“You’re learning,” said the old man’s voice from behind him.

Finn turned to see Wayne, in khakis and a plaid shirt, sitting behind the wheel of an electric golf cart with the Walt Disney World logo painted on the front. The sky glowed faintly on the horizon. It took Finn a moment to register his location as somewhere in Frontierland, not far from Tom Sawyer Island.

“You just missed the fireworks display,” Wayne said, stopping the cart alongside Finn. “Park closed a few minutes ago. I love this time of night. Especially the music.”

“What music?” Finn didn’t hear any music and realized now that he’d always heard music in the park. The old guy was a bit daffy.

Finn reached out and grabbed the steel bar that supported the cart’s awning. He saw his glowing hand wrap around the metal but could also faintly see through his hand as well. Not only that, but the metal didn’t feel exactly like metal.

“This is so weird,” he confessed.

“Don’t fight it,” Wayne said.

“This is probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve done some weird stuff,” Finn said.

“This one time, a friend of mine and I—” He caught himself blabbering. Instead, he told Wayne, “I found Charlene. I’m still trying to locate the others.”

“It has to be all of you. You understand that, don’t you? All or nothing. Youngsters your age, you always think it’s all about you, only you. I can promise you, it has to be all of you.”

“I want to help you.”

“You have no choice,” he said. “At some point you’ll understand that.”

Finn felt the words like drumbeats in his chest. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

“I thought it was a dream at first,” Finn said.

“And now?”

“Now I don’t think so. I don’t know exactly what it is if it isn’t a dream, but I don’t think it could be a dream.” He hesitated and said, “I saw the moon.”

Wayne nodded and cocked his head curiously. “Yet something’s bothering you.”

“Charlene said it isn’t safe. You basically said the same thing.”

“And yet here you are. You came back,” Wayne said.

“You brought me back.”

“Did I? Not exactly. This is a two-way street, young man. You’re neither hologram nor human.

You’re something in between, I think. The holograms don’t think for themselves, and they speak only what you recorded for them. How much you are…one or the other…may depend on your thinking;—what you’re thinking, how you’re thinking it. So I’d be careful of what I was thinking, if I were you.”

Finn spotted a large gold bear by the entrance to the Jungle Cruise. He shook his head to clear his eyes since the bear was walking on two feet and there was what looked like an oversized rat jogging to keep up with it. “Is that…?”

“What?” the old man said excitedly.

“Pooh and Piglet?”

“Is it?”

“There!” Finn said, pointing.

“I told you, didn’t I?” Wayne was quick to lose his patience. “I don’t see what you see.” He sounded frustrated.

“Pooh and Piglet.” Finn was certain now.

“What are they doing?”

“Walking away from us.”

“Anything else?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Finn felt like some kind of translator.

“I told you: things are happening in the park. We—you and your friends, actually—need to stop them.”

“The Overtakers.”

“Yes.”

“It isn’t safe,” Finn repeated.

“No, it’s not,” Wayne said, agreeing.

“What’s that mean, exactly?”

“What did you think of the park as a small child?”

“Magic,” Finn said without a second thought. He still thought of it as magic.

“Exactly,” Wayne agreed. “But there are two sides to magic, yes? Good magic is what you’re talking about. But there’s other magic besides good magic.”

“Black magic,” Finn stated.

“A layman’s term, but yes, a darker side to magic that few if any fully understand.”

“Do you?”

“Heavens no. But Walt did. He wrote about it. He made films. Invented characters. He understood its seriousness, its potential for…but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.”

“Potential for what? Evil?”

“Let’s just put a pin in that. We’ll come back to it.”

Finn climbed into the front seat of the golf cart. His feet disappeared. They weren’t simply in shadow; they were…gone. He felt a little faint. “My feet,” he gasped.

Wayne explained, “The hologram imaging system isn’t set up to project to all locations. There are places we call shadows. Like dead spots where cell phones don’t work. Inside some attractions they will be visible— you, the DHIs, will be visible. Other locations, maybe not. Your feet inside a cart, for instance,” he said, pointing, “not so good. You may be able to control this. We don’t know for sure. You’re the first of your kind.”

Finn glanced down at his missing feet. It wasn’t so bad.

“Okay?” Wayne asked.

“Okay, I guess.”

Wayne pressed the accelerator. The cart lurched forward.

“Where’d you get your license?” Finn asked, holding on for dear life.

“What license?” Wayne answered, his eyes sparkling.

Four or five dark, shadowy figures streaked across the intersection in front of the cart. Wayne didn’t see them. Finn reached over and jerked the cart’s steering wheel, narrowly averting an accident. Wayne braked to a stop.

“You nearly paved those guys,” Finn exclaimed.

“What guys?”

“The—” Finn couldn’t complete the sentence. Wayne hadn’t seen them. Then Finn said,

“Pirates.” He pointed to their left. “But not exactly pirates. They look more like…”

“Like what?”

“More like robots…Like the lifelike pirates in Pirates of the Caribbean. And Finn realized that was it: they weren’t people, but Audio-Animatronics figures that had somehow come alive. “Never mind,” Finn said, not wanting to sound crazy. A group of the figures was pushing a line of smal blue cars ahead of them. Finn thought he recognized the cars but couldn’t associate them with any particular attraction. He was stuck on the idea that some of the AAs—but they were only machines—had come alive. Was that possible?

Wayne asked, “How many?”

“Five…no, six, including the guy with the hat.”

“Interesting. What guy with a hat?”

Finn didn’t want to go there. He’d call them pirates and that was that. “You really can’t see them?”

“Me? Heavens, no. I see the cars, but nothing else,” Wayne said excitedly. “And if you can see them, then maybe you can stop them. Or at least try to stop them.”

“Stop them from what, exactly?”

“Three nights ago at the end of the Fantasmics show, the dragon set Mickey on fire.

Obviously, that’s not supposed to happen. Mickey is supposed to win. He jumped into the water.

He’s all right. The crowd laughed. They didn’t get it. But Mickey could have…He could have…

could be in some serious trouble. And then what?”

“But those are actors, right?”

“The dragon is a machine, an Audio-Animatronics machine. But that machine malfunctioned, didn’t it? It did something that it’s not programmed to do. How is that possible? How can that be explained?”

Finn thought, What a strange old man.

Wayne said, “You think I’m a strange old man.”

“Do not.”

“You’re the chosen leader of the DHIs. Don’t question it. Accept it. Without you, Finn, there is no plan.”

“What plan?” Finn gulped. Wayne seemed so serious all of a sudden.

Finn sensed something behind and to his right. He spun around and saw her. Charlene.

His breath caught. She was…glowing. A fuzzy light sputtered at the edges of her body and all around her head, like a halo. She wore a white nightgown. Her hair danced in the wind.

Some distance behind her stood Philby. He wore school clothes, like Finn. Finn recognized him immediately. They were missing Maybeck and Willa.