Gustav Gloom and the Nightmare Vault

by Adam-Troy Castro

  “What?” she asked.

  He answered her very softly. “Nothing. That was a very good idea you had. Except…”

  He was so quiet for so long that she felt the need to prod him. “Except what?”

  “You know that they’ll go straight to the places you mentioned. And you know that when they do, none of the respectable shadows will be around. This lot will just find empty room after empty room, where all the other shadows used to be. And they’ll think you told them the truth. If they manage to avoid October, they’ll tell their friends, and so on.”

  Fernie asked, “And your point?”

  He looked away just a fraction of a second too slowly for Fernie to miss the slight twitch at the corners of his lips. He said, “What’s the most feared creature in the Gloom house.”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “What,” he said.

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “I wasn’t asking you anything, Fernie. I was telling you something. As far as that bunch is concerned, What is the most feared creature in the Gloom house. What. That’s your name. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  It took her a second to see what Gustav was getting at. Then she did, and turned red. “Oh.”

  They walked on in silence through a corridor now blessedly cleared of disreputable shadows, both knowing that it would not be long before the next of the night’s many dangers popped up to say hello.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  FERNIE RECEIVES AN OFFER

  For the next few minutes, as they headed deeper into the parts of the house where no respectable shadow would ever go, they weren’t bothered. Any shadows they spotted were just terrified, furtive faces peering at them from around corners or through the windowpanes of some of the corridor doors.

  The path ahead grew grimmer and dirtier, the air so cold that Fernie could only wonder if somebody had left a window open somewhere. There was so much dust that Fernie had to bite her lip to avoid sneezing.

  Then the hairs on the back of Fernie’s neck stood straight up, and she sensed something that had been putting her ill at ease for several minutes.

  One member of the mob had doubled back to follow them and had now almost caught up with them; even as Fernie whirled to see whom, she cringed, expecting his inevitable cry to his friends, that they should come back, because all the stuff about the little girl being able to eat shadows had been a lie.

  Instead, she saw the vague outline of a friendly, skinny figure with bony elbows and knees, and ears that poked out like handles. “Hello, Fernie. Hello, Gustav.”

  She relaxed. “Hello, Mr. Notes.”

  Mr. Notes’s shadow was one of the few, other than Great-Aunt Mellifluous and Fernie’s own shadow, whom Fernie had spoken to. All she really knew about him was that he’d once been the shadow of a mean man also named Mr. Notes, until he decided that following Mr. Notes around was no fun at all.

  “I was wondering when you’d catch up with us,” Gustav said.

  “It took me a while,” Mr. Notes’s shadow allowed as he fell into a friendly stroll alongside them. “But I had to flee almost all the way to the other end of the house before I could get away from that mob and start making my way back.”

  Fernie didn’t understand. “You were with them?”

  “I was the one who told the others that he’d been to the banquet hall looking for scraps. After that wonderfully clever lie you told, it was just the right thing to say to push them the rest of the way into panic.”

  “Oh.” Fernie felt deflated. After how satisfying it had been to scare the disreputable shadows away all by herself, it was disappointing to now find out that she’d had a friend in the mob giving them an extra added nudge.

  Gustav spotted her stricken expression. “I’m sorry, Fernie. I thought you knew that it was him. I recognized him right away.”

  “Well,” she said defensively, “I only met him the one time, and even then only for a minute or two. And besides, what was he doing over here with all the disreputable shadows? Why isn’t he in hiding with the rest of your family?”

  Mr. Notes’s shadow seemed a little hurt by that. “Did you really think that Great-Aunt Mellifluous or the other shadows who care about Gustav would leave him totally alone during an invasion by a creature as dangerous as the shadow eater? Somebody had to stick around and offer any help we could. Mellifluous asked for volunteers, and I said I’d stay.”

  Fernie wasn’t mollified. “This is the first time we’ve seen you all night.”

  “I know, and that’s why I said any help we could. There was nothing I could do to help you against the shadow eater himself; if I’d gone anywhere near him, I would have been snatched up and eaten and mixed up with all the other shadow-stuff in his belly. I would have become just another one of his tendrils, darting out of his mouth to grab you. I had to keep my distance. But here? Against the idiots who live in this part of the house? The right words, spoken at just the right time, did the trick.”

  “It would have been nice,” she said, “if you’d told us you were around, so we wouldn’t have felt like we were doing this all by ourselves.”

  “It would have been,” Mr. Notes’s shadow agreed, “but what good would that have done? Can you imagine my telling you ‘I’m here to help, but, oh, by the way, I can’t do very much’? How would that have made you feel any better?”

  Fernie wanted to stay mad, but couldn’t come up with any good answers to that, and so stayed mad while feeling bad about it. “I don’t suppose you can tell us where to find the Nightmare Vault.”

  “See?” Mr. Notes’s shadow said petulantly. “That’s exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. I don’t have the slightest clue where to find it.”

  Fernie said, “I should have expected that.”

  “In fact, I’m not entirely sure that you should even be looking for it, since anything you find the shadow eater can find. If it were up to me, I’d look for it in places where I knew it was not.”

  Fernie wanted to scream with frustration. “You make it sound like the best we can do is run from him forever!”

  “It is better than running toward him and being eaten up right away,” Mr. Notes’s shadow pointed out.

  “Not by much,” Fernie declared. “A life spent running away from things is no life at all!”

  “Most rabbits would disagree with you.”

  The corridor came to a dead end with a vault door made of a completely round expanse of stained wood that, judging from the pattern of concentric rings, might have been the carved cross section of a tree not cut down until it was older than most major cities. The closest thing to a doorknob was a grasping iron hand at its precise center, inviting somebody to clasp it even though its fingernails were long and ragged and sharp enough to slice anybody who tried. Wisps of black mist puffed through the crack at the bottom of the door.

  Gothic lettering across the door read:

  WARNING

  DO NOT ENTER

  Hall of Shadow Criminals Within

  Gustav reached for the grasping hand, but pulled back at the last moment. Sweat beads dotted his pale little forehead. “Fernie? You’ve met kind shadows. You’ve met mean ones. You’ve even met a few that were no help at all.”

  “That’s harsh,” Mr. Notes’s shadow objected.

  Gustav ignored him. “The shadows you’ll meet behind this door are evil. They’ve been locked up because of terrible crimes against both shadows and people. You shouldn’t get any closer to the cages than I do, and you shouldn’t talk to anybody inside them unless I say it’s all right. This is as bad as it gets. Okay?”

  Fernie gulped. “Okay.”

  Gustav clasped the clawed hand, which immediately closed on his. The ragged claws cut his pale skin in several places, but he seemed to expect that and did not cry out in pain. After a moment the hand released his and a deep rumbling began. It was the sound of machinery doing whatever it had been designed to do after it had been left alone for a long
time and was no longer quite certain that it could. It whined to let the two children and Mr. Notes’s shadow know just how much it resented the task that had been asked of it.

  Then the door rolled out of the way.

  A gray mist spilled from the threshold, covering the floor at Fernie’s feet to ankle depth.

  “Stay close,” Gustav warned her, just before taking the first step into the darkness.

  Fernie had never been to a human prison, but she’d seen pictures and movies and had imagined a dim hall lined with stacked rows of tiny barred cells, all housing grim-faced men with neck tattoos and bad shaves.

  That’s not what the Hall of Shadow Criminals was like.

  It was a vast indoor space as large as a stadium, but it gave the impression of a cramped dungeon, down to the thin streams of water dripping from a ceiling high enough to qualify as a sky. The floor was a labyrinth of narrow stone walkways hanging unsupported over a darkness that went down as far as Fernie could see.

  “Don’t step off the stone path,” Gustav warned. “You’ll fall all the way to the Dark Country.”

  Fernie tried not to look down. “Why do you have a special room with a pit that leads there if a shadow who wants to get there can just jump off one of these instead?”

  Mr. Notes’s shadow said, “Because the Dark Country is a big place, and anybody going down there on purpose wants to land in a place they could survive. Jump here instead of the Pit and I promise you, you won’t. It’s like the difference between walking out the door of your house and finding yourself in a familiar, friendly place like your front yard and falling off the deck of a ship and landing in the middle of a freezing ocean a thousand miles from the nearest beach.” He hesitated, then added, “Plus, there are sharks.”

  “In the Dark Country or on the way down?”

  “Both,” Gustav said.

  “Wonderful,” Fernie muttered. She didn’t fall back into her habit of telling Gustav that his house was stupid, but she did think it.

  As they moved deeper into the room, Fernie saw that the twisty stone paths surrounded a number of floating stone islands, each bearing a single tiny cell that looked like a cube made out of light. As far as she could tell, there were about twenty cubes in all, some visibly darkened by the silhouette of a solitary prisoner.

  Some of those prisoners pounded on the walls. Some sat on the floors of their cells and shook in what seemed to be despair. A few paced restlessly, growing more agitated as the kids and Mr. Notes passed by, a lot like caged tigers planning for the day when the doors were left open and they were freed to make a fine lunch of raw zoo visitors.

  After a while, Fernie noticed that while the cages of light were solid on all sides, one side was more transparent than the others, although it was still bright enough to keep its shadow criminal imprisoned. Most of the prisoners she could see looked as evil and cruel as their plight would have suggested. They hunched over and leered and brandished hands with fingernails like steak knives.

  But then, at one point, having fallen a little bit behind Gustav and Mr. Notes’s shadow because the path was narrow and she wanted to be sure of every step she took, Fernie found herself alone when one called out to her in the voice of a little girl. “Please, miss! Help me!”

  Fernie knew that she shouldn’t listen, but was stricken by the innocence in the caged shadow’s voice. When she turned her head to look, she saw the occupant of the nearest cage, who seemed to be the shadow of a young girl with pigtails and wide, imploring eyes. “Please, miss! You look so pretty and kind! You can’t leave me here! It’s so lonely!”

  Fernie’s heart wouldn’t let her walk away without saying anything. “I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

  The little girl shadow wailed and pressed closer to the wall of her cell. “No! Wait! Miss! Don’t go away!”

  Fernie cast a sad look at Gustav Gloom and Mr. Notes’s shadow, who were about thirty steps ahead of her and concentrating on the path.

  “I’m sorry, miss,” the prisoner said quickly, “but I see that you don’t cast a shadow. Did you lose yours?”

  Fernie saw no reason to lie. “Yes.”

  “That’s a sad and terrible thing, miss, because people in the world of light will find that strange and make fun of you. But it also means we might be able to help each other, because I don’t have a person. I promise, if you release me, I’ll stay with you and do everything you do, so you can live an ordinary life. Nobody will ever know.”

  Fernie was tempted. “You don’t look anything like me. We would look strange to anybody who saw you following me around.”

  “But I could look like you, miss. That’s an easy trick. Just look.” The prisoner stretched and flexed and grew on all sides, and after a very few seconds became something that looked just like the shadow Fernie had lost. As she pressed her face against the clear wall of her cell, she even took on Fernie’s own features, becoming a gray image recognizable down to the freckles. “See? Now I’m as pretty as you, I am. And all you have to do is come over here and place your hand on my cage.”

  Fernie thought about it. “That’s pretty tempting.”

  The prisoner squealed. “Oh, thank you, miss! I knew you’d be nice! Please, come over here and we’ll be friends, forever and ever.”

  The cage was just a short detour away. If Fernie wanted to do what the prisoner suggested, she could get away with it without either of her companions ever suspecting. She went so far as to put one foot on the path leading up to the prisoner’s cage before pulling it back, tilting her head, and saying, “Hmmm.”

  “Hmmm what, miss?”

  “I just had a little thought.”

  The prisoner appeared distressed. “Is something bothering you?”

  “A lot of things are bothering me,” Fernie said truthfully. “I’ve had a long night, I’m worried about my family, I’m tired of running around scared, and I no longer have a shadow.”

  “I would love to help you, miss.”

  “Yes.” Fernie sighed. “I know. I could use another friend. But, this one thing…”

  “You can tell me, miss. I won’t be unkind.”

  Fernie said, “If you started out looking like one girl’s shadow and could change yourself to look like another girl’s shadow, how can I possibly know what you really look like, and what you really are?”

  The prisoner was silent for a long time before answering, this time in a voice that never could have belonged to any little girl: a voice older and deeper and more filled with menace than any voice Fernie had ever heard. “Let me out now, you stupid little brat.”

  It was not the voice of anything that should ever be allowed to run free.

  Fernie shivered. “That was dumb of you. You might have still been able to talk me into it. But now, at least, I know for sure.”

  The prisoner, who swelled still further and was now more a hulking, threatening man than a bereft little girl, shouted angry curses at Fernie’s back as she hurried up the path to where it next turned, and then to where it turned after that.

  A few minutes later, she caught up to Gustav and Mr. Notes’s shadow, who had noticed her absence and were heading back to make sure she was all right.

  “You’ve got to keep up with us,” Gustav complained. “What were you doing back there?”

  “I’m sorry,” Fernie apologized, shuddering as she glanced over her shoulder at the glowing cage of light now safely in the distance behind her. She answered truthfully. “I thought I saw something, but it was just a trick of the light.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  TALKING TO HAIR ON A MOUSE

  They walked the stone paths for another twenty minutes or so, taking a long time to cross the chamber because of how many times the route doubled back on itself.

  The path they traveled moved left and then right and then left and right again, like the line for a popular amusement park ride, as it wound them closer to the cage Gustav wanted.

  Then he told them, “His name’s Hieronymus
.”

  Fernie had never heard that name, which to her sounded like a strange way to pronounce hair on a mouse. “Is that his first name or his last name?”

  “His first name. His family name is Spector, but I don’t call him that; it’s too close to specter, which means ghost, and the very last thing I need when talking to Hieronymus is to call him anything that makes him more scary.”

  Fernie said, “Do you speak to him a lot?”

  “We’ve had four conversations, all because I needed information and had no other choice. He knows things.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He was once Grandpa Lemuel’s best friend in the shadow world. He was the one who made the deal with Grandpa to make this a shadow house. That was before he turned out to be one of the most evil shadows who ever lived.”

  “What did he do?”

  “We don’t need to get into it right now. There are a million stories in this house, and not all of them have anything to do with us. Let’s just say he’s a very, very evil being…and a very cunning one.”

  The cell they wanted was the most isolated of the lot, occupying a stone island so far away from the others that they appeared as just distant dots of light. It was also, for some reason, twice as big and therefore twice as ominous as the others. Fernie thought that whatever crime he had committed must have been an awful one for him to not even be able to see his fellow prisoners, and that he must be very lonely. But she had already encountered one evil shadow tonight, and the closer she got to that glowing box, the more the back of her neck prickled at the thought of what Hieronymus Spector must have done to be considered even worse.

  Mr. Notes’s shadow said, “I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind. I’d rather not get any closer to this villain than I have to.”

  Fernie reflected that Mr. Notes’s shadow sure did like to stay out of trouble.

  But Gustav didn’t seem to mind. “That’s probably for the best. Stand guard here and we’ll meet you on the way back.”