Gustav Gloom and the People Taker (9781101620748) Read Online Free Page A

breathless story about giving that rude cashier a piece of her mind.
    Nobody noticed her crossing the street, not even when Mrs. Everwiner had gone on to the part of the story about demanding to see the rude cashier’s manager and that manager getting the same piece of her mind, only louder.
    Nobody stopped Fernie from approaching the place in the iron fence closest to the sad-looking little boy, who stood holding a black book in one hand and the smoky, gray shadow of the little dog in the other.
    Behind her, Mrs. Everwiner had gone on to explain how the manager’s apology had failed to satisfy her, and how she’d demanded a personal phone call from the company headquarters in St. Louis. But ahead of her, the sad little boy stood ankle-deep in gray mist.
    To Fernie, it was a lot like being in a dream, but she had always been polite, even in dreams, so she found herself saying, “Hello. I’m Fernie What. Like in the question.”
    â€œWhat question?”
    â€œLike in any question that starts with
what
. My first name is Fernie and my last name is What. When I say ‘My name is Fernie What,’ many people say ‘Fernie what?’ again, like a question, so I kind of have to beat them to it by saying, ‘Like in the question.’”
    The sad little boy nodded. “I can see how that would happen. But I got it the first time. I’m Gustav Gloom.”
    â€œThat’s a strange name.”
    â€œSo’s Fernie What.”
    He had a good point, of course, but all of this was dancing around the real reason she had come across the street, the thing she now found she was having a little trouble coming out and actually saying. “You’re playing with Snooks’s shadow.”
    â€œYes,” Gustav Gloom said as Snooks’s shadow licked him on the cheek. “It’s much nicer than the actual dog.”
    Fernie resisted a strange need to stamp her foot. “But that can’t be.”
    â€œSure it can,” Gustav Gloom said. “The real dog bites.” When he put the shadow dog down, it ran around him three times, panting in canine joy, before slipping back through the fence and galloping across the street to the flesh-and-blood Snooks, who did not seem all that happy that it had returned.
    Mrs. Everwiner had just gotten to the part of the story about the angry letter she’d written to the newspaper, whose editors were so horrified that a woman of her station would ever have an unsatisfactory experience in a supermarket that they put her letter on the front page beneath a giant headline of the kind most newspapers reserve for warnings about erupting volcanoes. It was even bigger, Mrs. Everwiner proudly assured them, than the headline over the latest story about all those mysterious disappearances that had plagued the town over the past few months: Seven people so far, some plucked from their beds, had all disappeared without a trace.
    Fernie’s father and sister, who were still trapped listening to Mrs. Everwiner’s story, hadn’t noticed the departure and return of the dog’s shadow any more than they’d noticed the absence of Fernie. This was distinctly odd, as Fernie’s father always noticed when his daughters crossed streets, in part because he knew that even the most quiet streets could without warning become runways for airplanes coming in for emergency landings. For as long as Fernie could remember, he’d always watched his daughters carefully to make sure that they didn’t cross any street without looking not only left and right but also up.
    But Fernie couldn’t let go of the one thing she’d seen that was distinctly odder. “Shadow dogs don’t just walk away from their real dogs.”
    â€œIt happens all the time,” Gustav said.
    â€œYou’re crazy.”
    â€œYou saw it happen,” Gustav pointed out.
    â€œBut it doesn’t happen
all the time
!”
    â€œIf it