Gustav Gloom and the Four Terrors

by Adam-Troy Castro

  It was terrible to believe that she no longer trusted the boy who had so quickly become the best friend she’d ever had, or that she needed to keep secrets from him. But the feeling would not go away, and it couldn’t be just because he’d become a shadow.

  She turned back to him just in time to see him try to hide the terrible darkness in the expression he’d worn while she wasn’t looking.

  It was the expression of a boy who hated her.

  She pretended she hadn’t noticed it. “All right. Let’s go.”

  He said, “Okay. Stay close. There might still be escaped shadow criminals about.”

  He floated ahead, leading her down the final curve of the circular staircase, which ended in a wooden door adorned with the stenciled legend: CORRIDOR 23,973 (SECTION 7(B), NORTHWEST EXTENSION). He opened the door, revealing another of the house’s endless corridors, this one much taller and wider than the one that had proven so difficult for the tyrannosaur. It was a fancier corridor, too, probably a “better neighborhood,” as Gustav would have put it, marked with a brilliant red carpet runner extending to the left and right until it disappeared into the distance on both sides.

  With the single exception of one room Fernie had been to on her last visit that came equipped with its own sun, the corridor was also the best-lit place Fernie had ever seen in the Gloom house, as the ceiling was lined with ornate golden chandeliers, all of which sported dozens of burning candles, casting the walls and all the paintings that lined the vast distance with a burnished orange glow.

  “She’s this way,” said Gustav, turning left.

  Fernie had become so uncomfortable around Gustav that she had to resist the temptation to run for her life in the opposite direction. “Okay.”

  They walked, a floating Gustav leading the way and Fernie walking behind him. The paintings on the walls, all of empty suits without any obvious people in them, offered no clue about how safe the way might be. The doors between the paintings were all hard dark oak, with massive brass knockers hanging from each. There were peepholes above the knockers, some of which darkened for a second or two as Gustav and Fernie passed, indicating that beings behind those doors watched but preferred to stay in hiding.

  They walked farther than it made sense for Gustav to have gone if he had just left Pearlie somewhere safe and returned for Fernie. But then they stopped at a plain wooden door, one of the few without a peephole or a giant brass knocker, and he said, “Here. We’ll just pick up Pearlie and then go get your dad.”

  The door swung inward at his touch. He stepped back and gallantly stepped aside so she could enter first.

  Fernie hesitated at the doorway, because the room was darker than the corridor outside and her eyes needed a second or two to adjust. She saw a book-lined study, corners shrouded in impenetrable blackness, and her sister, Pearlie, sitting in an easy chair far too large for her. She was not quite facing the door, because her head was slumped and her hair had fallen forward, making a curtain over her eyes.

  The dangling hair offered enough gaps to reveal her cheeks were wet in a way that looked like she’d been crying. That was scary enough all by itself, because Pearlie, like Fernie, didn’t cry all that often and pretty much indulged herself in that activity only when things were hopeless. She hadn’t even cried the day she’d broken her wrist falling off the swing, and that had happened way back when she was eight. But her shoulders shook now, the way shoulders do when the person they belong to has cried enough to gasp for breath.

  The oddest element, and therefore the most frightening, was the red balloon tied to the armrest. Fernie didn’t like the way it bobbed about all by itself, almost as if there was something inside it, moving it about in ways that the still air did not.

  Fernie took a single step toward her sister and then stopped, realizing that the darkness in the room was not just darkness, but shadow: shadow that swirled around the lonely easy chair and the girl in it like a great black blanket being whipped about with angry hands.

  She heard a whispered shhhh from that darkness, clearly not meant for her ears.

  “What are you waiting for?” asked Gustav, not a single trace of trustworthiness left in a voice that no longer sounded like the boy she knew. “Go in.”

  Fernie wanted nothing more than to rush to her sister’s side. But she also knew, as surely as she knew that the sky is up and the ground is down, that if she were foolish enough to cross that threshold, nobody in the world would ever see her, or her sister, or their father, ever again.

  The shadow beside her raged: “Do what I say, you stupid child! Go in!”

  There was no place to flee, no help Fernie could ask for; just the certainty that if she didn’t do something desperate, right now, all was lost.

  The only thing she could do was call for help, in a manner that had already failed to work once.

  She put the whistle to her lips and blew for her life.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE USEFULNESS OF DOOR KNOCKERS

  The emergency whistle made exactly the same useless burping sound it had made before.

  The creature who had clearly only been pretending to be Gustav snarled, in a voice like a heavy stone dragged across broken glass, “You loathsome brat! How dare you?”

  He didn’t look much like Gustav anymore; his face had distorted, one side melting like candle wax while the other side blew up like a balloon on the verge of bursting. His teeth had elongated and turned pointy, like fangs. For a heartbeat he throbbed, and he seemed about to become the shadow of a wan, desperately friendly, pigtailed little girl.

  The waif looked familiar, but Fernie didn’t have time to think about where she’d seen her before, not with the creature grabbing for her with arms grown as elongated as pythons.

  Fernie yelled and threw herself to the floor, scrambling away on her back as the shadow arms, which no longer had hands at the ends of them but vicious, snarling snake heads, swung downward to clutch for her.

  There was a whoosh of movement, and the angry shadow bellowed in incoherent rage as Fernie’s own shadow leaped off the floor and hurled herself on top of him.

  Fernie’s shadow cried out, “Fernie! Run! I won’t be able to hold him for long!”

  Fernie didn’t react right away, because she was too busy remembering exactly where she’d seen the shadow waif’s face before.

  On her last visit to the Hall of Shadow Criminals, the dangerous creature who had just posed as Gustav had worn the shape of an innocent, heartbroken little girl, locked in one of the cells by mistake. In a voice as sweet as honey, she’d begged for Fernie to free her.

  On that night, which had been almost as terrible as this one, Fernie had almost been fooled by her pathetic offers of devotion, almost been cajoled into facing the no doubt disastrous consequences that would have resulted by setting her free.

  Fernie hadn’t given much thought to the encounter afterward, because there had been a greater threat to deal with on that night and not much reason to worry about threats from a monster who seemed safely caged—but she did remember being told, later on, that his name had been Nebuchadnezzar.

  Now, Nebuchadnezzar changed shapes faster than her eyes could keep up, turning the little-girl head into the features of a ravenous tiger, the tiger into a whirling ball of knives, and the ball of knives into something that no language on earth had ever described and no language on earth ever would.

  Fernie’s shadow fought him with the same kind of ferocity she always used in defending her human, peppering the many changing heads with as many punches and kicks as she could. “Go! I said go!”

  Fernie was paralyzed by her concern for Pearlie. She glanced through the open doorway, saw her slumped sister in the easy chair, and wondered if she had time to run in and rescue her while Nebuchadnezzar was occupied. It would only take a second . . .

  But then Nebuchadnezzar bellowed, “Carlin! Ursula! Otis! Get the stupid girl!”

  The shadows wrapping Pearlie in darkness slid away from her
slumped form and began to roll toward the door.

  Fernie’s shadow screamed, “I said run!”

  Fernie had no choice. She turned tail and fled down the long carpeted hallway, the only thought in her head a prayer that she’d be able to come back and save her sister from these fiends later.

  She heard the voices of her pursuers close behind her: three different voices, each one hateful in its own way.

  The first was the voice of an arrogant older man, filled with the gravel that only enters a human voice during a bad cold or after twenty years of smoking cigars. “Oh, please. She can’t really believe she has a chance.”

  The second voice belonged to a younger woman and was both cruel and joyous, the kind of voice only heard from somebody who delights in being bad. “I can’t say I blame her, Carlin! I’d run, too, if I faced the fate she does! Wouldn’t you, Otis?”

  The third voice reeked of stupidity. It wasn’t the stupidity of someone who simply wasn’t smart and therefore had no choice about whether he was being smart or not, but the stupidity of someone who had discovered that being a bully in the service of other bullies was much easier than ever stopping to think about what he was doing. “I dunno, Ursula. I just like it when they run.”

  They were shadows that moved with the speed of all shadows and had no trouble keeping up with a ten-year-old girl, even if that girl happened to be brilliant at running. So they had a little fun with her, flying alongside her and laughing at her vain attempts to gain ground.

  Of the two to Fernie’s left, one—probably Carlin—was a gangly old gentleman wearing a three-piece suit and a derby, his hollow cheeks curling back to reveal an oversized smile filled with many needle-shaped teeth. It was the kind of determined smile a rude person gives when he’s pretending to be nice but still wants you to know that he thinks you smell bad.

  The other, Ursula, possessed the dark, icy-cold, not very enviable kind of beauty that some very attractive young women achieve only when they take deep pleasure in also being terrible people. Her gray-white, ankle-length hair billowed around her like a cloud, in places hard to distinguish from her long white gown. Her full lips drew back, forming a dazzling smile as she saw the depth of Fernie’s fear.

  With those two to Fernie’s left, the one called Otis had to be to her right, so she risked a quick look—and just as quickly wished she hadn’t. Otis was a shadow of a repugnant little man with fat cheeks, a squashed nose, and tiny little eyes. Considering his striped shirt, mismatched suspenders, and oversized shoes, he might have been the shadow of a circus clown, but there was nothing at all funny about the leer that had as many missing spaces as misshapen teeth. “’Lo, girlie.”

  “You’re really wasting effort,” Ursula assured her. “We’re so much more powerful than you are.”

  Fernie cried out, “Who are you?”

  “Why, we’re the escaped shadow criminals, of course. Us and our old friend Nebuchadnezzar back there were all busted out at the same time. We’re old partners, what I suppose you would call a gang—and no mere person of flesh and blood could ever defeat one of us, let alone all four! Why don’t you just give up and come with us? I promise you, life as a slave isn’t nearly as bad as its reputation.”

  Fernie had seconds to figure out what she was going to do, if she was going to do anything at all.

  She still wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she skidded to a stop.

  The three pursuing shadows hadn’t expected that. They shot past her, though not nearly as far as Fernie would have liked. As they looped around, not in any particular hurry, Carlin remarked, “You know, I think that’s the first one ever that actually did give up.”

  “I know,” Otis said sadly. “Takes the fun out of the whole thing.”

  But Fernie had not given up at all. She leaped to one of the hallway’s many doors, seized the big brass knocker, and rapped it hard against the wood.

  The sound was slightly louder than it should have been, given how hard she knocked. It sounded a little like a sledgehammer smashing in the roof of a car. In most situations she would have said that it was altogether too loud. Today it didn’t sound even remotely loud enough. Under the circumstances, she would have liked a sound like a battleship hitting the ground after being dropped from skyscraper height.

  Nor did she wait to see if anybody answered her knock. Even as the shadow criminals charged her again, she raced across the hall and used the knocker on another door.

  “You insufferable girl!” Ursula cried. “You really think this is going to—”

  The first door Fernie had knocked on opened and the shadow of a burly man with a sloping forehead and arms like tree trunks stumbled into the hallway. “Here now! What’s all the fuss?”

  The shadow named Carlin stopped before him, warning him, “Don’t interfere, good sir! The girl’s fate is none of your concern!”

  “I’m not interfering, you silly twit! I’m just answering my door!”

  Ursula spread her lovely arms wide and grabbed at Fernie, who dropped to her knees, crossed the corridor in a somersault, and leaped to her feet long enough to use the knocker on yet another door.

  Behind her, the second door Fernie had knocked on opened, and the shadow of a frail old woman protested, “Is this important? I’m watching my stories.”

  Fernie yelled, “Please! Somebody help me!”

  “I really don’t want to get involved,” the old woman’s shadow fretted.

  Carlin told the burly shadow, “Just who do you think you’re calling a silly twit, you twit?”

  A familiar distant rumble, a lot like thunder, made the hallway shake, rattling the chandeliers and freezing both shadow criminals and shadow innocent bystanders in their tracks. It didn’t freeze Fernie, who darted to yet another door and used its knocker as well, not sticking around for even a heartbeat to see who answered.

  “Maaaa!” whined the kind of little boy who forever marks himself as impossibly annoying just by the way he says Maaaa. “There are people at the door for you!”

  “What’s that?” questioned the old woman. “You say you’re the mailman?”

  “I’m calling you a twit!” exploded the burly man. “You twit!”

  Ursula had already found the increasingly confusing crowd of shadows more distraction than she wanted to deal with. “Get the girl! Stop her from knocking on any more doors!”

  She gave the order too late, because Fernie had already knocked on another that opened to reveal the shadow of a wild-haired lady wearing a bathrobe and thick magnifying-glass eyeglasses—who didn’t even seem to notice when twenty shadow cats of different sizes raced yowling into the hallway.

  Otis happened to be flying past the shadow cat lady’s door at that moment, just low enough to attract the natural cat instinct to leap at flying objects. A dozen of them attached themselves to his legs, belly, and face, and brought him crashing to the floor.

  “’Ey! What the—?” he cried. “What a revoltin’ development this is!”

  Fernie zigzagged from one side of the hallway to the other, knocking twice on each door before racing to the next. The corridor grew deafening with the sounds of shadow women protesting the treatment of their cats, shadow cats yowling as Otis tried to pull them off him, shadow brats telling their unseen mothers that there seemed to be a party going on in the hallway, shadow burly men calling Carlin a twit, and Ursula screaming at everybody and everything that the little girl was getting away.

  The pandemonium only grew worse as Fernie knocked on even more doors, working her way back down the corridor to the place where she’d last seen her shadow in battle with the shape-changing Nebuchadnezzar. She even added to the growing noise level herself by yelling, “Hold on, Pearlie! I’m coming back for you!”

  But the single greatest noise in a space now overwhelmed with noise was that distant rumbling thunder, which she now began to realize wasn’t all that distant anymore, as each fresh drumbeat rattled the chandeliers and shook flakes of plaster from the c
eiling.

  Far, far up ahead—farther even than the place where she could make out her own shadow, still battling Nebuchadnezzar but losing—the distant reaches of the hallway were already turning dark as a monster the size of a house charged, its massive head shattering chandelier after chandelier.

  The tyrannosaur was back.

  CHAPTER NINE

  AN UNFRIENDLY CHAT WITH NEBUCHADNEZZAR

  The pounding drumbeat Fernie heard was the sound the tyrannosaur made as it ran—and here it could run at full speed, since this corridor was so much wider and taller than the one it had smashed into rubble before.

  The tyrannosaur’s sudden reappearance ahead of her seemed even more unfair than anything else that had happened to Fernie tonight. It was already more than enough for her to have to deal with prison breaks, shadow criminals, shadow cat ladies, and flooded staircases, not to mention a missing father, sister, and best friend. She really didn’t need a giant rampaging dinosaur on top of all that. That was just one touch too many.

  With the tyrannosaur up ahead, racing toward her, Fernie wanted nothing more than to turn around and run back into the chaos she had left by knocking on so many doors; but as Fernie considered that, she took note of a sight between her and that charging beast: Nebuchadnezzar tossing her heroic shadow aside like a piece of trash to dart back inside the room where Pearlie was being held prisoner.

  Fernie had no choice but to continue running toward the tyrannosaur if she hoped to reach Pearlie before Nebuchadnezzar could carry out whatever he had in mind.

  There was a sudden flash of white as something just as terrible caught up with her. Ursula appeared beside her, floating in the air in no particular hurry, the white folds of her gown trailing behind her like streamers. A snarl twisted her graceful features, turning them even darker and colder as she said, “Nasty, nasty, uncooperative little girl.”

  Ursula’s long elegant fingernails shifted, becoming shapes like crescent moons, each of which ended in a point as razor-sharp as anything Fernie had ever seen.