“Neither am I,” Pearlie said, shuddering.
“Or me,” the big man said with a sigh. “But alas, here we are.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence as the girls cast about for another conversation starter.
He saw them glancing at his books. “Ah, those. Every once in a while somebody up in the real world throws an old book into the Pit. That’s all I’ve been able to accumulate since I landed. My collected Shakespeare, my collected Twain, and, unfortunately, given that there’s no human food to be had in this dreary place and we’d all starve to death if we didn’t have our shadows to eat for us, The Joy of French Cooking. I’m afraid I read that one most of all, just to remind myself what a good meal back in the world of light was like. I keep hoping somebody will pass by with something else to read, but alas, it’s been years.”
“How many years?” Pearlie asked, in a tone that suggested she didn’t look forward to knowing.
“The last human event mentioned to me by any of my occasional human visitors was something called the Summer of Love. By then I’d been living in this place almost thirty years, and I’d appreciate it very much if neither one of you fine young ladies tortured me by telling me how many years it’s been since then. You’ll learn soon enough that time down here doesn’t pass the way it does on Earth. It slows down and speeds up, without even the courtesy to separate itself into days and nights so you at least have sensible terms you can use in a conversation. Here, I’m afraid, there are only four terms we use to measure time: right away, soon, eventually, or never. Come on, you two. Sit down already. I’ve long since forgotten how to bite.”
Had the man not told them he had been living in the Dark Country for so long, Fernie suspected she would have guessed it from how much sadness filled his every word. She decided that he was more pathetic than dangerous, and that it would be a polite thing to show him a little trust, even if she wasn’t quite sure he’d earned it yet.
Fernie lowered herself onto one of the two free stools. It wobbled at once, the way a small dog does when some tiny child tries to ride it. After a moment, she figured out that if she shifted position and leaned to the left, the stool became as stable as it was ever likely to be. “My name’s—”
“No names,” the big man warned. “That way, if anybody comes looking for you later, I can truthfully say I don’t know whether I’ve seen you or not. It doesn’t matter so much what you call me, because it’s been so long for me that I’ve forgotten the name I brought here. I think it started with an R.” He turned toward his shadow. “Am I right? Did it start with an R?”
“It was definitely an R,” the shadow confirmed, “but I don’t remember any more than that.”
“Well, let’s try some,” the big man said. “Ralph? Ruddigore? Ridiculous? Roddenberry?”
The big man’s shadow shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Rupert? Revision? Real Estate?”
“No.”
“Could it be Roger? Try it.”
The shadow pronounced the name with excessive care. “Raaaahhhh-jurrrr.”
The big man considered that, then shook his head sadly. “No, I’m afraid that’s not it. We might as well use it for the time being, though. I like the sound.”
Pearlie, who remained standing, showed signs of losing her patience. “What is this place?”
“This?” He regarded the room around him as if seeing it for the first time. “Ah, well. This is a place I put together from all the bits and pieces I’ve been able to find so that people would stop by and I would have someone to talk to every once in a while. Welcome to Shadow’s Inn.”
“You mean . . . it’s a hotel?”
“I prefer the term inn,” said the big man whose name wasn’t Roger, “because hotel isn’t very accurate. Nobody here needs a bed to sleep, so there aren’t any guest rooms. What I offer instead is a way station of sorts, for weary travelers both shadow and flesh who wish to pause for congenial company and a friendly voice.”
“How often does that happen?”
“You know the name of this place? Not my inn, but the land around it?”
“The Rarely?”
“Well. There you go.”
A glum silence followed this pronouncement.
Trying to be helpful, Fernie asked, “Maybe the problem’s that you built an inn someplace where guests rarely show up. Wouldn’t it be better to have one where folks pass by all the time?”
“If you’re doomed to spend your life in the Dark Country,” Not-Roger said, “then you’ll learn it’s best to avoid Dark Country business. I’m better off being lonely and out of trouble than in the center of everything and always fighting for what little life it’s possible for me to live. For instance, you two: You may have heard me mention the evil one?”
Fernie said, “Yes. We think we know who you’re talking about. We saw the statue. Lord Obsidian, right?”
“That’s him. He’s a terrible, terrible person, even for the Dark Country, and by far the worst kind of terrible person you ever find here—a shadow who used to be a human being. He’s been fighting a brutal war to take over this place and has let it be known that he won’t be satisfied until he’s also turned the world of light and all the other realms he can reach into places that fit his awful standards. But there’s nothing in the Rarely he wants, and so his servants don’t pass by here unless they’re chasing runaway shadows or whatnot.” He sighed again. “Eventually they’ll come for me, and I’ll have to shut this place down and flee. It’s a depressing subject for conversation. Maybe we should talk about something else.”
“Why don’t we pretend we’ve covered all the stuff we don’t need to talk about and have gotten back to what we can do about Lord Obsidian?”
Not Roger grimaced. “We can’t do anything about him. He’s too powerful for any of us.”
“Let’s start with that, then. We already know that he was human when he first landed in the Dark Country. He was just a man named Howard Philip October. How did he go from that to becoming a terrible world-conquering shadow too powerful for anybody to stop?”
Not-Roger rose from his stool, prompting his shadow to rise from his stool so the two could storm over to the other side of the room together. Not-Roger leaned one massive arm on the wall over the window and used that as a resting place for his forehead as he glared at the gray view beyond the light of his little captured sun. His shadow remained behind him.
Neither man nor shadow seemed to notice what Fernie saw: Gustav Gloom just outside ducking out of sight to avoid being spotted.
At Pearlie’s suggestion, Gustav had approached the house before the What girls did and taken up his hiding place outside the only window with light so he could stand watch and offer assistance if the man inside proved dangerous. Also not visible in the window at the moment, but no doubt nearby and also listening, were Olaf and Cousin Cyrus.
Apparently unaware just how many eyes were observing him, Not-Roger faced a view he must have known by heart by now and heaved a sigh strong enough to make his whiskers shake. “The truth is, girls, I wasn’t a good man back up on Earth. I was a liar and a bully and a thief. Nobody I met was ever better off for knowing me. I’ve had a long time to think about it, and I confess, I deserved to be thrown in the Pit. I deserve to be imprisoned here forever. I wouldn’t leave now even if I could.
“But not everybody who’s brought here deserves to be here. There’s one man in particular, a man who’s famous for coming as close to stopping Howard Philip October and the monster he became as anybody ever has. If you want to know how October became Obsidian, his is the story you need to know.”
He took another deep breath, long enough for Fernie and—apparently, from the sudden widening of her eyes—Pearlie to realize who he must have been talking about.
Not-Roger said, “His name was Hans Gloom . . .”
&n
bsp; CHAPTER EIGHT
The Origin of Lord Obsidian
Not-Roger reclaimed his stool, prompting his shadow to do likewise. He sat there absently stroking his beard while he gathered up the bits and pieces of the tale his guests had demanded.
“See, girls, from what I’ve learned, the world of light has ten Pits to the shadow country. I know one’s in Liechtenstein and another’s in Orlando, and I hear tell that a third’s in a crater somewhere in a place called Tunguska. (That’s a bad one.)
“I don’t know which one you girls fell through, but I suppose it doesn’t matter. You’re here to stay, wherever you started off from, because only shadows can travel back and forth unassisted.
“The point is that people from the world of light are always falling through one Pit or another, and most either don’t survive very long or don’t do much more than wander around losing their minds.
“It was different with those two. Everybody in the Dark Country knew those two were special even before they landed here.”
“We knew,” Not-Roger’s shadow said, “because we could hear them screaming.”
Not-Roger nodded. “It’s true. No matter where someone was in the Dark Country, in the highest mountaintop or the deepest valley, in the most crowded shadow city or out here in the Rarely, he could hear Hans Gloom and Howard Philip October battling each other as they fell. We all heard every punch, every kick, every groan of pain, and every foul oath they cried as each tried to put an end to the other. We heard Hans Gloom call October a murderer and October call Hans Gloom a naive fool. They never tired and never stopped. It was as if the fight itself was all they had left.
“I don’t think there’s ever been a pair, in any world, who hated each other that much or who fought each other with that much abandon. Neither one ever stopped to rest, though it took them an uncounted amount of time to fall, and it would have been much easier, in that amount of time, for one to sacrifice his claim on the other.”
Not-Roger’s shadow shook his head. “It was just two men and their shadows fighting. But you couldn’t hear the sounds and not know that the war between them was capable of spreading to entire worlds.”
“No,” Not-Roger said. “You couldn’t.” He was silent for a moment, remembering; but then he took a deep breath and continued. “Now, shadows can use one Pit or another to travel back and forth from the world of light faster than it takes a body of flesh and blood to fall, and so a number of them hastened to do just that. They went, gathered information from the shadows of the house where the two men had started their plunge, and reported back what they had learned.”
The next minute or so Not-Roger devoted to the parts of the story that he couldn’t be aware the girls already knew, beginning with Lemuel Gloom’s invention of the Cryptic Carousel many years ago, and continuing past Penny Gloom’s murder, to the point where Hans Gloom and Howard Philip October toppled into the Pit together.
Then he moved on to the parts of the story that the girls hadn’t heard before.
“You must understand, this wasn’t the first time two enemies had ever shared such a fate. It wasn’t even the first time two had ever fallen into the Dark Country together. But these two were special. Hans Gloom had been raised in a shadow house and had been saturated with its magic all his life. October had spent long greedy years studying how to exploit the same magic for his own power and was almost as suffused with the same strange forces.
“When they fell, their hands locked around each other’s throats, and their shadows also ripped and tore at each other as few enemies had ever fought before. The darkness that already ruled October’s soul and the rage that had temporarily taken control of Gloom’s made what passed between them a far greater thing than it ever had to be, a greater thing than it ever should have been. Some of the shadows who flew close to watch a part of their fall returned blinded from the fury they had seen.
“The shadows and captive humans of the Dark Country, learning the story of these two enemies, began to fall into several camps. Those who were capable of love, who had known love or who had ever wanted love, felt for Hans Gloom. Those who were ruled by greed, by ambition, by the lust for power, or by hatred of everything that lived felt for Howard Philip October. Others just waited to see what would happen when the pair finally landed, at which point—everybody assumed—one of these two men would triumph over the other and it would no longer be something anyone needed to worry about.”
Not-Roger shook his head.
“Some went to watch the landing for themselves. There must have been hundreds of them. My shadow was one; I’d sent him to go take a look. I’ll let him take over from there.”
Not-Roger’s shadow took over. “Gloom and October touched ground on the Golden Desert, a wasteland at the heart of the Dark Country that contains all the riches Man was never meant to find. It’s a place where rubies and diamonds the size of houses sit undisturbed, half-buried by sand made out of gold dust. But neither man noticed these treasures, and neither would have cared if they had. Instead, they broke away from each other and rolled in the dirt.
“The men and their shadows scrambled to their feet, facing each other once again.
“They stood apart, eyes burning, enjoying the first break in the battle as they girded themselves for another round.
“The first to falter was Howard Philip October. The hatred drained from his face, replaced for the moment by total puzzlement. He said, ‘It’s a shame, Hans. I’ve never understood you. You lived in a house that offered access to treasures beyond counting and forces that could have granted you power most men will never know . . . and you were ready to squander it, let it all go to waste, just to live the life of an ordinary man. Why?’
“Hans Gloom wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. ‘Maybe it’s because it’s all I ever wanted.’
“‘You can’t win,’ October warned him. ‘I’ve been studying how shadow-magic works. I’ve started to learn how to control it in a way you never can.’
“Hans Gloom’s only response to that was a little nod. ‘But I have more power than you’ll ever know,’ he replied.
“Howard Philip October made the mistake of flashing an incredulous look and asking him how.
“Hans Gloom said, ‘I have the memory of a wife who honored me by loving me as much as I loved her, and who until the day she died offered you just as great an honor by being your friend. I had a beautiful son who never got the chance to be born and who I never got to meet, who I’ll love to the day I die even though I can only love the idea of him. I have the knowledge that you took those people, who were more precious to me than any amount of power, and threw them both away like they were garbage. Do you really imagine that there’s any force, in this world or any other, that’s strong enough to prevent me from avenging either one of them, even if it’s with my very last breath?’”
As Not-Roger’s shadow let the words ring, Fernie’s vision blurred with tears, and she thought of poor Gustav listening to this story from his hiding place. It was breaking her own heart. What was it doing to him, the halfsie boy who had never before experienced the chance to hear his father profess his love for him?
Pearlie pointed out what Fernie had not. “But wasn’t Hans wrong about his son? Gustav Gloom did get to be born. He did get to be more than an idea. He did get to be a person.”
Not-Roger nodded. “True, miss . . . as all who know this terrible history recognize. But at the particular time this story took place, Hans Gloom had no way of knowing it. He still believed that his unborn son had perished at the same time as his poor wife. As far as he was concerned, then and for a long time afterward, Howard Philip October had taken his entire family from him, not just half of it.”
“I hope he eventually found out otherwise,” Pearlie said.
“That I don’t know,” Not-Roger said, while dabbing at his shiny eyes with a thumb. “But I h
ope so, too.”
His shadow resumed the tale. “In any event, what happened next, and what I had the privilege to witness, became a legend among my kind.
“Hans Gloom and his shadow started to walk.
“They took a step and then a step after that and then a third step after that one, each one bringing them closer to Howard Philip October.
“The look in Gloom’s eyes was the worst and most frightening thing I have ever seen.
“All the shadows watching the moment thought that Howard Philip October and his shadow would advance to meet Gloom in the middle and that the fight between them would start all over again.
“But that’s not what happened.
“Instead, October and his shadow turned their backs and started to run.
“They ran and stumbled and fell flat on their faces and crawled and got up and started to stagger away again.
“Behind them, Hans Gloom and his shadow never sped up and never hurried and never broke into a run to close the distance, but also never stopped; they just kept walking, putting one foot ahead of the other for as long as Howard Philip October and his shadow fled.
“I didn’t stick around much longer after that. But Hans Gloom and his shadow were pitiless. They never stopped to rest. They never sped up to end it. They just walked at the same merciless, unhurried pace . . . and for as long as they walked, there was nothing Howard Philip October and his shadow could do to escape.
“I don’t think Gloom intended to kill October anymore. Instead, he dedicated himself to doing something that might be considered even worse—denying his enemy even a moment of rest, or peace, for as long as his own strength permitted him.
“There were times when October was able to put some distance between them and Gloom was just a small dot he had left far behind; and there were times when October had to stop to rest and watch while Gloom approached almost close enough to reach out and touch him. There were times October was just out of Gloom’s reach for what would have been days on end back in the world of light, and they were able to have extended conversations. From what I hear from those who stuck around long enough to see what was going to happen, October desperately offered Gloom one deal or another to go away, and Gloom replied with loving stories of his life with the woman named Penny.
Gustav Gloom and the Inn of Shadows Page 7