Ted Bell
Phantom
Prologue
The house at the seaward end of Captain’s Neck Lane in Bar Harbor is a three-story Victorian painted a lovely shade of pale yellow with white trim. The home has all the prerequisite nineteenth-century decorative gingerbread geegaws and doodads, but they are not overwhelming. There is a certain peace about the house that you can feel, just standing on the sidewalk at the front gate on a quiet summer evening.
Peace, yes, and should you step inside, abiding love.
There was red, white, and blue bunting hung from the portico surrounding the front door. A very large American flag was draped from the roof and obscured the two large windows on the third floor. A banner was affixed to the exterior wall just below the flag. It read:
A HERO’S WELCOME, U.S. MARINE SGT. CHRIS MARLEY!
Tonight, all the windows of 72 Captain’s Neck Lane are aglow, though it is well nigh the witching hour. Even lit is the tiny window at the top of the tower jutting out from the western front corner of the house. In that small round room, a little girl is sitting on her bedroom floor being read to by her father. The child’s name is Aurora, age six. The father is Christopher, age thirty-two, a warrior at heart. Still. He is missing part of his right leg, from the knee down. It is the result of an IED the Taliban had left waiting for him beside the road to Kabul. He’d been promised a prosthetic, but there was a very long line of amputees ahead of him.
He thought little of the wound. He had seen countless horrors far worse. He was one of the lucky ones. He was alive. He had come home safely to his family. He had done his duty. He was a proud man, proud of his service and what he’d done for his country, though he would never, ever, let you know it. His father had never talked about his war. Neither would he.
“I like my cane,” the Marine told people. “It has many other uses, you know. You can scare cats with it, stuff like that.”
Aurora, unable to sleep because of an impending adventure, has had her father reading to her for hours. She hasn’t yawned once, Christopher thought, pulling another book from her shelves. Not once! With her flouncy red curls and cornflower-blue eyes, she was a picture-perfect child.
Christopher Marley once told his wife, Marjorie, that when the great gardener finally clipped all the inferior roses in the great garden, he came up with one perfect bud and he named it “Aurora.” It was the kind of thing he said from time to time, the kind of thing that endeared him to his wife of ten years. Not to mention his legions of loyal readers.
Christopher, a famous writer of children’s books before duty and country had called, turned the page of the picture book.
“Ooh, Daddy, what a lovely palace! Who lives there? Can I live there someday? Become a real princess?”
“Well, most likely not. You’ll see it for yourself when we get to Orlando tomorrow, but I can tell you now even though it’s a great secret. That palace is the home of Cinderella and-”
“Cinderella? She’s so beautiful.”
“Indeed. As I say, it’s her palace, but she has many guests living there as well. Including a certain mouse, your favorite mouse in the whole wide world.”
“Remy? In Ratatouille?”
“Remy was a rat, darling, not a mouse. Otherwise they would have called the movie Mouseatouille. Which they didn’t.”
Aurora laughed and pursed her lips, thinking this over.
“Not Mickey?”
“Yup. Mickey Mouse himself.”
“Mickey Mouse. The real Mickey Mouse. Lives in that very palace with Cinderella? Inside.”
“Correct.”
“And we’re going there. To that exact palace. Tomorrow.”
“We are.”
“Oh, Daddy, I want to hug you. I’m so excited… can we meet Mickey? Go to his house? See his room and everything?”
“I should think so. He does live there, after all.”
“Well. We’ll just walk up to his door and knock on it, won’t we, Daddy?”
“Or maybe he’ll be out playing and we’ll go say hello. I hear he is just about the most popular mouse in Orlando and-”
At dinner the night before he shipped out, he had made a solemn promise to his family. When he got home he was taking them all to Disney World for a grand holiday. Three whole days. In bed later that night, he’d asked his wife to honor his promise in his absence. No matter what. And there were times, lying in a rocky roadside ditch, bleeding out, when Sgt. Chris Marley, USMC, had believed he’d never set foot (he still had one, anyway) inside Disney World. He still remembered Aubrey, his son, who had pumped his fist and shouted, “Disney World? Space Mountain, bring it on!”
“Daddy! Wake up! You fell asleep reading!”
Aurora, her eyes gleaming, looked up at him and said one word freighted with reverence.
“Mickey.”
A t that moment the door swung inward and a small, familiar-looking boy of eleven (he was Aurora’s older brother) stood there holding a very beat-up red duffel bag with a big black L above a pair of crossed lacrosse sticks. It was the one his dad had used at Lawrenceville. The boy’s name was Aubrey. He was an auburn-haired boy, with great handsome eyes that he would grow into with the passing of time.
“Dad, Mom says I can’t use this duffel without your permission.”
“Permission granted, Private Marley, but it’s too big. We’re only going for three days, Aubrey.”
“Dad! What about all my lacrosse stuff? It’ll only fit in this
…”
“No time for lacrosse where we’re going, I’m afraid. Your days are already accounted for. I’ve got tickets for Splash Mountain, the Riverboat cruise, the Haunted House, the Pirates of the Caribbean, It’s a Small World… and that’s only the first day.”
“What about Space Mountain?”
“I hear that’s too scary,” Aurora said, clutching her dolly.
“It’s just a roller coaster,” Aubrey sniffed. “How scary can it be?”
“All I know is my best friend forever Tabitha Longley went and she said it’s all in the dark and you can’t see anything. She hated it. She even… threw up… gross!”
Aubrey laughed, “Yeah, I bet. ’Specially for the poor bozos sitting behind her.”
“You are so totally disgusting.”
Christopher closed the picture book and leaned forward in his chair.
“Aubrey? Why don’t you go pack, buddy. It’s late and we’re getting up very early. You were supposed to be packed by dinnertime.”
“Dad! I had practice!”
“Go get Mom; she’ll help you. You won’t need much, okay? Jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers.”
“Space Mountain, Dad? Please.”
“Yes, fine. Space Mountain.”
I t was lunchtime when the Marleys checked into the great Wilderness Lodge, the hotel Christopher and Marjorie had chosen because of its resemblance to the place where they’d honeymooned, the Yellowstone Lodge in Yellowstone Park. Aubrey was simply astounded by the size of the place. Aurora just wanted to get to the room,
