Gustav Gloom and the Four Terrors

by Adam-Troy Castro

  “I know you like them,” Gustav said earnestly, looking a little startled when the girls started laughing again.

  After a moment, Mr. What surprised all three kids by joining in.

  “All right, Gustav. As long as you explain where we’re going every step of the way, and I get to turn us around the first time I see trouble, then I’ll do this for you. Shall we go?”

  The girls squealed and wrapped their dad in the tightest of all possible hugs.

  The first part of their journey was familiar. It still began with that long walk down the same portrait-lined entrance hall, which again led to the cavernous grand parlor occupied by hundreds of shadowy figures saying things like “Oh, terrific, more party crashers,” and “There goes the neighborhood,” and in the baffling case of one shadow, tap-dancing across the floor wearing a bow tie wider than his head, “Wakka-bakka-ding-dong-whang-bang-gazoom.”

  “Don’t worry about him,” Gustav said. “He does that everywhere.”

  “Must make him a real hit at parties,” Mr. What said.

  Mr. What had no problem with Gustav leading them down one of the many side passages, or up a circular stairway, or through a room furnished with hundreds of desks and just as many old-fashioned manual typewriters, clacking away all by themselves even though there was no paper in sight and nobody around to read whatever was being written. (Gustav called that the Hall of All the People Who Liked to Say That They’d Like to Write a Book Someday But Had Never Been Able to Find the Time.)

  After one last shortcut through the servant passages that ran behind all the rooms, the corridors they traveled grew dustier and the light dingier in a way that began to strike Fernie as familiar from her last visit. The few shadows wandering these passages alongside Gustav and his friends looked furtive, and even hostile, which led a worried Mr. What to ask Gustav, for the first time since entering the house, whether he was certain that this place was safe.

  “It’s not pleasant,” Gustav admitted. “The shadows in this part of the house aren’t as respectable as the ones who hang around in the grand parlor. They can be trouble, but they’ll keep their distance tonight. They’re all still a little scared of Fernie from the last time.”

  “The shadows are scared of Fernie?” Pearlie said incredulously.

  “Yes. They tried to push her around, and she showed them that it was a big mistake.”

  “So let that be a lesson to you,” Fernie told her older sister.

  Pearlie rolled her eyes. “Right. What really happened?”

  “I’m not kidding,” Gustav insisted. “That’s what really happened. Fernie scared them so much that they’ll never bother her again. Why don’t you believe me?”

  “I believe you,” said Mr. What with quiet pride.

  But then the corridor grew even more dingy and even less respectable, the dark shapes lurking in the corners even less pleasant, until at long last they found themselves standing at their destination, another place Fernie knew: a dead end dominated by a vault door that appeared to have been made from a cross section of some massive tree. The closest thing to a doorknob was a grasping iron hand at its precise center, inviting visitors to clasp it even though its fingernails were long and ragged and sharp enough to cut anybody who tried. Wisps of gray mist puffed through the crack at the bottom of the door.

  The sign on the door read:

  WARNING

  DO NOT ENTER

  Hall of Shadow Criminals Within

  “Cool,” Pearlie breathed.

  Mr. What drew back as if stung. “I can’t say that I like the looks of this, Gustav.”

  Fernie knew that she had only a few seconds to reassure her father. “It’s okay, Dad. We’ve been past this door before. It’s perfectly safe as long as you watch where you’re going and don’t stray off the paths.”

  “What happens if you stray off the paths?”

  “Well,” Fernie replied, hating to say it but knowing that there was no way out of it, “you fall. There’s nothing between them but empty space, so you just go straight down. It’s okay as long as you keep an eye on where you’re going.”

  Mr. What looked even more unhappy at this development. “What if you trip over a shoelace or something?”

  “We’re all wearing loafers,” Pearlie pointed out.

  “Besides,” Gustav said, “I knew you would be concerned, so it’s where I installed the safety railings.”

  Mr. What wasn’t mollified. “Let me see.”

  Gustav grasped the iron hand at the center of the door. As they were designed to, the sharp claws at the ends of the fingers curled inward to scratch his skin, drawing blood from his flesh, before the door rolled aside and revealed the Hall of Shadow Criminals in all its terrible grandeur.

  Ahead of them, the white stone paths, arranged like a labyrinth, floated unsupported in a sea of darkness, stretching out as far as the Whats could see. Some of the paths ended in distant stone islands, each one bearing a prisoner in a cell of pure light.

  The paths now had safety railings mounted at their edges, protecting travelers from an accidental drop into nothingness. There must have been miles of them. For Fernie, who had walked the same route with Gustav depending only on her own sense of balance, it should have looked much safer, but somehow the railings made the labyrinth look even scarier. Maybe it was because they were reminders that there was still danger here, no matter how hard Gustav tried to protect them from it.

  “How?” Fernie managed.

  “I ordered Hives to put them up,” Gustav said. “I wouldn’t rest all my weight on them or anything, because he’s Hives and he does only as much work as he has to, but they should be enough to keep you from slipping off the paths by accident. Don’t you like them, Mr. What?”

  Mr. What’s eyes looked glassy. “Please close the door, Gustav. I need to think about this for a few minutes.”

  Gustav obliged. A quick tug, and the massive door rolled back into place and shut with an echoing clang, the iron hand at its center making a brief angry fist before relaxing enough to invite another painful hand clasp.

  Mr. What leaned one hand against the wall and gasped, shaking his head in sheer denial of what he had seen.

  Pearlie rushed to his side. “You okay, Dad?”

  “Fine,” he managed. “You know I don’t like heights or darkness much, and that place has both. I’ll just need a few minutes to get used to the idea.”

  “That’s okay,” Gustav said. “I’m grateful to you for coming this far.”

  Fernie hugged her dad, but found her attention taken by the closed vault door and the memory of the labyrinth beyond. After a moment, she suddenly found herself understanding why they were here, and could only wonder why it had taken her so long; probably because she’d been so busy, all along, worrying about her dad. She exclaimed, “We’re here to see Hieronymus Spector!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  OF COURSE, SOMETHING GOES TERRIBLY WRONG

  Mr. What glanced up at the strange name. “Who’s that?”

  Fernie answered him. “A nasty shadow criminal we visited on our last trip.”

  This did not make Mr. What look any happier. “What kind of shadow criminal?”

  “The evil kind,” Gustav said. “Don’t worry, Mr. What—he’s in a secure cell by himself and can’t do us any harm. But he knows a lot about the Dark Country and shadow history, and has always been the one person I could speak to when I needed information I couldn’t get anywhere else.”

  “Really? What about your great-aunt Mellifluous? Or your friend Mr. Notes? I’ve met them at our picnics; they’re nice. Why can’t you ask them questions?”

  “I could,” Gustav said, “if I were asking them questions about nice things. It gets a little harder if I’m in trouble and have to ask them questions about things that are not so nice.”

  Mr. What looked more and more upset at himself for agreeing to take his daughters on this dangerous expedition. “And this Hieronymus Spector character? What did he d
o to get himself put in a cage?”

  “That’s another long story, Mr. What. It was a terrible crime against both human beings and their shadows. But he’ll never be allowed to walk free again.”

  “And why would he only agree to talk to Fernie?”

  “To make things difficult for me, I suppose. Once, when I really needed his help, he refused to talk to me until I brought him one thousand spoons. It took me almost a week to collect them all. Then he said he wouldn’t talk to me until I put them back in the same drawers I got them from. It’s the only way he has to amuse himself.”

  “Except,” Mr. What presumed, “for whatever horrible thing he did to get put in a cage in the first place.”

  “That’s true,” Gustav said. “I think he found that very amusing.”

  “I’m liking this less and less, Gustav.”

  “It’ll be okay. Honest. All I need Fernie to do is stand outside his cage, well out of his reach, and ask some questions for me. I promise you, he won’t be able to get at her, and the whole conversation shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

  Mr. What wore the look of a man who had ordered an exotic meal and gotten through half of it only to have someone suddenly explain to him that its name translated to something like “parrot brains with fried lizard eyes.” Judging from the number of different facial expressions he made in the length of time it took him to open his mouth, Mr. What changed his mind about a dozen times before deciding.

  Then he surprised them all. “All right, Gustav. I’m only doing this because I know how important it is to you. But I’m not letting my daughters go in there, with me or without me, unless I check it out first.”

  “Dad,” Fernie said, “I’ve already been in there one time before—”

  “I know, Fernie. But my decision’s final. I’ll let Gustav take me part of the way in, so I can satisfy myself that it’s okay. And I’ll only do that if he makes sure that there’s somebody you can call for help if you run into trouble while we’re gone.”

  Gustav nodded, then reached into his pocket and produced a cylindrical black whistle on a chain. He handed it to Fernie and closed her fingers around it. “Blow this,” he said, “if we’re not back in ten minutes.”

  She looked down at the chain. “Gustav, I—”

  “Your father’s right,” Gustav said. “He’s only doing for you what I would want my dad to do for me if he were around. Don’t worry, it’ll be okay. I’m just going to walk your father in for a short distance, prove to him that it’s safe, and then walk him back. There should be no problem, but if we’re not back in ten minutes or if you run into any other kind of trouble, blow that whistle and somebody I trust with my life will come running to show you the way out.”

  Fernie hung the chain around her neck. “Okay.”

  Once again, Gustav clasped the iron hand, which once again tightened to scratch his skin. The great circular door rolled aside, and Gustav crossed the threshold, stepping aside so Mr. What could follow.

  Mr. What entered after him, his knees wobbling like they had just been turned to butter. He turned around and faced his girls, hurrying to say something before the door rolled shut behind him. “Remember, girls, be caref—”

  The door clanged shut, cutting off the rest.

  Pearlie hugged herself. “He was going to say careful.”

  “Thanks,” Fernie said with tremendous irritation. “I never would have been able to figure that out without you here to help me.”

  “Sorry,” said Pearlie.

  The two girls huddled together at the end of the dingy corridor, a sudden uncomfortable silence wrapping them in its grip as they waited for Gustav and their father to return. Fernie rediscovered something she’d almost forgotten after all the time she’d spent in this house running from one danger or another alongside Gustav: Being in a scary place with a friend who lived there and knew his way around was a lot different from being in that place when the friend was out of sight. Even with her big sister at her side, she felt terribly, terribly lost, the world of light so far away that it might have been the moon.

  Pearlie checked her watch. “Five minutes.”

  It couldn’t have been only five minutes, not when it had seemed to be almost twenty. Fernie looked around and found her own shadow hanging on one of the gray walls. The familiar little-girl shape seemed to be trembling, but was that just because Fernie herself was trembling?

  Fernie raised her hand and waved it to see what her shadow self would do. It wasn’t always the same thing she did, especially not when they were together in the Gloom house. The shadow girl raised her hand, too, and waved it the same way, but a fraction of a second after Fernie did, and with a notable lack of enthusiasm.

  Pearlie checked her watch again. “Six minutes.”

  Fernie shivered and fingered the emergency whistle just to make sure that it still hung from the chain around her neck.

  Beside her, Pearlie said, “Something seems wrong.”

  Fernie almost jumped. “Why? What?”

  “I’m not saying it. I’m reading it.”

  Fernie looked at the door. The legend on the sign had changed. It now read:

  WARNING

  Hall of Shadow Criminals

  SOMETHING SEEMS WRONG

  Fernie’s heart skipped a beat. “That can’t be good.”

  The sign on the door blurred, the various letters shifting and changing position and finally recombining to form an entirely different legend that read:

  WARNING

  Hall of Shadow Criminals

  THIS IS DOWNRIGHT OMINOUS

  Fernie was reduced to arguing with the door. “What? What?! What’s downright ominous?”

  Groping for an innocent explanation, Pearlie said, “Maybe the sign’s just making things look worse and worse to keep unauthorized visitors like us from hanging around.”

  “Maybe,” Fernie said, without believing it. “Or maybe something really is downright ominous.”

  “Maybe we can just open the door and give them a yell. You know, let them know that things are getting pretty scary out here.”

  The last thing Fernie wanted to do in front of her big sister was agree that things were getting too scary for her to handle. But the air around them was getting colder, and the shadows on the walls were growing darker, and the warning sign was even now blurring a third time. She dreaded seeing what the new words were going to be, but the message remained blurry, the indistinct letters struggling for focus but never quite getting there. It was as if whatever warning they had to impart next was so horrible that they couldn’t come up with words that were terrible enough.

  Pearlie checked her watch again. “Seven minutes.”

  The prospect of waiting the full ten was more than Fernie could bear. She jumped to the door and grasped the iron hand, wincing as the sharp clawlike nails on all the fingers scratched her skin. Its tight clasp hurt even more, but the door didn’t roll away as it should have, and when she tugged to free her hand, she discovered that it was stuck.

  As if realizing that there was now something helpful it could say, the sign came into focus again.

  WARNING

  Hall of Shadow Criminals

  NOW IN EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN

  ALL SECURITY PROCEDURES IN EFFECT

  DUE TO PRISON BREAK

  DO NOT ATTEMPT TO OPEN DOOR

  YOU WILL BE HELD IN CUSTODY

  Fernie could only yell at the door. “Why didn’t you warn me about this before I tried to open you, you stupid door!?!” She tried to free her hand, felt a sharp pain, and cried out as the iron hand tightened still further. The claws hadn’t made much more than pinprick wounds yet, but they hurt, and the message was clear: If she struggled again, the hand would tighten even more, making the pain that much worse.

  Pearlie fell to her knees at Fernie’s side. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Don’t panic yet. Gustav gave us that emergency whistle, didn’t he? Why don’t we blow that?”

  Fernie’s trapped h
and was really beginning to hurt quite a bit now. It was hard to stand perfectly motionless, and the iron hand interpreted even a slight movement on her part as another attempt to escape. “Hurry.”

  Pearlie took the chain with the whistle from around Fernie’s neck, put it around her own, lifted the whistle to her lips, and blew hard. Fernie expected to hear a piercing shriek, something that would summon an army of helpful rescuers from the farthest reaches of the Gloom house, but the only sound that emerged was a sad burp, like their uncle Warren made every time he ate cheese.

  Perturbed, Pearlie blew again . . . and this time got an even sadder burp, like the kind Uncle Warren only made when it was grilled cheese.

  She stared at the whistle as if not recognizing it, and guessed, “Maybe it’s like a dog whistle, and it makes a sound that only shadows can hear.”

  “Maybe,” Fernie said. “And maybe it’s broken.” She glanced at her shadow, who remained silhouetted against the wall, watching her predicament with dark fascination. “Did you hear anything when she blew the whistle?”

  “Nope,” the shadow girl said.

  “Neither did I,” Pearlie’s shadow chimed in, though she hadn’t actually been asked.

  Pearlie looked mortified. “Sorry. Maybe if we—”

  Then the floor started to rumble, not continuously, but off and on, each sudden crash of thunder followed by a moment of uncanny silence. It was the sound the ground makes when something very big and very dangerous draws near, shaking the earth with every step . . . but this monster approached from somewhere inside the house. From where Fernie stood, she could hear glass shattering as paintings fell off walls.

  “Something very, very big is coming,” Pearlie said, unnecessarily.

  The far end of the corridor turned dark as something tremendous lumbered around the bend. It was so big that it had to walk hunched over, its sides scraping the walls and its spine tearing a gouge in the ceiling. It completely filled the space available to it, leaving no possible dodging room for any unlucky creature that might have been trapped in its path. Anything before it was going to be either swallowed whole or trampled beneath its feet.