Gustav Gloom and the Castle of Fear Read online

  Fernie had faced down a number of monsters of late, and had, until now, imagined she was getting used to it; but not that face, not those eyes. They were the eyes of a creature who had never felt a moment of genuine warmth for anything that lived, whose only reaction to anything good was the need to destroy it. An evil smile spread across his elongated, crescent features, as he said, “Yes. I should take the very smallest one first and work my way up to greater pleasures.”

  He reached for her.

  Everything else in the battle faded into the background as those impossibly long fingers stretched toward her. Behind him, the shadows falling from the carousel became a kind of slow-motion rain, so far away that they might have come from another planet.

  Then there was a sudden flash of steel as a heavy sword slammed against Lord Obsidian’s knuckles with an audible clang. It didn’t sever any of Obsidian’s fingers and probably damaged the sword more than his hand, but it did knock the giant hand aside just before its deadly touch would have brushed Fernie’s cheeks.

  Stung, Lord Obsidian clutched that hand with the other and stepped back to behold who would have dared do such an impudent thing.

  Mr. What stood alone, the smoking sword in front of him, looking like a man who had absolutely no idea what he was expected to do next but was willing to do it anyway.

  Fernie could hardly believe her eyes. “Dad?”

  Lord Obsidian looked even more astonished. “You? You’re the most pathetic of all of them! A terrified little man who lives his life in fear, imagining ways to protect himself from all the world’s imagined dangers!”

  “Not just myself,” Mr. What said, “and not just imagined. Fernie, get behind me.”

  Horrified by what she saw about to happen, Fernie protested: “You can’t fight him, Dad. Not with a sword!”

  Mr. What didn’t waver one instant. “I’d rather be anywhere else, doing anything else, Fernie, but nobody ever asked me for my vote, and I am your father. Get behind me, young lady. Now.”

  Fernie would have protested further, but then something grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her away.

  Above her head, the carousel went into another high-speed spin, scattering shadows and humans in all directions. Elsewhere, Not-Roger let go of the man he was swinging and sent him flying over the crowd with a scream that became just another of many filling the gray air. Pearlie broke the jar containing Not-Roger’s shadow, and he burst free, leaping into the crowd of enemy shadows with a roaring battle cry. Gustav and Hans Gloom grabbed swords and fought side by side, wearing identical fierce expressions on faces that were impossible to avoid seeing as linked by heredity. There was shouting and running and fighting everywhere. But Fernie, being pulled away by the whisper-soft hand of Great-Aunt Mellifluous, had no eyes for anything but her father, thin and small and armed with nothing but a puny sword, but standing resolute against an amazed enemy the size of a house.

  Mr. What lifted that sword to block another blow from Lord Obsidian’s fingers, and though he succeeded in parrying Obsidian’s hit, was knocked to one knee by the force of it. He managed to rise back to his feet and shouted at the towering figure above him: “Is that the best you can do, you ugly freak? Come on!”

  Fernie was desperate to pull free to help him. But Great-Aunt Mellifluous spun her around and knelt before her, cupping her cheeks. “There’s no time, dear. Obsidian’s forces must already know what’s happening here, and are likely sending reinforcements from the castle even now. You need to get to the carousel and—”

  A shadow guard bowled into Great-Aunt Mellifluous, knocking her away from Fernie.

  The guard was a shape-changer who had made himself into a creature a lot like a gnarfle, with little stubby legs, little grasping hands, and a head that was mostly angry gnashing mouth. Great-Aunt Mellifluous fell to the ground beneath him, but she started to blur at once, shifting from her familiar old-woman guise, to the much slighter Anemone, to something that was in less than a second just as monstrous as the shape she fought.

  “The armies!” she cried, for Fernie’s benefit. “If we can’t signal our own, then all is—”

  Whatever else she had to say was cut off when she and the guard got all tangled up together and became something that looked like two storm clouds battling each other.

  Fernie was pretty sure that Gustav’s great-aunt’s next word would have been “lost.”

  She looked for her father. She saw that Lord Obsidian had reached down and touched the tip of Mr. What’s sword with one of his great distorted fingers. The part of the blade that remained visible, just before the hilt, was already turning yellow and tarnished with age.

  Mr. What still held on grimly, shouting something Fernie couldn’t hear. He seemed like he had doubled in size, and she had trouble telling why until she saw that another shadow surrounded him, adding to his grip with the strength of his own arms. It was recognizable as her father’s shadow only because it did everything her father was doing, but in outline it was bulkier, more muscled, looking like her father might have looked if he’d lived the life of a great warrior, renowned wherever he went for his fearlessness and strength.

  Without understanding how, Fernie suddenly knew that it was the shadow of the man her father had always been, for all his constant fussing and worrying about safety.

  He’d never been frightened of anything, not really. He’d just been careful.

  But even with his shadow’s help, her father was still losing.

  As the blade crumbled, a grinning Lord Obsidian moved his fingertip closer to the hilt, taking obvious pleasure in the inevitability of his enemy’s defeat.

  Fernie’s father had only seconds left . . .

  . . . but Great-Aunt Mellifluous had told her she needed to get to the carousel.

  . . . but Fernie was the only one who even saw the trouble he was in.

  . . . but there was nothing she could do herself to save him from Lord Obsidian.

  . . . but he was Dad.

  . . . but . . .

  Fernie made the hardest decision she’d ever had to make in her life and, rather than rushing to help her father, she ran in another direction, twisting away from the various evil hands trying to grab her, and heading straight for the only thing she’d seen today that could possibly be able to help.

  She found herself in the path of the charging unicorn. There were already what looked like two dozen shadow soldiers impaled on its horn, struggling to get free. They would survive the experience, but Fernie had no reason to believe she would, so she evaded its charge and ran toward one of the sprawled human guards. This fellow looked like he had already had more than enough of the fighting. His head, which lay facedown in front of her on the platform, was bald and lumpy and bruised.

  Building up as much speed as she could, Fernie used his back as a ramp, and his rather large and protruding butt as the closest thing she had to a trampoline.

  It was the only way she could achieve enough height to do what she needed to do, and even then, she wasn’t at all sure she would make it.

  It was a near thing. A very near thing.

  But she landed on the spot she’d aimed for.

  Right in the saddle of the carousel’s winged horse.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Lord Obsidian Shows a Degree of Personal Irritation

  The winged horse was so startled by the sudden weight on its back that it reared, trying to throw her off. But Fernie was prepared for that and held on to its mane, shouting, “Stop! Stop! You know me! I’m one of the carousel’s passengers!”

  The winged horse flapped its giant wings, scattering the vicious shadow minions around them. The act made it leave the ground, and for a moment it seemed about to settle again when Fernie cried, “No! No! You need to go up! I need to get back to the carousel right away!”

  “But all the fun’s down here,” the winged hor
se complained.

  The carousel’s gorilla was capable of speech, and so Fernie was only mildly surprised that this animal came equipped with the same feature. “You’ll be able to hurt them a lot more if you get me back to the carousel.”

  “This better be good,” it warned as it rose into the air. “It’s been years since I’ve been given a chance to get involved in a good fight.”

  Spreading its wings, the winged horse swooped low over the crowd, knocking over a handful of human guards who had been advancing on Hans and Gustav Gloom, and giving the father and son a moment’s freedom to race to Mr. What’s rescue.

  Nor were they alone. Even as Hans and Gustav struggled to make their way across the battlefield, many more of their allies had rushed to help the bespectacled man who had taken on Lord Obsidian alone. Penny’s shadow and Not-Roger’s shadow and even Pearlie’s shadow had all gathered behind her father’s shadow, surrounding him and adding their strength to his as he struggled to wrest his rapidly disintegrating sword from Lord Obsidian’s touch.

  Mr. What had the look of a man who would have preferred being anywhere else in the universe, even on a Ferris wheel—and, really, for anyone who knew him, that was saying a lot. But he clung to the sword and refused to let go.

  Fernie didn’t really have time to try to save him, but even with her own important mission to complete, she couldn’t ignore her father’s plight anymore. She shouted an instruction to the winged horse, which dipped in mid-flight and gave Lord Obsidian a powerful kick in the head as it passed by. It was the kind of kick that might have pulped a watermelon, and Lord Obsidian was currently solid enough to feel it, but it didn’t seem to hurt him much. He roared, but more in indignation than pain . . . and he didn’t lose his grip on the blade.

  Another loop, and she saw Not-Roger, who had picked up yet another human guard by the ankle and now had two he was swinging around like hammers. He cried up at her, joyfully, “You know what, Fernie? I think I used to do this kind of thing a lot!”

  Fernie also flew over Pearlie, still alive and chasing the shadow minion who was trying to escape the battle with the last of the glass jars in his arms. It wasn’t hard to figure out that the one shadow ally who still remained imprisoned was the mysterious Caliban. Fernie considered making another side trip to help Pearlie free him. But no. She’d already lost too much time.

  The carousel filled the sky before her, spinning too quickly to be seen as anything but a colorful blur. As fast as it was moving, not just in its own circles but back and forth across the battlefield, sweeping away as many shadows as it could, a safe landing seemed impossible. Fernie almost closed her eyes to avoid seeing the crash that would most likely kill her. But just as she was certain she was about to die, all sense of movement vanished and she found herself sitting on a carousel animal that had taken its place in the circle and frozen there, once again mounted on its pole.

  “Did you think I was going to crash?” the winged horse inquired. “Please. I learned how to land on a moving target long ago.”

  Fernie supposed it appropriate to say this much: “Thank you.”

  “I hope so,” it replied. “Every moment I stay here, I miss more of the fun.”

  Fernie hopped down onto a carousel floor that was right now empty of all its animals except for the one she’d just ridden, and the helpful gorilla, who loped up to her with Harrington’s carrier still tightly clutched under his hairy arm.

  Harrington was, unsurprisingly, very wide-eyed.

  “Welcome back, miss,” the gorilla said. “Will you want your pet back now? He’s been yowling most insistently.”

  “Not yet, thank you! But take care of him!”

  Ignoring the view out the side of the carousel, which spun and tilted and blurred and in all other ways attempted to make her faint with dizziness, she ran past a forest of abandoned silver poles to the carousel’s hub, where Grandpa Lemuel’s shadow stood at the controls with transparent fingers darting back and forth like furious birds.

  Lemuel’s shadow was so busy that he didn’t look up to greet her. “I was very glad to see all of you, Fernie. You were all out of touch for so long that I almost gave up hope.”

  She was glad to see him, too, but didn’t have the time to give him the joyful hug she thought he deserved. “We’re still going to lose unless you do something right away.”

  “Really? It looks like we’re doing okay.”

  “I know. But Lord Obsidian has entire armies under the clouds . . . and there’s no telling how many might be already on their way here to help him.”

  His friendly eyes darkened with concern. “Should I go fight those instead?”

  “No. We have to get a message to all the oppressed shadows on the other side, the ones who could be fighting with us but are either so beaten down they can’t imagine winning, or don’t know that this is their one chance to rise up.”

  “Like what?”

  “Back when Gustav and I were first learning to fly this thing, we accidentally shrank ourselves to the size of a mote of dust. Do you remember how to do that?”

  “Of course. The carousel has always been able to change its size. It’s the only way to be sure that wherever you go, there’ll always be a place to park it. But how could getting smaller possibly—”

  Fernie said, “I’m afraid you’re still not getting it.”

  Below, many of the human guards were either down or still trying to stay out of the way of the rampaging carousel animals. Most of the shadow soldiers were either scattered or busy trying to help their embattled comrades. Pearlie was still chasing the shadow guard trying to hold on to that last jar. Gustav and Hans Gloom were still racing to Mr. What’s aid, but had both needed to stop and evade the sword thrusts of all the shadow guards who had massed to stop them.

  Much of the battle on the statue’s head now came down to a single frightened man and a few shadows refusing to back down from one of the greatest monsters who ever lived.

  The last of Mr. What’s blade crumbled into a whiff of rusty powder, and Mr. What himself fell flat on his back, staring up at a laughing figure many times his size.

  Mr. What scrambled away on his back, trying to get out of Lord Obsidian’s way, but the furious tyrant simply advanced on him, taking his time, uncaring. The shadows who’d been adding their strength to Mr. What’s flew over his shoulders and attacked Lord Obsidian themselves, but the scowling villain merely batted them aside, one after the other. One blow sent Pearlie’s shadow flying; the next sent Not-Roger’s shadow flying; the third sent Penny’s shadow flying. Pearlie’s shadow returned and wrapped herself around Lord Obsidian’s legs in a bid to trip him up, but he simply plucked her off and threw her away again.

  Lord Obsidian just knelt and poised his giant hand over Mr. What’s helpless form, stopping with one long and snakelike finger scarcely an inch from the tip of the man’s nose. “This was the overrated boy’s great plan? This petty act of . . . mischief? The sudden appearance of a flying machine?”

  “Seemed . . . pretty good . . . to me . . . ,” Mr. What wheezed.

  “I’m almost tempted to let you live. It should amuse you to know that, even as we speak, I have sent some of my forces to the Gloom house to free your old friend the People Taker and all the prisoners in the Hall of Shadow Criminals. It would amuse me even more to see your reaction when they demonstrate they have done what I bade them, to bring your foolish wife here to join you and the girls as slaves in my mines.”

  Mr. What tried to get up, but the lightest touch from one of Obsidian’s fingers to the center of his forehead sent him back down to the cold ground. It had not been enough of a touch to suck the life from him, but he had clearly felt that terrible draining sensation, because his face had lost all its color, and he looked unlikely to get up even if Lord Obsidian had any intention of allowing him.

  Obsidian stepped on his chest and pinned him wi
th the weight of his foot. “But no. I am now angry enough to kill. So first, you. Then the other worthless father. Then the boy. Then your brats. Your wife, when she arrives, can labor as a slave alone.”

  His fingers started to close on Mr. What’s face . . .

  The ground lurched.

  It was like an earthquake, except that this was not Earth and, considering what the ground they were fighting on really was, the only thing the disturbance could possibly be called was a giant stone Howard Philip October head-quake.

  A deafening vibration, like a jackhammer on pavement, except a thousand times worse, filled the air and sent all the humans, whether working for Lord Obsidian or fighting for the side of Gustav and the Whats, to their knees, clutching their ears in pain.

  Everybody stumbled, even the carousel animals and shadows. Even Lord Obsidian himself, who drew his hand away from the fortunate Mr. What and staggered backward, demanding, “What’s happening?”

  Pearlie stumbled and dropped the jar she’d managed to wrest from the shadow minion’s clutches. It shattered when it hit the stone, releasing a black cloud that immediately congealed into the shape of the hooded Caliban.

  The shaking grew worse, almost like the surface they all fought on was ripping itself apart. Pearlie toppled to the ground, the shaking of the stone beneath her so violent that she bounced up and down as she tried to crawl back toward the center of the fight.

  Over the next few seconds it became clear that there was now another sound, even louder than the grinding and quaking. It sounded like a distant hum, and then it became a louder hum, and then it became millions or possibly even billions of voices, shouting from every corner of the Dark Country as something impossible happened to the statue that towered at the center of that land.

  Even this high above the Dark Country, they sounded like cries of terror from Lord Obsidian’s followers . . . and cheers from his enemies.

  Gustav gazed past the unsteady figure of Lord Obsidian and saw something happening at the stone head’s horizon. At first it looked like an impossible storm, a reverse blizzard of boulders the size of flying hills, all being flung upward in the distance. This was followed by a swiftly spinning riot of color he recognized as the curve of the Cryptic Carousel, rising over that horizon as if it were a sun climbing to greet a new day.