Gustav Gloom and the Castle of Fear

by Adam-Troy Castro

  Fernie risked another question. “Who are they?”

  “More prisoners,” the guard behind her explained. “Enemies of the great Obsidian. The shadows who tried to resist him are even worse off, being captured by him, than you human types are. He uses them, he does.”

  Had Fernie not already possessed good reason to consider Gustav Gloom’s enemy Lord Obsidian a real creep, the sight of all those despairing shadows would have provided her with a fine first clue. It wasn’t the kind of sight nice people preferred to see from their castles. It was the kind of sight awful people used to remind themselves of all the unhappiness they’d caused. Only a real villain wanted to look out his window and see that kind of thing before breakfast.

  Up ahead, the catwalk ended at an ominous stone tower studded with balconies from which many armored shadow minions shouted nasty things at the prisoners being brought toward them. Unlike most of the shadows Fernie and Pearlie and Gustav had seen so far—who, like their fellow prisoners Anemone and Caliban and Not-Roger’s shadow, had all tended to look pretty human—these had taken on more monstrous shapes, almost as if it would not have been enough for them to just look like bad people; they had to look like things worse than people, or things that ate people.

  “’Ey!” said one whose mouth sported a pair of walrus tusks. “Look over there! I’ll sell me nose if that’s not Gustav Gloom!”

  An apelike figure cried, “The master will be ’appy about this, ’e will, ’e will. ’E’s been ranting about Gustav Gloom for a while now!”

  “Aye, ’e has such plans for the boy . . . !”

  “. . . And who’s that red-haired little girl walking along in front of them? Not the little one with the curls . . . the taller one! That must be the other one the master wants: Fernie What!”

  Behind Fernie, Pearlie cried out, “Shows how much you know, you big dummies! I’m not Fernie! I’m her bigger and tougher sister!”

  “Oi! You hear that?”

  “I did, I did! There’s a tougher sister!”

  “Won’t do either one of ’em any good! It won’t, it won’t! They’ll both lose what toughness they have slaving in Lord Obsidian’s mines!”

  “It’s just interesting that there’s a tougher sister, that’s all!”

  “She don’t look so bloomin’ tough now! None of ’em do! Lookit them, all prisoners being led to a fate worse than death!”

  The catwalk ended at a platform with a massive door overseen by an elderly, robed shadow whose eyebrows were so long at the sides that they joined his bushy mustache and beard in drooping all the way to the floor. He peered over his foggy bifocals at the four human beings who were the first of his prisoners, and said, “All right, all right, everybody, pipe down. This lot still has to be processed. Please line them up in front of me, will you? The three children over there, and that big bearded fellow . . . Yes, that’s right. Him. Excellent.”

  Now that they were standing side by side, Fernie reached for Gustav’s hand. He took hers and squeezed, a grip that betrayed no particular fear of the horrors they now faced. She glanced over and confirmed that he was holding Pearlie’s hand as well, and that Pearlie was doing the same for the comically huge Not-Roger.

  The shadow in the bifocals rolled back one page of the stack of papers on his clipboard and read his next words from something printed there, rushing through the text in a monotone, as if he’d delivered this speech so many times that it had ceased to have any meaning for him. “Be grateful, insignificant worms. Your puny lives are now the property of the all-wise, all-powerful Lord Obsidian, conqueror of the shadow realm and future destroyer of the world of light. Any complaints you might have about your treatment after you pass through this door should be kept to yourselves, as nobody who will be placed in charge of you cares. If you wish to survive, just remember this one thing: that if you disobey us in any way, it can always get much worse.”

  He rolled the top sheet back, adjusted his bifocals, and said, “Right. So let’s get to it. My name is Scrofulous, and it’s my solemn duty to decide just which fate worse than death, out of all the many options provided to us by our lord and master, you will come to suffer from now until the end of time.”

  “Sounds like a fun job,” said Fernie.

  “Why, yes, it is. Please cooperate, and this can be a brief and convenient experience for all of us.” He flipped the papers again and said, “Right. I’m told that one of you is the boy Gustav Gloom?”

  Gustav Gloom released the hands of the What sisters so he could step forward and jab a proud thumb at his chest. “I’m Gustav Gloom.”

  “Would you be the Gustav Gloom who’s also the son of Hans and the grandson of Lemuel?”

  “That’s me,” Gustav confirmed.

  Scrofulous peered through the bifocals that enlarged his eyes and made them look as big as dinner plates. “Do you have any identification attesting to that, young man?”

  “Sorry, no. I guess you’ll have to let me go.”

  Scrofulous spent the next few seconds blinking, as if this was an option that had never been mentioned to him before and he had to give it careful consideration before rejecting it out of hand. Then he coughed and said, “Ah, I see. A joke. We don’t have those here. Our lord and master has declared them illegal. In any event, I do suppose it’s safe enough to assume that you are who you say you are, since this is Lord Obsidian’s place of power, and nobody with even an ounce of self-preservation would claim to be the son of his greatest enemy, unless he was. Our lord has been quite clear in his daily, crazed, inspirational rants that you were to be delivered to him the instant you were captured. So you, at least, we’ve got sorted out.”

  Gustav shook his head and said, “Sorry. But no.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Making Scrofulous’s Job Difficult

  Scrofulous flipped through the papers on his clipboard, searching for the proper response to such an outrage, found none, and replied, “Excuse me, young man. Did you just say No?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah,” said Scrofulous, his eyebrows lowering like a pair of curtains. “You realized your mistake and have now decided to say Yes instead.”

  “It wasn’t a mistake,” Gustav explained. “I’m just answering your most recent question this time. You asked me if I had said No, and I had, so I said Yes.”

  “Was that first No a No as in, No, please, anything but that, I beg you, no?”

  “It was No as in, I didn’t come here to waste time with Lord Obsidian. I came here to find and rescue my father, Hans, who I’ve been led to believe you’re holding prisoner. It’s No as in, You will bring me to see him, Scrofulous, or you will be very sorry you didn’t, the next time we meet.”

  This must have been an entirely new experience for Scrofulous, the gatekeeper at this place that was supposed to be entirely without hope: not just defiance, but defiance backed up with threats. He drummed his fingers on his clipboard. “You know, I almost believe you.”

  “You should try a little harder,” Gustav suggested.

  “I admire your confidence. Alas, you’re not the first prisoner dragged before Lord Obsidian, and in my experience the defiant ones generally don’t tend to survive long enough to carry out any brave threats. So that settles that.”

  “I disagree,” said Gustav, with unshakeable calm, “but feel free to use your best judgment. We’ll see who’s right before long.”

  “Yes, well.” Scrofulous ruffled through his papers. “It’s Lord Obsidian’s throne room for you. You can step back now.”

  Gustav obliged, though clearly less out of fear than politeness. He nodded at Fernie as he did, and she took a moment’s comfort in the confidence he showed her; confidence that might have been misplaced, given how dire their situation was, but confidence that still hadn’t been shaken by anything he’d been through so far. It was the kind of look that made her promise herse
lf she wouldn’t show any more fear than he just had.

  Before her, Scrofulous ruffled papers. “So, next I’m told that we have your almost-as-infamous companion, Fernie What. That’s an odd name.”

  “Says the guy called Scrofulous,” muttered Fernie.

  “Be quiet, girl. I haven’t gotten to you yet. I want this dangerous renegade Fernie What . . . and since you’re clearly too young to be such a feared creature, she must be that somewhat larger girl standing next to you.” He turned to Pearlie. “Step forward, Fernie What.”

  Though taken aback at being the target of Scrofulous’s pointing finger, Pearlie didn’t move. “I’m not Fernie. I’m her older and even tougher sister, Pearlie.”

  Fernie gave her older sister an irritated glance. “Will you please stop telling everybody we meet in the Dark Country that you’re tougher than me? It doesn’t help.”

  “Maybe not,” Pearlie said implacably, “but it’s true.”

  Scrofulous rapped on his clipboard, hard. “Ladies, ladies! I don’t care which one of you is tougher; I only care which one of you is Fernie. Will Fernie please step forward?”

  Fernie took a giant step forward, clasped her hands behind her back, and stood at attention, which was exactly the roll-call position preferred by the gym teacher at her last school. “Present.”

  “You’re Fernie What? Are you sure?”

  “Last I checked,” said Fernie.

  “But you’re the smaller one. Do you have any identification?”

  “My dad sewed a name tag in the back of my shirt collar, and you can have somebody look at that if you want, but, really: Why would I pretend to be Fernie What, in this situation, if I wasn’t?”

  “An excellent point,” said Scrofulous. He ruffled papers. “I believe I have you down for ‘to be imprisoned in darkness while awaiting Obsidian’s judgment.’ You’ll be taken to a suitably uncomfortable place to wait until our master decides what to do with you.”

  Fernie said, “No.”

  “Again, No?”

  “That’s right,” Fernie said, “and again, it’s not No as in, No, oh please, anything but that, show mercy, no. It’s No, I came here to find my father, too, and I’m not letting you take me anywhere unless I get to see him.”

  Scrofulous drew back his clipboard as if preparing to throw it at someone. “Does everybody in the line today have a father they insist on seeing?”

  Pearlie raised her right hand. “I do, but Fernie’s father is my father, too, so you only have to make one trip between us.”

  “Don’t forget mine while you’re at it,” Gustav prodded.

  The man known as Not-Roger timidly raised his hand. “And, ummm . . .”

  Scrofulous whirled. “Don’t tell me you have a father in the dungeon!”

  “I honestly can’t swear that I do,” confessed Not-Roger, “because I’ve been trapped in the Dark Country for so long that I no longer remember my real name or my family or for that matter much else about my life back in the world of light. But as long as you’re retrieving everybody’s fathers, I figure you might as well see if you have one of mine anywhere in your collection.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Fernie. “As long as you’re gonna get two fathers, you might as well try for three. We’ll wait.”

  By now poor Scrofulous was downright bouncing with indignation. “So let me get this straight. I’m not just expected to reunite our prisoners with their actual fathers, but also, while I’m at it, with any hypothetical fathers who we might not even have in the first place?”

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” ventured Not-Roger.

  “You can start with the ones you’re sure about,” suggested Gustav.

  This was just about the last straw for Scrofulous, whose eyebrows had knit so violently by this point that they looked like a pair of wooly snakes meeting face-to-face to decide which one was going to eat the other. “Ravager! Take the boy to his meeting with our father in darkness, Lord Obsidian! Gnulbotz! Take Fernie What to the Screaming Room! Krawg and Hissfang! Take Pearlie What and the big oaf next to her to the Dungeon of Those Who Await!! Now bring forward the next prisoners, and get these insolent newcomers out of my sight!”

  A quartet of shadow guards who merited these unappetizing names stepped forward. In the instant before they tugged at the arms of their prisoners and separated them for what could very easily turn out to be all time, Gustav and the What sisters felt the magnitude of the dangers facing them and threw themselves into a hug so tight that if sincerity alone had been enough to lend it strength, no force on earth or in the Dark Country would have ever been able to tear it apart.

  Fernie struggled to come up with a good-bye that could possibly be powerful enough for the occasion. “Gustav. Pearlie. I . . .”

  “Don’t worry,” Gustav said, under his breath. “This won’t take long.”

  Hope raised a lump in her throat. “Don’t tell me you have a plan!”

  “No plan,” said Gustav. “Not even an idea. Just a couple of vague notions.” Then a shadow-collar looped around his throat, and he was pulled backward by his personal guard, the one called Ravager.

  Fernie cried, “No!” and tried to fight, but by then the shadow guard called Gnulbotz had collared her and pulled her away from her sister. He had the nastiest smile Fernie had ever seen. There were actual little worms sticking their heads out of each and every one of his teeth, and they waved those heads like dancing cobras. Fernie fought long enough to see Pearlie reaching for her, only to be pulled back and secured alongside the giant Not-Roger. Behind them both, a fresh set of prisoners—including the hooded shadow Caliban, the beautiful shadow Anemone, and Not-Roger’s own shadow, identical to the man except that he could be seen through—were all being brought forward to be the next subjected to Scrofulous’s clipboard.

  Anemone had enough time to meet Fernie’s despairing glance with her own . . . and for a moment her beautiful features slipped, revealing the older and more maternal features of the shadow Fernie had known as Gustav’s great-aunt Mellifluous.

  Fernie had already figured out that Anemone was Great-Aunt Mellifluous in disguise, but didn’t have enough time to read much of use in the old woman’s expression before being pulled away. Was Mellifluous despairing, too? Or afraid? Or ashamed of letting things get this far? Or was there a secret smile there, something to give Fernie hope as she was brought to whatever terrible place Lord Obsidian intended for her?

  Leading a squad of other shadow guards, Gnulbotz marched her through a stone archway and into a tunnel of jagged walls and stalactite ceilings, where a gallery of lost prisoners cried out for mercy behind barred windows.

  Gnulbotz’s laugh was terrible even by the standard of cruel laughs, mostly because his wasn’t the only voice laughing; somehow, when he cackled, a small chorus of smaller and squeakier cackles, probably the worms inhabiting his teeth, cackled along with him. “You’re an unlucky one, aren’t you? Not as unlucky as your friend in the black suit who’ll have to face the terrible one himself . . . but unlucky enough to be headed where you’re going.”

  Fernie remembered the name of the chamber she’d been condemned to. “What’s so terrible about the Screaming Room?”

  “It’s the place our lord banished the only being he ever truly feared—a place where he has also chained hundreds of shadows driven insane by his treatment of them. It is said that even the strongest grown man cannot spend more than a day chained in their presence, trapped in darkness listening to the awful sounds they never stop making, without losing his mind forever . . . and I wager that the mind of a mere child such as yourself won’t long outlast the echo of the slamming trapdoor.”

  Fernie felt true terror for the first time since her arrival in the Dark Country, but her mind was still racing. “The only human being Lord Obsidian ever feared . . . that would be my friend Gustav’s father, right? Tha
t would be . . . Hans Gloom?”

  “Aye, so it was . . . but if you’re thinking there’s any help to be had from him, you can think again. From what I hear, he lost his mind only a short time after Lord Obsidian locked him up in that terrible place. He’s got the brain of a turnip now, and you, my dear, are about to join him.” He cackled again, the worms cackling with him. “You shouldn’t have made such a big deal about finding fathers, girl. If you hadn’t mentioned it, Scrofulous might have been satisfied with just putting you in the same dungeon as your sister.”

  She tried to run then, but the collar pulled her up short, and all her useless attempt at escape accomplished was getting Gnulbotz to tighten his grip on her leash.

  The sights and sounds of Obsidian’s castle grew worse and worse, the deeper her guard led her into the castle. She saw things so awful that she found herself thinking her mind wouldn’t last long enough to be shattered in the Screaming Room. But every time she felt herself start to break, she shut her eyes and thought of everybody depending on her: of her father, the safety expert who had envisioned so many of the world’s hidden dangers but never considered the ones that came from the Dark Country; of her mother, the professional adventurer, who had braved so many dangers but would not be ready for the empty house she would find when she returned from her latest expedition; of Pearlie, who was pretty tough but (Fernie knew) not tough enough to get through this without a little sister to help her; of her best and truest friend, Gustav Gloom, who would be so alone without her if she did not live through this; and of even her cat, Harrington, who last she’d seen was being cared for on the Cryptic Carousel by the shadow of Gustav’s grandfather Lemuel. Being a cat, Harrington was sometimes reserved with the love he gave, but he had never once allowed a minute’s confusion about the amount of love he needed. They all counted on Fernie to get through whatever horror faced her with her mind and her courage intact.