Gustav Gloom and the Cryptic Carousel Read online

  There was no sign of the black storm that had escaped from the toolbox, but that didn’t mean anything. There were so many crags on the cliffsides, so many spots swallowed up in black shadows from the overhangs, that the black storm cloud could have been hiding anywhere, or nowhere. It might have dispersed, for all Fernie knew. It might not even be one of the problems she and Gustav had to deal with. But Fernie remembered its cry of Revenge! and its bottomless anger at its past betrayal, and somehow she knew that it was still somewhere just out of sight, nursing its rage, yet another threat in an alien place that seemed to be crowded with them.

  Beside her, Gustav summed up their situation: “Could be worse . . .”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  How It Could Be Worse

  From Fernie’s point of view, Gustav couldn’t have said anything more dumbfounding even if he’d sung “Happy Birthday” or clucked like a chicken.

  She turned her head toward him very, very slowly and spent more time saying her next word than she’d ever needed to say it before. “What?”

  “You heard me. This could be worse. In fact, I think we’ve had great luck so far.”

  Fernie smacked her arms against her sides. Sometimes, being with Gustav Gloom meant fighting the urge to throttle him. “How have we had luck?”

  “Well, for one thing,” he pointed out, reasonably enough, “we were lucky the carousel crash-landed someplace soft instead of against the side of one of those mountains. We’d have been killed right away.”

  “You mean, instead of after a little while, like we’re going to be killed?”

  “Probably,” Gustav admitted, “but at least now we have a little while to get our bearings and figure something out.”

  “That’s assuming we can figure something out.”

  “I don’t see why we can’t. We always have.”

  Fernie wasn’t sure how it necessarily followed that this meant they always would, but Gustav’s calm, unsmiling optimism made her shut her mouth with an audible click.

  He continued: “We’re even luckier that we didn’t overshoot this net entirely and go plunging into those red clouds far below; I don’t know what’s down there, but I don’t suppose it could possibly be any great improvement on where we are, and our chances of hitting something like the ground very hard while falling very fast would have been that much worse. I have to say, Fernie, if we had to get stranded anywhere in this world, this is probably the very best place we could have crash-landed, out of a long list of even worse choices. So you have to admit, that’s a definite plus.”

  Fernie shook her head in disbelief. “We’re going to have to have a long talk about what you consider a plus.”

  “That’s not all I find encouraging,” Gustav said. “Think about how many hours we’ve been experimenting with the carousel today, after all the time we spent running around last night. Think about how long it’s been since you ate or drank anything. Are you hungry or thirsty? Have you gotten sleepy at all?”

  Fernie hadn’t considered any of these things. “No.”

  “Well, neither have I. And to me that says that even if we’re separated from our shadows for the time being, they’ve still been able to get to some shadow food and water and feed themselves, which means that they’re probably okay, which means that for however long we’re stuck here we’re not going to have any problems with hunger or thirst or sleep, either.”

  The genuine relief Fernie felt upon learning that the brave little shadow version of herself was probably doing fine, wherever she was, was unfortunately diluted by the dismay that went along with any thought of not needing to eat or drink or sleep but still being stuck in this strange world, with nothing but those craggy pillars of rock to look at, forever. She wasn’t sure all that added up to a plus, either. “What else have you got?”

  “We’ve also gotten the toolbox open, and once that black storm was out of the way, I saw that the box had what we were looking for: a fat notebook containing an alphabetical list of destinations, along with all the dial combinations necessary for steering the carousel to any one of them. I didn’t have time to look up the way to the Dark Country before you started yelling about Harrington, but I’m sure it’s in there somewhere. That’s also a plus.”

  Fernie also found that last “plus” hard to accept. “It won’t help us much, with the control panel broken.”

  “No,” Gustav admitted. “It won’t, but that’s where our amazing luck comes in yet again. When the dial went flying, it could have been blown miles away. It could have fallen through the clouds below us and been lost somewhere, where we’d never see it again. We would have been trapped here, not just for a little while, but forever and ever. But I see the dial, Fernie. It’s over there. On that ledge.”

  He pointed at the same rock pillar where the big hairy whatever-it-was hung sleeping.

  Fernie squinted, saw nothing, curled her fingers into a pair of binoculars to look through, and still saw nothing. As far as she could tell, there was nothing to the big rock pillar with some kind of giant monster clinging to its other side but a big rock pillar with some kind of giant monster clinging to its other side; which was, all by itself, more than enough. She ventured an uncertain, “Are you sure?”

  “It’s very small,” Gustav confirmed, “but clear as day.”

  She wasn’t sure. “You don’t have much experience with day.”

  “Or with dials,” he said, “but it’s there. Trust me, Fernie. I have terrific eyesight. It goes along with always having to see dark things hidden in the dark places of a dark house.”

  Fernie believed him, not just because she’d witnessed Gustav’s keen vision before (as she had), but also because trusting that he was right was the only option that offered her a little bit of hope. “Okay. So how do we get it?”

  “Simple. We have to make our way across the net, climb up that cliff wall, grab the dial before that big hairy thing notices, climb back down, and make our way back here before it can wake up and chase us.”

  Fernie took that all in and remarked, “I don’t think you understand the word simple, either.”

  “Sure I do,” he said, pouting a little. “We have no choice. It’s that simple.”

  There was nothing Fernie could say to argue with that.

  They walked over to the edge of the carousel and stared down at the pink netting, which close up didn’t look like any surface Fernie had ever seen. Under the white lights of the carousel roof, the material seemed more white than pink, the scarlet tint it seemed to have everywhere else a reflection of the bloodred sky. The white fibers seemed to be tied together in little braids that were tied together in larger braids, which were themselves wrapped up tight in even larger braids strong enough to form a net capable of supporting the carousel. The surface was not smooth like a sheet, but cratered like the moon, with a number of places where the braids had ripped apart, or seemed about to. It didn’t look much like a trustworthy place for a long hike.

  Fernie glanced at the sky. “Aren’t you going to be in trouble if you leave the carousel?”

  “I think we can pretty much expect some kind of trouble. That monster, for one thing.”

  “I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about the way you start going up in smoke the second you leave family property. Won’t leaving the carousel mean leaving family property?”

  Gustav’s eyebrows knit. “Probably. Let’s test the light.”

  He extended his arm out from under the carousel roof and experimented by waving it around a little.

  No smoke started to rise from his exposed skin.

  He pulled his arm back, examined his hand closely, and murmured, “Well, that’s another lucky break.”

  Fernie didn’t understand. “Why aren’t you burning up?”

  “I don’t know. This is the first time it’s ever happened, so I’ve never had to come up with an exp
lanation before. But I know what I think.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I may be wrong, and I’ll work on a different explanation later if we find out anything else, but it looks to me like that annoying rule keeping me from ever stepping foot outside the gate might only apply to locations on the planet Earth. This isn’t Earth, so as long as I’m here, I can go wherever I want.”

  Fernie took another look at the bloodred skies, the ominous mountains, and that motionless hairy back clinging to the edge of the peak they were about to visit. “Lucky you.”

  “Yes, well . . . I’d rather make this kind of discovery about a more delightful place, but you know what they say: Beggars can’t be choosers.” He got down on his belly and touched one of the braids with his fingertip. When he pulled his hand back, his fingertip pulled a thin line of fluid along with it. He had to stand back up and thrash his hand about before the thin line snapped in two; and he was not nearly as upbeat about this as he had been about all the pluses he’d seen before. “The bad news,” he announced, “is that it’s not a net. It’s a web.”

  “Like a spiderweb?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Meaning that the great big hairy thing on the cliff over there is some kind of giant spider?”

  “I haven’t gotten a good look at it any more than you have, but I guess so. If it’s not a spider, then it’s something very much like a giant spider.”

  “That’s gross,” Fernie said.

  “It hasn’t shown itself, so we can’t even know that for sure . . . but you’re right, that would be gross.”

  Fernie refrained from saying that this was not a plus. “Can you think of any way we can get away with not taking a hike across its web?”

  “Aside from giving up on saving your family and mine, and getting used to being stuck here forever? No.”

  “Then I guess we better get on with it,” Fernie said.

  “Let me try it first. You follow me.”

  Gustav Gloom didn’t look happy even at the best of times, in part because he rarely smiled and in part because he had one of those faces, like a basset hound’s, that always looked sad even when he wasn’t sad at all. But experience had taught Fernie how to tell the difference between Gustav merely looking unhappy and Gustav actually being unhappy, and she could tell that the prospect of stepping onto the giant spiderweb made him very, very unhappy indeed. Still, he took a deep breath, steeled himself, and stepped out onto the web, placing his shiny black shoe on a spot that looked reasonably solid and then putting all his weight on it, just to make sure he wouldn’t fall through or get stuck. After a moment he took a step, and then another. Every time he lifted the sole of his shoe off the web, it peeled off the surface with an audible snap. After a few steps, he reported, “It’s sticky. You don’t want to get all tangled up, but it should be okay if you’re careful where you step.”

  “Great,” Fernie muttered. She stepped off the side of the carousel and onto the web, which was as sticky as advertised and felt exactly like stepping on a sidewalk that was covered in blobs of discarded gum.

  Walking in single file, Gustav and Fernie inched across the giant web, both terribly aware of the looming wall of rock up ahead of them and the hairy back of the monster clinging to the cliff’s far side. The carousel, the closest thing to a comforting sight in this strange place, receded behind them.

  They were so busy finding safe places to step that they didn’t talk much on the way, which was probably a good thing when it came to not attracting any unwanted attention to themselves, but was a bad thing indeed when it came to keeping Fernie’s mind off the plight of her father and sister. Her thoughts turned to the very last time she’d seen them, which could very well turn out to be the very last time she’d ever see them. It was particularly hard to shake that horrible, lost look that had flashed across Pearlie’s face when she realized that she and her father were about to fall. Fernie had been able to keep that terrible look out of her mind for a while, because she and Gustav had been so busy just getting this far. But now that she had nothing to do but walk and think, the look popped back up, reminding her to be half out of her mind with worry.

  There was nothing Fernie could do but concentrate really hard and think thoughts that amounted to talking to her sister and father in the hope that maybe, wherever they were, they could feel her thinking about them. Don’t worry, she thought. I know it’s bad where you are. I know you’re lost and afraid. I know you don’t know how you’re ever going to escape. But it’s not over. We’re coming after you. We will be with you before you know it. Nothing Lord Obsidian puts in our way will stop us. I promise.

  It was impossible to make herself believe that her father and sister had gotten the message, but she comforted herself by pretending that they had. In her mind, she saw them huddled together for warmth atop a cold, lightless rock in a place surrounded by threatening shadows. She saw Pearlie crying and their father hugging her tightly while comforting her with promises that everything was going to be all right. She imagined her own words, rendered audible just because she was far away wishing very hard that they could be. She imagined her father and Pearlie perking up a little, just a little, even if they didn’t know why. It was nice to believe, even if only for a few minutes, that this could be so. It kept her own hopes up as she followed Gustav across the curved slope of the web to its anchoring point on the rocky cliff.

  It took almost ten minutes to get to the cliffside, touching the rock face. The giant spider, or whatever it was, had not interrupted its nap to come down and bother them. That was a good thing, of course, but it was hard to forget that they would only get closer to it as they climbed.

  From close up, it was a very bumpy cliff, with plenty of crags and outcroppings and ledges, but also lots of crumbly bits, judging from the thin layer of sand and the scattering of pebbles gathered on any surface flat enough to hold any. Fernie craned her neck back to see how high it was and saw that she still couldn’t see the top, which disappeared well into the scarlet clouds high above. The big bat-winged birds, or dragons, or whatever they were, continued to circle just below those clouds, but it was easier now to see just how high up they were, and how being able to see them from this distance meant that they must have been enormous.

  Fernie saw Gustav watching them and said, “I hope that none of them swoop down and try to get us.”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Gustav admitted. “You notice, though, that none of them have.”

  “Maybe we’re too small for them to see.”

  “I doubt that,” Gustav said. “I read a book once that said an eagle can spot a mouse from two miles up. If those things eat meat, they can probably see us just fine.”

  “Maybe they’re not hungry.”

  “I hope not, because the only other possible explanation is that they’re too scared of being eaten by the spider themselves, and that’s not exactly good news for us, either.”

  This was, indeed, the kind of thought that made a scary situation worse. “Terrific.”

  Gustav looked up again and asked her, “Do you think you can climb it?”

  Fernie was a big fan of rock-climbing walls, and had earned herself a little bit of fame in the amusement center of her old neighborhood’s shopping mall for consistently getting to the top of the expert climb faster than any of the kids in her age group. Of course, she reflected, that attraction also required climbers to wear helmets, knee pads, and safety harnesses, and she hadn’t brought any of those; however, there was a nice sticky web soft and strong enough to cushion the fall of a plummeting carousel, and therefore certainly strong enough to catch any plummeting little girl. The only questions in her mind were just how deeply she’d be embedded in the web if she did fall, and whether Gustav would be able to free her before the spider-thing came down to investigate, and—

  Well. She cut that thought off in midsentence, reflecti
ng that some things were worth worrying about, and some things just had to be gotten on with. “I bet I can climb it faster than you can.”

  “It’s a bet,” said Gustav.

  They shook hands, grabbed hold, and began to climb.

  It was far from the most difficult climb Fernie had ever managed, in part because the way up had so many nooks and crannies to brace her feet and in part because the soles of her shoes were so sticky from the web that they held on to the rock just a little bit better than they might have otherwise.

  In any other circumstance, it might have been a fun race. Gustav climbed like a monkey, scrambling over one outcropping after another without even pausing for breath, rising almost faster than he might have been able to walk an equal distance on flat ground. Given how quickly Fernie had seen him move in their various encounters with villains and monsters back at the Gloom house, he might have been slowing himself down so she could keep up. But if so, he soon learned that he was slowing himself down more than he had to, because Fernie not only kept up, but passed him, until he had to move even faster to stay ahead. More than once, as he kept speeding up to stay ahead of her, she saw a look of surprise flit across Gustav’s pale and serious face and, despite everything else she had to worry about, allowed that to feel good.

  It was a good thing to feel good about something for at least a little while today . . . because they were about two hundred feet up when a sudden rumbling began.

  It was a deep, steady vibration, like a cat’s purr . . . except that it was loud enough for the rock to tremble beneath their fingers and for their ears to ache. It didn’t sound contented. It sounded angrier, more aggravated, as if whatever made it had once been horribly insulted and had never quite gotten over it.

  Then it gave way to a voice. It was a female voice, but not a woman’s. A voice that first spoke a number of words that sounded like nothing in any human language, and then seemed to shift, becoming a tongue Fernie and Gustav could understand.