Gustav Gloom and the People Taker (9781101620748) (11 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE BATTLE OF THE SMASHING COUCHES

Seeing before it the boy who had engineered that whole embarrassing business with the Statue of Awkward Liberty, and being, like most of the world's most terrible monsters, excessively concerned with its own dignity, the Beast gathered up all of its impossible strength and resentment at being made to look stupid and attacked.

The first slash of its claws could have sliced a school bus in half.

It was a little surprised when the swing cut nothing but air and didn't end with various pieces of little boy stuck between its claws. That was all right. Every monster is used to fighting the kind of people who insist on fighting monsters and knows that many of them have some surprisingly good moves. The boy had pulled off an impressive dodge, but it was not the kind of thing that even a boy raised by shadows could possibly do more than once. He seemed to recognize that he was doomed. Just look at him: falling to his knees, throwing his arms over his head in what looked like a desperate attempt to protect himself from being crushed like a bug.

There's only one possible answer to that for a self-respecting Beast, and that was to go ahead and crush the boy like a bug.

The Beast thought this was an absolutely terrific idea and would have given itself a medal for it had it ever imagined the giving of awards for rending and tearing. After all, crushing puny boys like bugs was one of its favorite activities. It considered itself very good at it, and given the powers of speech it would have been able to deliver a fine scholarly lecture on all the best ways to smash them into nice, flat puddles.

It curled two of its terrible shapeless hands in a pair of boulder-size fists and brought them down in a mighty hammering blow. The parlor echoed with a terrible crash of splintered tile and powdered stone.

The Beast peered into the crater its fists had made of a section of parlor floor and would have been perfectly satisfied were it not for the absence of any crushed little boys.

It seemed that this kid actually
could
dodge the Beast's blows, which would have been worrisome enough, if not for a more pressing question: Why had the child bothered with all that stuff with falling to his knees and throwing his arms over his head and all but daring the Beast to try to smash that one particular spot if he wasn't going to be considerate and let himself be hit?

The Beast suddenly felt something scrambling up one of its arms.

It was the boy.

The Beast found this extremely annoying, not to mention puzzling, because no flesh-and-blood boy should have been able to climb a creature made of shadow, even if that creature had made itself solid enough to hurt him. It just wasn't in the rules. The Beast had never seen the list of rules, but it knew that there
were
rules and it knew that this broke all of them.

This annoyed the Beast so much that it reached over with one of its many other arms to pluck the little boy off and crush him into chunky boy juice. But by the time the Beast had grabbed for the spot where the boy had been, he had scrambled onto its shoulders. By the time the Beast grabbed for him again, the boy had scrambled farther and was wrapped around the creature's neck. By the time the Beast grabbed at its neck, the boy was past the neck and was riding the top of its head.

The Beast roared with confusion.

In the Beast's experience, flesh-and-blood things couldn't touch shadow things that didn't want to be touched and certainly should not have been able to climb them like a ladder.

A possible answer flitted across the Beast's tiny mind before sinking into the murk of its stupidity. Maybe the boy was somehow neither flesh nor shadow but something
else
, something the Beast had never even heard of, something the Beast had never once paused to consider.

The Beast was still thinking about how ridiculous this was when it felt the first sharp pain on the top of its head. Its next roar was one of distress, and for the first time the Beast began to realize that it might be in serious trouble. It didn't enjoy that idea even one bit.

Gustav hung on to the top of the Beast's massive head, clutching shadow-stuff. The way the Beast was bucking and running around in circles, he needed both hands just to stay put, which meant that as far as pressing his attack was concerned, there was really only one thing he could do.

He took a bite.

Shadows have a taste all their own, and this one tasted a little like the mud at the bottom of a duck pond that's never been dredged.

The Beast cried out in pain and grabbed for him again. Gustav scrambled down the Beast's spine to that annoying place in the center of everybody's back that no one can ever scratch unless they have a long stick or a very good friend.

He took another bite.

Now thoroughly indignant, the Beast spun around two or three times to look for some way of dealing with this annoyance and then picked up one of the parlor's many dusty couches in one of its hands and tried to use it as a flyswatter. By this time, Gustav was no longer on its back but had climbed back to the top of its head.

The Beast smacked itself over the head with the couch.

The couch broke in half.

Gustav had seen the dusty old antique being swung in his direction and dropped down over the creature's sloping forehead. He rode the narrow strip of darkness between what should have been the eyes, remaining there even as the wreckage of the couch plummeted past him.

The Beast roared in frustration and rage and cast about for more things to hit itself with. It found another couch, this one plucked from a conversation pit where a dozen shadows in elegant dress had been sitting together and enjoying fond memories of their latest trip to Liechtenstein. The shadows dove for safety as the Beast seized their couch and whomped itself over the head hard enough to reduce the poor antique to dust.

It didn't notice that Gustav had already jumped off and was running as fast as he could.

He was halfway to the corridor where the People Taker had escorted Fernie's father and sister when he heard more smashing furniture behind him. He could tell that he'd gained only a few seconds. But he didn't care about that. He cared more about something that he hadn't had time to realize until now.

Since the People Taker had returned to the parlor without Fernie, it almost certainly meant that he was already done with her, that she was probably already plummeting into the Pit and facing a lifetime of slavery at the hands of Lord Obsidian. Her whole life had been ruined just because she'd happened to move in across the street from Gustav Gloom. Her whole life had been destroyed just because Gustav had been content all these months with hiding from the People Taker instead of doing something about him.

It was too late to save her. It would probably be too late to save her family. But it would not be too late to make the People Taker pay.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

MR. WHAT KINDLY OFFERS HIS SERVICES

Fernie's dad had always prided himself on his deep understanding of life's many dangers and on his remarkable ability to take in a complicated situation and boil it down to its most important elements. This was, he thought, what made him such a sought-after safety expert.

It was with his vast well of knowledge in the field of personal safety that he stood with his older daughter, Pearlie (who for some reason kept tugging on his arm, whispering “Daaaaaad” with a sudden whiny insistence that was utterly unlike her), and his odd new neighbor Brad Gloom (who for some reason stood grinning at him, his lips growing wider and wider to reveal teeth that were far pointier than they needed to be) in a room that did not look like a kitchen (and was instead a kind of shadowy dungeon, complete with a stone-lined bottomless pit at its center) and asked, “Did we make a wrong turn?”

Brad Gloom's grin was now ear to ear. “No, Mr. What. You have fffffollowed me exactly where I intended to
take
you.”

Mr. What adjusted his eyeglasses, studied his neighbor's face for several seconds, then turned to the Pit, and after a few seconds of serious consideration, thought he understood. “I'm certainly not surprised that you showed this to me.”

This turned out to be precisely the very last thing Brad Gloom expected to hear. “Oh?”

“Of course,” Mr. What said. “Once I told you about my background as a safety expert, you could hardly be expected to do anything else. And you're right. Naturally, you need to put up a safety railing around that thing. And a warning sign. If you want, I'd be happy to help you fix it up after breakfast.”

Nothing Mr. What could have said or done gave him and his older daughter a better chance of lasting the next few minutes than the words that had just come out of his mouth. They stopped the People Taker—or Brad Gloom, as Mr. What believed him to be—utterly. “A warning sign? Really? Are you ssssserious?”

“Of course I'm serious,” Mr. What said. “I would suggest one that points out this rather serious danger. Otherwise, somebody could fall in and get hurt.”

The infinite wonder in Mr. Gloom's eyes as he stood before Mr. What slowly shaking his head was a thing to behold. “Because someone could always wander by my bottomless pit, without warning, down here in my basement.”

Mr. What thrust out his chin and declared the most deeply held philosophy of his entire life. “Better safe than sorry.”

The People Taker fell silent for ten seconds, then started to laugh.

It was the laugh of somebody who was not just bad but proud of being bad, in the same way that Mr. What was proud of his lifelong support of safety railings. Only a man like Mr. What, for whom safety had always been a matter of what dangers could be predicted and what special padding had to be attached to things to protect people from them, could have failed to sense that he was in the presence of a monster.

But Pearlie sensed it. She swallowed all the nervousness that had been building in her since she first saw the sudden evil in Mr. Gloom's eyes and stepped between her father and the man threatening them. Her voice trembled, but there was more rage and grief in it than fear. “You threw her in there, didn't you?”

Mr. What was shocked by his daughter's impossible rudeness.
“Pearlie!”

Pearlie ignored her father and focused all her attention on the figure she knew only as Mr. Gloom. Her voice quavered, but behind it was the kind of courage she and Fernie had both inherited from their mother. “You're not a nice man who makes pancakes. You threw my little sister in there. And now you want to throw us in. That's what this is all about. That's the kind of man you are.”

Mr. Gloom's smile faded, replaced by a grimace that seemed to drain all the heat from the room. “Yesssss, my dear. That's exactly the kind of man I am.”

He moved.

Pearlie had not been raised by shadows and was not nearly as fast as Gustav. She was not able to evade the People Taker. She just barely had time to do the first thing that came to mind, which was to shove her father away as hard as she could, before the bad man could seize her by the throat.

Mr. What tried to regain his balance, but all he managed to do was change the direction of his fall. Instead of toppling through the open doorway behind him, he spun, fell sideways, and hit the stone wall with his head. There was no crunch, but there was a loud
thud
. He sank the rest of the way to the floor, out cold and no doubt having a very nice dream about where everything even the least bit dangerous was corrected by a safety inspector.

The bad man lifted Pearlie off the ground by her neck, her legs kicking and thrashing with a fury that had more to do with sheer indignation than will to survive. His arm was so long that none of her kicks came even close to hitting him, and her punches just brushed his arm without affecting him at all. He let her choke for several seconds before, that evil smile spreading again, he spun on his heels and began to stride toward the Pit with the struggling Pearlie at arm's length.

He was almost to the Pit when the shadow of a little girl flew in through one of the other doorways, flitted through the air, and darted straight at his face. The People Taker had spent too much time hiding out in the Gloom mansion in the day and venturing forth to
take
people at night to be scared by shadows, but this one distracted him at a key moment. He waved his arm to shoo the annoying thing away, flapping Pearlie at it like she was a towel being snapped at an intrusive fly.

The little girl shadow circled around him and then flew at his face a second time as insistent as a moth determined to get at a lightbulb. This time the People Taker recognized the shadow, because he'd used a shadow cord to leash it not all that long ago. His cry of realization was almost delighted. “It's Fffffernie!”

“No,” the real Fernie said from behind him. “It's just my shadow.”

In the surprisingly long and rich history of people hitting other people in the back with chairs, there have been a number of more effective swings. A lot of times the chairs were heavier, and the people swinging them were stronger. Fernie was just a young girl and would not have made any list of the top ten. Frankly, she didn't even crack the top hundred.

This is not even close to the same thing as saying that the impact didn't hurt.

The People Taker fell to one knee, dropping far enough for Pearlie to land with her feet on the floor and be able to swallow a quick breath. He stood almost immediately, yanking her off her feet again and resuming his march toward the Pit with her at arm's length. His strides were so long that Fernie had to run after him to keep up.

She swung the chair again.

This time he reached behind him with his free hand and caught her midswing, snatching the chair out of her grasp with an audible
snap
. A quick overhand toss and it plummeted into the Pit. If it hit anything on the way down, even the Pit walls, no sound returned to offer testimony.

“There,” he said. “That's better. Don't worry, Fffffernie. I'll be dropping her soon enough. And then you sssssecond. I've changed my mind about your being the one I'll keep. Your fffffather is way too entertaining to give up.”

He was now fewer than three steps away from dangling Pearlie over the Pit. Fernie's shadow darted at his face again, and this time became solid enough to strike him a couple of times, but he didn't seem to be bothered or slowed at all. Fernie jumped on the People Taker's back, wrapping her arms around his neck as if the slight addition of her own weight possibly stood any chance of bringing him down. It didn't, as she knew it wouldn't, but she had no ideas left, and doing something, even something that didn't work at all, was better than doing nothing.

Two steps from the Pit now.

One.

Suddenly another tiny form ran into the room and scrambled up the People Taker's back, wrapping his arms around the villain's neck and unbalancing him so much that he actually had to take a single step backward to keep himself from falling over.

“Gustav!” Fernie cried.

It was indeed Gustav, who as far as Fernie knew should have been part of a chair in the Too Much Sitting Room for the rest of his life but was instead running around and free and, most wonderfully,
here
.

Gustav seemed just as surprised and delighted to see Fernie as she was to see him, but it didn't stop him from treating the People Taker's ears like the lids of peanut butter jars that just needed a strong grip and a decisive twist before they'd agree to come off.

They didn't come off, unfortunately, but they did hurt the People Taker even more than being hit in the back with the chair had. He spun in a circle and stumbled away from the Pit, almost completely crossing the room before getting control of himself and managing to stand upright again.

He threw Pearlie away. She sailed across the room, hit the floor, and skidded to a stop at the edge of the Pit, arms and legs flailing. For one terrifying heartbeat she almost rolled in, but then she looked down, straight down, into the infinite darkness below her, and almost levitated away with instinctive fear of the country far below.

Unburdened now, the People Taker spun his arms trying to grab Gustav. But the strange boy had jumped off his shoulders and was not there to be grabbed; he was instead standing just beyond the People Taker's reach, saying, “It isn't going to be that easy.”

Ignoring him, the People Taker snarled, ripped Fernie away from his neck, held her at arm's length as she shrieked, and resumed his march back toward the Pit.

Crying out, Gustav jumped on his back again, but all his additional weight accomplished was to drive the People Taker toward the Pit faster. Pearlie lowered her head and charged him with everything that she had, ramming him in the belly and forcing him back half a step. While the People Taker was off balance, Fernie took the opportunity to scramble onto his back.

Fernie's shadow swooped around another time, again flying at the People Taker's face. Angry fingernail scratches appeared on his cheeks. A flurry of movement ended with three children and one angry shadow riding on the People Taker's back and pounding him with everything they had.

It still wasn't enough to stop him. The People Taker was stronger than all of them put together and was still able to march forward, the grin widening on his face as he saw his victory growing closer with every step.

Then yet another shadow flew across the room and wrapped itself around the People Taker's head, crying out in the voice of a being too brave and too formidable to have ever worried about being protected by a safety railing. It pounded the People Taker on the face with its fists, driving him back.

“Let them go!” that new shadow roared in a voice deeper and stronger than any Fernie had heard from the man who still lay out cold by the doorway.

“Dad!?!?”
Fernie gasped.

“You know better than that, Fernie! I'm not him; I'm just his shadow! But he'd be doing this himself if he could!”

Fernie had always known that her father wanted her safe, but it had never occurred to her that he could fight for her. With his shadow, she dared to hope, they might even have a chance.

But no; the People Taker was so strong that he could force himself forward even with three children and two shadows weighing him down. Groaning from the effort, he gathered up his strength and staggered toward the Pit.

Pearlie's shadow and Gustav's shadow also separated from their people and added their own fury to the battle, punching and hitting the People Taker with a ferocity that might have been too much for any other man. Pearlie's shadow wrapped itself around his ankles and Gustav's shadow concentrated on pounding his nose, both while calling him the kinds of names that even a man who made people disappear for fun might have found more insulting than he deserved.

It slowed him down only a little. He continued carrying them all toward the Pit.

The three children and now four shadows on the People Taker's back did the only thing they possibly could: They started screaming for help. Fernie and Pearlie cried out for their real flesh-and-blood father, who still wasn't moving. Gustav cried out for Great-Aunt Mellifluous, the shadow Mr. Notes, and whomever else he could think of. The shadows in the fight all cried out for any of their kind who might not only be able to hear them but also be inclined to come help.

None of this did any real good. No dark army came running to their rescue.

And then, three steps from the edge, things got even worse.

An inhuman roar from one of the entrances to the room established that the Beast had caught up with Gustav at last, and it so completely filled up the doorway that it resembled a walking wall of darkness.

Fernie screamed. Pearlie saw the Beast for the very first time and screamed louder. As someone who had already tangled with what they were facing and knew how badly it doomed their chances of defeating the People Taker as well, Gustav might have screamed louder than the two girls put together if he'd had the chance to make a sound, which he didn't. Because that's when a yowling and spitting black-and-white missile with fur standing straight up all over his little body rocketed into the room and launched himself, claws first, at the People Taker.