Gustav Gloom and the Castle of Fear Page 5

  Unfortunately, when she reached for that pen now, it was gone, fallen through a hole that had ripped open in the bottom of that pocket.

  “Great!” she grumbled. “Now I can’t find my pen, either.”

  Her shadow leaned down and retrieved something from the floor at Pearlie’s feet. “Here it is. You must have only dropped it a second ago.”

  “Thank you,” Pearlie said, clicking the pen a couple of times to make sure it still worked.

  Not-Roger said, “Um. Pearlie?”

  “What are you going to suggest now?” Pearlie said in irritation. “That I look in my shoe?”

  “No,” Not-Roger said, “but right in front of you might be nice.”

  Pearlie rolled her eyes. “At what? There’s nobody here but you, me, and my shadow, and if . . .”

  Pearlie stopped mid-sentence, remembering that the last time she had seen the shadow version of herself was when Lord Obsidian’s minions had hauled away her father. The shadow girl had elected to stay with him rather than with the girl whose shape she wore.

  After a moment, Pearlie managed, “You!”

  “Of course,” said the shadow girl. “Who else would I be?”

  “You left me.”

  “Only for as long as it took you to catch up. I figured you’d understand: Somebody needed to stay by your dad all this time. I figured he needed somebody to keep an eye on him more than you did. Was I wrong about that?”

  It took Pearlie a second to manage an answer of any kind. “Is he okay?”

  Pearlie’s shadow gestured at the crazy architecture around them: the irregular directionless stairs that headed up in some places and down in others but never seemed to arrive at any destination. “All these stairs, wherever the eye can see, and not a single safety railing to be found? How do you think he’s taking it?”

  Pearlie had never in her whole life felt so sorry for her father, a professional safety expert who had compiled entire filing cabinets of terrible things that could happen to people who were careless while climbing up or down stairs. Being trapped in a place like this without benefit of safety railings was exactly the kind of thing that would drive her father especially crazy. “Bring me to him!”

  “I can’t,” her shadow said. “He’s standing behind you . . .”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Surrender of Gustav Gloom

  The Beast was any size it wanted to be and any shape it thought it ought to be. It changed its mind almost constantly, and was with each step not quite the same monster it had been one step earlier, qualities that along with its tremendous speed and power made it an almost impossible creature to either flee or fight.

  There was a reason it was the worst monster people could imagine, in any language where people used words to try to describe the monsters glimpsed in dark places, a reason why it had been given so many different names, from bogeyman to Wendigo to Jabberwock: It was everything bad.

  But Gustav Gloom had played this game with it before.

  Even as it reached for him to cause the pain Lord Obsidian had requested, he had moved out of its way, leaving it to grunt and bellow and galumph about, shattering the statues Lord Obsidian had erected to commemorate the great moments of his life. The baby version of Howard Philip October, the one the aunt had called Little Sunshine, shattered into a thousand pieces. The young scholar his fellow students had avoided exploded into pebbles. The teller of strange tales about alien worlds and ancient civilizations broke in half. Still, the Beast whirled about, with arms that changed shape with every second, trying to get its claws on what it perceived as a bothersome flea that persisted in irritating the top of its head, no matter how desperately the monster struggled to swat it.

  Gustav scrambled down the monster’s back, evading a grab from an arm that the Beast had grown for the occasion. He couldn’t resist taunting Lord Obsidian on the way: “Too bad about your statues, Howie! I could have told you all about your pet’s habit of carelessly breaking them! He broke a lot of them back at my house! Maybe I can make him break so many you won’t have any left!”

  Lord Obsidian didn’t stir from his throne. “They will be no trouble to replace.”

  “But isn’t that the point, Howie? They’re all you have! What difference does it make if they get smashed or not? When you were a person, you threw away people . . . and all it earned you in exchange is a bunch of stupid statues!”

  Frustrated beyond what little reason it had, the Beast turned itself inside out to get to Gustav, an act that left the little halfsie boy inside him. However, the Beast was notoriously stupid, and forgot to close his mouth to trap Gustav inside. Gustav leaped out of the slightly darker spot that represented its mouth, rolled across the floor, and darted between the great monster’s legs as it came for him again.

  “This is very amusing,” Lord Obsidian noted, “but even a boy who is part shadow is still part flesh and blood. You will not be able to keep this up forever.”

  Gustav didn’t point out that he didn’t have to, not as long as the Beast had a long history of being as easy to lead as a maddened bull.

  Instead, he headed toward the one part of the room that Lord Obsidian would have expected him to avoid: the throne.

  Lord Obsidian realized what Gustav was up to in time to clutch for him. Whatever particularly awful kind of shadow he was made of made the air terribly cold around him. His long, spindly, floor-length fingers rotted the material of Gustav’s jacket when they brushed his lapels in passing . . . but the same speed that enabled Gustav to play a pretty decent game of keep-away with one monster out of nightmares also permitted him to evade that clutching grasp.

  The soles of Gustav’s shoes flaked and crumbled as Gustav raced up Lord Obsidian’s chest and leaped away from his shoulders. By the time Gustav was airborne, he was barefoot. But that was worth it. The Beast, who had been just a step or two behind him, was as heedless in his pursuit of him as a pet dog is in chasing a pet cat across the bed where its master lies sleeping. The Beast hit the world-conquering former Howard Philip October in the center of his chest. Caught up in the excitement and fury of the chase, it knew only that it had caught something, and raked at Lord Obsidian’s body with both fangs and claws, as if its master and not Gustav were the prey it had sought.

  Lord Obsidian’s scream of pain was one of the most terrible sounds Gustav had ever heard. It sounded like gears ripping through steel, like a thousand creatures on fire, like a million stringed instruments all playing the same screeching note at once. It was a sound that must have been heard all over his castle, and likely over much of the Dark Country, as well, and for as long as it went on, Gustav could only hope that his friends and allies were still alive and listening.

  Unfortunately, it was over almost immediately, because Obsidian snarled, “Heel!” and the Beast immediately obeyed, curling up at his feet like any pet smart enough to understand that it had just been bad.

  Gustav hit the ground and rose to his feet in a throne room that was now filled with rubble. “Well, Howie. Are you going to make a dumb statue of that?”

  Lord Obsidian began to snarl, but then seemed to remember himself, and offered the troublesome boy a naughty wag of his finger instead. “You are a very clever halfsie, Gustav. Well done. But as you will see, it is not even close to enough.”

  He pressed a button on his armrest, and one of the shadows imprisoned beyond the transparent wall behind the throne was suddenly and violently drawn upward. A second later, it fell from the ceiling above the throne and landed in Lord Obsidian’s hand, as convenient as a candy bar dispensed by a vending machine. The shadow trembled and screamed for mercy, but the instant Lord Obsidian pressed it against his injured chest, its substance flowed into his, healing his wound immediately. The face of the victimized shadow was the last part to sink below the surface before it was silenced.

  “See?” Lord Obsidian gloated.
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  Gustav shuddered. “I’ve got to give you credit. That was pretty disgusting.”

  “By all human standards, perhaps. But it is part of the reason I’ve gone to so much effort to conquer this place and imprison so many of the shadows who live here. They are all now just raw materials I can use to replenish myself. Except for a select few, who will follow me into the new universe I intend to build once the old one has been destroyed, they will all soon be part of me. I will add all the other shadows of the Dark Country to what I am, and then I will add all those dwelling in the world of light to what I am, and then I will add the shadow of the entire universe to what I am. In the end, Gustav, there will be nothing left but me, my closest minions, and whatever worlds I decide to create as my temporary playthings.”

  Gustav blinked. “Sounds lonely. I guess this is the part of the story where I say, ‘You’re mad.’”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “It’s not something I have to say, Howie. I knew you were a crazy old loser before I ever met you.”

  Lord Obsidian didn’t just leap from his throne; he exploded from it. He moved faster than the People Taker ever had, faster than the Beast ever had, faster than any shadow Gustav had ever seen. In an instant he had crossed the pitifully short distance separating himself from the boy, and wrapped his impossibly long fingers around Gustav’s neck.

  Gustav clutched at those awful fingers, trying to peel them from around his neck, but his hands went numb the instant he touched them, and his arms fell to his sides, as useless as rags.

  “Do you feel that?” Lord Obsidian snarled. “Do you feel how helpless you are at my touch?”

  Gustav tried to answer, but nothing escaped his mouth but a hiss.

  “Don’t for one second think that your cleverness will make me as easy to evade as my pet. The Beast is just a shadow—a very powerful and dangerous shadow, but still no more than a shadow. I have made myself into something worse than any man or any shadow, something that can take life with a touch. If I wish, contact with my flesh would rot your flesh, as it did your clothing. You would age a lifetime in an instant, and find yourself a withered old man, too weak to stand. Or I could hold on to you even longer and watch as you crumbled to dust.”

  Gustav’s throat had gone dry, as if he now, for the very first time, felt the thirst that had somehow never made itself known at any point since his arrival in the Dark Country. His legs had gone numb, as well. He found that he wasn’t afraid of dying, because that had never been something he worried about, but he did feel an awful sadness at the thought of all the people he had failed.

  Then Lord Obsidian released him, and he fell to the cold stone floor.

  “After all the insults I have suffered from you,” Lord Obsidian said, “I am tempted to rescind my generous offer. I don’t need a halfsie boy, or even the location of the Nightmare Vault, that much. But I can afford to give you one last chance. You will join me and start following my orders, or I will have the What girls and their father brought here so you can see the worst my touch can do to those who defy me.”

  Gustav coughed, blinked away the weakness that had overcome him in the few seconds that he’d been imprisoned in Lord Obsidian’s grasp, and then managed to pull himself to his feet. He swayed. He was aware that he already looked like he’d been on the losing side of a war. His shoes had almost completely dissolved into dust and were now just a pair of leather rings around his ankles. The lapels of his jacket had faded, and even the rest of his suit looked like it had been nibbled by moths. He raised his arms, just to make sure they still worked, and found that even though the strength and the feeling were returning to them, they were for the moment still moving like the branches of a dead tree stirring from the touch of some cold autumn wind.

  It was clear that, up until this moment, Lord Obsidian had just been toying with him.

  The conqueror of the Dark Country regarded him closely, just to confirm that all the fight had gone out of him, then offered a satisfied nod and returned to his throne so he could wait for Gustav’s answer.

  For the first time in a life of perfect health, Gustav had to speak with a hoarse voice. “Can I . . . tell you a little story first?”

  “As long as you tell it to me respectfully.”

  “When I was very small . . . and just starting to realize that I would never be able to explore the world on the other side of the iron fence . . . my shadow mother used to tell me . . . that nothing’s ever really sad.”

  Lord Obsidian rolled his eyes. “Oh, please.”

  “She said . . . that even when sad things happen, when life disappoints you or takes away the things you love . . . there’s always something happy to look for . . . something you can find and hold on to . . . that can show you your problems aren’t nearly as bad as they seem.”

  “Did any of this insipid foolishness actually help?”

  “She said that . . . even if I lost people, then that just meant I had room in my heart for more. She said that . . . even if I was trapped behind a fence . . . it only meant that someday a special person would know where to find me. She said that . . . even if there was evil in the world . . . evil like you . . . then it was only worth noticing because there was also good somewhere, to measure it against.”

  “I get it,” Lord Obsidian said, sounding as tired as any all-powerful conqueror of a shadow dimension ever had. “A silver lining behind every cloud, blah blah blah. This really isn’t doing much to improve your situation.”

  Gustav found himself standing a little straighter, and his voice sounding a little stronger. “I haven’t gotten to the point of the story yet.”

  “If the point is as fascinating as everything I’ve heard so far, I’m sure I’m in for something special.”

  Gustav flexed his arms, which had almost completely recovered now, and cleared his throat so his voice could do the same. “For many years, both before and after my shadow mom disappeared, I didn’t believe her, not even a little bit. Oh, I was a good kid, and I pretended that what she said made me feel better, but inside I reacted the same way you have. I rolled my eyes. Why wouldn’t I? They were just words. They didn’t change any of the problems I had to live with. I was still alone. Still trapped behind a fence. Still living in a world where it was easy to see evil and hard to see good.”

  “We had better be near the end now.”

  “Many years later,” Gustav said, “after my shadow mother disappeared, I found out she’d been right about every single last bit of it.”

  He took a deep breath and concluded: “All it took was for Fernie What to move in across the street.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Lord Obsidian clapped. “That’s it? Am I supposed to weep? See the error of my ways? Apologize for everything I’ve done, free the Dark Country, and return your loved ones to you?”

  “That would be nice,” Gustav admitted, “but I don’t expect it. No, I just wanted you to know what Fernie and her family showed me: that even if you’re right, and I find myself having to surrender to you, my shadow mother still knew what she was talking about. There’s a good side to everything, even this.”

  “And before I reduce you to a pile of ash just for wasting my time with this drivel, what silver lining do you find in the knowledge that you now stand defeated before me?”

  Gustav told him, “At least I got to destroy your statues.”

  And for long minutes, the throne room of Lord Obsidian was rocked by the dark one’s mocking laughter.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Fernie Delivers an Important Message

  Hans Gloom didn’t seem to be in any hurry to wake up, even with company visiting the shadow version of the house inside the house for what must have been the first time ever.

  “He has been asleep a long time,” Penny’s shadow explained. “I keep him asleep, because it’s better for him to sleep and dream of his happy times
with the flesh-and-blood Penny, than to wake up and remember everything that’s happened to him since.”

  Fernie regarded the pale, fragile figure. Unlike Not-Roger, who had been in the Dark Country for decades and didn’t seem to have aged a year in all that time, Hans Gloom had been imprisoned in a place specifically designed to drain the life and hope from people, and he showed the effects. He had aged since posing for the photographs she had seen of him; not just the ten years that had passed since he chased Howard Philip October to the Dark Country, but more like twenty. His hair had gone silver, and his face had become drawn and lined. But he was still clearly the man who had loved a woman named Penny and fathered a child named Gustav—a man whose strength and goodness were not gone, but simply hidden beneath a curtain of sleep. “I didn’t know shadows could cast sleeping spells.”

  “This is not quite a sleeping spell, Fernie. I could not force any man to sleep if he did not actually prefer to be asleep. But have you never been in bed past the moment when it was time to wake up, unwilling to open your eyes because your dream was too special to surrender without a fight? That is what Hans is doing. He chases the shadows of happiness I have placed in his head, and stays sleeping for as long as he knows that the only thing to greet his waking eyes is heartache and loss. This has been protecting him from the madness of this place for years.”

  Even in her journeys across the Dark Country, it had been quite some time since Fernie had heard anything quite so terrible. “Could he wake up if he wanted?”