Gustav Gloom and the Castle of Fear

by Adam-Troy Castro

  She sped through an explanation in one breath, saying that she had just experienced a harrowing adventure that had required her to run around the Gloom house for what felt like days; that she and her new shadow friends had been chased by the People Taker and Ursula and their shadow army every waking instant; that they had come close to being captured a dozen times and closer to being killed even more; and that they had finally defeated their enemies and made it back to the grand parlor just in time to find the people she loved heading across the same room, toward her.

  Though the precise details had to wait until all the hugging and kissing and weeping and, yes, meowing, were over and done with, and though there were also the many introductions to get out of the way, and they inevitably led to more hugging, Mrs. What ultimately offered her three-word summary of her adventure at the exact same time Gustav Gloom, her daughters, and even her husband used the same three words to summarize theirs.

  “It was awesome.”

  Some of the details that came out, when everything calmed down a little, were not quite so happy. The People Taker had wound up falling back into the Pit to the Dark Country, and would likely stay there for a while, as there was no Lord Obsidian to send him back to the world of light for more mischief. Many of the shadow criminals had fled when it became clear that they were losing, though Ursula was one of those Mrs. What had succeeded in caging. The worst news, alas, was that the dire villain Hieronymus Spector had used the cover of the mass breakout to complete his own escape, and his current whereabouts and plans remained unknown.

  This was, Great-Aunt Mellifluous declared, the most terrible of the loose ends, and it was one that would have to be dealt with someday.

  Two weeks had passed after the family’s return to the Fluorescent Salmon house on Sunnyside Terrace. Mr. and Mrs. What had straightened out the little bit of trouble caused by Fernie and Pearlie’s missing the first few days of the school year, the girls had enjoyed their first week of classes and returned home eager for the weekend, and the What adults had fallen into the routine they always fell into between Nora What’s expeditions: Mr. What writing a new book of the deadly hidden dangers of paper clips, Mrs. What laying out maps and travel guides as she tried to figure out what deadly risks her next TV special would require her to take.

  It was the middle of a fine Saturday afternoon with nothing else happening, and the Whats were enjoying the peace and quiet of it all—a fine change from all the recent excitement—when they heard a knock on the door.

  “I hope it’s not Mrs. Everwiner,” Mr. What said.

  Their troublesome neighbor, driven by awful memories of her own misadventures inside the Gloom house, had started up a new campaign to tear it down and had knocked on their door four times already, trying to get signatures.

  But when he opened the door, it was Great-Aunt Mellifluous.

  “Hey!” Mr. What said, opening the door wide to let her in. “How are things in the Dark Country?”

  He knew that Great-Aunt Mellifluous had been traveling back and forth to the Dark Country via the Pit, coordinating the relief efforts.

  “Not as good as I would like them to be,” she reported, as she drifted over the threshold, “but not as bad as I feared, either. The recovery will still take a while, but at least it’s happening.”

  “What about Hans? Has he found his shadow?”

  “Alas, no; there is no sign of the poor thing, so Hans will have to go on living without one for the time being. He says it’ll be a while before he misses having one, as he’s too occupied at home building a new family life with his son. I still have agents in the Dark Country, tracing the various rumors, and have no doubt that we’ll be seeing a happy reunion before long. We haven’t heard any more from the dastardly Hieronymus Spector, either. Wherever he is, whatever he’s doing, he seems to prefer doing it in silence. We might be lucky enough to never hear from him again. But I doubt that. He is the kind of bad penny that always turns up.

  “But I’m afraid this wasn’t just a social call, dears. There’s one last bit of business left over from all that unpleasantness in the Dark Country that I’ll need to discuss with you. Nothing bad,” she hastened to say, because Mr. What had gone pale. “Quite the opposite, in fact. But I hear from Gustav, who heard from the girls, that the two of you are still arguing over whether to sell your house and move your family away?”

  “Well, not arguing,” Mrs. What said, as she took Mr. What’s hand. “We’ve been disagreeing about it, a lot, but it hasn’t become an argument yet.”

  “It’s not something I’m happy about,” Mr. What confessed. “I know what a great kid Gustav is and how much my girls love him, not to mention what a great example he is in all the ways that matter.”

  “They’ve been terrific for one another,” Mrs. What agreed.

  Mr. What said, “But I can’t get past all the dangers my girls have been exposed to since we moved here. I don’t want to turn around one day and find out that they’ve all disappeared into the Dark Country again, let alone to any of the places they can get to in that carousel thing.”

  “That’s right,” Mrs. What said. “And I keep saying that the kids have shown us what an unbeatable team they make, and what a shame it would be if we failed to respect that, or broke up their friendships.”

  Great-Aunt Mellifluous nodded in deep understanding. “You’re both right, and I have no intention of arguing with either one of you. But if moving away is actually still under discussion, perhaps I can help you make a decision. If you’re up to coming across the street for a short visit, may I show you something that neither of you knows about yet that should make a special difference?”

  Mrs. What agreed at once. Mr. What, who remembered all the trouble he’d had the last time he’d popped over to the Gloom house for just a few minutes that somebody promised him would be perfectly safe, needed a little more persuading, but eventually, he gritted his teeth and agreed to go, holding his wife’s hand for extra safety.

  They crossed the street, passed the Gloom estate’s gate, and went into the yard, where they collected Gustav and their girls (who were having the latest in a long series of picnics). On the way up the walk they said hello to Not-Roger, who had taken on the name Roger Knott and was settling in just fine in his new position as the Gloom family groundskeeper.

  Dealing with Hives at the door, and allowing him to aggravate them a little just so he could have some satisfaction in his work, they proceeded together down the long entrance hall. They collected another old friend when they ran into Mr. Notes’s shadow, who for some reason seemed to be having trouble suppressing one of the most conspiratorial smiles that any of the Whats had ever seen.

  Ascending one of the grand parlor’s many stairways, to a balcony that Fernie said she’d walked before, they followed Great-Aunt Mellifluous through a doorway Fernie said she’d seen before, into a room that Fernie said she’d visited before.

  There they found Hans Gloom and Penny’s shadow, waiting with grins almost as poorly concealed as the one Mr. Notes’s shadow also struggled to hide behind his hand.

  As Mr. and Mrs. What stood blinking at the array of paintings that hung as far as their eyes could see, Great-Aunt Mellifluous said, “I have told Gustav many times that there are no prophecies. The future is never written. Destiny promised us no chosen heroes to rid all creation of Lord Obsidian. When the time came for that to happen, it fell to a small group of friends and family, all doing the absolute best they could for the ones they loved, with no guarantee of victory.

  “Always, everywhere, history doesn’t happen until it happens.

  “But that doesn’t mean it’s never possible to see what the future might be, or even what it will probably be.

  “That’s the force at play in this room, my friends. This is the Gallery of Possible Futures, where the shadows of what might be, what should be, and what should never be allowed to be are
all captured on canvas, for the eyes of any who come here.

  “Fernie, I know that you have been in this room before, and had its nature explained to you. On that occasion, I understand you saw a painting of the terrible place the world of light would become if Lord Obsidian were ever permitted to succeed in his mad ambitions. Is that true?”

  Fernie gulped. “Yes.”

  “I have spent much of the last two weeks searching for that painting, and have so far not succeeded in finding it. If the future it foretells is still even remotely possible, it may still hang in some out-of-the-way alcove, but somehow I believe that the chances of any of us ever seeing it again are now too remote to worry about. We need not speak of it again.

  “Still, there is another painting we should revisit, one I know that you have also seen before, and one very well known to the shadows with us who watched Gustav grow up.” Great-Aunt Mellifluous turned to Penny’s shadow. “You know the painting, don’t you, dear?”

  For some reason, Penny’s shadow could not stop grinning. “Yes. It’s always been one of my favorites.”

  Great-Aunt Mellifluous escorted the two families to another painting Fernie found familiar, having stopped before it during the adventure of the Four Terrors.

  This painting seemed to depict Hans Gloom and a beautiful redheaded woman in mountain-climbing gear, atop a pillar of rock with a vast brown desert far below. The sky behind them was a brilliant cloudless blue, and the sun looked warm on both of their bright shining faces. It looked like the most beautiful of beautiful days.

  Great-Aunt Mellifluous asked, “Fernie? Do you understand what this painting shows?”

  “Sure,” said Fernie. “That’s Mr. Gloom, and some woman I’ve never seen before.”

  “You’re wrong about that being that Mr. Gloom,” Great-Aunt Mellifluous said. “You are right about that being a woman you’ve never seen before, not yet at least, but that’s not Hans. That’s Gustav.”

  Fernie gave the grinning man in the picture another look, and could not make a face that cheerful look like an older version of the Gustav she knew, no matter how hard she tried. “Are you sure that’s not his dad? It looks just like him.”

  “It does look almost exactly like Hans, and if this painting hung anywhere else in the house, I would indeed be tempted to believe it was him. But you forget that this is a gallery of the future, dear, and the man in the picture is several years younger than Hans is now. He has fewer lines on his face and more color in his hair. Whatever the future has in store for Hans, and I hope that it will bring nothing but happiness, I suspect that he will not be fortunate enough to age backward. No, I have studied this painting for many years, down to every pore on this man’s cheeks. I’m certain. That’s Gustav.”

  “But that can’t be Gustav,” Fernie insisted.

  “Oh, no?” Great-Aunt Mellifluous asked. “Why not?”

  “Because we all know that Gustav would die if he ever left this estate. He would evaporate. The man in the painting is out in the sun climbing a mountain. He even has a tan. He can’t be Gustav.”

  “And yet he is,” Great-Aunt Mellifluous said. “In this painting’s possible future, Gustav is out in the world, walking in the bright sun without fear. Somehow, something happens to him between now and then, something that none of us can even guess at, that makes such a blessing possible. Maybe it’s another adventure. And maybe it’s just time.”

  Fernie glanced at Gustav, who was so stunned by this development that he’d taken a step back, and been caught by his flesh-and-blood father and his shadow mother. “Out in the sun,” he whispered. “With people. Seeing something of the world other than this house . . .”

  It seemed to be too much for him to take in all at once, but Fernie had never been happier for another person in all her life. She was overjoyed to be with him when he got this news, and could only hope with all her heart that this particular possible future came true. “Okay,” she said, conceding the point. “I hope you’re right. But then, who’s that woman with him?”

  “Ah,” said Great-Aunt Mellifluous, and now there was something special about her smile, something that spoke of life’s unexpected gifts. “You will notice that both the man and the woman in the painting wear wedding rings. From that evidence, I venture that she’s Gustav’s possible future wife . . . and, judging from many of the other paintings you’ll find around here if you look hard enough, not just a world-famous adventurer alongside her husband, but also the possible future mother of his children.”

  What followed was an extremely long moment of silence as the various gathered friends and family absorbed this information and tried to put together what Great-Aunt Mellifluous was implying.

  Of them all, Pearlie was the very first to get it, with a delighted yelp of, “No way.”

  Great-Aunt Mellifluous smiled at her. “I believe this is where you children would say, ‘Yes, way.’”

  “What?” Fernie demanded. “What!?”

  Gustav didn’t get it, either. “Yes! What?”

  Pearlie was positively bouncing. “Come on! How can the two of you not see it?”

  “SEE WHAT?” Gustav and Fernie cried together.

  Everybody in the room seemed to get it now, except for those two; they simply didn’t have a clue, and didn’t seem capable of getting a clue, no matter how obvious the import of the painting had just become to everybody else.

  Not far away, backing up against the nearest wall, a stunned Mr. What murmured, “Nora?”

  She didn’t look one bit less dazed than he did. “Yes, dear?”

  “You win. We’re not selling our house. Not now, or ever.”

  Their hands met, and her fingers twined with his.

  She said, “I know. But maybe we can have a little talk about painting it.”

  (This is the famous poem that Gustav understood a little better than Howard Philip October did, provided in case any reader is curious.)

  OZYMANDIAS

  BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

  I met a traveller from an antique land

  Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

  Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

  Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

  The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

  And on the pedestal these words appear:

  “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

  Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

  Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

  The lone and level sands stretch far away.

  Acknowledgments

  You would not now be seeing this book without the persistence of agents extraordinaire Joshua Bilmes and Eddie Schneider of the Jabberwocky Literary Agency. You would not now be enjoying the same experience free of verbal land mines and other clutter without the ace red pens of copy editor Kate Hurley and editor Jordan Hamessley. You would not now be oohing and aahing over the illustrations without the genius of artist Kristen Margiotta. You would not now be holding the divine artifact in your hands without designer Christina Quintero. You might have no idea the book exists without the fine work of publicist Tara Shanahan. You would not now be seeing any books from me at all without the patience, love, and constant encouragement of my beautiful wife, Judi B. Castro. You would not now be seeing a human being with my name and my face were it not for my parents, Saby and Joy Castro.

  Most of all, thank you to all the young readers who have expressed their appreciation for Gustav and Fernie and their world.

  Adam-Troy Castro has said in interviews that he likes to jump genres and styles and has there
fore refused to ever stay in place long enough to permit the unwanted existence of a creature that could be called a “typical” Adam-Troy Castro story. As a result, his short works range from the wild farce of his Vossoff and Nimmitz tales to the grim Nebula nominee “Of a Sweet Slow Dance in the Wake of Temporary Dogs.” His twenty prior books include a nonfiction analysis of the Harry Potter phenomenon, four Spider-Man adventures, and three novels about his interstellar murder investigator, Andrea Cort (including a winner of the Philip K. Dick Award, Emissaries from the Dead). Adam’s other award nominations include eight Nebulas, two Hugos, and three Stokers. Adam lives in Miami with his wife, Judi, and three insane cats named Uma Furman, Meow Farrow, and Harley Quinn.

  Kristen Margiotta has been creating spooky, creepy images since her early childhood. Now as an adult, she explores similar themes with more depth and further enjoyment. Since 2005, Kristen has been working as a freelance illustrator, painter, and art instructor. She finds that her roles as visual artist, illustrator, and instructor influence and strengthen each other, and she enjoys the challenges and rewards that come from these endeavors. Kristen is the illustrator of Better Haunted Homes and Gardens, and her work can be found in the homes of collectors throughout the country. She continues to exhibit in galleries, museums, and local events. Kristen resides in Delaware with her husband, Lee, where they both are actively involved in the art and music communities. Learn more at www.kristenmargiotta.com.

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