Gustav Gloom and the People Taker (9781101620748) (10 page)

On the screen, Fernie's father and sister arrived at the towering double doors of the Gloom mansion, which opened up for them. They peered inside, blinking at the darkness they saw within. Mr. What turned to Pearlie and said something Fernie couldn't hear, no doubt an expert opinion on the kinds of accidents that can befall unlucky people whose houses aren't adequately lit. Fernie couldn't hear Pearlie's answer, either, but it was easy enough to read the single word on her lips:
Whatever.

Then they both entered, and the doors shut behind them.

“You know what?” the People Taker said. “I think I'm going to have fffffun with them. I think I'm going to actually let them go on thinking I'm going to make them pancakes. It'll make the moment when I throw them into the Pit that much more enjoyable. Why don't you watch and see how fffffunny it is.”

Fernie screamed in rage and frustration, while the chuckling People Taker left to
take
her family.

Pancakes would surely not be involved.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THE PEOPLE TAKER MUST BE BRAD

The neighbors had always thought Gustav was the saddest little boy in the world. They thought this because he looked lonely behind the fence, and because he never seemed to smile, never seemed to show that he even knew how to smile.

But he had never truly known despair until he saw the People Taker stuff Fernie in his sack, pull the drawstring tight, and strut out the front door of the Too Much Sitting Room.

He hadn't known despair until he heard Fernie crying his name, ordering him not to even dare think that any of this was his fault.

Gustav wasn't sad that he was now stuck to this chair,
part of
this chair, forever.

He wasn't sad that anybody who entered this room from now until the end of time would always find him, still sitting where he was now.

He wasn't even sad that there was no escape from this predicament, not from now until the very end of the world.

There would be plenty of time to be sad about those things; enough time to forget that he ever was a boy who could get up, walk around, have adventures, and sometimes even go out into the yard and talk to other people.

But right now he couldn't be sad about any of that. He could be sad only about a girl he'd just met for the first time the previous day, who had crossed the street, talked to him, invited him back across the street to meet her family, punched him in the shoulder, called his house stupid, hugged him, and called him a friend, and who had been so kind and brave that she'd taken time to worry about him being sad even as she was being stuffed in a sack and carried away to be thrown in the Pit for Lord Obsidian.

He hadn't really had time to tell her much about himself: not what had happened to his real parents, not how he'd come to live with shadows, not what would happen to him if he ever took one step outside his front yard. He would never be able to show her the fun parts of his house like the carousel or the arcade or even his favorite place, the Planetarium of the Neverworlds.

Nor would he ever have a chance to learn about the world she came from, about what her father was like and what her mother was like and what her sister was like and even what her stupid cat was like. He had wanted to ask her what it had been like to go to school and to walk around under the sun and have people around her who she could touch and talk to and hug as much as she wanted. Most of all, he wished he could ask her what it was like to live a life so special that even when she was being stuffed in a sack by the People Taker, she still had enough room in her heart to worry about how sad this would leave a boy she'd known for less than a day.

That all made Gustav sadder than he'd ever been, sadder than he'd ever known he could be. It made him so sad, in fact, that something happened to him that had not happened to him in years.

He began to cry.

The room blurred. His eyes burned. His tears welled over and streamed down his cheeks in waves. His nose stuffed up and began to run. He shook his head and wiped his face dry with the back of his jacket sleeve and . . .

. . . and . . .

“Wait a minute,” Gustav said.

He studied his right arm, which he'd just used to wipe his face. Doing that had required him to lift it off the armrest. The armrest that his arm was now supposed to be
part
of.

He put his arm back down on the armrest and then immediately picked it up again. He had no trouble moving it. Nor did he have any trouble moving his left arm. Nor, he discovered, did he have any trouble standing up.

“That's interesting,” Gustav said.

He looked down at the chair he had just left. It looked exactly like all the other chairs in the room. It
was
, he knew, exactly like all the other chairs . . . and it should have trapped him in its eternal grip. Except that it hadn't.

“I can stand,” he told the room. “I can
walk
.”

Two dozen people trapped in just as many chairs all shouted at him in just as many languages, all of them calling him their version of the name an English speaker called him. “Showoff!”

Gustav supposed that bragging about his personal miracle in the presence of all those people who were still trapped in their chairs had been a rude thing to do. “Sorry. I'm just surprised. This isn't supposed to happen.”

“So it's not supposed to happen,” one of the trapped figures growled. “We all know it's
not supposed to happen
, and we all know that it
happened, anyway
. I'm sure you can find out why later on. Right now, why don't you go do something useful with yourself other than stand there bragging? Like, gee, I don't know . . .
saving that poor girl
?”

For a man who'd been stuck in an easy chair for the last few centuries, the fellow really did have a way of getting to the heart of a problem.

“Thank you,” Gustav said.

“Don't waste time thanking me,” the trapped man snapped. “Just go!”

Gustav went.

He raced out the door and into the stairwell, taking the steps three at a time and hitting the first landing so fast that he turned himself around by grabbing the railing and swinging himself around like the end of a whip. He took the next set of steps four at a time, wishing that he were like one of his many shadow siblings who, when in a hurry, did not so much run as glide.

He ran thinking of Fernie and how she might be plunging helplessly into the Pit even now.

He threw open the door at the top of the stairs thinking of how he wouldn't let that be true, how the People Taker might have taken his own sweet time carrying her there, and how there were any number of things that could have delayed them.

He burst out into the grand parlor, which was as always teeming with uncounted thousands of dark shapes drifting to and fro on their various mysterious errands. He ran around the grand staircase and toward the opposite wall, heading toward one particular passage out of many, as it was the fastest way to get to the Pit, and hating how far away it was.

His only hope was to get to the Pit as quickly as he could, get to Fernie if she hadn't been thrown in yet, and somehow keep the People Taker busy enough for Fernie to run away. He knew that if he could not defeat the People Taker, the most he might be able to give Fernie was a one-minute head start. Gustav wasn't about to give up even if that minute was the best he could do, but it really would have been nice to work out something more permanent.

He ran toward the corridor that would take him to the secret passage that would take him to the trapdoor that was the fastest possible way to the room where his new friend Fernie had probably already been thrown into the Pit. Then, all of a sudden, he heard a rich, worried voice way on the other side of the parlor, calling, “Hello!?!? Mr. Gloom?”

Gustav recognized the voice. He had heard it once before, when the man who owned it had been standing across the street listening to Mrs. Everwiner's story about the rude cashier.

A girl said, “This house has
ghosts
! Why couldn't we live here?”

Her voice sounded so much like Fernie's, only older, that Gustav's heart suffered a pang at the thought that he might not have his new friend Fernie any longer.

Already knowing what he was about to see and how much it would complicate his problems, Gustav turned toward the source of the voices. Fernie's father and older sister stood at the entrance to the grand parlor, gaping at the sights they had found inside the Gloom household.

The man seemed one step away from panic. The girl seemed incapable of considering that there might be reason for any.

Neither one spotted Gustav right away because he was on the opposite side of the parlor and there were too many overlapping shadows wandering about between them. They didn't notice when Gustav, doing what he knew Fernie would have wanted him to do, turned his back on his only chance to rescue her and started running toward them instead in order to warn them away before they wandered into more trouble.

But as Gustav started to run toward them, the People Taker emerged from one of the side hallways to stride across the room with a big friendly and utterly lying grin on his face.

For some reason Gustav didn't know, the People Taker had disguised himself. He no longer wore the short cape or the crooked top hat. He had changed into a white T-shirt and a pair of shorts as well as a chef's hat and a white apron bearing the words P
ANCAKE
C
HEF
. To Gustav, who knew him, the apron just made him a menacing killer who happened to be wearing a chef's hat and an apron that said P
ANCAKE
C
HEF
. But the getup already seemed enough to reassure Mr. What, who strolled toward him extending a friendly hand. “Hi! You must be Brad!”

Gustav could already tell that he wouldn't reach the Whats before the People Taker did.

But maybe he could still warn them. Maybe he could still impart the danger in words they would believe and get them to run away before it was too late. He threw out his hand and opened his mouth to yell, “No, get away! That's not Brad; that's not anything that could possibly be thought of as a Brad.”

But before he could speak, the air before him got impossibly colder and darker, and he knew that he was already far too late.

An inky blackness swept across the floor like an evil wind, taking on the form of a silent whirlwind that rose from the tiles in his path to swallow up all the space between Gustav and the strangers he would have given his life to save. A mouth wide enough to swallow four of him whole and still have room for fries gaped wide, revealing that the familiar monster was even darker on the inside than it was on the outside.

There was no chance of going around it.

There was no chance of getting past it.

And there was no chance of outrunning it.

The Beast had caught up with him.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

FERNIE WATCHES THE WORST TELEVISION SHOW
EVER

Depending on the way Fernie What looked at it, the People Taker had been either a really considerate maniac or a very cruel one. He'd left the television set on for her and allowed her to watch her father and sister as they ventured, impressed and apprehensive but determined to be good neighbors, down the long entrance hallway of the Gloom mansion.

Like most characters on television doing something that was about to get them killed, they didn't hear anybody watching them tell them that they were about to be killed.

Like anybody who had ever watched a scary movie, Fernie asked the universe at the top of her lungs, “How could
anybody
be stupid enough to walk into
this
house and walk down
that
hall and not know it's bad news?”

The universe was far too polite to point out that she'd done the same thing in search of a lost cat just a few hours earlier.

On the screen, her father and sister arrived and stood at the entrance to the main parlor, their eyes wide as they took in all the hundreds, or thousands, of dark shapes milling about in the room before them.

Mr. What's mouth fell open, but his eyes looked busy. Behind them, Fernie knew, sat a brain counting all the unpadded edges, all the sharp places that could be brushed against, all the shadows where loose nails could be hiding. The grand staircase would of course be the worst thing he saw, as staircases were just teeming with possible accidents. To him, the hundreds of ghostly shapes wandering to and fro before his eyes might not have been even nearly as disturbing as all the possible places where a careless person could trip.

Pearlie didn't seem to have made up her mind what to think of the house or all of the strange shapes moving around inside, but from the light beginning to dawn in her eyes, she was about to declare how much she loved it.

Fernie struggled. The unseen noose around her neck pulled her back. She coughed, used her free hand to search her neck for whatever was holding her back, and found nothing. “This is stupid! How can I possibly be tied down with
an invisible rope
?”

“It's not invisible,” somebody said.

She whipped her head around and saw her own shadow, which the room's single candle cast against one of the gray walls. Like her, it was trapped in a chair, but unlike her, it was held in place by a dark black line extending from its neck to a ring set in the nearest wall. Also unlike her, it had both hands wrapped around that cord and was yanking at it with all its might.

Fernie remembered the banquet hall. “You ate shadow food for me.”

“You were hungry.”

Next, Fernie remembered the library. “And you attacked the Beast for me.”

Her shadow gave the rope another ineffective tug. “You were in trouble.”

Fernie peered at the shadow cord that leashed her shadow self. “The cord isn't around my neck. It's around yours.”

Her shadow struggled. “About time you figured it out!”

On the TV screen, Fernie's dad called out an anxious hello. Beside him, Pearlie declared how much she
loved
this house. The People Taker extended a friendly hand as he strolled across the parlor to say hello. He wore an apron reading P
ANCAKE
C
HEF
.

This struck Fernie as the worst thing he had done yet.
Taking
people and throwing them into a bottomless pit to become slaves of a guy named Lord Obsidian was evil enough, but promising them pancakes first and not giving them any added an entirely different level of cruelty.

Fernie thrashed, felt the usual yank on her neck as punishment, and in desperation turned to her shadow again. It was still struggling uselessly with the shadow cord.

Fernie cried, “Am I only being held here because you're tied down?”

Pulling at the shadow cord with all the strength it had, the shadow Fernie gasped in pain and exhaustion before falling back in defeat. “Yes!”

“That's not right! I know you can hold me in place for some reason, but you can also separate from me anytime you want! Why won't you let me go so I can leave and try to save my family?”

The shadow Fernie gathered up her strength and attacked the shadow cord again.
“Because I love you and I don't want to be separated from you!”

Though it was just a dark outline, the shadow Fernie's efforts seemed heroic; Fernie could almost see the straining muscles, the sheen of sweat, the eyes shut tightly in concentration. But it did the shadow Fernie no good. The cord was too strong to be broken that way.

On the TV screen, Fernie's family and the People Taker had a nice chat as he led them across the parlor.

“Don't worry about all this,” the People Taker assured them. “None of what you're seeing is really real. I'm a professional special effects man for amusement parks and I was working on something just before Fernie came in. I guess I forgot to turn the projector off before getting started on breakfast! Ha, ha, ha!”

He'd said the actual words
ha
,
ha
,
ha
, as his laugh was so chilling, it might have been enough to warn Mr. What that something was terribly wrong.

Mr. What chuckled. “It's pretty impressive work, Brad! You almost fooled me! Me, I'm a safety expert. I make a living out of seeing all the hidden dangers that people don't notice!”

“Really?” The People Taker sounded fascinated. “There much money in that?”

“There is if you're good at it!” Mr. What said. “And I'm the best! No hidden danger ever gets past me ever!”

Fernie had never been the kind of girl who yelled at her dad, not even when he drove her crazy with all his safety talk; but there had been times in her life when she would have liked to, and this was one of those times. As it happened, only the TV set was present, so she yelled at it instead, calling it a big fat dumb stupid-head idiot
safety expert
. When she was done, she whirled to face her shadow again and saw that it was still struggling with the cord around its neck, still wasting time when the People Taker was on the TV leading Fernie's father and sister to the Pit.

Fernie would have given everything she had in the world just for a pair of scissors capable of cutting a shadow cord. If she only had a pair of scissors like that, she could have freed her shadow and talked it into running away with her—maybe even into helping her get back to the Pit before the People Taker did—and finding some way to push
him
into the Pit before he could do the same to her family. Then they could go back to the Too Much Sitting Room and do something, anything, to get poor Gustav out of that chair.

There was no possible way, she thought, to get a pair of scissors while she was as leashed as her shadow and might as well be making shadow pictures on the wall for all the good she could do for herself.

There was no—

Her last thought had just hit a brick wall and bounced back.

She looked at her right hand. She looked at the shadow version of herself, still struggling with the cord. She looked at her hand again.

It couldn't possibly be that simple.

She said, “Hey.”

Her shadow said, “What?”

“Go back to doing what I do. Just for a second.”

She held her hand up to the flickering light of the candle and made scissoring motions with her index and middle fingers. On the wall where the shadows were cast, it looked just like a child's hand pretending to be a pair of scissors. Fernie moved her hand against the light, then moved her shadow scissors up the wall, against the shadow cord that bound her shadow self.

She closed her index and middle fingers.

The cord snapped.

Freed, the shadow Fernie leaped up, spinning frantically as it tried to figure out what to do.

Also freed, the real Fernie did the same. “You silly whatever you are! Why didn't you just
tell
me I could do that?”

Fernie's shadow glared at her . . . and, for a moment, just like Great-Aunt Mellifluous, didn't look like a shadow at all. It had form and substance and a face, all of which looked just like Fernie's except darker and smokier and more transparent. The only bright parts of it were its eyes, which had so much life in them, so much inner strength and wild energy, that it startled Fernie to realize that they looked just like her own. “Sorry,” the shadow Fernie said. “I didn't think of it.”

Fernie had to admit that there was something about being captured and tied to a chair that was capable of reducing even shadows to shadows of their usual selves. But there was no time to worry about it now. She whirled around, grabbed the chair by its back, and ran from the room, using the same dark passage the People Taker had used to carry her in.

Her shadow followed her along the stone wall, its outline turning rough and bumpy wherever it was distorted by the uneven stones. “No, Fernie! Not that way! I have to lead you out of the house!”

Fernie wanted that more than she'd ever wanted the sum total of gifts she'd ever received for all her birthdays, but there was still something she wanted even more. “No, thanks.”

“I know how you feel,” the shadow Fernie said. “But I'm telling you, you can't stop him. You saw the way he beat Gustav. Even before Lord Obsidian got him, he was stronger and faster and more dangerous than you could ever hope to be, and he came out of the Dark Country with strength that no man should ever be allowed to have. If you get in his way again, you'll just give him another chance to
take
you. It's safer to just let me show you the way out.”

“I know,” Fernie said, breaking into a run as she reached a flight of stairs she had last traveled as a prisoner under the People Taker's arm.

“You're headed back to the Pit room,” Fernie's shadow noted as the real Fernie carried her chair down those steps.

“Yup.”

“You know I can stop you,” Fernie's shadow said. “I stopped you at the banquet hall and I could stop you now. It would be for your own good.”

“So would saving my family.”

“You don't even have a plan. Please. You could get away.”

Knowing that she didn't have the time for this conversation but also aware that she could not escape it, Fernie stopped between one step and the next, put the chair down, and pointed an angry finger at her own shadow's face. “Do you really think that would be a happy ending?”

“No. But you could live.”

“Yes, I could live. But let me tell you what would become of me if I
lived
after not even trying to save my father and sister. It wouldn't be all bad. My mother would come home from her adventures and take care of me, but as hard as she'd try, I'd never smile again. I'd never make any friends because I wouldn't deserve any. I'd never do anything that was the slightest bit fun because I wouldn't deserve that, either. I'd have nightmares every night for the rest of my life. I'd spend all my free time sitting in dark rooms with all the shades drawn and all the lights off, forever, because wherever there's no light there are no shadows, and as much as I could help it I wouldn't ever want to see any shadow ever again. Especially,” she said, jabbing her finger at her shadow, “if you didn't do something to help me save them,
you
. That's how I would
live
. And living that way is
not worth it
.”

Fernie said all of that in as close to a single breath as she could, because there wasn't much time left and slowing herself down long enough to breathe could have been the difference between a father and a sister living with her in a Fluorescent Salmon house and a father and a sister lost to the Dark Country.

Her shadow floated before her, looking stunned. Then, after a moment, it said, “Okay.”

Fernie thrust her chin out. “Okay
what
?”

“Okay
okay
.”

“Are you gonna
help
me?”

“I
said
okay.”

“I didn't know what kind of
okay
that was. It could have been some other kind of
okay
.”

“No, it meant
okay
. Okay?”

“Okay,” Fernie said.

She picked up the chair again and resumed her charge to the rescue, her bemused shadow following close behind. She still didn't have the slightest idea what she was going to do when she saw the People Taker again, but it didn't matter. He was in trouble now.