Gustav Gloom and the Four Terrors

by Adam-Troy Castro

  “Why would she be dead?”

  “She was with Ursula when the tyrannosaur ran by.”

  “Shadows can’t be hurt that way. She probably got swept away with the rest of them. Don’t worry. Sooner or later she’ll find her way back to you. With any luck, sooner. We could use her help.”

  Fernie was reassured. “Good.” But that, of course, only answered some of her questions, because she now saw that Gustav was missing his shadow, too. “Where’s yours?”

  “On an errand,” Gustav said.

  She hardly knew which one of her million and one questions to ask next. “What happened after you and my dad went into the Hall of Shadow Criminals?”

  He picked his way through the rubble, his stocking feet moving across the field of broken glass without ever being cut by it. “We were okay for a little while. Your dad wasn’t happy walking on those pathways with all the big empty spaces between them, but he did admit that the safety railings Hives installed made the walk perfectly safe as far as he could see. Just before the trouble started, he agreed to come back for you two so I could take you to speak to Hieronymus Spector.”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it, as if unsure whether he should say the next part.

  “What?”

  “We talked a little bit on the way back. Your dad told me that he was sorry about the family having to move away. He also said that he wished he could take me with you, and that if he ever had a chance, he would be proud to make me a permanent part of your family. It wasn’t the first time he’s said something like that, but . . .” He bit his lip, as if considering three or four different places the sentence could go from there. “Anyway. We were almost back to the door when the emergency sirens started. I don’t know if you could hear them outside where you were, but inside the prison they were as loud as anything I’ve ever heard; there’s never been an escape from the Hall of Shadow Criminals for as long as I’ve been alive, so it’s the first time I’ve heard them. I had no idea what to do.

  “Then shadows started coming up through the empty spaces between the paths . . . ummm, here. This is as good a shortcut as any.”

  The door looked like every other door in sight, except that it was a shade of yellow and bore a disgusting green stain on it. He opened it now, ushered her in, and led her through a dim room filled with chairs: easy chairs, high chairs, dentist’s chairs, airplane seats, recliners, hundreds of them, all of them lopsided and melted, as if they’d been made of wax and then exposed to extreme heat.

  He said, “This, by the way, is the Hall of—”

  “I don’t need to know, Gustav. Just finish the story you already started.”

  “Okay,” he said, not at all upset that he had to skip the explanation for all the chairs. “So I told you once before that the empty spaces between the walkways in the Hall of Shadow Criminals drop all the way down to the Dark Country. I also told you that they hang over a very bad part of the Dark Country where even shadows don’t live. It’s a long distance from anyplace useful, which is probably why nobody ever considered Lord Obsidian mounting an attack from that direction.

  “But that’s what happened. There were hundreds of them, all so dark I couldn’t tell whether they were the shadows of men or women, coming up out of the emptiness and climbing up onto the walkways between us and the exit.

  “Your dad, who doesn’t understand the way things work in this house any more than you do, asked me, ‘Is this normal?’ I had to tell him it wasn’t, even as the invaders started crying out, ‘Free the prisoners! Free the prisoners! Free the prisoners for Lord Obsidian!’

  “I was afraid at first that they wanted to free all the prisoners, because that would have meant freeing Hieronymus Spector and a couple of others almost as bad as him who would have proceeded straight to the world outside the fence and caused suffering greater than you can possibly imagine, but no; while Lord Obsidian might want to free those shadows someday, they don’t seem to have been on the list of prisoners he wanted freed today. Today he only wanted to free the ones you’ve met.”

  Fernie broke in. “Nebuchadnezzar, Carlin, Ursula, and Otis.”

  Gustav nodded. “Yes. The Four Terrors.”

  The two friends had reached the back wall of the room with all the chairs. Gustav opened the door there, revealing a narrow, unfinished hallway Fernie recognized as part of the network of servant passages that ran behind all the house’s main rooms.

  Gustav led her through the dim space, his features visible only when he passed through one of the shafts of light shining down through the cracks in the upper floors.

  He went on: “The Four Terrors are infamous, Fernie. My shadow mother used to tell me scary stories about them when I was small. Even Great-Aunt Mellifluous warned me against them. She used to tell me that it was shadows like the Four Terrors, and the evil they do, that make the world of light spend so much energy confusing dark things for evil things, as if one always means the same thing as the other. It doesn’t, you know. It never has. Some of the most wonderful things you can think of happen in dark places, and some of the worst evils committed in your own world are committed in daylight, under a bright sun, in places where everybody can see them happening.

  “I don’t know where the Four Terrors came from, or what happened to make them so evil, but a long time ago, they roamed the world of people, causing misery and ruining lives just for the sheer fun of it. The one I found you talking to, Nebuchadnezzar, was their leader. He could change his shape, and he amused himself by appearing before human beings, turning them against their friends and loved ones, or causing wars where brother fought against brother. He’s most famous, I think, for appearing before a young Danish prince and talking the poor gullible kid into believing that his uncle had killed his father. That caused a mess you wouldn’t believe. Don’t get me started on that story, or I’ll be talking all day.

  “Anyway, Carlin and Ursula were his lieutenants; they were in charge of charming people, getting them to do whatever terrible things Nebuchadnezzar wanted them to do. Entire pointless wars started because of them, Fernie. You can track a lot of the evil things people have done to one another to their influence.

  “As for Otis, he wasn’t very smart, but he knew a hundred ways a shadow could hurt a person, and about fifty ways that a shadow could kill one. You hear stories about boogeymen sometimes. They’re not all about Otis, of course. But he contributed to more than his share of them. He . . .” Gustav was silent for several seconds. “It’s terrible, Fernie. It’s more terrible than you should ever have to hear. It’s more terrible even than I want to say. Will you be able to accept that much if I also tell you that we’ll do whatever we can to save your family?”

  Her heart felt cramped. “You can skip the horror stories about all the terrible things the Four Terrors have done. I know they’re bad. I could hardly miss that part. Just tell me what happened to my father.”

  Gustav slumped a little, as if suddenly feeling a terrible weight that he’d managed to forget for a little while, but now he spoke faster, racing through the words even as he moved faster to race through the passage. “All right. Lord Obsidian’s shadow army was all around us, blocking our way back to you and flying in waves to the cells holding the Four Terrors. Those cells, like the others, they were made of light so pure that it’s impossible for even the most powerful shadow criminal locked inside one to get out, or for even the most powerful friend of a shadow criminal to get in. Any shadows who try to pass through those cell walls, either in or out, sizzle away to nothingness.

  “It’s a terrible thing to see, Fernie, and an even more terrible thing to hear. No single shadow could survive it.

  “But Obsidian had hundreds of shadows to spend, and they were all willing to sacrifice themselves in order to free the Terrors. They didn’t just fly to the four cages. They swarmed over those four cages like ants, evaporating by the dozen only to be replaced by more just as willing to give their lives for what their master wanted.” He shook hi
s head. “Fernie, it took less time to happen than it does to say. The light of those four cages started to dim. I realized that all the light was being used up, and told your dad, ‘We’re in big trouble. We have to get out of here now.’

  “He said, ‘How?’ Which was a good question, because there were more reinforcements coming up through the darkness with every second. Already, the path between us and the main entrance was filled with them. They didn’t seem to be at all interested in us yet, but I wasn’t willing to take your dad through all of that, not when it looked like the Four Terrors were going to be free at any minute.

  “So I said, ‘Fernie and I found another way out the last time we visited. We have to go out that way and make our way back to the girls as fast as we can.’

  “He didn’t want to go. He said, ‘But what are they going to do if we’re not back in time?’

  “There was no time to argue with him, because that’s when Nebuchadnezzar got out. I heard him yelling above all the war cries of Obsidian’s army, ‘Those humans over there! Don’t let them get away!’

  “Some of them did come after us, Fernie, but only a few of them, at the start; I think what saved us from being buried by the lot of them is that they were still obeying Obsidian’s orders to free the Four Terrors and didn’t see why they should start listening to orders from anybody else before they were done. But if we were going to run away at all, we had to run away that moment. So I tugged your dad’s wrist and told him that if he ever wanted to see you or Pearlie again, he had to follow me. It took him a second to obey, but even he could see that there was no choice, and ran after me.

  “Behind us we heard Carlin shout that he was free, and then we heard the same from Otis, and finally from Ursula. We put as much distance between us and them as we could, but the walkways in the Hall form a labyrinth, as you know, and that meant we sometimes had to double back and run toward them instead of away.

  “If your dad’s concerns hadn’t made me install all those safety railings, we could have jumped the gaps. But the safety railings kept us from doing that. It did help a lot that there were, by now, only a few of Obsidian’s soldiers left—he’d known exactly how many he had to use up—but that still left us with the Four Terrors to deal with. They were catching up with us faster than I could ever believe, and your dad wasn’t having a good time with all that running.

  “I guess I never realized before now, never having known my dad, that dads can run out of breath before kids do, and might have to start slowing down even while there are still monsters chasing them. Ursula was right behind him, reaching for him with her sharpened claws, when he barely managed to get out the words, ‘Gustav! Don’t worry about me! Get Fernie and Pearlie out of the house!’

  “I didn’t want to leave him behind, Fernie. I really didn’t. He’s not my dad, but he’s a dad, and since meeting him, I’ve hoped that he’s the kind of man my dad turns out to be. But even as I turned around, I saw Otis take him by the arms and Carlin take him by the legs, while Ursula knelt on his shoulders, weighing him down. It didn’t stop your dad, who was so determined to keep running that he managed to keep it up for a little while, even with the three of them hanging onto him and trying to bring him down.

  “I was in trouble, too. Some of Lord Obsidian’s remaining soldiers had caught up to me. There were at least a dozen of them, all at once. They got my tie and my shoes, and were still struggling with me as your dad fell down; I must have looked pretty beaten myself, because the Terrors just let the others continue to tear at me as Nebuchadnezzar, who had made himself look like the shadow of a little girl, arrived.

  “Unfortunately, he had heard your dad mention your name, and it meant something to him. He cried, ‘Fernie? Really? This worthless old man is Fernie’s father? The Fernie I know? The Fernie I’ve been asked to get? And she’s in the house now? How convenient is that?’

  “Ursula said, ‘This is going to be easy!’

  “Nebuchadnezzar transformed in midair, turning himself into a version of me. ‘You take care of the man and the halfsie boy. I’ll go find the stupid girls.’

  “Carlin said, ‘Are you going to need any help dealing with them?’”

  Gustav hesitated, looking like he would have preferred eating tacks to saying the next part. “I’m sorry, Fernie. This next part is not my opinion. It’s his.

  “Nebuchadnezzar laughed. ‘The little one’s clever enough, in her animal manner—I learned that the hard way, to my sorrow—but she’s not one tenth as smart as she thinks she is. She’s as stupid as any other naive little girl. She was never going to amount to anything in her life, anyway. And I’m sure her sister’s not any better. Don’t worry, I’ve heard enough about this halfsie freak over the years to keep them fooled until I’ve brought them both to ruin. Just catch up with me as soon as you have the other two stored away. We have a schedule to keep.’

  “That’s when your dad yelled at them. He was out of breath, Fernie, but he managed to say it all. ‘My daughters are smarter than all of you put together, you monsters! And what smarts they don’t have, this boy has! I promise you, messing around with them is the worst mistake you’ve ever made! We’ll all be sleeping in our own beds tonight!’ They went to shut him up, but then he looked me in the eyes and shouted, ‘Gustav! Go!’ So I threw off the shadows wrestling with me . . . and left him behind.”

  Gustav stopped in midstep to cover his face with his hands. Fernie almost ran into his back. She could barely see, because it was dark and her tears made everything a blur, but she hadn’t expected Gustav to be affected the same way. She knew enough about him to recognize some of what she saw as shame, and found that she didn’t want to hear any more of his story. “But he was alive when you saw him last, right?”

  “He was alive,” Gustav echoed.

  “And they hadn’t taken him down to the Dark Country yet.”

  “No,” Gustav said, shaking. “They hadn’t.”

  “So that’s something.”

  “Yes,” Gustav said. “It’s something.”

  But from the way the courage seemed to have gone out of him all at once, he still wasn’t done.

  Fernie found herself afraid that he’d held back the worst part, something so terrible that it would make all the horrors they’d experienced so far seem small. Maybe they’d hurt her father in some way. She couldn’t bear to know, but she couldn’t bear not knowing, either. She couldn’t keep the quaver out of her voice. “Gustav? What is it?”

  When he turned to look at her, she saw that while no tears had escaped his eyes, there was still a flood of them, refusing to well over and stream down his cheeks.

  He pointed at her face. “Fernie, I live in a shadow house, where miracles happen in every room, every day. Despite all the crazy things I’ve had to live with, all the impossibilities I’ve had to get used to, I’ve never, ever heard or seen anything as wonderful as that thing he said to them. Don’t you ever dare think, even for a moment, that your father doesn’t believe in you. He believes in you more than I’ve ever been lucky enough to have anybody believe in me.”

  Understanding his problem now, she took his wrist and moved the pointing finger away from her face. Then she said, “You know, Gustav, I really don’t think you’ve been paying enough attention to anything my family’s been telling you.”

  He blinked. It was the kind of blink that makes eyes that have been trying not to overflow with tears release great soggy floods. Maybe if the predicament the two friends were in had not been quite this serious, his eyes would have done just that. But it was this serious, and there was nothing tears could do to help. So he blinked, and when he was done blinking, the tears were gone, replaced with the calm determination Fernie had long since grown used to seeing from Gustav Gloom.

  He squared his shoulders. “All right, then. Let’s go get your family.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE SHADOW WHO RUINED MOVIE NIGHT

  About ten minutes later, the two friends emerged from the se
rvant passages into a vast and elegant gallery with walls of carved dark wood, ornate oriental carpets so beautiful that they dazzled despite the usual ankle-deep layer of gray mist obscuring them, tempting easy chairs arranged in circles around coffee tables, and what looked like hundreds of paintings, ranging in size from some smaller than Fernie’s thumb to others large enough to decorate the sides of barns.

  It wasn’t the first art gallery Fernie had found in Gustav’s home, but the last one had been all portraits, and this one presented a variety of images, from bloody battlefields to grinning elderly ladies.

  There was also a painting of a horrid old skeletal castle of black stone, rising from a black swamp to stand tall and foreboding against a starless black sky. There was even black lightning, crashing against the black night. All around the castle, dark inhuman armies, numbering thousands, stood in formation, knee-deep in the muck, some not wearing shoes or not much caring that any shoes they wore would be peeled off by the mud the second they tried to take a step.

  With all the black set against other shades of black in a place composed of so many shades of darkness, there seemed no possible way that anything in the picture should have been visible at all—but it was somehow all perfectly clear, a place that had never known light but which was too stubborn to let its ebony majesty go unseen.

  There were some human beings in sight: men, women, and children, all skinny, all dressed in rags, all identifiable at first glance as slaves. They had the miserable look of people who have been frightened for so long that they no longer know how to be anything else. Some of them were being dragged along the ground like shadows, by shadows who walked upright like men.

  Gustav saw Fernie stop to stare at the terrible image, and put a hand on her shoulder. “That’s Lord Obsidian’s palace.”

  Fernie shivered. “That’s what it looks like in the Dark Country?”

  “Yes,” Gustav said. “But that’s not a painting of the Dark Country. This is the Gallery of Possible Futures, where all the paintings are images of things that might someday come to be. That’s one possible future for your world, if Lord Obsidian ever gets his way. It’s not a palace that stands now. It’s a palace he wants to build.”