Gustav Gloom and the Castle of Fear

by Adam-Troy Castro

  “And then?” Pearlie insisted. “What will you do then?”

  This appeared to have been the very first time the question had occurred to him, because he cocked his head and mused for a moment, and then allowed a little crinkle in his cheek to tug at the corner of his mouth.

  “Why, then,” he said, “I think I’ll do what the flesh-and-blood October never could, and write some happy books.”

  He wasn’t wearing a hat, but he gestured toward what would have been his hat brim as if to tip it in farewell, and spared a special nod for another shadow watching his departure in silence. “Farewell, Mellifluous.”

  “Take care of yourself,” Great-Aunt Mellifluous said. “And thank you.”

  October’s shadow turned his back and began to walk, fading with every step, until he was not only transparent but almost invisible, and finally until he was gone.

  The battles being fought in the Dark Country remained audible, but the various minions who had fought atop the statue’s head had little spirit left for continuing the battle up there. The shadows gathered and started to drift off toward the horizon. The humans gathered up their weapons and, looking sheepish, headed the same way, already grumbling about the troubles they would face climbing down from such a height. None of them seemed inclined to ask for a ride home, which led Pearlie to ask, “What about all the slaves in Lord Obsidian’s mines? What about everybody the People Taker took? How are we going to get them all home?”

  Great-Aunt Mellifluous shook her head. “This isn’t like one of the stories in your books, child. The defeat of the big evil villain doesn’t make all the world’s problems go away in an instant. In this case, the Dark Country is still in shambles, Obsidian’s allies continue to fight for the cause he enlisted them for, and even if the battle below ends in immediate victory, the job of returning all those he imprisoned to their lives and reuniting them with their loved ones will no doubt go on for years to come. I suspect that there might be one or two smaller wars that follow in the aftermath of this one, just to get everything settled . . . and also that we may need many more journeys in the Cryptic Carousel before it’s all done. But we have taken the first step. That is a great victory.” She blinked, and focused on something in the distance. “Ah. Speak of the devil.”

  Two flying objects, one small and one large, had risen over the horizon that was at the front of the statue’s head, and were coming this way.

  One was the Cryptic Carousel, spinning merrily as it flew low over all those who had left the battle. It had sustained some damage in its vandalism of the statue’s face and had lost most of the paint around its edges. Much of the Dark Country’s shadow-stuff still clung to its surfaces, much but not all of it dissipating in little puffs of gray cloud as it flew closer.

  The other object, a mere speck by comparison, soon became recognizable as the carousel’s flying horse, with Fernie in the saddle. As they watched, the horse skimmed the ground so Fernie could scoop up an object the departing soldiers had abandoned. When the horse rose back into the air, Fernie brandished the object she had found, point upward. It was a little sword.

  While Fernie was still a fair distance away, Gustav grinned. “She’s a Valkyrie.”

  Pearlie, who read a lot of books, too, but apparently hadn’t read all of the same ones Gustav had, said, “What’s a Valkyrie?”

  Mr. What knelt to hug her, his eyes shining. “You are.”

  “Huh?”

  “It means warrior woman, honey. And she is. Both my girls are.”

  A cheer rose from those who remained at the site of the battle as Fernie and the carousel drew close.

  They landed, and what followed was an endless series of hugs in just about every possible combination: Fernie leaping down from the horse to rush forward and tearfully embrace her dad, then breaking away from him to embrace Pearlie, then the two of them hugging him again, and all three of them moving in a group to interrupt the private moment between Gustav, his father, and Penny’s shadow so they could hug Gustav, too. Lemuel’s shadow came out of the carousel and of course he had to be hugged as well, not just by Gustav and the girls but also by Hans Gloom, who almost broke down at the sight of his father’s shadow and embraced him with the fervor of a man rescued from drowning.

  This all went on even longer because the shadows also had to hug all the people and everybody had to hug Great-Aunt Mellifluous all together, just because. And then it went on even longer after that because Fernie suddenly spotted the lonely figure of Not-Roger, looking a little lost with no one but his shadow for company, because he’d spent so many years in the Dark Country and there was nobody around who had thought to be happy he’d survived.

  There was no way that Fernie would ever allow that to go on, and so she whispered something to her sister and Gustav, and they ran to him together. The big man wept at the first affection he had received from any human being for longer than most of the people in this all-out hug-a-thon had even been alive.

  The last combination left unresolved was the two fathers, and they faced each other from behind their respective kids, because they were two adults meeting each other for the very first time, and even in this kind of situation, grown-ups are never quite as comfortable with all that hugging as kids are.

  One father stuck out a hand. “Hello. I’m Sidney What.”

  The other took it and said, “I’m Hans Gloom. I see our kids have already become friends.”

  “Yes,” Mr. What said. “I think we’re going to be great neighbors.”

  They nodded at each other, both wondering what else to say or do, and then by mutual agreement fell into what would not be the last hug between these people and shadows, during the journey to follow.

  The only being who hesitated, as everybody else—shadows, mechanical animals, and human beings alike—boarded the Cryptic Carousel, was Not-Roger, who stood outside regarding it with both longing and fear.

  The big man had never looked more like a child lost in a strange and unfamiliar place, unaware how to find his way home.

  Gustav and the What girls hopped back off to speak to him, and Fernie said, “It’s okay. We’ll give you a ride back to the world of light, if you’d like.”

  He licked his lips nervously. “I’d . . . like that, Fernie. It’s been so many years since I saw a sunrise, that I’ve forgotten what one looks like.”

  Still, he didn’t move.

  Gustav said, “What are you afraid of?”

  “I . . . told you, back at the inn. I was never a very good man, in the world of light. I don’t remember anything I did, but I think it’s even possible that I might have been a bad person.”

  “There’s an answer to that,” Pearlie said. “Be a better one from now on.”

  He wiped his eye with the tip of his finger and went on. “But it’s been . . . so long. I don’t remember the number of the last year I saw, but I know it was before your grandparents were born, possibly before your great-great-grandparents were born. Everybody I ever knew is gone. The world I knew has moved on. I probably wouldn’t even recognize it. What will I ever do? Where will I go?”

  Gustav said, “If you don’t come with us, you’ll never figure it out.”

  Not-Roger considered that, then gave a nod that was more surrender than agreement, and followed them in uncertain silence.

  Harrington the cat would not get the hug he deserved for a while, because he was a cat and he had just seen and heard more upsetting things than any cat ever likes to tolerate when there’s serious napping to be done. When Fernie took his cat carrier from underneath the gorilla’s hairy arm (thanking the gorilla for taking such good care of him) and opened the door, Harrington became a yowling black-and-white rocket, racing for a dark corner in the carousel’s hub. Hugs, and petting, and sweet treats, and warm laps to lie in, were something he would doubtless have more than enough of in the future, but for right now he jus
t wanted to be a cat by himself. This would pass.

  They took off, dangling Lord Obsidian’s motionless form from one of the carousel’s belly-mounted snares, as they flew low over the Dark Country’s murk.

  Most of the survivors of the battle on the statue’s head sprawled exhausted in various places on the carousel floor, surrounded by robotic animals that had all returned to their places. Hans Gloom and the shadow of his murdered wife sat next to each other on the carousel’s bench, speaking in low voices. Accompanied by his shadow, Not-Roger wandered from one immobile sculpted animal to another, running his paw-like fingers over their faces and marveling at bright colors he had almost forgotten. Great-Aunt Mellifluous stood at the carousel’s edge, looking down through the clouds at whatever took place beyond, either smiling or frowning at whatever developments she found. Pearlie What, who had never been on the carousel before and had begged off the important strategy meeting in the hub in order to explore it, ran around in delighted girlish circles, spinning on the poles and acting far younger than her age, because she had just come from a place she had never expected to escape, and could not bite back the sheer joy of it.

  In the carousel’s hub, Gustav and Fernie held an important council with Lemuel’s shadow, while the recovering Harrington did figure eights to claim permanent ownership of all their ankles.

  Fernie said, “I’m still not happy about having to take Lord Obsidian with us.”

  Gustav replied, “You weren’t around when October’s shadow told us he would only be immobile this way for a while. What good will it do to leave him here, when he can just wake up and start where he left off? We have to take him with us and find some safe place to strand him where he can’t ever get into any mischief again.”

  “Yeah,” Fernie said, “but that’s the problem, isn’t it? He can wake up at any moment. Maybe years from now, but maybe only ten seconds from now. I don’t want to be halfway home and suddenly have to deal with him wanting to come aboard so he can poke those awful fingers in our faces. I also don’t want to take him anywhere too far out of our way. We have to hurry back for Mom. From what Obsidian said, she might be in real trouble.”

  Lemuel’s shadow fluttered about the control console. “There’s this, too. The Cryptic Carousel has many, many destinations programmed into its memory, but I’m afraid that many of them are inhabited by people—or other things that quite rightfully consider themselves people—who really don’t deserve to have a menace like Lord Obsidian dropped into their backyards. I’m afraid my sense of responsibility won’t allow me to just dump him in some random place and hope for the best, unless I can look around and know for sure that there’s nobody close by he can try to conquer or kill, or any chance he can make his way to a civilization he can threaten. That would be unacceptable.”

  “So the only choice,” Gustav said, not very happy about it, “is to take him to a place we’ve already been, a place far out of the way.”

  The place they all thought of at once had no name: a world of red skies, raging thunder, and four mountain spires emerging from a lower atmosphere of thick and impenetrable murk. In many ways it sounded too much like the Dark Country for comfort, and though the terrible spider-crone they’d fought there no longer resided at that address, Fernie had seen something far worse stirring below the clouds: an immense, evil, tentacled thing with a staring eye that she had hoped she would never see again.

  But it wasn’t like they had any other choice, not unless they wanted to spend half their lives looking for some place better. At least they knew how long it would take them to get there.

  Gustav, Fernie, and Lemuel’s shadow all spoke the name of the proper place at the same moment.

  “Silverspinner’s world!”

  EPILOGUE

  What Awaits in Gustav’s Future

  The flight from the Dark Country to Silverspinner’s world, through a shifting cloudscape of gray nothingness, was a lot like the flight in, except that there were more people to talk to and different things to be anxious about.

  During the week or so the trip seemed to last, Gustav had many long and teary conversations with his father and with the shadow of the woman who would have been his mother, the three of them all catching up on the years they had missed. Fernie and Pearlie spent a lot of time hugging their father. Harrington calmed down and wandered from person to person, rubbing against ankles of both flesh and shadow, and thus, by cat logic, ensuring that everybody in sight belonged to him.

  Beyond that, it was like any other long road trip through places where there really isn’t all that much to see. If there hadn’t been so much cause for worry about the forces Lord Obsidian had told them he had sent against Nora What on Sunnyside Terrace, they might have sung songs and played word games and fallen into lazy bored funks. Instead, they spent most of their time trying not to imagine the worst. Everybody also spent a great deal of time hoping that Lord Obsidian wouldn’t wake up and cause some trouble before they got anywhere, but having that to talk about and nothing at all that could be done about it just made everybody grumpy.

  Eventually, though, the Cryptic Carousel broke free into the sky over the world where Gustav and Fernie had fought the monstrous spider-crone named Silverspinner: a place with an endless sea of scarlet clouds that was only broken by four towering mountains.

  Everybody aboard peered over the sides as Lemuel’s shadow piloted the carousel toward a point between those four mountaintops, high above the tattered remains of Silverspinner’s web. Only a couple of pink strands remained, the rest either dissolved by time or torn apart by the world’s other creatures. The giant bird-creatures that had fled to the sky in fear of her now nested on those rocks by the thousands, making sounds that could have been caws and could have been the most terrible laughter any of the carousel’s riders had ever heard.

  Mr. What shuddered. “It’s not much of an improvement over the Dark Country, is it?”

  “No,” Lemuel’s shadow said. “It’s not. The worst thing I can say about it is that he’ll be right at home here. Anybody want to say anything else before we drop him off?”

  Hans Gloom surprised them all by saying, “I would, if you don’t mind.”

  They all waited as Hans stepped away from his place at the shadow-Penny’s side, went up to the carousel’s edge, and looked down. A wind had picked up, buffeting the lassoed Lord Obsidian, so they could all see the defeated tyrant’s stick-figure form dangling above the mountain ledge they had chosen for his eternal prison.

  “Once upon a time,” Hans Gloom said, “I thought this man was a friend. My darling Penny thought he was a friend. Even after everything he’s done, I’ve never stopped missing the man I once believed he was. I’ll mourn that fictional man forever. But I hope I’ll never again see the monster he turned out to be. That monster deserves to end his days in this terrible place.” He turned to Lemuel’s shadow. “That’s it, I suppose.”

  Grandpa Lemuel’s shadow pressed a button, and the lasso lowered the much-reduced Lord Obsidian to one of the nearest mountain’s ledges. He showed no sign of recognizing that he had been released. The bird-things paid him no mind, either. The only sign that anything had taken notice of his arrival was a certain parting in the red clouds far below, which for an instant revealed coiled tentacles and a terrible slit eye, gazing up at them with emotions that nobody cared to read.

  Hans Gloom found that he had one more thing to say. “That looks just like one of the creatures October wrote about in his books.”

  Gustav shuddered. “I know. I don’t think he’ll be too glad to meet it for the first time.”

  “No, son. I don’t, either. But I think . . . maybe . . . he’ll get some satisfaction out of having been right that there were such things in the universe. As long as he keeps his distance—and it doesn’t get hungry.”

  Silverspinner’s world was much closer to home than it was to the Dark Country, so the few m
inutes of flight that remained were filled with vocal worries about what perils might be awaiting them at home.

  Then they heard the pop of displaced air and found themselves back in the Gloom house’s carnival room, where the painted backdrops of sideshow amusements provided a stage setting for the carousel’s assigned parking space inside the house.

  None of them wasted any time gathering up their luggage, because none of them had brought any, unless Harrington’s carrier counted. Instead they leaped off the ride and out the door and into one of the house’s many corridors, where they could race toward the grand parlor and, they hoped, find some clue to the peril that faced Nora What.

  They did not expect to find Nora What dressed in full safari gear, leading several shadows known to them, striding across the grand parlor in the opposite direction.

  “Oh!” said Mrs. What.

  “Mom?” said Fernie.

  “Mom?” said Pearlie.

  “Nora?” said Mr. What.

  “Sidney?” said Mrs. What.

  “Fernie!” cried Fernie’s shadow.

  “Girls!” cried Mrs. What.

  “Gustav!” cried Gustav’s shadow.

  “Hives!” the kids yelled.

  “Meow!” said Harrington.

  “What great timing!” yelled Mr. Notes’s shadow.

  This was indeed great timing, and in the small explosion of excitement that followed, it became clear that Mrs. What, who was, after all, the official adventurer of the family, had proven as capable of dealing with the threat of the People Taker and the shadow army Lord Obsidian had sent to Earth to capture her as the rest of the What and Gloom families had been in dealing with equivalent menaces down in the Dark Country. By now, given how very often the various members of the What family had prevailed in their battles, with or without the help of Gustav Gloom or various assorted shadows, this honestly should not have been a surprise to anybody . . . and Mr. What actually felt the need to apologize at length to his wife for doubting her.