Gustav Gloom and the Nightmare Vault

by Adam-Troy Castro

  Fernie didn’t see any reason to ruin his picnic, since he’d had so few during his strange life, so she returned to the table and pretended to be calm while the family finished the chicken and had watermelon slices for dessert.

  But even as Pearlie taught Gustav to spit watermelon seeds, Fernie couldn’t help but wonder: What about an ice-cream man could possibly be scary enough to frighten shadows?

  And why was she so terribly afraid that she’d soon be finding out?

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE VERY IMPORTANT NEIGHBORHOOD MEETING ABOUT FINALLY DOING SOMETHING ABOUT YOU-KNOW-WHAT

  Later that day, after the What family had returned home, Fernie retired to the living room and curled up with her black-and-white cat, Harrington, and an exciting new book about a pair of mummy-hunting archaeologists named Oozle and Boozle. But she was unable to concentrate on the story and drifted away around the time when the two explorers found themselves trapped in a crypt by millions of hungry beetles. She found herself staring out the window at the Gloom house. As always, it was big and black and ominous and clearly hiding any number of secrets.

  The ice-cream truck drove by, jingling its happy tune—maybe the twentieth time she’d seen it pass or heard that tune in the last few hours. Each time the truck went by, she’d felt a deeper chill.

  She said, “I don’t know what that truck’s selling, Harrington, but I don’t want any.”

  Harrington, who had gone wide-eyed at the first sound of bells, hissed at the truck as it went by, itself an ominous sign, since cats have a special sensitivity to shadows and tend to feel bothered when they’re up to no good. His plaintive meow when the truck passed out of sight again was Cat for “Why don’t you do something about that scary thing?”

  “There, there,” Fernie said as she petted him. This was Little Girl for “I don’t know what to do, but petting you makes me feel better.”

  Harrington purred. Me too.

  The doorbell rang.

  Fernie fit her feet into her new pair of slippers (the ones that looked like some bloodred mutated alien blob that had glommed itself around her feet and was now working its way up her ankles) and went to see who it was.

  She and Harrington got to the door just behind Pearlie, who opened it.

  “Hello,” said Mrs. Adele Everwiner.

  The What girls had been raised to show respect toward their elders, and for the most part obeyed that simple commandment, as it was generally easier to be nice than not-nice. But they’d both long since reached the age where it became obvious to them that some adults seemed determined to make that difficult.

  Unfortunately, Mrs. Everwiner belonged to that category.

  She was the kind of person who seemed to spend her life waiting for the precise moment when a visit from her was least wanted.

  If you ever want to predict when a person like her is about to show up, then simply wait until you’re comforting yourself with a thought like, Well, at least Mrs. Everwiner isn’t here, and you can be assured of a knock on the door.

  Both What girls managed a polite “Hello, Mrs. Everwiner” that sounded only a little bit less convincing than when they had looked at dinner and said, “Oh, great, spinach.”

  Their visitor looked like a human teardrop: wide and rounded at the bottom, narrower at her shoulders, and coming to a point on top. Her hair was as red as an apple and was the part that came to a point, even if the point was a little off center and leaned to the right, as if signaling to invisible people behind her that she was about to make a sudden turn. She had bright green eyes behind bright green eye shadow and a nose so small that it looked like it had been placed on her face as an afterthought.

  Just below her shoulders she had affixed an adhesive sticker with the friendly words HELLO! MY NAME IS. Beneath that the sticker bore an empty space in which she’d handwritten Mrs. Adele Everwiner, Founder and Vice President, Neighborhood Beautification Society.

  Reading it, Pearlie said, “Is all of that your name?”

  Mrs. Everwiner glanced down at the sticker. “No, dear. I keep telling you, my name is only Mrs. Adele Everwiner. The rest is just my official title.”

  “Like lord or lady,” Pearlie suggested.

  “Or countess,” Fernie added.

  Mrs. Everwiner was such an important person in her own mind that she never saw when she was being messed with. “Except this is a democracy, dears. The Neighborhood Beautification Society doesn’t go in for actual inherited titles.”

  “Oh, well,” Fernie said. “As long as it’s official.”

  “Thank you, dear. Hello, Mr. What.”

  Fernie’s father had arrived at the front door. “Hello, Adele. What can I do for you this fine evening?”

  “I just wanted to pick you up for the meeting,” Mrs. Everwiner said, with a worried sideways glance at the girls. She leaned forward and whispered, “You know, the one about finally doing something about you-know-what?”

  “Oh, yes,” Mr. What said in a regular tone of voice, making absolutely no attempt at all to keep the matter the secret Mrs. Everwiner seemed to want it to be. “The very important neighborhood meeting about Finally Doing Something about You-Know-What. I’m sorry, Adele, I know that I promised to come, but the truth is that I forgot all about it.”

  “What’s you-know-what?” Fernie asked.

  Mr. What glanced at his daughter. “Adele here is launching another of her regular campaigns to get the city to condemn and tear down the Gloom place.”

  Mrs. Everwiner preened. “Somebody has to, dear. It’s an eyesore. It doesn’t fit the character of the neighborhood.” This was her way of saying that, unlike the other houses on Sunnyside Terrace, it wasn’t painted some headache-inducing color like Fluorescent Salmon or Radioactive Lime Green.

  Mr. What said, “But it was here before the rest of the neighborhood was built. Isn’t the real problem that they don’t fit in with it? Couldn’t we solve the problem by just painting all the other houses black?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Pearlie declared. “I’ll get the paint roller.”

  She actually turned around and started hurrying toward the closet, but Mrs. Everwiner called her back.

  “That won’t be necessary, thank goodness.”

  Pearlie stopped. “Why not?”

  “We’ve found an old law in the city charter that empowers the authorities to demolish ugly buildings like that horrid Gloom place. The city can intervene whenever a majority of the residents within a two-block radius sign statements testifying to the aesthetic damage being done to the overall character of the surrounding neighborhood.”

  It took Mr. What a few seconds to put that together. “In other words,” he said slowly, “you can ask the city to tear down any neighbor’s house, as long as you can get enough of your other neighbors to gang up on them?”

  “Exactly,” Mrs. Everwiner said with considerable pride.

  “But that’s not fair,” Fernie protested.

  “Of course it’s not,” replied Mrs. Everwiner, who didn’t seem to have any problem with that at all. “We do want to win, dear.”

  Pearlie asked the next logical question: “And what if the people living in a house you consider an eyesore don’t want their home torn down?”

  Mrs. Everwiner waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, the same law says that homeowners can get their houses ruled historical landmarks, or at least something called ‘privileged prior construction,’ that legally can’t be torn down without the permission of the owners unless it’s been declared unsafe. But in order to qualify for that, those owners have to file paperwork and talk to a judge. And nobody’s seen Hans Gloom or any of his crazy relatives for years. Nobody even knows if they’re still living there.”

  This was the very first time anybody in the What family had heard any reference to Gustav’s non-shadow relatives. Fernie let it pass, and protested, “They’ve seen Gustav. He spends time in the yard almost every day.”

  “I know.” Mrs. Everwiner sniffed. “But
anybody with half a brain can tell that there’s something terribly strange about that boy. If he were normal, he’d be going to school like other children. At least if we get his house torn down he can get taken away from those terrible people and put away someplace more appropriate.”

  Fernie was ready to cry that there was nothing wrong with being strange, and that Gustav didn’t go to school because he couldn’t, and that she’d rather live in the same neighborhood with him than with people who want to tear down houses, anyway.

  But before she could speak, her dad suddenly made her very proud of him by saying, “Come to think of it, Adele, I believe that I will go to your silly meeting after all. Somebody has to stand up and tell you people what a completely cruel and inconsiderate idea you’ve had. Please go ahead, I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

  Mrs. Everwiner was still sputtering when Mr. What closed the door.

  Both girls cried, “Dad!”

  He was at the front closet taking out the blue sweater he always wore when the temperature outside dipped below seventy. “What?”

  The girls shouted together, “That was awesome!”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he said. “It was rude. But I’ve never had much patience for bullies.” He donned the sweater, then picked up his umbrella and regarded it the way he usually did whenever weighing the chances of a sudden thunderstorm against all the possible freak accidents involving umbrellas and low-flying geese.

  Fernie asked, “Can we come?”

  “Not this time,” he said. “I may have to use some strong language I don’t want you to hear.”

  Pearlie said, “Come on, Dad. We read grown-up books. We have satellite TV. We learned all the bad words years ago.”

  “I know,” he said regretfully, “but I’d rather not have either of you ever hear them coming from me.”

  He kissed them both good night, told them not to wait up, and placed Pearlie in charge before marching out the front door where Mrs. Everwiner still stood, frozen openmouthed at the moment the new neighbor had dared to shut the door on her.

  Fernie almost wished she had a bugle she could use to sound a charge as he left his castle, intent on doing battle with dragons.

  Outside, the ice-cream truck passed by one more time, and Harrington hissed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WHILE MR. WHAT WAS OUT

  Many people have had their lives saved by dogs.

  Dogs are always dragging people out of deep water, standing between them and hungry bears, and racing over hill and dale to advise Mom that little Timmy’s fallen into the well again.

  A certain smaller number of people are saved by other animals.

  Dolphins have been known to defend people from sharks, parrots have been known to dial 911, and at least one man we know about was actually saved from freezing to death by a pig.

  Not many people are saved by cats.

  This isn’t because of any shortage of love in the feline heart, but because they usually sleep through most bad things that happen, or are too busy running away and saving themselves to worry much about saving anybody else.

  Harrington was an exception, in that he had recently saved the What family and their new friend Gustav Gloom from a deadly killer known as the People Taker.

  If you think he didn’t remember that or constantly play back those events like a favorite movie in his little mind, then you don’t understand cats or how much they like to believe that everything that ever happens in the world is all about them.

  The drawback of all this was that Harrington also got to remember how many dangers lurked in the neighborhood. So while his favorite human being, Fernie, and his second-favorite human being, Pearlie, lay next to him on the living room couch that he permitted them to use, watching some pointless thing about little white objects zipping back and forth through space, firing beams of light at one another, he kept all his attention on the street outside, and on the house behind the black iron fence. He sensed that tonight the shadows were afraid, which disturbed him even more than the sound of a tuba. (And few things disturbed him more than the sound of a tuba.)

  He wished he could consult with his own shadow, which he sometimes chased and which sometimes chased him, but it was being exceptionally dull tonight, staying close to him and not doing anything that Harrington himself hadn’t done. Harrington was smart enough to recognize this as a sign that it was also afraid; and that meant that he, also, knew enough to be afraid.

  So he just kept watch while his favorite humans watched their stupid movie about little white darts zipping through space while shooting one another with beams of red light, and at long last, when it was past dark, his attention was rewarded.

  He saw the ice-cream truck pull into the empty space in front of the What house and park.

  He growled when the driver got out and stood in the center of the street, staring first at the Gloom house and then at the one where Harrington lived with his pet people.

  He puffed his tail to three times its prior size when the driver finally turned toward the What house and began to march up the front walk.

  He released a yowl as loud as anything that had ever emerged from his mouth.

  Fernie said, “What’s wrong, baby?” and happened to look up just as the yellowed and lumpy uniform of the ice-cream man passed out of the view of the living room window and onto the front steps.

  She glanced at her cat and knew that whatever he’d just sensed was very, very wrong.

  Then everything got real bad, real fast.

  Just before the ominous knock she expected, Fernie cried out, “Don’t let him in!”

  Pearlie, whose hand was wrist-deep in a bowl of cinnamon popcorn, glanced up and managed to get out a single word, “Who?” before the door opened and the driver of the ice-cream truck walked in.

  He shouldn’t have been able to come in. Mr. What had locked the door when he left, and the girls had bolted it, according to his usual stringent safety procedures. A quick glance at the door itself, with its protruding bolt, and Fernie realized that it was somehow, impossibly, still locked, though the ice-cream man had just as impossibly managed to open it without splintering the door frame.

  Pearlie stood up, spilling her bowl of popcorn on the floor as she angrily advanced on the intruder. “Who do you think you are, mister? This is a—”

  Fernie yelled, “Stay away from him, Pearlie!”

  Pearlie glanced back at Fernie and seemed to realize that her little sister knew more about this strange intruder than she did. She didn’t advance any farther on the ice-cream man, who stood in the doorway, cocking his head from side to side as if he needed somebody to remind him what a living room was and what to do once he saw one. She just moved a little to her right, making sure that he wouldn’t be able to get to Fernie without going through her first.

  Fernie, who was just as protective toward Pearlie, got up from the couch and stood at her big sister’s side, prepared to fight if necessary.

  Even Harrington joined in, by puffing himself up as much as he could: a little cat making himself a somewhat bigger one, as befitted a beast who had once taken on a People Taker all by himself.

  Pearlie spoke out of the right side of her mouth. “This is Gustav Stuff, isn’t it?”

  Fernie answered from the left side of hers. “I think so.”

  “Me too,” Pearlie said glumly.

  Gustav Stuff had become their private name for the strange and frightening things that sometimes happened in the vicinity of the Gloom house. This wasn’t exactly fair to Gustav, but it was the phrase they had settled on.

  The ice-cream man looked like Gustav Stuff. He was a squat, lumpy figure with no neck, a wide face with a mouth that seemed to stretch too far a distance between his baggy cheeks, and bright blue eyes that didn’t seem to see the girls at all. He wore an all-white uniform with a cap, but his shirt and trousers weren’t clean; they looked more yellow than white, almost as if they’d been white once but had been dirty for so long that the
color had become part of the fabric.

  He seemed to bring winter with him. It wasn’t a crisp, comforting cold, either, not the kind that’s fun in winter. It was the cold of something very, very wrong.

  His baggy cheeks bulged and throbbed. “Interesting. It’s just a house.”

  “It’s not your house,” Pearlie noted. “Get out and close the door behind you. You’re letting in the bugs.”

  The ice-cream man seemed to notice that the door behind him was still open. He turned around and closed it. It shouldn’t have been able to close with the bolt still sticking out, but the door shut with an audible click.

  The cold got worse as he stared at them. He stepped out into the narrow tiled hallway between the living room and the kitchen, blocking their route to both the front door and the rear of the house.

  Pearlie murmured, “Back door. First chance we get.”

  Fernie answered under her breath. “Race you there.” Then she directed her next words, louder and more cheerful, to the ice-cream man. “Are you looking for something?”

  He sniffed the air, rolling his strange, lumpy head from side to side as if trying to determine whether a tasty snack was being prepared in the kitchen. “I can smell it.”

  Pearlie sidled toward the picture window and closer to the ceramic sculpture on the little table next to the easy chair. “That’s probably just the cat. It was Fernie’s turn to scoop the box.”

  “Was not,” Fernie said as she moved away from the window and closer to the sofa.

  “No,” he said, sniffing again. “Not the cat. I smell…shadows. Fresh shadows. Many shadows. You girls were inside the shadow house. You were inside and lived to see another day. The scent of the house is still on you.”

  “Well, I like that,” Pearlie said as she inched still closer to the ceramic sculpture. “That was weeks ago, and I’ve taken something like twenty showers since then.”

  Fernie jumped up onto the sofa cushions. “I liked it better when I thought he was complaining about the cat.”