Gustav Gloom and the Castle of Fear by Adam-Troy Castro

Author:Adam-Troy Castro
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2016-06-16T10:55:11+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Fernie Loses Her Mind

Between them, the What girls had been taken prisoner an awful lot this summer vacation.

Fernie didn’t know exactly how her sister felt about it, but speaking just for herself, it was getting old.

The guards had leashed Fernie and Mr. Gloom, and stuffed Penny’s shadow into a glass jar, but these precautions were unimportant. The fact was, there were more than twenty guards, and the chances of pulling off a successful escape from them was just about zero, so all she could do was march along looking angry. This she did very well. If irate facial expressions could be bottled as ultimate weapons, the one she wore—as Gnulbotz and his platoon escorted her, Penny’s shadow, and Hans Gloom through the halls of Obsidian’s castle—would have laid waste to entire countries.

The corridors they marched through now were narrow, reeking places, more like sewers than dungeons, though there were cells even here. Forlorn faces, some human, some shadow, and some far stranger things, peered through the barred windows of the iron doors, looking like they now had no purpose in their lives other than standing at those windows and looking like they had no other purpose in their lives. Things that looked like torches burned in the narrow section of wall between each set of doors—but what they burned with was not fire, only a form of darkness a little less impenetrable than the darkness all around them.

Fernie managed to glance back at Hans Gloom and noted that he wore no facial expression at all; he just stumbled along with his mouth hanging open, a thin layer of drool escaping from his slack lips. She didn’t understand why he was doing that until Gnulbotz chuckled, and said, “See, girl? I told you, earlier today. Nobody can spend any amount of time in the Screaming Room without losing his mind. This poor rotter’s head doesn’t even have a pair of marbles to rattle together. He’s nothing but an empty sack now, and that’s the truth. What do you think of that?”

Fernie understood then that Hans was wearing the expression the guards expected of a man who had been confined to the Screaming Room for so long, because he wanted to hide just how much he really was his old self. It struck her as something she should try herself. So she retorted, “You think you’re so smart? Well, elephants.”

Gnulbotz’s eyebrows knit together. “Excuse me?”

“You can imprison my body, but you’ll never coffee pot geranium.”

Gnulbotz grimaced, leaving one of the little maggots who lived in his teeth protruding between his upper and lower lips. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re getting at, little lady.”

Fernie thrust out her lower jaw and declared, “As long as there’s even one person willing to stand up and fight for our freedom, you’ll never platypus toilet bowl reverberating golf ball. Never ever EVER, you vibrating nose faucet.”

Gnulbotz looked as if he was about to protest that Fernie still wasn’t making any sense, when an explanation occurred to him and he glanced at Mr.

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