Gustav Gloom and the People Taker (9781101620748) Read online

  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.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book, and the series to come, has only one father but a number of uncles and aunts.

  You would not now be seeing it without the persistence of agents extraordinaire Joshua Bilmes and Eddie Schneider of the Jabberwocky Literary Agency; you would not now be reading it in its present form without the input of the members of the South Florida Science Fiction Society writer’s workshop, a group that includes Brad Aiken, Dave Dunn, and Chris Negelein; you would not now be enjoying the same experience free of verbal land mines and other clutter without the ace red pen of 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 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.

  Michael Burstein contributed no input whatsoever to the composition of this volume, but has for years now made regular, inexplicable appearances on the acknowledgment pages of my books. I started this because it makes him yelp in bed and wakes up his wife, Nomi. I’m a strange man.

  Adam-Troy Castro has said in interviews that he likes to jump genres and styles and has therefore 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 attended the University of Delaware, where she majored in Visual Communications with a concentration in Illustration. Kristen received the Visual Communications Award for Excellence in Illustration, along with another colleague, during her final year at the university. When she graduated in 2005, Kristen began receiving commissions from buyers and selling her paintings. She also began exhibiting at regional galleries and events. In 2009, Kristen illustrated her first children’s book, Better Haunted Homes and Gardens, and made her southwest gallery debut at the Pop Gallery in New Mexico. She is currently preparing for her first NYC gallery exhibit at the Animazing Gallery, scheduled for December 2012. Besides being an artist and illustrator, Kristen teaches at the Center for the Creative Arts in Yorklyn, Delaware, working with creative and exciting students who enjoy the arts.