Gustav Gloom and the People Taker (9781101620748) Read online

  Fernie, who was not only hours past her usual bedtime but, after all, wearing pajamas, found herself yawning and thinking about how nice it would be to sink into one of these big chairs, if only for a moment. It was not a great thought to have, but there it was in her head as if the room had found a fine unoccupied shelf somewhere between her ears and put it there. She shivered. “Why doesn’t the People Taker take these people? It’s not like they’d run away.”

  “He wouldn’t be able to lift any of them,” Gustav said. “Once you sit in any of these chairs, you become part of it forever. These people are just . . . upholstery, who can think and see and remember being people and wish they could move.”

  She gulped. “Can they speak?”

  “Yes, but you don’t want to talk to them. All they ever do is suggest that you pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable.”

  This was somehow even worse. “Why would there even be a room like this in your house? I understand the library and the gallery, but what does something like this have to do with shadows?”

  “The way Great-Aunt Mellifluous once explained it to me is that people who spend their entire lives sitting around never doing anything become shadows of what they could have been, so they deserve a room here as much as anybody.”

  Fernie chewed on this for a bit. She didn‘t like it from any angle. “I kind of want to take back my apology for calling this house stupid.”

  “I thought you might,” Gustav said, without taking any particular offense.

  The pair hurried past the various circles of high-backed chairs where sleepy and motionless and despairing figures sat slumped with nothing to do but stare at one another. Some, driven by boredom or malice, called to the two children, noting that they looked tired and that they really ought to get off their feet.

  “The stairs are over there,” Gustav said, pointing to a black door between one of the fireplaces and a sizable painting of a comfortable chair empty but for a single forlorn hand reaching for freedom from some hopeless prison beneath sofa cushions. “One flight up’s the grand parlor, which you’ve already seen, and once we’re there all we have to do is get you back to the entrance hall and out the front door.”

  The grand parlor would be a relief. The talking shadows had scared her on the way in, but they wouldn’t be so terrible now that she knew what they were and had spoken to a couple.

  She knew she had Gustav to thank for getting this far, and was about to say so when he stopped so short that she almost collided with his back. What Fernie had mistaken for just another patch of darkness on the floor now turned out to be the People Taker, squatting with his back against the door as he waited for Fernie and Gustav to draw close.

  Gustav had said that the People Taker was as human as she was, but when he drew himself to his feet, he was like a column of greasy black smoke rising from some unseen, burning place. An evil, happy grin spread across his pale skin, cracking his face in two. Fernie could imagine him grinning that same grin while doing all manner of cruel and malicious things to all of the people he’d taken.

  “Fffffernie,” he exclaimed with what seemed genuine delight. “Gustavvvvv. I sssssent my pet into the gallery to fetch you. How tricky you mussssst have been to get this far!”

  Gustav kept himself between Fernie and the People Taker. “We were tricky, all right. We buried him.”

  “Did you now?” The People Taker chuckled. “Mussssst have been enjoyable fffffor you. I’ve buried lotsssss of people, and I’ve never gotten tired of it.”

  He took a single, unhurried step. It was clearly the walk of a living, breathing, solid, flesh-and-blood man, but he was also clearly as much a creature of absolute darkness as anything Fernie had seen in this house. He seemed to swallow the surrounding light with every step, putting it out as simply as most people can put out a candle by snuffing the wick between thumb and forefinger.

  For the first time, Fernie noticed that for such a dark presence, he didn’t seem to have a shadow himself. That reminded Fernie that Gustav had hurried her away from her own back in the banquet room, and she turned to check whether it was with her again; and, yes, there it was on the ground, trembling with fear and candlelight.

  Gustav Gloom stepped away from him, forcing Fernie to retreat the same distance. “You’ve never been able to take me. You’ve been trying for months but haven’t ever gotten close. And you won’t ever get to take Fernie, either. I’ll stop you if you try.”

  The People Taker wagged a finger. “Sssssilly boy. Whoever said I could be ssssstopped?”

  He moved. In all her life, Fernie had never seen any man move faster. In an instant, his clutching, pale, white hands became missiles, dragging the impossibly long coal-black sleeves of his arms behind them.

  Before Fernie even knew what had happened, his gloved hands had closed tight around Gustav’s neck.

  Or at least they would have if Gustav hadn’t moved.

  Instead, the cold fingers closed on empty air.

  In the same insanely brief instant, Gustav had shoved Fernie aside and dodged the People Taker’s grasp. Fernie cried an indignant protest as she fell but, even before she hit the floor, had time to appreciate the look of even greater surprise on the People Taker’s face as his hands closed all the way into fists without ever encountering a neck.

  The People Taker’s dark eyes fixed themselves on Gustav and memorized exactly where he’d gone.

  One more impossibly fast lunge later, the terrible fists once again closed on empty air, just short of Gustav’s throat.

  “You’re fffffast,” the People Taker noted.

  “I was raised by shadows,” Gustav replied. “Have you ever tried to catch one?”

  An awful sound, like broken glass crunching into smaller pieces when a boot steps on it, started in the People Taker’s throat. Only the grin on the People Taker’s face made it possible to recognize it as the sound he used for deep, uproarious laughter. “Would you like to know why I’m ssssstill sssssmiling?”

  “Not particularly,” Gustav said.

  “I’m sssssmiling . . . because there’s a diffffference between how fffffast I usually have to move . . . and how fffffast I can move.”

  The People Taker lunged again . . . and this time, when the fingers of his left hand closed, they found an actual neck to grasp. He lifted Gustav high off the ground with nothing but the strength of his left arm and stood there laughing while Gustav dangled, clawing at his fingers.

  As terrible as his laughter was, he really did sound like he was having a good time.

  Then the laughter ended and was replaced by a cry of pain. He wasn’t having anything like a good time anymore.

  As much attention as the People Taker had needed to pay to the strange little boy who had refused to allow himself to be taken, he had completely forgotten to pay attention to the little girl who the little boy had been protecting. And that little girl had belly-crawled across the floor and sunk her teeth into the spot where the hem of his right trouser leg had risen up and revealed an inch or so of pale, white ankle.

  His ankle tasted much worse than she ever would have expected. Beneath a thin layer of dirt and sweat lay another taste so disgusting that it left her wondering how much of his life he had spent wading through troughs of mangled, rotten fish guts. But Fernie was determined to keep biting. She grabbed his foot and his leg and held on, even as the People Taker hollered in pain.

  She almost allowed herself to hope that she and Gustav were winning.

  And then the People Taker, faced with the need to do something with the boy in his hand so he could take care of the girl at his feet, did something terrible that Fernie hadn’t considered at all.

  He threw Gustav away.

  Fernie happened to see Gustav’s face as he sailed backward, reaching out with both arms. His eyes, meeting hers, were filled wi
th apologies, saying more than any number of words ever would have been able to.

  He landed in the seat of one of the empty high-backed chairs.

  His arms and legs fell into place a fraction of a second later, his hands landing palms-down on the armrests.

  He did not get up.

  He didn’t even turn his head, which had hit the seat back and must have become part of it at once. But a terrible, despairing expression appeared on his face. He cried out, “Fernie!”

  Fernie screamed, “Gustav!”

  This was a mistake, as screaming meant releasing her jaw’s grip on the People Taker’s ankle, and while biting his ankle now seemed like a tremendously lame way to fight him, it was also the only idea she’d had. Before she knew it, cold, dead fingers grabbed the collar of her pajamas and yanked her to her feet.

  “That,” the People Taker whispered, “was an unfffffortunate accident. I didn’t mean that to happen at all.”

  “Liar!” Fernie screamed. “You—”

  His other hand clamped tight around her jaw, holding it shut. His thumb and forefinger tightened on her nostrils, cutting off her air and leaving her unable to breathe.

  “I’m ssssserious,” the People Taker said, almost apologetically. “I wanted to take both of you. You were the last two I needed to make my quota. Now your fffffriend’s stuck in that chair ffffforever and I can’t take him at all. It’s a terrible inconvenience to me. Maybe you have a suggestion . . .”

  He released Fernie’s jaw. She gasped, swallowed a deep breath of air, and thrashed, feeling a little piece of herself die inside as her most powerful kick merely brushed against his ribs with a soft and embarrassing thump. “Let me go!”

  The People Taker cocked his head to one side. “An interesting idea. Not one I would have sssssuggested, but an interesting idea nevertheless. Arguably, I could let you go, apologize, lead you out the fffffront door, let you go back home, and never bother you again. Jussssst out of the goodness of my heart or fffffor the sheer novelty of doing something diffffferent for a change. Maybe ifffff I did, my night would not be so awfully . . . predictable.”

  What followed was five seconds of the eeriest silence Fernie had ever known as the People Taker pretended to weigh the pros and cons of her idea.

  Then he decided. “Naaaaahhhhh.”

  He took a satiny black bag out of a coat pocket and took her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  IT’S NOT TIME FOR PANCAKES

  The People Taker turned out to be the kind of fellow who sang a happy tune as he went about his business.

  With Fernie crammed inside his sack, he amused himself with a melody that might have been quite charming to anybody whose idea of music was the squeal car brakes emit when the wheels are skidding on ice.

  Fernie did what she could to drown him out. She yelled for help and called him terrible names and told him that he was in big, big trouble and wept in fear. Then she decided that being angry was better than being terrified and went back to calling him names again.

  None of this was at all useful, at least not as long as she was stuck inside this sack, smelling everybody else who’d ever been stuck in there before her. From what her nose told her, it must have been an awful lot of people, some of whom should have used deodorant.

  After several minutes, he said, “Ahhhhh. We’re here.”

  She heard him dialing a phone. This was hard to digest, not just because Gustav had said that there were no phones inside this house but also because it was impossible to imagine the People Taker having anybody to call. Who on earth could have wanted to answer a phone call from him?

  She couldn’t make out the conversation, but she could tell that it didn’t sound at all like him. He didn’t use his customary reptilian tones but spoke with a warm and friendly voice, concluding with a warm chuckle as he said good-bye.

  The material around her loosened as he undid the drawstring. A pale light barely better than darkness streamed in just before he reached in and pulled Fernie out by the collar.

  Holding her at arm’s length, he whispered, “Loooook.”

  The large circular chamber around them had four equally spaced doorways, dingy gray walls, air so dusty that it burned her lungs, torches trying and failing to dispel the darkness with flickering light, and, at the center of it all, a floor that would have been like any other floor were it not interrupted by a black pit.

  The Pit was circular and had a lower edge just over the side leading to another step down and then the deepest darkness Fernie had ever seen. It was impossible to see very far into what lay below as the gray mist that Fernie had come to recognize as concentrated shadow-stuff churned like a storm-tossed sea less than a foot down. But it was impossible to look at it and not know that it was bottomless.

  The People Taker licked his lips. “That’s the Pit.”

  “Duh,” Fernie managed.

  “Yesssss,” the People Taker agreed, “I’m sssssure you could already tell. It’s a pit, and even if it is one of only ten pathways to the Dark Country in the entire world, there’s ssssstill only a limited number of things it really could look like.”

  “Then why bother to tell me what it is?”

  “Because I want you to understand. I’m not going to throw you in.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No, Fffffernie, I have something better in mind for you. But before you find out what, I’m going to tell you the terrible fate you’ll be ssssspared, so you’ll know how terrible the one awaiting you would have to be in order to be even worse. You sssssee, Fffffernie, while shadows may have no problem using the Pit to travel back and forth from the Dark Country, people have a rougher time of it. Fffffor people, it’s just a long fall. A very long fall. It lasts longer than you could ever imagine. Hours. Days. Sssssometimes weeks or months or years. It can last so long that you’ll wonder if you’ll die of old age before hitting the bottom. Then, when you land . . . you’re ssssstuck in a strange and dangerous place, not at all fffffriendly to human beings. You might wander there for a long time as I did when I fell . . . cold and helplesssss . . . with nobody to talk to and nobody to help you before Lord Obsidian finds you and makes you his ssssslave.”

  “It’s still got to be better than being here with you!”

  The People Taker’s chuckle was like the rattle of a poisonous snake. “Oh, yesssss, dear Fffffernie. It is. You’re a smart girl. That’s exactly the point I was making.”

  All of Fernie’s grim determination to deny this evil man the satisfaction of seeing her beg for mercy nearly turned to water. She almost cried, almost wailed, almost told him that she’d do anything if he just let her go. She resisted, and that almost made her about as brave as any girl in her position could possibly be, but it didn’t feel like bravery to her.

  “Now,” he said, “on to where you’re going instead.”

  The People Taker tucked her under his arm and lugged her through a narrow opening. He proceeded along a winding hallway, up a long, curving flight of stairs, and through a number of stranger passages until he reached a smaller room empty except for an ancient high-backed wooden chair and a rickety table bearing an old-fashioned box-shaped thirteen-inch television. The TV had a V-shaped wire antenna and an empty hole where the picture tube should have been.

  “I’ve never been much of a TV watcher,” the People Taker remarked. “There’s too much sssssinging, too much laughter, and I’ve never liked anything that sounds like people being”—his lip curled as he spoke the next word like a curse—“joyful. But this particular TV was a gift from my master. And it’s ssssspecial. Wait till you see what it does.”

  He put her down. She couldn’t see what he did to keep her in the chair, but when he let go and stepped away to address his attentions to the TV, she couldn’t stand up or throw herself to the floor or do anything else to try to ge
t away. It felt like having a rope around her neck, even though there were no ropes to speak of.

  He played with the rabbit-ear antenna, making images appear where the screen should have been. Most of what came up were black-and-white images of places in the house, not just rooms she and Gustav had visited but places she hadn’t, one of them an odd gallery of paintings that included the wedding portrait of a man who, from the resemblance, could have been Gustav’s father, and a beautiful red-haired woman who must have been his mother. But that vanished, replaced by static, and the next image in line was an aerial view of the Beast limping away from the wreckage of the fallen Awkward Liberty.

  As he worked the antenna, looking for the precise image he wanted, the People Taker chatted away. “After I fell into the Pit and landed where you would have landed, I ssssspent more time wandering lost in the Dark Country than I like to think about. It’s not a nice place, Fffffernie, not even for someone like me. There are things you can’t sssssee that are far worse than the things you can.”

  “It sounds like the kind of place you deserve,” Fernie said.

  “That’s what I thought,” the People Taker agreed. “I began to wonder if I was being punished for all the bad things I’d done, all the people I’d taken. And I began to promise myself that if I ever got out, I’d be a better man.” He paused. “That was, of course, a very sssssilly promise to make. I don’t want to be a better man.”

  Fernie wasn’t surprised. Not that it wouldn’t have been nice for the People Taker to be a better man, but she had the distinct impression that he wouldn’t have had the slightest clue how.

  “So,” he continued, “Lord Obsidian fffffound me and made me a special deal that he’s never offfffered anybody else. He sssssaid that in exchange for my shadow, which he keeps beside him, he’d send me back to the world of people. For every nine people I took and threw into the Pit for him, I could keep one, just one, for my own personal amusement. You may have heard about all the ssssstrange disappearances in your town? I have been working toward my reward.”