Just up ahead, the now profoundly irritated tyrannosaur bellowed as it smashed another chandelier with its forehead. It spotted Fernie and darted forward, its powerful pounding feet making the floor shake with every step. “Fernie What! I’m coming for you!”
Everything depended on Fernie not only evading Ursula’s claws but also reaching the open doorway of the room where Pearlie was being held while it was still between her and the approaching tyrannosaur.
Ursula slashed at Fernie, her claws slicing the air between them with a terrifying audible whoosh.
Fernie couldn’t spare the time to aim for the doorway. She could only dodge Ursula’s slash and hope that her back hit the open doorway and not a wall. Her shoulder slammed into a doorjamb and she spun, sure she was dead, until she slipped through the open door and fell flat on her back.
Above her a floating Ursula, still terribly beautiful despite all her malice, hung framed in the light of the hall . . . but unfortunately inside the threshold, out of the charging dinosaur’s way.
“Well, well, well.” Ursula drifted into the dark room, her claws growing as long and terrible as curved swords. The long folds of her gown trailed into the hallway after her, as if blown by some unfelt wind. “Now that we’ve gotten your foolish attempt to resist out of the way, perhaps we can—”
Fernie’s shadow, still intent on protecting her, flew into the room and yanked hard on the white folds of Ursula’s gown. Ursula flew backward into the hallway and into the shadow girl’s embrace, when the massive foot of the tyrannosaur came down on them both.
For a moment Fernie was sure that her brave shadow had just been killed, even if that made no sense to her; Gustav had told her that shadows could not be killed, and even if that wasn’t so, she couldn’t see how being swept away by a bigger and more powerful shadow could kill another. But then she realized that she could hear the screams of both her shadow and Ursula receding in the distance as the tyrannosaur swept everything before it away with the force of its forward charge. The tyrannosaur didn’t seem to be able to stop its charge right away—it didn’t even seem to know that Fernie had evaded it by ducking into the open door. It did, however, keep yelling, “I’m coming to get you, Fernie!”
Even as its thunderous footsteps receded into the distance, the hallway echoed with the cries of the shadows trapped in its path. Fernie’s shadow was among them, yelling, “Don’t worry, Fernie! I’ll find you again!”
But so was Ursula, snarling, “Not before I get her, you little witch!”
For a moment Fernie resented so many shadows yelling that they were either going to get her or save her, as if she wasn’t a perfectly competent person all by herself and didn’t have a little input of her own over whether she would be “gotten” or “saved” or not. It would have been nice just to be consulted.
But then a swarm of other terrified voices, the voices of all the other shadows milling about in the hallway, overwhelmed theirs.
“Oh, no!”
“Who let that thing loose?”
“Run away! Run awaaaaay!”
“Otis! You idiot! Don’t play with it!”
“Owwwww!”
“I still say you’re a bunch of twits!”
“Help! Somebody—anybody! HELP!”
“Gee, this’ll take forever to clean up!”
The tyrannosaur’s angry bellow and the pounding sound of its footsteps trailed off into silence, as did the sound of shattering chandeliers.
This left Fernie free to deal with Nebuchadnezzar.
She rolled over onto her belly and rose up off the floor to confront him. Pearlie was no longer in the chair, but had been dragged over to the bookcase, which had now been slid open to reveal a secret passage. Only Pearlie’s unmoving legs emerged from the passage to still lie inside the room. For some reason, Pearlie’s legs didn’t seem to cast a shadow . . . but the whereabouts of Pearlie’s shadow remained a mystery.
Nebuchadnezzar, who had made himself look a little like Gustav again, floated by the opening, a vicious grin too big for a human mouth splitting his features from ear to ear.
“Poor Fernie,” he sang. “You shouldn’t have made it personal.”
Fernie had to keep talking until she came up with a plan. “How did I make it personal?” she demanded. “By running? Was I not supposed to run?”
“Don’t be a silly little brat. Everybody tries to run. My partners and I don’t take that personally. It’s what makes hunting humans fun. No, you made it personal the first time we met, when I was still locked in that terrible cell and took the shape of a helpless little girl, offering you my friendship. You made it personal for me because you said no and left me there to rot. Do you have any idea how rude that was?”
“I have an idea,” Fernie said. “I also know how smart it was.”
“Oh, certainly. As you so cleverly figured out back then, I had no real interest in being your friend. Had you listened to my sad story and released me from my cell, I would have disposed of you as quickly and unpleasantly as possible and then gone back to doing what got me locked up in the first place.” The jagged grin grew wider. “The difference, Fernie, is that by making it personal, you gave me reason, other than my current employer’s plans for you, to take you alive, so you can live a long and miserable life witnessing the horrible fate you’ve brought upon your family.”
Fernie was still trying to figure out what to do. “Gee,” she said with a calm she didn’t feel. “Would it help if I said I was sorry?”
This surprised him. “Does that strike you as something you’re likely to say?”
“Frankly, no. But you’ve made such a big fuss about how personal I’ve made this that I almost feel bad about it. How about I apologize, you give me my family back, and we forget the whole thing?”
Nebuchadnezzar looked amazed. “And you really expect that to work?”
“Nope. Not really. But it’s worth a shot, I guess.”
Behind him, Pearlie’s legs shifted.
Was she waking up?
No.
She was being dragged.
Somebody standing behind the door had taken hold of her arms to pull her deeper into the passage . . . somebody who softly chuckled now, out of pleasure at capturing his prize.
Pearlie’s legs swung up off the floor, as whoever it was got a better grip on her and picked her up, hauling her out of sight. For a moment the red balloon, which had been hidden by the door, bobbed into sight . . . but then it was yanked away, too, and both girl and balloon were gone.
It was a horrible thing for Fernie to see, but even more horrible was the awareness that Nebuchadnezzar still stood between herself and her sister, and that there was very little she could do to get past him. She formed her hands into fists. “Give her back.”
“I almost wish I could,” Nebuchadnezzar said mournfully. “The lot of you are really more trouble than you’re worth. But I’m not the only person who takes what you’ve done personally. My new employer does, too. And he wants your entire family thrown into the Pit, not just some of you.”
The Pit was one of the worst places in Gustav’s house, a bottomless well that served as the portal to the Dark Country. People thrown in there survived the fall but were doomed to wander a place where no human being had ever been meant to live, and were as often as not taken as slaves by Lord Obsidian. Fernie and Pearlie had come close to that terrible fate once before, courtesy of one of Obsidian’s nastier minions, a very bad man whom she knew only as the People Taker.
The mere thought of her family being exposed to that awful doom a second time was so heartbreaking that there were only two possible ways Fernie could have taken it: with total stunned paralysis, or with an anger deep enough to bury her fear someplace that fueled her determination to fight.
Fernie reacted the second way. She took a step toward him. “You can’t have us.”
“I beg to differ. We took your father first. We have your sister now. Pretty soon we’ll have you. Your mother�
��s not all that important, as she’s been away for so long that she’s never committed the offenses that the rest of you have . . . but I wager that she’ll come running back home from wherever she is as soon as she finds out that the rest of you have disappeared, and we’ll be able to get her, too. In fact, if you’re very, very lucky, Lord Obsidian will be kind and allow you all to work chained side by side—though that will not be nice for you, Fernie, as I guarantee that your parents and sister will all soon come to hate you for being the one to introduce them all to the dangers of this house.”
This was just about the worst thing that anybody could have ever said to her. It stung Fernie in a way that few things could, and made her eyes burn the way eyes do when they’re about to fill with tears . . . but she would not let herself cry in front of him. “My family won’t hate me,” she promised, the words sounding empty in her mouth. “They’ll love me more, because I’m going to save them.”
“Oh,” Nebuchadnezzar said lazily, “I’m certain that’s what you’d like to believe. In fact, it’s that kind of silly thinking that will make sure you stupidly deliver yourself into our hands. So in order to make sure that happens, let’s make you a solemn promise, hmm? Let’s say right here and now that we won’t throw your father and sister into the Pit until we can have all three of you in that room at the same time. My employer said there was a game he wanted to play with you there, anyway. That’ll make sure you come to us.”
That did it. The anger that had ebbed when he threatened to make sure she lost her family’s love now took over again, and she charged.
Something very strange happened to him in the heartbeat it took her to cross the room. His confident, jagged smile faltered, and his eyes widened. The false Gustav Gloom face he’d been wearing seemed to melt off him all at once, replaced by the blank gray most shadows looked like when their faces could not be seen.
He shouted, “No!”
Fernie had no idea what she possibly could have done to frighten him when she had no plan more sophisticated than wading in and swinging her fists. But that moment of fear gave her strength and hope as she found herself upon him, hurling the single angriest blow of her life.
Her fist went right through his head without seeming to do anything to disturb it. The air there turned out to be far colder than the rest of the room; it was like dunking her hand in ice water, or leaving her gloves at home on a freezing day.
Even so, he seemed genuinely afraid of her. He retreated, darting through the open panel into the secret passage, and she took his flight as encouragement, prepared to chase him not only there but to the ends of the earth if that’s what it took to get her father and sister back.
But then a familiar voice behind her cried, “No, Fernie! Don’t! It’s not you he’s frightened of! It’s me!”
Fernie froze in place, suddenly unsure what to do.
Nebuchadnezzar took advantage of her hesitation, not only slipping inside the passage but doing something as he went that made the bookcase slide shut and latch.
Fernie leaped on the bookshelf and pounded on it, shouting at the top of her lungs: “Pearlie! Listen to me! Don’t listen to them, and don’t be afraid! I’m not going to let this happen to you! Do you hear me, Pearlie? I’m not going to let this happen to you!”
She was still pounding the shelves, to no avail, when the owner of the familiar voice crossed the room and stood beside her, anger darkening his pale features to a shade that came very close to approaching pink.
“Neither will I,” said the real Gustav Gloom.
CHAPTER TEN
GUSTAV SAYS “OW”
What happened next may have been because Fernie was so furious, she needed someplace to put her anger.
Or it could have been because she was so mixed up between real Gustavs and imposter Gustavs and emergency whistles that didn’t summon any useful help and an entire band of evil shadows with names like Carlin and Ursula and Otis and Nebuchadnezzar that she had no idea what to do.
On the other hand, it might have been because she had good reason to be upset with Gustav by now and knew exactly what she was doing.
She whirled, clapped her hands onto his shoulders, and gave him a hard shove.
He didn’t even try to stay upright. He just fell on his back, landing with a loud whump and a gigantic cloud of billowing dust.
“Ow,” he pointed out.
Fernie was mortified but didn’t have the time to muster the necessary apology. “Gustav, they just took my sister—”
He held both his hands before him, palms out. “I know. I saw. But I was right to keep you from following him into that passage. It’s what he wanted you to do, and it wouldn’t have worked out at all well for you or your sister.”
“But we can’t just let them take her!”
“Sure we can,” said Gustav, and then before she could get more upset at him than she already was, added, “in fact, that ship has sailed. We just won’t let them keep her, or your dad, one second longer than we have to. Is it safe for me to get up now?”
She wasn’t sure she could promise that, but she extended her hand.
He clasped it and allowed her to help him rise to his feet, dusting himself off as soon as he was upright. His black suit had suffered some damage since she’d seen him last: his right sleeve had been torn off at the elbow, revealing the dusty white sleeve beneath. There were other rips on his lapels, and a large one, fortunately not as noticeable as it could have been, in the seat of his pants. He’d also lost his little black shoes and his little red tie. Every part of him was covered with a layer of gray dust and glittery powdered glass.
As much as she wanted to know where he’d been and how this whole sorry situation had come to pass, she couldn’t bear to stand there and watch him brushing the dust off the remains of his clothing. “Gustav,” she begged. “We have to hurry—”
“It’s not about hurrying,” he said. “It’s about not wasting any time. They want you so worried about Pearlie and your dad that you rush right in without giving any thought to how you’re going to save them. That’s a good way to make sure that they get you, too.”
“But the Pit—”
“I know. I heard. I also heard Nebuchadnezzar say that his boss is not going to throw them in until he gets to play his game with all three of you. I can guarantee you that’s just the kind of promise he’s going to try to keep, because—as he pointed out—it’s also exactly what’s going to deliver you to him. That gives us time to come up with a plan.” Satisfied that he had freed himself of as much of the dust as he was going to be able to, he looked at her, and with considerable difficulty, twisted his serious little lips into the closest he could come to a smile. “Trust me.”
It was the last thing he ever should have said to her after the kind of night she was having. Before he knew it, he was back on the floor, once again on his back.
“Ow,” he repeated, a little more insistently this time. After a moment, he complained, “You said it was safe.”
“So did you!” she snapped.
It took him a second to realize what she was talking about. “Oh. My promise to your dad.”
“Yes. Your promise to my dad.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said humbly. “I told you, I checked out every single step of the way. I installed those safety railings and arranged other precautions wherever I could. We should have been okay.”
“Why weren’t we?”
He seemed hurt. “Fernie, there’s a limit to how much anything, anywhere in the world, even on your side of the fence, can ever be safe. Your own house can be as safe as any house in any neighborhood ever, and you can promise any friend who comes over to visit that nothing’s going to happen, but that doesn’t mean you can guarantee that a meteor won’t suddenly come plunging down from outer space and make the whole neighborhood a crater two miles deep. It doesn’t mean you broke your promise. It means that you can’t ever really plan for everything.”
This somehow sounded li
ke cheating to Fernie. “You took my family to a prison and didn’t plan for a prison break?”
“Not one like this,” he said.
She just stared down at him, unable to come up with a proper reply to that. “That’s a pretty big mistake, Gustav.”
“I can see that, and I’m so sorry that I could spend the whole night apologizing. Can I ask you something, though? I showed up in time to see that Nebuchadnezzar disguised himself as me, but I don’t get why you ever believed him. You must have seen that he was only a shadow.”
“He told me that he was you, turned into a shadow.”
“Why would you even believe such a silly thing?”
She exploded. “Gustav, I don’t know all the rules of this crazy house! It all seems silly to me! I don’t always know what makes sense here and what doesn’t!”
He thought about that for a long time and finally nodded. “Okay. Are you going to push me over again? Because if you are, I’d rather not waste my time getting up.”
Exasperated, she extended her hand again.
He took it, once again allowed her to pull him to his feet, and this time satisfied himself with one or two quick brushes before saying, “Come on. We need to get out of sight before Ursula and the others get back.”
He led her into the hallway, which was no longer the elegant place it had been only a few minutes earlier. The walls were battered and dented, the floor covered with a layer of shattered crystal from the overhead chandeliers. Burning candles had fallen and started small flickering fires. Everywhere Fernie looked, shadows flattened by the tyrannosaur’s charge resentfully peeled themselves off the floor while complaining about how long it was going to take them to clear away all the rubble. It generally looked like somebody had gone on a joy ride with a bulldozer, and then carefully backed up to make sure he succeeded in crushing anything that had somehow remained intact.
Fernie also realized that her own shadow was missing. “Gustav, is my shadow dead?”
Gustav Gloom and the Four Terrors Page 7