place. But it
wasn’t until I explored the tunnel for the third time that I recalled the block lettering of CAT. No cats in Mr. Toad’s ride. I had to be in the wrong place.

Voices from the next room interrupted my train of thought. I scrambled to hide behind a stack of crates around the corner. The Overtakers were annoying, but they weren’t stupid. If they
were here for me, they’d be stealthy—as would Disney Security. That left Disney employees, Cast Members, or Imagineers.

The voices grew louder, and then stopped with the sound of a low rumble. I cautiously peeked out from behind the crate, grateful for once that I was not in DHI form; there was no glow to give me
away.

I saw Imagineer Joe Garlington and a woman in a wheelchair. The rumbling had been the sound of the wheelchair moving across the dock. What a late hour to be showing someone around!

“Has this anything here changed?” Joe asked the elderly woman, his voice echoing through the tunnel.

The woman took her time before replying.

“Not that I can see. But it doesn’t mean I’m correct.” She sounded hesitant as she probed him. “Have you considered why or how pieces of the attraction might
change?”

“Honestly, we can’t make sense of it.”

“A prank of some kind?” the woman asked. “I know how you Imagineers are always tricking the Cast Members.”