Gustav Gloom and the Castle of Fear Read online

  Lord Obsidian did not emerge from the crowd alone. He moved with two other figures familiar to Fernie.

  To Lord Obsidian’s left stood Gustav Gloom, whose impeccable black suit was now a tattered and frayed version of its usual self. It was impossible to tell from his unsmiling lips or serious eyes just what was going through his mind. He might have been grim and he might have been defeated, and he might have been simply biding his time; it was hard to tell. He showed no sign of being glad to see the What girls and their father. His eyes did seem to widen a little bit when he saw his own father for the very first time in his life, but then they returned to their previous heavy-lidded condition, and there was once again no sign that he was even paying attention.

  To Lord Obsidian’s right—and straining at his leash like a bad dog—crouched a monster that Fernie remembered with dread from their prior encounters in Gustav’s house. It was the Beast, it was vicious, and when it saw Fernie, it tensed, eager to leap at her and avenge its past humiliations.

  Mr. What, who had been unconscious the last time he was so close to the creature, gasped. Pearlie, who had never caught more than a glimpse of it, did the same. Not-Roger, who as far as Fernie knew had never seen it at all before this moment, told nobody in particular, “See, that’s the kind of thing that keeps people in the Dark Country from thinking it’s unreasonable to keep hungry gnarfles as pets.”

  A guard slapped the back of his head to silence him.

  A final familiar face, Scrofulous, stepped out of the crowd, produced a scroll, and read aloud: “Attention, insignificant gnats! You have all been summoned to face the judgment of his unparalleled magnificence, the greatest and most underappreciated genius ever produced by the human race! Tremble at the very sight of the conqueror of the Dark Country and the future destroyer of the unworthy universe that existed before his arrival! He whose most rancid breath on the backs of our necks honors those of us whose lives have no meaning except for the honor we are paid by allowing ourselves to be crushed by him! The former Howard Philip October and current Lord Obsidian!”

  He rolled up the scroll, glancing at his master for approval.

  “Second rate,” Lord Obsidian allowed, “but not quite as uninspired as the last introduction I had you whipped for.”

  “Thank you, Majesty. I do my best.”

  The towering Obsidian then peered past the cowering Scrofulous at the prisoners his minions had just brought him. “And you, my barely competent servants. You have brought the prisoners I requested? Not just the pathetic beings the boy came all this distance to save, but also those who provided him aid and comfort along the way?”

  Gnulbotz performed a bow so deep that the top of his head almost touched the floor. “Aye, master. The girl, Fernie, and the man, Hans, have both lost their minds in the Screaming Room, but I brought them anyway, as well as a traitorous shadow who I found with them and brought to you in a jar.”

  Krawg attempted the same bow but caught a whiff of his own feet and almost passed out before recovering. “I have brought the girl’s reportedly even tougher sister, Pearlie, their useless coward of a father, and the hulking fool from Shadow’s Inn; also another handful of shadows with whom I found them conspiring and have also brought to you in jars.”

  Lord Obsidian offered a dismissive wave of his hand before advancing and lowering his crescent-shaped face to within a few inches of Hans Gloom’s. He peered into his old enemy’s eyes, tilting his own head first one way and then the next as he searched Gloom’s staring eyes for signs of the enemy he had once known. “Fascinating,” he said, at last. “The Screaming Room did its job well. I see no sign of the man who once pursued me for so long and with so much heart. Once, I peered into these eyes and saw a world filled with oceans of love, deep wells of courage, and gardens of unexpected strength, but I have now razed all of that to the ground. Nothing is left but mountains of madness.”

  Mr. What asked him, “Is that the kind of thing that makes you proud of yourself?”

  The crescent-shaped head tilted again, focusing the full force of Lord Obsidian’s glare at him. “Why, yes. Thanks for asking.”

  Mr. What’s mouth dropped open as if he dearly wanted to retort, but dared not.

  Obsidian rose to his full height, towering over his followers and his servants and his prisoners, his broken-glass voice echoing in the cold Dark Country air. “But you must all wonder why I have taken time out of my busy schedule to have my greatest enemy and all of these other troublesome prisoners brought to my side.

  “The halfsie boy, Gustav Gloom, has foolishly informed me that he believes there to be a bright side in every situation, no matter how dire—even this one. He is wrong.

  “This is not his fault. He’s just a foolish little boy, and the universe as I see it is a cold, pitiless place, beyond the comprehension of foolish little boys. There is no room for hope in it.

  “He claims to have found satisfaction in destroying the statues in my throne room. It is a pale and pathetic thing, but it nevertheless allows him comfort, and so I shall destroy that one source of hope, while forcing his friends to watch.”

  Fernie’s heart had fallen further with every word. Lord Obsidian was so confident, so assured in what he said he wanted to do, that it almost felt like he’d already succeeded in building the hopeless universe he envisioned. As much as she could without looking like she was sane and capable of focusing on other people, she searched Gustav’s face for some sign that he had a plan capable of preventing Lord Obsidian from doing any of the things he claimed he could. But though she had learned a lot about reading his usual facial expressions in the time she’d been his best friend, she saw nothing in his eyes now but emptiness and defeat.

  Is this it? she wondered.

  Have we really lost?

  Or (and she was really grasping at straws here) was that little twitch of his eyebrows and that little curlicue wrinkle at the corner of his lips as close as Gustav could get to a reassuring smile without being caught?

  She tried to focus on his face long enough to tell for sure, but whatever she thought she had seen was already gone.

  Lord Obsidian returned to Mr. What and, cocking his crescent-moon-shaped head again, pointed outside the castle walls at the landscape’s strangest feature, the two suspiciously round mountains whose summits were hidden behind all-concealing clouds.

  “Do you know what you’re looking at?” he inquired.

  “Mountains?” Mr. What guessed.

  “I would expect you to say that, because you’re a silly unimaginative man with the vision of a newt. But yes, sir, mountains will do as a guess. Mountains as tall as the tallest anyone in your world of light has ever seen.

  “But those are not mountains, sir. They are the smallest and least impressive parts of a magnificent statue, one that rises so far above our heads that all the works of man are proven insignificant by comparison.

  “Are you willing to guess what they are now?”

  Mr. What hesitated. “Am I allowed to guess?”

  “I am ordering you to guess.”

  Mr. What struggled to come up with an answer. “Sorry. I’ve got nothing.”

  But Fernie remembered a sight she’d seen from the ridge that surrounded the Dark Country on all sides: a head that was as big as a mountain range all by itself, emerging out of the swirling murk.

  She had always been the kind of girl who blurted out answers in class, and she now came very close to abandoning her disguise as a crazy person just to do the same thing.

  The only reason she didn’t was that Pearlie beat her to it. She sounded awed and horrified and as close to being without hope as Lord Obsidian wanted her to be, but she went ahead and said it: “That’s the front of the giant statue’s shoes!”

  Lord Obsidian whirled toward Gustav, his pointed chin and forehead slashing through the air like knives. “Are your hopes shattered ye
t, boy? Do you see how much my achievements dwarf anything you could ever imagine?”

  Gustav shut his eyes and shook his head, as if even the small part of the sculpture visible to him was more than his little mind could accept. His next words emerged as a whine. “They’re just shoes . . .”

  “Have you no vision, boy? They’re just the smallest part of a statue that pierces the clouds!”

  Gustav opened his mouth, as if struggling for words capable of reducing Lord Obsidian’s proudest achievement to terms he could accept, but then he just shook his head again. He looked like a boy who had just lost everything but had yet to admit it to himself, and could only keep from falling apart by denying the very evidence of his own eyes. Fernie could not be sure his reaction was real, because part of her still hoped he was pretending like she was. But she could not stop her heart from breaking for him.

  Gustav finally managed an even more pathetic whine. “Just shoes . . .”

  “Bah,” said Lord Obsidian. (He actually said “Bah” as if it were a word, which showed extreme misunderstanding of the sound villains and grumpy old men are really supposed to be making when books describe them as saying “Bah.”) “I’ll show you.”

  He waved the terrible fingers at the ends of his terrible hands, and the entire platform holding him and his minions and their various prisoners detached from the castle wall and began to rise . . .

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A Grand Tour of a Tyrant’s Swelled Head

  Fernie felt the sudden jar as the platform started to rise, and cried out, which was a sane thing to do, but as all eyes, human and shadow, turned toward her, she quickly covered her sanity with a happy declaration of, “This is the most typewriter fudge I ever Florida!”

  Hans Gloom also swayed with the sudden lurch, and for a moment dropped his own slack-jawed expression, but all of the guards were focusing on Fernie at that moment and none saw his brief look of determination. Pearlie also cried out, and Mr. What muttered something under his breath about the madness of building a flying machine without any safety railings or seat belts. The various human and shadow guards merely jostled, trying to stay as far away from its edges as they possibly could.

  Gathering speed, the platform left Obsidian’s castle behind and drew closer to the giant shoes, which closer up revealed a frightening wealth of detail that included shoelaces tied into bows that must have been, themselves, the size of some entire neighborhoods back in the world of light.

  The platform rose higher, into the shadowy mists that had up until now hidden the upper regions of the statue from view. However, this close to the statue, the mists failed to hide everything. The broad outlines of the giant version of Howard Philip October loomed before them, and though it must have still been many miles away, its sheer size remained terrifying. It took almost a minute for the platform to rise past the pair of colossal trouser cuffs, another couple of minutes for it to rise sufficiently high up the legs to pass the statue’s knees, another minute for it to reach the distant outlines of a belt buckle.

  “Imagine!” Lord Obsidian crowed. “Can you even conceive how many slaves, human and shadow, must have labored with aching backs and dripping brows, to further my glory?”

  Fernie couldn’t. She knew what slavery was, because she’d learned about it and read about it and even seen some movies about it. But it was impossible to look upon the giant version of Howard Philip October and not feel the awfulness of it. Uncounted beings permitted no rights of their own had labored for so long, in some cases, just to construct a belt buckle that all by itself might have been the size of England.

  Higher, and the statue’s arm bent over its chest, holding a gigantic copy of one of October’s books, The Shadows From Before Time.

  Then the platform ascended above the Dark Country’s awful murk. They found themselves facing the part of the statue that Fernie and her friends had seen before, at a much greater distance: the immense head that rose out of the clouds. But before, they had been many thousands of miles away from it. Now they were much closer to it, though even now perhaps as far as a hundred miles away. It filled the sky before them like a planet with a human face.

  Howard Philip October’s face, complete with his big jaw and big forehead and an expression of determined nobility that existed nowhere in the petty monster the man had been, rose before them.

  It was too much for a mere human mind to take in all at once. Without knowing it, Fernie had fallen to her knees. She glanced over her shoulder and, through a haze of tears, saw that Pearlie and Not-Roger and her father had all collapsed as well, unable to accept the terrible immensity of Lord Obsidian’s monument to himself.

  Even the Beast, crouched at its master’s side, whined because of it.

  Far worse, though, was the realization that Gustav Gloom had also been destroyed by the sight. He curled into a ball and shook silently, as if there were sobs within him that no amount of denial could keep in. “P-please,” he said, his voice breaking. “Land. Land on the head. I can’t look at it from a distance anymore.”

  “Very well,” Lord Obsidian said kindly. “Now that you’re broken, and fit for a miserable lifetime as my servant, I can afford to be generous with you.”

  He waved his terrible hands another time, and the platform changed course. Despite the speed it must have been traveling, there was no wind, no sense of motion; just that giant head continuing to grow closer before them.

  Soon they passed over the great balding scalp, and the landscape before them was no longer recognizable as the sculpture of a human being, but instead resembled a vast and forbidding desert, great enough to qualify as a country all by itself.

  The platform skimmed low over the balding top of the head for a while. The statue was so big that from this angle it was impossible to see anything but an immense plain, flat on top but with a subtle downward curve toward each horizon. Towering arcs of what Fernie supposed were hair formed a forest of sorts in the distance, but they were miles away, reflecting how far up his scalp October’s hairline had receded by the time he became the man pictured on the back cover of his books. It was probably best for a smooth landing that Lord Obsidian steered the platform toward a spot closer to the bald part of his scalp.

  The platform descended and settled, coming to rest only one short step up from the stone surface beneath it. For a second or two the gathered humans and shadows glanced at one another, wondering what to do. Then Gustav made a sound very much like a sob and ran from them, leaping off the edge of the platform and running into the stone desert as quickly as his little legs could carry him.

  Fernie dared to hope that this was part of some brilliant plan, but was disappointed almost immediately, because Gustav traveled fewer than fifty paces before he fell to his hands and knees again, trembling.

  Some of the human guards readied their spears and started to go after him.

  “No,” said Lord Obsidian, with the annoyance of a movie fan who didn’t want somebody else to spoil a good one by telling him how it was all going to work out. “There is no need.”

  Gustav remained where he’d fallen. He had stopped shaking the way Fernie and Pearlie and Mr. What and Hans Gloom and even Not-Roger were shaking, but he didn’t look like he had any fight left in him, either.

  Lord Obsidian noted this. “Behold, my friends. The child of my greatest enemy, broken before us. Reduced to hopelessness in front of all the foolish friends and allies who followed him to this, the moment of his defeat. It is the greatest triumph of my life.”

  Fernie felt the floodgates let loose. Through a fog of tears she looked back at her father and at Pearlie, who had each been let loose by their respective guards and were now huddled together grimly, having lost all hope as well. She wished there was something she could say to them. But she had no words left.

  Lord Obsidian, on the other hand, had plenty. He spun in place, like a child excited by a carniva
l, his elongated fingers slashing the air like swords. He cried, “Is this not magnificent? Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

  Fernie realized that she’d been wrong about believing her minute exposed to the full effect of the Screaming Room to be the worst point of her life. This was the worst point of her life. There was no hope left. Sunlight had vanished from the universe. All around her, everybody seemed to feel it—not just the prisoners, but also Lord Obsidian’s followers, who, in the wake of their master’s command to abandon all hope, seemed prepared to do just that.

  Nobody said a word. Nobody breathed.

  And then, still on his hands and knees, Gustav muttered, “That’s not the point of the poem.”

  Lord Obsidian whirled. “What is this?”

  Gustav sat up, dusted off his pants with slaps of his palms, and then turned around and peered across the expanse of stone to the crowd on the platform.

  He winked when he spotted Fernie, and sunlight, glorious sunlight, returned to her heart at once.

  Then he faced Lord Obsidian from across the not-nearly-sufficient distance that separated them, and cocked his head. “You heard me the first time, Howie. That’s not the point of the poem.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What you just said about how we should all look upon your works and despair. I know you were a writer once, but I’m a reader. I know that you didn’t come up with that line all by yourself. It actually comes from a very old and very famous poem by a guy named Percy Shelley.”

  “‘Ozymandias,’” Mr. What whispered. He must have known the poem, too . . . and it must have meant something to him, because just remembering it was enough to bring a wild hope into his voice.

  Fernie didn’t know the poem herself, because she’d never really gone for poetry, and the only one she’d ever liked at all was a really creepy one about a weird guy being pestered by a talkative black bird. But she could sense the power balance shifting in a way that might soon give all of them a split second’s fighting chance . . . so she rose to her feet, daring to believe, readying herself for anything.