Gustav Gloom and the Nightmare Vault

by Adam-Troy Castro

  Harrington’s opinion of this, if he even heard it, went unrecorded. He hissed, but that probably wasn’t meant for Fernie and Pearlie.

  The ice-cream man’s jaw fell open and for the first time revealed a formless darkness as black as anything Fernie had ever seen. Tendrils of black mist bubbled out between his lips. “October wants the Nightmare Vault.”

  “That’s not even a sentence,” Fernie noted.

  “The Gloom house is too big for October to search by himself. There are too many rooms. But you were inside the house. You’ve seen things. You might know the Nightmare Vault. You might lead October to the Nightmare Vault.”

  Pearlie looked at her little sister. “Is he saying that October’s his name?”

  “Sounds like it. Why?”

  “I’m just saying. The man’s named after a month.”

  “That’s not unusual,” Fernie pointed out. “I have a friend named April.”

  “That’s right,” Pearlie admitted, as if remembering this for the first time. “And I know one named June. And Spider-Man has an Aunt May.”

  The stranger, whose lazy black gaze had shifted from one girl to the other throughout this conversation, as if truly hoping to find a helpful answer, now dragged himself back to his point. “You will take me to the Nightmare Vault.”

  Fernie bounced up and down on the sofa cushion, working up enough courage to run for it. “What do you think, Pearlie? Have any interest in doing that?”

  “Nope,” said Pearlie as she prepared to make her move. “I wouldn’t give this guy directions to the nearest post office.”

  Then she lunged.

  The ceramic sculpture was the single ugliest furnishing in the family’s possession. They actually called it “that ugly sculpture,” as it had been given that very name by Mrs. What, who had been dismayed when Mr. What had bought it.

  The ugly sculpture was a twisted green thing that looked like a stick of taffy some petulant child had given a half twist and then left to melt in the sun. It perpetually looked about to fall over, but stayed in place because the base was so heavy, the rest of it could afford to lean a little. Hideous as it was, the family felt a perverse affection for it, like they might have felt for a puppy that had managed to grow up and become an old dog without ever understanding why it shouldn’t poop on the rug.

  Pearlie grabbed the sculpture with both hands and drew it over her shoulder like a baseball bat.

  October seemed wholly unworried that one of the girls had found herself a weapon. “You will bring me to the Nightmare Vault, or you will die.”

  “That’s the first we’ve heard of it,” Fernie told him. “You better leave and go look for it somewhere else.”

  His neck bulged, like a bullfrog’s, and he staggered forward another step, looking less like a man walking on his own than a puppet being controlled by invisible strings. There was a powerful rumble, so low that it was hard to hear as an actual sound but so strong that the walls rattled and a set of glasses shattered in the sink.

  Pearlie turned to Fernie and said, “I think this is it.”

  Fernie could feel the rumble on her skin, almost as if the entire house were an airplane and the vibration were the engines revving up enough power for a takeoff. “I think you’re right.”

  Harrington yowled…

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE MAN WHOSE MOUTH WAS BIGGER THAN HIS HEAD

  October’s mouth was not only bigger than it should have been, but bigger than it could have been—bigger, now, than his head.

  His lips had opened up and folded out and peeled back in all four directions, making an opening that extended well above the top of his head and well below what should have been the base of his neck. They curled back until his mouth was big enough to swallow a manhole cover whole.

  The inside of his mouth was a black emptiness uninterrupted by anything that normally would have been found inside a head.

  The blackness began to erupt into the air around him in tendrils of nasty, grasping darkness.

  Pearlie threw the ugly sculpture. It was much too heavy for her to throw very hard or very far, but shock and fear gave her strength greater than she normally would have had, and an accuracy that would have won her all the stuffed bears in every carnival midway that ever charged people a dollar a throw.

  The ugly sculpture hit the circle of perfect darkness dead center, and then shrank rapidly as it gathered speed and tumbled into whatever bottomless universe existed inside October’s mouth.

  “Wow,” Pearlie said.

  It was about as respectful a wow as any she’d ever uttered.

  The tendrils of darkness continued to spill from October’s lips, twisting and curling and grasping as they made their way through the air and toward the two girls.

  Backing up against the opposite wall, where her own shadow was scrabbling about looking for a way out, Pearlie said, “I’m out of ideas.”

  Fernie had nothing. Already the black tendrils stretched across the entire width of the living room, each one splitting into branches to create more, and still more erupting at every moment. They formed a kind of cage, closing the living room off from the rest of the house. She supposed she could try to jump through one of the gaps between tendrils and knew that this was the best chance she’d ever have, as those gaps were already filling in, but it was impossible to know the right moment, and the prospect of picking one seemed more and more impossible the longer she waited.

  Then Fernie felt something tug at her feet and looked down in panic, fearing it was one of the dark tendrils—but no, it was her own shadow, which seemed determined to shake her into action.

  “Jump when I do!” her shadow said in a voice very much like her own.

  Fernie yelled at Pearlie. “Here!”

  “I see her! I’m coming!”

  Pearlie and her shadow darted across the room, just barely dodging a grasping tendril that tried to loop around her as she went. They hopped up onto the sofa behind Fernie (and Harrington, who had also decided that this was the safest place to be) and waited the second it took for Fernie’s shadow to make her move. They all ran when Fernie’s shadow ran, using the sofa as a runway and leaping off the couch’s last cushion just one step behind the helpful shape of the shadow girl who was showing them where to go.

  The two sisters, two shadow girls, one cat, and one shadow cat succeeded in diving through a tiny gap between shadow tendrils, and landed in a pile in the hallway separating the kitchen from the living room. The two girls lay tangled there for a second or two, each one trying to be the helpful sister by pulling at the other to get up, while the panicking cat squirmed between them. For a few heartbeats that none of them could afford they pushed when they should have pulled and pulled when they should have pushed, and therefore remained a knot of tangled girl and cat.

  “No, wait,” Fernie said at the same time Pearlie said, “No, don’t.”

  “No, don’t,” Fernie said at the same time Pearlie said, “No, wait.”

  Then each sister, talking to the other, said, “Quit it.”

  Harrington made an aggrieved sound that could have meant “Stupid people!”

  They broke free of one another all at once. Harrington rocketed into one of the bedrooms, because the safest place any cat can think of is under a trusted bed. Fernie and Pearlie scrambled a little farther down the hallway on their hands and knees, even as October swiveled toward them and started to follow. Both could tell from the shifting shapes all around them that unless they moved fast, October would have them.

  Then a voice that sounded just like Fernie’s cried, “No!”

  Fernie looked back over her shoulder. The shadow Fernie had been caught and was now furiously battling the long and whiplike tendril pulling her toward the ice-cream man’s gaping mouth. She fought back as bravely as any shadow could have been expected to, so hard that she looked more solid than usual and no longer resembled a shadow girl, but rather a fuzzier, darker version of Fernie herself. But she was not
as strong as the tendril that had grabbed her, and could not prevent her terrible fate. The shadow Pearlie hovered nearby, as if desperate to help, but could find no safe way to attack the ice-cream man on her shadow sister’s behalf.

  The shadow girl yelled, “Go already! He’ll be after you next!”

  The shadow Pearlie fled.

  Fernie almost didn’t. She almost couldn’t.

  Then Pearlie grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her to her feet.

  Two girls and one shadow fled down the narrow hallway, racing past the open doors to the master bedroom, Pearlie’s bedroom, and Fernie’s own. The tendrils chasing them swept the walls of dozens of framed photos commemorating the best moments of the What family: the portraits of Fernie and Pearlie as babies, the picture of Mr. What in a tuxedo accepting the Morton J. Throckworthy International Award for Excellence for advancing the cause of protective safety railings, the one of Mrs. What in safari gear running away from an angry hippo. The sounds of breaking glass filled the air as the frames hit the floor, one after another.

  Just as the two girls passed through the open door to the sunroom in the back of the house, Fernie happened to look back again and see her shadow being dragged into October’s mouth. The shadow girl braced her shadowy hands and feet against the edges of his lips in a vain struggle to keep herself from being pulled in.

  Fernie almost froze again. But Pearlie pulled her into the sunroom, a bright open space at the back of the house where a swinging window seat and a carpeted jungle gym for Harrington looked out upon a view that was a thin strip of lawn and a high wooden fence. It was a great place to sit if you wanted to bask in the setting sun while enjoying the picturesque view of a wall. All the two girls could see of the sky over that fence was a deep purple, just beginning to glow with stars.

  The sight of Harrington’s jungle gym, an elaborate arrangement of ledges and tunnels and dangling knots that he usually ignored completely in favor of the couch that was a lot less trouble, reminded Fernie that their beloved pet was still trapped behind them. “Harrington—”

  “Is safe,” Pearlie said, “as long as that guy keeps chasing us.”

  Fernie hated to leave her beloved cat behind but knew that Pearlie was right.

  The girls reached the screen door just as October appeared at the entrance to the sunroom, his hands grasping the frame and his giant open mouth still giving off clouds of smoky darkness.

  He said, “I want the Nightmare Vault.”

  “I know!” Pearlie cried. “We get it, already!”

  A fresh wave of shadow tendrils swept toward the two sisters, who just barely managed to slam the back door behind them.

  They poured on every ounce of speed they had as they fled along the fence and around the side of the house. The automatic safety lights Mr. What had installed on the roof clicked on as they ran by, bathing the girls in bright halogen light. Fernie could not help noting Pearlie’s shadow, racing along the grass, even as her own remained missing, maybe lost forever. The absence of a shadow made her feel less real as a person, almost as if she were not part of the real world anymore. She couldn’t help remembering the scary story Gustav had told her about Mr. Notes, a man who had been abandoned by his own shadow and was so traumatized by that loss that he now lived in a special home for people who had been rendered very twitchy.

  The two girls crossed the street, ran past the fenced-in Gloom yard, and hunkered down behind a parked car belonging to a neighbor whom they sometimes said hello to and who struck them as either a secret agent or a dentist. Together they peered back at a home that was no longer safe for either one of them. It was impossible to tell from here that anything out of the ordinary was going on inside, but every patch of darkness the shining lights failed to reach felt like a possible hiding place for bad things.

  Fernie said, “That guy just ate my shadow.”

  “I saw that,” Pearlie whispered. “How did it feel?”

  “I don’t know. There aren’t a whole lot of things in the world I can compare it to.”

  “Well, did it hurt?”

  “It didn’t feel like much of anything,” Fernie whispered back, “but that’s not the same thing as saying I’m okay with it. That was my shadow. I want her back.”

  The two girls thought they saw somebody and hunkered back down, pressing their backs against the dentist–secret agent’s car.

  Pearlie whispered, “Maybe you can borrow mine sometimes. So you don’t look strange when you’re out in the sun.”

  This was the kind of interesting suggestion that could only have been made by somebody who had been inside the Gloom house.

  As much as Fernie appreciated her big sister’s generous offer, she shook her head. “What are we going to do, take turns going outside? That’ll be a fine thing on family trips to the beach. Besides, my shadow was a person. I’ve talked to her, and even been saved by her. It wasn’t okay for her to be gobbled up.”

  Her voice broke a little at that last statement, and she came perilously close to crying, which would have been a very bad thing, because once she started, she probably would not have been able to stop.

  Pearlie glanced over the hood of the car and said, “Look.”

  The automatic safety lights on the sides of the What house had just clicked off, leaving deeper patches of darkness that seemed too thick for a street with so many lights. Around the house, everywhere the shadows touched, the blackness swallowed everything. It was possible to believe that the one strip of darkness by the side of the house was not a lawn but a bottomless pit, ready to claim anybody who got too close.

  Then edges of that darkness seemed to crawl, the black tendrils advancing like vines, too blind to see where the girls were but too stubborn to give up the search.

  Then the outline of a man in a dingy white uniform appeared, walking around the side of the house. The white uniform didn’t seem very bright; it was just the suggestion of light, and the only reason October could be seen at all. The darkness, already impenetrable, seemed darker still where his head should have been.

  “He’s coming,” Pearlie said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A GAME OF HIDE-AND-SHRIEK

  October closed his mouth, though his face remained as lumpy and uneven as ever. He stopped in the center of the What lawn, throwing his head back so he could sniff the air. In the glow of the streetlights, the patches of darkness dancing around his head looked like a swarm of bees angry at being dipped in ink.

  Pearlie whispered, “What are we going to do?”

  Fernie understood that Pearlie wasn’t really asking her. She was a big sister, and big sisters are always in charge, even when the little sister has spent a little more time dealing with scary monsters and knows more about what’s involved. But only one decision made sense. “I have to go to the Gloom house and find Gustav.”

  “What could Gustav do?”

  “I don’t know,” Fernie said with deep irritation. “If I knew, I’d do it myself and save him the trouble.”

  Pearlie had to nod at the sense this made. “All right. So we’ll find Gustav, and—”

  As much as Fernie didn’t want to be separated from her sister at a time like this, she could only shake her head. “No. You can’t. Somebody has to stay behind and make sure that Dad doesn’t try to come home while that guy’s around. You have to go to Mrs. Everwiner’s, yank him out of that stupid meeting, get him to a car, and have him drive away with you as fast as you can.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because he’s covered with shadow-smell, too, and if he sticks around, October will go after him next.”

  October had followed the scent into the street and was now standing under the streetlight, sniffing the air again.

  Brave as she was, Pearlie was unable to resist a little whimper. “But I’m older. I’m supposed to protect you. Why can’t I get Gustav while you run away and warn Dad?”

  This was the last argument Fernie wanted right now, but there was no way to get past
it without first taking the time to have it. “Because I’ve spent more time inside Gustav’s house than you have. Because I know some of the dangerous places inside and might have a better chance of staying out of trouble. Because I probably have more shadow-smell on me than you do, and that means the ice-cream man’s probably going to go after me, instead of you, if we split up. Because I can lead him away from you and Dad, and maybe toward something that can stop him.”

  Pearlie was being offered the easy way out, but she still shook her head, resisting the idea just a little bit more. “Dad’s not going to go anywhere with you at Gustav’s!”

  “He has to,” Fernie insisted. “And you have to say whatever it takes to make him. Tell him Gustav and his friends will help me. Tell him everything will be fixed by the time the two of you come back in the morning and that I’ll tell him all about it over a nice waffle breakfast.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “If it’s not all right by morning, it’s never going to be.”

  Out in the street, the lumbering ice-cream man began to stride toward them.

  The air grew colder the closer he came.

  Pearlie only had enough time for one more objection. “You’ll be leading a man who eats shadows into a house filled with shadows.”

  “If he wants something in Gustav’s house,” Fernie said, “he’ll be headed there sooner or later, anyway. At least now I’ll be warning them.”

  Pearlie hesitated for one heartbeat more before throwing her arms around Fernie and squeezing her as tightly as she ever had. They’d always gotten along and had never suffered a shortage of sisterly hugs, but this particular hug was the kind sisters only give when they think it might be the last one ever.

  Then Pearlie stepped out into the street and waved her hands over her head. “Yoo-hoo, you big smelly stupid-head! Anybody ever tell you that you have a big mouth?”

  October turned to face Pearlie, his cheeks bulging and rippling enough to suggest snakes squirming around beneath them. “Yes.”

  Pearlie did a cartwheel, wobbled a little because she had never been all that good at those, and danced a silly butt-wiggling dance, as if this were all just one big joke and there was nothing else she’d rather do than make fun of the scary man with the mouth big enough to swallow ugly sculptures. “Well, I wouldn’t mind your mouth being that big, as long as you did something about your breath!”