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

didn’t help much.
    She waved the beam around. “Come on, Harrington! Want some noogums?”
    Noogums
, the family term for the smelly, brown canned glop that constituted most of Harrington’s diet, was one of the human phrases he definitely understood, along with
good cat
,
bedtime
, and—thanks to Fernie’s dad—
emergency safety procedures
.
    Normally, a cry of
noogums
brought Harrington running. But the only cat answer from within the shifting darkness of the Gloom property was a distant wail followed by an angry hiss.
    â€œHarrington! You come back here right
now
!”
    As anybody who owns a cat could have predicted, that didn’t work even a little bit.
    Fernie swung the flashlight beam across the Gloom yard, finding nothing between the fence and the house but the smoky blackness that Gustav seemed to have instead of a lawn. It was only when the light passed the Gloom family’s front door that she spotted a familiar shape cowering on the front steps just before the two giant front doors. It was Harrington, whose eyes glowed green the way cats’ eyes do when light hits them just right. The second he saw that he was being looked at, he let out the most pitiful of all possible meows, which was very pitiful indeed.
    Though he sat in the center of the spotlight, he cast no shadow.
    Fernie called to him again, shouting, “Noogums!” in a way that promised the biggest bowl of noogums any cat had ever seen.
    Harrington looked interested, but cats prefer claims like that to be verified.
    â€œStupid cat,” Fernie muttered.
    This was not a very nice thing to say, but it happened to be true.
    Fernie’s arm had started to hurt where the shadow Harrington had clawed her, so she wasn’t exactly eager to face that strange beast again. But the only other choices were to go back home with her cat still in danger or to stay at the fence promising him noogums all night long, so she inched along the row of iron bars until she reached the gate, which was unlocked and swung inward with a push. The little tendrils of fog curled at the edges of the Gloom property, melting almost at once wherever they spread past the fence line.
    â€œThis is your last chance, stupid cat! You can come out by yourself and have some noogums, or you can wait there for me to get you and be in
big
trouble!”
    Harrington licked his paw and considered his options. Any fear he might have had of the giant shadow cat, wherever it was, seemed to have evaporated out of his little head.
    Fernie stepped over the property line onto the Gloom estate. To her it felt like brushing aside a soft silk curtain and walking into a room where the air was cooler and the light was dimmer and the floor was the source of a draft.
    Between the gate and the steps to those big doors where Harrington sat licking his paw, she heard a number of soft voices murmuring things she couldn’t understand. Somebody said, “Ooh, pretty.” Somebody else said, “Another one for the People Taker.” A third voice said, “Poor girl,” in a voice as sad as the one Fernie’s aunt Sybil fell into whenever she watched sad movies where the family dog dies at the end.
    Fernie didn’t want to think much about who those voices belonged to and what they were saying, but they didn’t bother her even half as much as the sudden squeal of rusty hinges.
    Those big front doors were opening.
    â€œOh no!” Fernie cried as she started to run.
    She knew that Harrington, like all cats, loved open doors.
    Cats love open doors even if they have no idea what’s on the other side.
    In fact, cats love open doors
especially
when they don’t know what’s on the other side.
    She didn’t have time to realize that this was also a pretty good description of the mistake she was making by passing through the front gate of the Gloom estate without telling anybody where she was going . . . and by racing up