The revelation that dinosaurs had pinky swears, or at least knew what they were despite not having any pinkies of their own, left Fernie wondering anew just how old her dad really was.
But even that did little to defuse the sadness of the moment, as the shadow tyrannosaur lowered his head for a good-bye pat from Gustav before stomping off into the distance toward one of the few open hallways capable of accommodating him.
The thunderous drumbeat of his every step faded into a distant vibration, and then into silence.
Even Hives looked impressed. “And me, young master?”
Gustav turned to him. “Hives, I’m ordering you to take a message to Nebuchadnezzar, wherever he hides. You will confirm that he still has Pearlie and Mr. What, and that they are unharmed. If they’re okay, you will extract from him his promise that he will hold off on hurting them or throwing them into the Pit until we arrive. In return, you will promise him that Fernie and I will head straight there, without recruiting any further allies, gathering any additional weapons, or making any further plans. You will tell him that all my promises will be kept, in the name of my grandfather Lemuel Gloom, for only as long as he keeps his. Once you have done all this, you will return here to report your success; and then you will take the rest of the night off, and not accept any more orders from anybody, no matter how urgent they might be. Do you have all that?”
Hives clicked his heels. “Yes, sir.” He made as if to turn, then hesitated and turned back. “May I say before I go, sir, that serving your family all these years, as unpleasant and thoroughly beneath me as it has been, has not been quite as completely horrible an imposition on my time as I’ve sometimes made it sound?”
Gustav nodded. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Hives.”
The terrible butler turned his back and drifted away, picking up speed as he went.
The constant shadow conversation that always filled the grand parlor, and the clattering of smaller debris that still echoed across the tile floor and rebounded off the walls all seemed to stop at once, as if the whole world had just taken a deep breath.
Fernie had the impression that Gustav had just done something irrevocable, something that could never, ever be undone. “What are we going to do?”
He brushed a mote of dust off the bridge of his nose. “Lose, probably.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s not supposed to be. It just is. Whenever you find yourself having to do something terribly dangerous against impossible odds, you always go in knowing that you’re probably going to lose. And you know what?”
“What?”
“We’re already ahead of the game. We saved the world once. Not many people can say that. And we did it as best friends. Not many people can say that, either.”
He walked over to one of the parlor’s many plush sofas, brushed aside some of the dust that had fallen from above, and sat down to pick some of the other debris off the soles of his stocking feet.
Fernie waited for him to say more, realized that no more was forthcoming, and then ventured to the couch opposite his. The hubbub of shadows in conversation resumed. The gray mist that covered the floor of most places in the Gloom mansion drifted past them like a river that didn’t care one bit how long the two friends sat there, or what happened to them.
For ten minutes, she unsuccessfully fought tears. He dusted off his ruined suit. Neither one of them said as much as a single word.
Then Hives returned. “It’s all arranged, young master.”
“Thank you,” said Gustav. He hopped off the couch and then extended a hand to Fernie. “Ready?”
Fernie had used up her tears, exactly as Gustav had probably planned.
“Ready,” she said. “Let’s go kick their butts.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE MOST FRIGHTENING THING GUSTAV COULD POSSIBLY DO
Fernie had been to the Pit room before and found it a terrible place: a dusty, dank basement room ringed with doors and dominated at its center by a circular black hole, filled to the brim with churning shadow-stuff.
For shadows, it was a swift route to the Dark Country where all their kind came from. They could come and go as they pleased, and considered the trip just a matter of getting from here to there. But the journey was reported to be very different for human beings who fell into the Pit.
Human beings tumbled head over heels for a terribly long time, so very long that they stopped believing that they’d ever reach the bottom. When they finally landed, it was in the darkest, strangest, most terrible place they’d ever been, where they wandered lost and alone until, more often than not, Lord Obsidian came to claim them as his own.
Only love for her family and trust in Gustav could have persuaded Fernie to face that terrible fate a second time.
They went downstairs, through hidden passages, into darkened hallways, and into even stranger places, descending into parts of the house that felt darker and colder and ever more ominous.
Then they turned a corner into a section of corridor so dark that its single flickering candlestick only created a small bubble of light next to an open door, where they saw the shadow of a familiar little girl holding a red balloon on a string.
The little girl spoke in a nasty adult voice, hoarse and whispery, in the manner some very old women attain only after living long lives filled with cruelty and malice. “Hello. Like my balloon?”
It looked like the same red balloon from the room where Fernie had last seen her sister.
Gustav said, “I don’t suppose that’s helium in it.”
“Oh, no,” Nebuchadnezzar sang. “Of course not. What use have I for helium? No, I’ve been amusing myself capturing some of the house’s more helpless shadows as tributes for my new master. This balloon has a number of shadow cats, shadow mice, and even a few other inconsequential shadow creatures in it, all trapped together so I can bring them down to the Dark Country to join Lord Obsidian’s unwilling army. Oh, and Fernie? It also has your sister’s shadow, and your father’s; I wouldn’t want the likes of them getting loose and causing trouble before our big moment together. Now that you’ve come to surrender yourselves, I’d also take your shadows as a precaution, but”—the little girl looked down—“I see that neither of you has a shadow at present. I do hope this is not some kind of juvenile trick.”
Gustav shook his head. “I don’t know where Fernie’s shadow is. She’s been missing for a while. Mine I haven’t seen since the prison break. I’m not about to pull him out of my pocket, either.”
The little girl’s face puckered, becoming the visage of a very old, very evil woman, horribly out of place on the childlike body. Now Nebuchadnezzar spoke in a child’s voice: the kind of voice that only very nasty, very mean-spirited children attain when their chief pleasure in life is making other children cry. “You’re up to something.”
“I am,” said Gustav, as if astonished that Nebuchadnezzar hadn’t figured this out yet.
“Your insufferable butler said there’d be no tricks!”
“My terrible butler,” Gustav corrected, “would have said exactly what he was ordered to say. You should ask yourself: Do I know where Fernie’s shadow is? The answer’s no. Am I holding out hope that my shadow will still catch up with us? The answer’s no. Did I order Hives to take the rest of the night off? The answer’s yes. Did I send Fluffy away with the emergency whistle? The answer to that’s yes, too. Did I promise to surrender without a fight and not even try to win? That I never said. And neither did Fernie.”
Nebuchadnezzar transformed his face into that of a battle-scarred, ancient warrior, with a pug nose, sharp cheekbones, and sneering lips. “What are you planning?”
“I also never promised to answer your stupid questions.”
Fernie, wanting to say something equally impressive, appropriated a line a hero had spoken in one of her favorite books: “Now give my family back, you foul villain, or face my infinite wrath.”
This turned out to be fa
r more effective than she ever would have dared hope. For just a moment, Nebuchadnezzar looked just as unnerved as the bad guy in that old book had been.
Then a soft, terribly familiar, terribly evil chuckle emerged from the open doorway, followed by the sound of one man applauding. Each clap was as loud as a gunshot, as ominous as a coffin lid swinging shut. There was a terrible confidence to that applause, an absolute certainty that even if Gustav and Fernie had a plan in mind, it could not possibly deter the forces that stood against them. With a terrible chill in the back of her neck, Fernie suddenly knew who would emerge from that doorway, who had arranged the prison break, and who had been commanding the Four Terrors all along. She had to fight the urge to run for her life.
A voice like boots crunching on broken glass intoned, “You have become very fffffearsome . . . Fffffernie.”
The owner of that voice stepped from the doorway.
He was tall, skeletally thin, and paler even than Gustav . . . with bloodred eyes and a leering grin that suggested any number of terrible, cruel jokes played on innocents unlucky enough to fall within his reach. He wore a black suit with a long swirling cape and a chimney of a top hat with a bend in the middle that might have been a tribute to the twisted brain beneath it, or evidence of some ineffective fight put up by one of his previous victims.
He was not a shadow but a man . . . a man who had, to use his own word, taken any number of poor innocent people for his own cruel amusement before turning his dark talents to Lord Obsidian’s service.
She now understood who had pulled the unconscious Pearlie into that hidden passage during her own last confrontation with Nebuchadnezzar. She had been only a few feet away from the People Taker then, almost close enough for him to step out of the darkness and grab her; but he already had Pearlie to take care of, and confidence that Fernie and Gustav would go exactly where he wanted them to go, anyway.
Nebuchadnezzar, who had seemed such a powerful, threatening figure all on his own just a few seconds before, seemed to shrink in the presence of his employer, as if afraid of being struck. “I was about to bring them to you.”
“Oh,” the People Taker said, giving the suddenly meek Nebuchadnezzar an affectionate pat on the head, “I know, my new friend. You might have been willing to disssssobey me, but not the lord we both serve. Hello, Gussssstav. Hello, Fffffernie. Sssssurprised to sssssee me so sssssoon?”
“Not even remotely,” Gustav said with unnerving calm. “I expected you.”
“You’re lying.”
“Nope. It was obvious. I could understand Nebuchadnezzar here deciding that he didn’t like Fernie for some reason—they seem to have some history together I don’t know about—but you were the only person we’ve met who would have a grudge against her entire family and make a point of wanting them all to fall into the Pit at the same time. Fernie, Pearlie, their dad’s shadow, and even their cat, Harrington, all joined together with me to knock you into the Pit the last time you showed your ugly head. You want them to fall together because together they made you fall. Right?”
The People Taker clapped his hands together in glee. “You are a clever boy!”
“I suppose your master, Lord Obsidian, said it was okay to take your revenge on the Whats as long as you also did what you were really sent back up here to do: recruit the Four Terrors for his army.”
“He must have needed some more servants,” Fernie said. “He couldn’t have been all that happy with the job you were doing after you were defeated by three kids and a cat.”
The People Taker’s confident leer faltered a little. “You will pay for that insult, Fffffernie.”
She forced herself to shrug. “Whatever. You are so boring.”
It was a wonder the People Taker didn’t rush across the hallway and attack her right away. But then his rage vanished, replaced with that same terrible confidence he’d shown before, and he stepped away from the doorway, inviting her in with an exaggerated bow and flourish. “You misjudge me, Fffffernie. I think you will fffffind the game I have planned for your fffffamily . . . mossssst interesting.”
She did not want to take him up on the invitation. But then Gustav gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, letting her know that all was not yet lost, and she considered the price of letting the People Taker, or his minion Nebuchadnezzar, know how cold and without hope her heart had just turned in her chest. So she raised her head high, released Gustav’s hand, and walked alone through the open doorway, too proud to give either villain so much as a second look.
The Pit room was every bit as gray and forbidding as it had been on her last unwilling visit. If anything it was darker, the shadow-stuff in the Pit brimming over as if there was some violent storm in the country far below. But there had been some additions, key among them the two long wooden planks that had been placed over the Pit itself, held in place only by the foot or so each end extended over the sides.
Each plank bore a single unconscious figure. Their balance was so precarious that they clearly remained on the planks for only as long as they could be trusted not to roll over in their sleep or panic upon waking.
Mr. What lay on his back, snoring, a thin line of drool trickling out of the right corner of his mouth. His left foot had slipped off the edge, and his shoe had dangled from his heel, remaining in place only because it had not yet slid off his big toe. Pearlie lay on her side, her mouth curled in a smile while her left arm dangled off the board and swung, just the slightest bit, from whatever unearthly currents stirred beneath the surface of the mist.
Fernie almost rushed to their aid, but Gustav stopped her with a sharp “Fernie! Don’t!”
She froze and looked behind her. Gustav had entered the room and, sizing up the situation faster than she had, cried out to stop her from making what would have been a terrible mistake.
He calmed down now that she’d listened to him and not rushed forward. As she watched, he stepped away from the entrance to the room and circled the Pit, keeping his distance from it, and from her. Behind him, the People Taker swept into the room with a flourish, but made no attempt to seize Gustav or chase Fernie right away; instead, he stepped aside, watching the scene before him with deep, vicious amusement. Nebuchadnezzar bobbed along behind him, still clutching the red balloon, his face shifting with every heartbeat to form ever newer portraits of the mean and cruel.
“Vvvvvery sssssmart,” the People Taker crowed. “I’d worried that the sssssilly girl would make the obvious mistake right away and deprive me of my game.”
Fernie’s hands curled into fists. “What game?”
“The game that will make thisssss a little bit more than just an exercise in throwing you in. I thought you children deserved the heartache of fffffailing ssssspectacularly, after all the humiliation you caused me last time. So I cut those planks myself. Each of them is jussssst thick enough, and therefore ssssstrong enough, to sssssupport the weight of the one person lying on it. Each one will brrrrreak in the middle if you try to add your own weight . . . which means that you won’t be able to crawl out on your hands and knees to pull either one to sssssafety.”
Fernie felt sickened as she imagined what it would be like to crawl out onto her sister’s plank and hear it start to crack in the middle.
The People Taker grinned more widely, enjoying her heartbroken misery the way a fan of ice cream would enjoy two scoops of pistachio with sprinkles. “Of course, you can go another way. You can plant yourself on solid ground, grab one end of a plank, and try to pull it toward you. But as soon as the other end ssssslips off the edge, that plank will dip, just the ssssslightest bit, and your loved one will ssssslide, ssssslide, ssssslide down into the darkness.”
Fernie shouted, “You’re evil!”
“Thank you. I try so hard to be. Of course, sssssince there are two of you here, you may attempt to sssssave your loved ones with teamwork. Working together, you can grab a plank by both ends at once and ssssslide it sideways, hoping you can keep its passenger balanced for however long i
t takes you to move the plank to sssssafety. Of course, all that jostling will probably make the plank’s passenger rrrrroll off . . . and while you’re busy doing that, you will also have to defend yourselves from me. Ssssstill, you might get lucky. If you’re very, very careful, you might be able to sssssave your sister, at least. I’m not entirely sure that even children your size who’ve eaten all their green beans will be able to manage a sssssufficiently smooth ride to save your fffffather.”
Fernie hated to admit it, but the People Taker was right. As strong as she was, and as strong as Gustav was, it was impossible to imagine the two of them managing to not only lift but gently carry the plank bearing her father to safety.
“Of course,” the People Taker said, “if you remain too fffffrightened of what mmmmmight happen to do anything within the next fffffew minutes, your fffffather and sssssister will ssssstart to wake up and move around . . . and they’ll sssssolve your problem by fffffalling in even without your bungling help.”
Fernie circled the Pit, her heart pounding as she searched for some possible answer. Gustav circled on the other side, his eyebrows knitting as he also regarded the problem from every angle.
“Plusssss,” the People Taker concluded, “the sssssecond I sssssee you start to try anything, it becomes my pleasure, and Nebuchadnezzar’s, to ssssstop you. How are you going to manage this miracle? How are the two of you going to fffffight me, when I see you’re both missing your shadows, and last time we fffffought you only barely defeated me when you also had your sssssister’s help and the help of all your shadows and that ssssstupid cat of yours?”
Fernie had no ideas.
On the other side of the Pit, Gustav had crouched to examine the situation from close up, while rubbing his chin in what looked like deep concentration. But now he stood up and gave her infinite hope by winking at her, letting her know that all was not yet lost.
Gustav Gloom and the Four Terrors Page 11