Gustav Gloom and the People Taker (9781101620748) (12 page)

Harrington landed on the People Taker's face and stuck there, front claws digging into his temples, rear claws digging into his neck, angry mouth biting his nose. The People Taker shrieked but still stumbled the remaining two steps toward the edge of the Pit. Gustav turned what would have been his scream of fear into a shout of urgent command.

“Everybody let go!”

The What sisters dove for the floor. The shadows flew at the ceiling. Gustav remained on the People Taker's back until he knew they were clear, then dove away at the last second, pushing off with one furious kick.

The People Taker teetered with one foot on and one foot off the edge of the Pit, his arms spinning like pinwheels in a desperate attempt to regain his balance. Harrington registered the vast open space below him and, with a cat's unerring instinct for self-preservation, decided that the rage he felt at this guy who'd threatened his people was not quite worth sticking around for the full plunge. He leaped straight up, his back curled in a feline arc.

His leap provided the last fatal nudge.

The People Taker screamed and spun his arms but fell in, his splash into the shadow-stuff sending clouds of darkness puffing into the air around him.

The Beast saw its master plunge into the Pit, let out its own inhuman cry of grief and rage, and also charged, a billowing, shapeless darkness afraid of losing what might have been the only being in two worlds it could possibly ever obey. The wind it made as it passed over the prone children felt like a hurricane, if any hurricane wind could be not just powerful and destructive but also downright malicious. Caught up in the wind, the What girls each slid a couple of feet closer to the edge before hugging the floor tighter and managing to hold on.

The Beast cleared the backs of Gustav and the two What girls and plunged into the Pit, looking like a cloud of black exhaust being sucked back into a hole. The very last of it disappeared just as the yowling Harrington, who had leaped straight up and not off in some other direction as he'd intended to, plummeted back down toward the Pit, thrashing all four legs as if he could somehow turn the air to water and swim the distance to safety.

He didn't quite make it to solid ground.

Just as Harrington was about to be swallowed by the shadowy blackness, Gustav, who'd hurled himself toward the edge and made a wild grab over the side, pulled him back up by the scruff.

“Nice cat,” he murmured, scratching him on the top of the head.

“Tell me about it,” the trembling Fernie said. “I'm never calling him
stupid cat
again. He is
so
getting extra noogums today.”

Harrington purred. The shadow Harrington, which had joined him on that last charge and was now beside him duplicating his movements as it had been for all of his life, made no sound but seemed just as pleased with this most recent development as the real cat was. Just what had transpired between real cat and shadow cat during the long night was something that neither of them seemed inclined to explain, but they had certainly come to some kind of understanding.

Fernie glanced at Pearlie, who was sitting up and just starting to realize that she still didn't understand anything that had happened. Mussed by the wind, the hair on the heads of both sisters stood up almost as straight as Gustav's. They both glanced at their father, who still lay unconscious in the corner, a slight smile on his lips the only indication that he might have sensed everything was all right.

Gustav released Harrington, who stretched, licked a paw, and hopped into Fernie's lap.

“See?” Gustav said. “I told you I'd find your cat.”

Fernie didn't have a laugh in her, not quite yet. She coughed, spit out dust, and told her sister, “Pearlie, this is Gustav. He's
by far
the coolest friend I've ever had.”

Shaking her head, Pearlie managed a breathless, “Really, I got that.”

“Gustav,” Fernie continued, “this is my sister, Pearlie. She's
by far
the coolest older sister I've ever had.”

Gustav looked equally dazed. “I got that, too. Hi, Pearlie.”

Pearlie said, “Hi, Gustav.”

All three nodded at one another and then collapsed on their backs.

EPILOGUE

CHOCOLATE CHIPS ON SUNNYSIDE TERRACE

The next day, Fernie What sat on the stoop of her Fluorescent Salmon house and watched the shadows dance. It was a bright, sunny day, so the shadows were easy to spot if you knew where to look for them. In the tiny patches of mixed darkness and light formed by the leaves of every tree on Sunnyside Terrace, there were a number of other shapes amusing themselves with games of tag.

From time to time, one of the shadows would dart back across the street to the constant gray murk of the Gloom yard or from the Gloom yard on other mysterious errands.

Gustav had told her that shadows had always been this open about their activities and this easy to spot, not just here but everywhere they lived. It was, he said, just the kind of thing flesh-and-blood people overlooked until they really saw it for the first time, at which point they never stopped seeing it.

Fernie found that she didn't mind. In her book, anything that made life more interesting was a good thing.

Mr. What came out dressed in an old pair of jeans and one of his favorite T-shirts, one displaying a list of instructions on what people should do if they're ever attacked by a bear. He carried two glasses of ice water and handed one to Fernie as he sat beside her.

She sipped. “Thanks, Dad.”

“I wanted to make sure again that you're okay.”

“I'm fine.”

“You sure?”

“I'm sure, Dad. I really am.”

He didn't seem to have heard her. “Because if you're not okay, I'm serious about what I said. We can always find another house in another neighborhood. Somewhere safer.”

Fernie had been sitting here thinking about what to tell her father if he said that to her again as he had at least a hundred times since their safe departure from the Gloom house. “I know you only say that because you love us.”

Mr. What suddenly found his glass of water very interesting. He hid his eyes, but it was too late; Fernie had already seen them go shiny. That had happened a lot in the last twenty-four hours. He said, “But for you to look out the window every day and see
that house
right there and be reminded of everything bad that happened . . .”

“I'm also reminded of the good things,” Fernie said. “I met Gustav there. And his great-aunt Mellifluous, who was also very nice. And there's a library with every book that people never got around to writing and a sculpture gallery filled with some of the craziest statues you ever saw. I had fun there, in between all the scary parts. If you ever let me, I'd go back in a second.”

His eyes darkened. “And that's exactly why we need to move, Fernie. It's not safe.”

She measured her next words carefully. “But that's the point, Dad. The world doesn't have any safe places.”

He looked stricken. “Oh, honey . . .”

“No, it's okay. I'm not saying it just because I had a scary night. I've seen your books. Some places have earthquakes. Others have hurricanes or avalanches or forest fires or wars. You told me once how we couldn't ever go to New York City because somebody's air conditioner could fall out an apartment window and onto our heads or to Hawaii because they have volcanoes. It seems to me that every place has something, Dad. We just moved to a place that has one of the stranger things.”

“But, Fernie . . . ,” he whined.

“I know. You're the dad in this family and that means you get to decide whether we leave or stay. But I just need to say, I think people always have to decide what dangers they're willing to live near in order to also live near the people they care about. And I care about Gustav. I think he's a good kid, and I don't think he deserves to be lonely. I don't want to move away and not be his friend anymore.”

Mr.What looked away from her and toward the black house across the street. His eyes grew distant and sad in a way that Fernie had never seen. He might have been thinking about anything, but she was pretty sure he was thinking about what had happened after the defeat of the People Taker.

Gustav had escorted the What family all the way to the front gate and then stayed behind as they stepped off his property and back into the sunlight.

Mr. What had done something surprising then. He'd turned around and begged Gustav to go with them. He'd said that living in a dusty, dark old house with nothing but shadows for company and any number of dangers to worry about was no way for a young boy to grow up. He'd said that if Gustav followed them across the street, he could stay with them for as long as he wanted.

Fernie had never been prouder of her father in her entire life.

But then Gustav had shown them all why this could never be. He'd stuck his hand through the gap between the iron bars of his front gate and into direct sunlight. His flesh had started to smoke and burn, boiling away with an angry hiss. By the time he withdrew his hand back into the perpetual overcast on his side of the gate, his skin oozed with blisters.

“I'm not a shadow,” Gustav explained with the same spooky calm he used to explain everything. “But I'm not really a flesh-and-blood person, either. That's why I was able to leave the Too Much Sitting Room. I didn't know it, but the chairs there only capture
people
.”

Fernie and her family had stared at Gustav's hand, watching as the gray mist that covered the Gloom yard rose from the ground, swirled around his hand, and became part of it, instantly repairing the damage the sunlight had done.

Pearlie had murmured a soft, “But what are you then?”

Gustav had shrugged, and for just a moment looked like he'd always looked to all the other neighbors on Sunnyside Terrace: like the saddest little boy in the world.

He'd said, “I'm not sure,” and walked away, darkness rising up like a curtain to shroud him until he was gone and the yard was empty.

There were still a number of questions that Fernie hadn't had a chance to ask him. She wanted to know who Gustav's real parents were, how he had come to be adopted by the shadows of the Gloom mansion, and just what his childhood had been like if he'd never been with anybody who could hug him. She also wanted to tell him that everything would be all right but wasn't sure that was true. There were things she hadn't told him yet, things that made her suspect that the danger wasn't really over.

The People Taker had told her that falls into the Pit weren't fatal, and there was nothing she could think of, based on everything she had learned, that could ever stop this evil shadow, Lord Obsidian, from just sending him back to the world of light to try again.

The front door opened, and Pearlie stepped out carrying a bowl wrapped in aluminum foil. “That cat,” she said, shaking her head.

“What's he doing?” Fernie wanted to know.

“What else would he be doing? He's chasing his new best friend, his shadow, around the living room. And then it's chasing him. They're getting along just fine now. They're nutsy-kooky, the two of them. I guess we're stuck with both of them.”

“I guess it's not all we're stuck with,” Mr. What said with a sigh, unhappy about living across the street from such a strange house but surrendering to the will of his daughters. He looked at Fernie and Pearlie. “Are we ready to do this?”

“Yup,” said Fernie.

Mr. What took one hand of each of his daughters and walked with them to the street, stopping at the curb to look left, right, and—just in case of any airplanes coming in for emergency landings—up. They opened the front gate of the Gloom yard and strolled past the clutching hand of a tree and the gamboling tufts of smoke that could be the shadows of dogs or cats or people or stranger things. They knocked on the front door and waited there until it opened and the shadows gathered in the front hall.

“We'd like to talk to Gustav,” Mr. What told the shadows politely.

The doors closed, and a short time passed before they opened again, this time with Gustav Gloom behind them. He was dressed in another jet-black suit with another jet-black tie, and his hair still stood straight up, though it was so shiny that it must have been, somehow, recently washed.

He seemed surprised to see them. “I thought you'd move away.”

“Don't be stupid,” Fernie said, quickly putting an end to that. “We brought you a gift.”

He glanced at Mr. What and at the bowl Pearlie carried before turning his gaze back to Fernie. “What is it?”

“You told me something the last time I visited,” Fernie said. “You said that your family can't go shopping, so there's no real food anywhere in your house. You said that's why your shadow always eats for you.”

“Yes.”

“You also said that you've lived here as long as you can remember.”

“Yes.”

“So I put that all together and it seems that you've never really had anything to eat, not without your shadow's help, for as long as you've lived.”

“It's not like I ever go hungry,” Gustav said defensively.

“I know that. But you don't get to enjoy food, either. I know, because my shadow ate for me while I was there and I didn't get to taste even a bit of it. So we're going to start bringing you some treats to enjoy. Pearlie made you some chocolate chip cookies. Here they are. Try one.”

Pearlie peeled back the aluminum foil, revealing a mound of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

“Go ahead,” she said. “They're for you.”

Gustav Gloom's eyes darted from Mr. What to the two sisters to the bowl of unfamiliar but tempting treats. He looked dubious. At last, with the air of a boy who forces himself to taste something only because he has to be polite, he reached into the bowl . . . and pulled his hand back without a cookie. “They're warm.”

“They're supposed to be,” Fernie said. “They just came out of the oven. Come on. After fighting the People Taker, this is nothing.”

Glancing at Fernie again for one last note of reassurance, he reached into the bowl a second time and brought out the smallest cookie in the bunch. He looked at it, sniffed it, again looked like he would have rather been anywhere else doing anything else, and finally put it between his teeth and bit down.

He chewed.

They waited.

And then, for the very first time in the memory of anybody who lived in any of the colorful houses on Sunnyside Terrace, Gustav Gloom smiled.