A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Slippery Slope (11 page)

Chapter Twelve

Not too long ago, in the Swedish city of Stockholm, a group of bank robbers took a few prisoners during the course of their work. For several days, the bank robbers and the prisoners lived together in close proximity, a word which here means "while the police gathered outside and eventually managed to arrest the robbers and take them to jail." When the prisoners were finally freed, however, the authorities discovered that they had become friends with the bank robbers, and since that time the expression "Stockholm Syndrome" has been used to describe a situation in which someone becomes friendly with the people who are holding them prisoner. There is another expression, however, which describes a situation that is far more common, when a prisoner does not become friends with such people, but instead regards them as villains, and despises them more and more with each passing moment, waiting desperately for an opportunity to escape. The expression is "Mount Fraught Syndrome," and Sunny Baudelaire was experiencing it as she stood at the top of Mount Fraught, gazing down at the frozen waterfall and thinking about her circumstances. The young girl had spent another sleepless night in the covered casserole dish, after washing the salmon out of it with a few handfuls of melted snow. It was chilly, of course, with the winds of the Mortmain Mountains blowing through the holes in the lid, and it was painful, because once again her teeth were chattering in the cold and giving her tiny cuts on her lips, but there was another reason Sunny did not sleep well, which is that she was frustrated. Despite her best spying attempts, the youngest Baudelaire had been unable to eavesdrop on the villains' conversation and learn the location of the last safe place where V.F.D. would be gathering, or learn any more about the dreadful recruitment scheme planned by the man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard. When the troupe gathered around the flat rock for dinner, they discussed these things, but every time Sunny tried to get close enough to hear what they were saying, they glared at her and quickly changed the subject. It seemed to Sunny that the only thing she had accomplished all evening was preparing a meal that the troupe enjoyed. When she had presented her platter of False Spring Rolls, no one had complained, and every single villainous person had taken second helpings. But something crucial had escaped the attention of Count Olaf and his comrades during the meal, and for that Sunny was very grateful. As she had told her siblings, the youngest Baudelaire had prepared an assortment of vegetables wrapped in spinach leaves, in honor of False Spring. Her recipe had required the bag of mushrooms, the can of water chestnuts, and the frozen hunk of spinach, which she had thawed by holding it underneath her shirt, as she had when preparing toast tartar. But Sunny had decided at the last minute that she would not use the enormous eggplant. When Violet mentioned that the eggplant must weigh as much as Sunny did, the youngest Baudelaire had an idea, and rather than chopping the eggplant into small strips with her teeth, she hid it behind the flat tire of Count Olaf's car, and now, as the sun rose and the group of villains began their usual morning bickering, she was retrieving the eggplant and rolling it to the casserole dish. As she rolled it past the automobile, Sunny looked down at the frozen waterfall, which was looking less and less frozen in the morning sun. She knew her siblings were at the bottom with Quigley, and although she couldn't see them, it made her feel better knowing they were relatively nearby and that, if her plan worked out, she would soon be joining them. "What are you doing, baby?" Sunny had just slipped the eggplant under the cover of the casserole dish when she heard the voice of one of Olaf's comrades. The two white-faced women were standing just outside their tent and stretching in the morning sun. "Aubergine," Sunny replied, which meant "I've concocted a plan involving this eggplant, and it doesn't matter if I tell you about it because you never understand a single word I say." "More babytalk," said the other white-faced woman with a sigh. "I'm beginning to think that Sunny is only a helpless baby, and not a spy." "Goo goo ga... " Sunny began, but the flap of Count Olaf's tent opened before she could utter the last "ga." The villain and his girlfriend stood in the morning sun, and it was clear that they expected the new day, Saturday, to be an important one, because they were dressed for the occasion, a phrase which here means "wearing such strange clothing that the youngest Baudelaire was too surprised to say the final 'ga' she had been planning." Amazingly, it appeared that Count Olaf had washed his face, and he was wearing a brand-new suit made out of material that at first seemed to be covered in tiny polka dots. But when Sunny took a closer look, she saw that each dot was a small eye, matching Olaf's tattoo and the V.F.D. insignia and all of the other eyes that had plagued the Baudelaires since that terrible day on the beach, so that looking at Count Olaf in his new suit felt like looking at a crowd of villains, all staring at Sunny Baudelaire. But no matter how unnerving Olaf's fashion choice was, Esme Squalor's outfit was worse to behold. Sunny could not remember when she had ever seen a dress so enormous, and was surprised that such an article of clothing could have fit in the tent and still leave room for villains to sleep. The dress was made of layers upon layers of shiny cloth, in different shades of yellow, orange, and red, all cut in fierce triangular shapes so that each layer seemed to cut into the next, and rising from the shoulders of the dress were enormous piles of black lace, sticking up into the air in strange curves. For a moment, the dress was so huge and odd that Sunny could not imagine why anyone would wear it, but as the wicked girlfriend stepped farther out of the tent, it became horribly clear. Esme Squalor was dressed to look like an enormous fire. "What a wonderful morning!" Count Olaf crowed. "Just think, by the end of the day I'll have more new members of my troupe than ever before!" "And we'll need them," Esme agreed "We're all going to have to work together for the greater good, burning down the last safe place!" "Just the idea of the Hotel Denouement in flames makes me so excited, I'm going to open a bottle of wine!" Count Olaf announced, and Sunny covered her mouth with her hands so the villains would not hear her gasp. The Hotel Denouement, she realized, must be the last safe place for volunteers to gather, and Olaf was so excited that he had uttered the name inadvertently, a word which here means "where the youngest Baudelaire could hear it." "The idea of all those eagles filling the sky makes me so excited, I'm going to smoke one of those in green cigarettes!" Esme announced, and then frowned. "Except I don't have one. Drat." "Beg your pardon, your Esmeship," said one of the white-faced women, "but I see some of that green smoke down at the bottom of the waterfall." "Really?" Esme asked eagerly, and looked in the direction Olaf's employee was pointing. Sunny looked, too, and saw a familiar plume of green smoke at the very bottom of the slope, getting bigger and bigger as the sun continued to rise. The youngest Baudelaire wondered why her siblings were signaling her, and what they were trying to say. "That's strange," Olaf said. "You'd think there'd be nothing left of the headquarters to burn." "Look how much smoke there is," Esme said greedily. "There must be a whole pack of cigarettes down there. This day is getting even better!" Count Olaf smiled, and then looked away from the waterfall and noticed Sunny for the first time. "I'll have the baby go down and get them for you," Count Olaf said. "Yessir!" Sunny said eagerly. "The baby would probably steal all the cigarettes for herself," Esme said, glaring at the young girl. "I'll go." "But climbing down there will take hours " Olaf said. "Don't you want to be here for the recruitment scheme? I just love springing traps on people." "Me, too," Esme agreed, "but don't worry, Olaf. I'll be back in moments. I'm not going to climb. I'll take one of the toboggans and sled down the waterfall before anyone else even notices I'm gone." "Drat!" Sunny couldn't help saying. She meant something along the lines of, "That is exactly what I was planning on doing," but once again no one understood. "Shut up, toothy," Esme said, "and get out of my way." She flounced past the youngest Baudelaire, and Sunny realized that there was something sewn to the bottom of the dress that made it make a crackling noise as she walked, so that the wicked girlfriend sounded as much like a fire as she looked like one. Blowing a kiss to Count Olaf, she grabbed the toboggan belonging to the sinister villains. "I'll be right back, darling," Esme said. "Tell that baby to take a nap so she won't see what we're up to." "Esme's right," Olaf said, giving Sunny a cruel smile. "Get in the casserole dish. You're such an ugly, helpless creature, I can scarcely stand to look at you." "You said it, handsome," Esme said, and chuckled meanly as she sat at the top of the waterfall. The two white-faced women scurried to help, and gave the toboggan a big push as Sunny did as she was told, and disappeared from Olaf's sight. As you may imagine, the sight of a grown woman in an enormous flame-imitating dress tobogganing down from the source of the Stricken Stream to the two tributaries and the half-frozen pool at the bottom of the waterfall is not the sort of thing to pass unnoticed, even from far away. Violet was the first to see the colorful blur heading quickly down the slope, and she lowered Colette's hand mirror, which she had used once again to catch the rays of the rising sun and reflect them onto the Verdant Flammable Devices, which she had put in a pile in front of the pit. Wrinkling her nose from the bitter smell of the smoke, she turned to Klaus and Quigley, who were putting one last piece of weakened wood across the pit, so their trap would be hidden from view. "Look," Violet said, and pointed to the descending shape. "Do you think it's Esme?" Klaus asked. Violet squinted up at the tobogganing figure. "I think so," she said. "Nobody but Esme Squalor would wear an outfit like that." "We'd better hide behind the archway," Quigley said, "before she spots us." The two Baudelaires nodded in agreement, and walked carefully to the library entrance, making sure to step around the hole they had dug. "I'm happy that we can't see the pit anymore," Klaus said. "Looking into that blackness reminded me of that terrible passageway at 667 Dark Avenue." "First Esme trapped your siblings there," Violet said to Quigley, "and then she trapped us." "And now we're fighting fire with fire, and trapping her," Quigley said uncomfortably. "It's best not to think about it," Violet said, although she had not stopped thinking about the trap since the first handful of ashes and earth. "Soon we'll have Sunny back, and that's what's important." "Maybe this is important, too," Klaus said, and pointed up at the archway. "I never noticed it until now." Violet and Quigley looked up to see what he was referring to, and saw four tiny words etched over their heads, right underneath the large letters spelling "V.F.D. Library." "'The world is quiet here,'" Quigley read. "What do you think it means?" "It looks like a motto," Klaus said. "At Prufrock Preparatory School, they had a motto carved near the entrance, so everyone would remember it when they entered the academy." Violet shook her head. "That's not what I'm thinking of," she said. "I'm remembering something about that phrase, but just barely." "The world certainly feels quiet around here," Klaus said. "We haven't heard a single snow gnat since we arrived." "The smell of smoke scares them away, remember?" Quigley asked. "Of course," Klaus said, and peered around the archway to check on Esme's progress. The colorful blur was about halfway down the waterfall, heading straight for the trap they had built. "There's been so much smoke here at headquarters, the gnats might never come back." "Without snow gnats," Quigley said, "the salmon of the Stricken Stream will go hungry. They feed on snow gnats." He reached into his pocket and opened his commonplace book. "And without salmon," he said, "the Mortmain Mountain eagles will go hungry. The destruction of V.F.D, headquarters has caused even more damage than I thought." Klaus nodded in agreement. "When we were walking along the Stricken Stream," he said, "the fish were coughing from all the ashes in the water. Remember, Violet?" He turned to his sister, but Violet was only half listening. She was still gazing at the words on the archway, and trying to remember where she heard them before. "I can just hear those words," she said. "The world is quiet here. " She closed her eyes. "I think it was a very long time ago, before you were born, Klaus." "Maybe someone said them to you," Quigley said. Violet tried to remember as far back as she could, but everything seemed as misty as it did in the mountains. She could see the face of her mother, and her father standing behind her, wearing a suit as black as the ashes of V.F.D. headquarters. Their mouths were open, but Violet could not remember what they were saying. No matter how hard she tried, the memory was as silent as the grave. "Nobody said them to me," she said finally. "Someone sang them. I think my parents sang the words 'the world is quiet here' a long time ago, but I don't know why." She opened her eyes and faced her brother and her friend. "I think we might be doing the wrong thing," she said. "But we agreed," Quigley said, "to fight fire with fire." Violet nodded, and stuck her hands in her pocket, bumping up against the bread knife again. She thought of the darkness of the pit, and the scream Esme would make as she fell into it. "I know we agreed," Violet said, "but if V.F.D. really stands for Volunteer Fire Department, then they're an organization that stops fire. If everyone fought fire with fire, the entire world would go up in smoke." "I see what you mean," Quigley said. "If the V.F.D. motto is 'The world is quiet here,' we ought to be doing something less noisy and violent than trapping someone, no matter how wicked they are." "When I was looking into the pit," Klaus said quietly, "I was remembering something I read in a book by a famous philosopher. He said, 'Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.'" Klaus looked at his sister, and then at the sight of Esme approaching, and then at the weakened wood that the three children had placed on the ground. "'Abyss' is a
fancy word for 'pit,'" he said. "We built an abyss for Esme to fall into. That's something a monster might do." Quigley was copying Klaus's words into his commonplace book. "What happened to that philosopher?" he asked. "He's dead," Klaus replied. "I think you're right, Violet. We don't want to be as villainous and monstrous as Count Olaf." "But what are we going to do?" Quigley asked. "Sunny is still Olaf's prisoner, and Esme will be here at any moment. If we don't think of the right thing right now, it'll be too late." As soon as the triplet finished his sentence however, the three children heard something that made them realize it might already be too late. From behind the archway, Violet, Klaus, and Quigley heard a rough, scraping sound as the toboggan reached the bottom of the waterfall and slid to a halt, and then a triumphant giggle from the mouth of Esme Squalor. The three volunteers peeked around the archway and saw the treacherous girlfriend step off the toboggan with a greedy smile on her face. But when Esme adjusted her enormous flame-imitating dress and took a step toward the smoking Verdant Flammable Devices, Violet was not looking at her any more. Violet was looking down at the ground, just a few steps from where she was standing. Three dark, round masks were sitting in a pile, where Violet, Klaus, and Quigley had left them upon arriving at the ruins of headquarters. They had assumed that they would not need them again, but the eldest Baudelaire realized they had been wrong. As Esme took another step closer to the trap, Violet dashed over to the masks, put one on and stepped out of her hiding place as her brother and her friend looked on. "Stop, Esme!" she cried. "It's a trap!" Esme stopped in her tracks and gave Violet a curious look. "Who are you?" she asked. "You shouldn't sneak up on people like that. It's a villainous thing to do." "I'm a volunteer," Violet said. Esme's mouth, heavy with orange lipstick that matched her dress, curled into a sneer. "There are no volunteers here," she said. "The entire headquarters are destroyed!" Klaus was the next to grab a mask and confront Olaf's treacherous romantic companion. "Our headquarters might be destroyed," he said, "but the V.F.D. is as strong as ever!" Esme frowned at the two siblings as if she couldn't decide whether to be frightened or not "You may be strong," she said nervously, "but you're also very short." Her dress crackled as she started to take another step toward the pit. "When I get my hands on you... " "No!" Quigley cried, and stepped out from the arch wearing his mask, taking care not to fall into his own trap. "Don't come any closer, Esme. If you take another step, you'll fall into our trap." "You're making that up," Esme said, but she did not move any closer. "You're trying to keep all the cigarettes for yourself." "They're not cigarettes," Klaus said, "and we're not liars. Underneath the wood you're about to step on is a very deep pit." Esme looked at them suspiciously. Gingerly, a word which here means "without falling into a very deep hole", she leaned down and moved a piece of wood aside, and stared down into the trap the children had built. "Well, well, well," she said. "You did build a trap. I never would have fallen for it, of course, but I must admit you dug quite a pit." "We wanted to trap you," Violet said, "so we could trade you for the safe return of Sunny Baudelaire. But... " "But you didn't have the courage to go through with it," Esme said with a mocking smile. "You volunteers are never brave enough to do something for the greater good." "Throwing people into pits isn't the greater good!" Quigley cried. "It's villainous treachery!" "If you weren't such an idiot," Esme said, "you'd realize that those things are more or less the same." "He is not an idiot," Violet said fiercely. She knew, of course, that it was not worthwhile to get upset over insults from such a ridiculous person, but she liked Quigley too much to hear him called names. "He led us here to the headquarters using a map he drew himself." "He's very well-read," Klaus said. At Klaus's words, Esme threw back her head and laughed, shaking the crackling layers of her enormous dress. "Well-read!" she repeated in a particularly nasty tone of voice. "Being well-read won't help you in this world. Many years ago, I was supposed to waste my entire summer reading Anna Karenina, but I knew that silly book would never help me, so I threw it into the fireplace." She reached down and picked up a few more pieces of wood, which she tossed aside with a snicker. "Look at your precious headquarters, volunteers! It's as ruined as my book. And look at me! I'm beautiful, fashionable, and I smoke cigarettes!" She laughed again, and pointed at the children with a scornful finger. "If you didn't spend all your time with your heads stuck in books, you'd have that precious baby back." "We're going to get her back," Violet said firmly. "Really?" Esme said mockingly. "And how do you propose to do that?" "I'm going to talk to Count Olaf," Violet said, "and he's going to give her back to me." Esme threw back her head and started to laugh, but not with as much enthusiasm as before. "What do you mean?" she said. "Just what I said," Violet said. "Hmmm," Esme said suspiciously. "Let me think for a moment." The evil girlfriend began to pace back and forth on the frozen pond, her enormous dress crackling with every step. Klaus leaned in to whisper to his sister. "What are you doing?" he asked. "Do you honestly think that we can get Sunny back from Count Olaf with a simple conversation?" "I don't know," Violet whispered back, "but it's better than luring someone into a trap." "It was wrong to dig that pit," Quigley agreed, "but I'm not sure that walking straight into Olaf's clutches is the right thing to do, either." "It'll take a while to reach Mount Fraught again," Violet said. "We'll think of something during the climb." "I hope so," Klaus said, "but if we can't think of something... " Klaus did not get a chance to say what might happen if they couldn't think of something because Esme clapped her hands together to get the children's attention. "If you really want to talk to my boyfriend," she said, "I suppose I can take you to where he is. If you weren't so stupid, you'd know that he's very nearby." "We know where he is, Esme," Klaus said. "He's at the top of the waterfall, at the source of the Stricken Stream." "Then I suppose you know how we can get there," Esme said, and looked a little foolish. "The toboggan doesn't go uphill, so I actually have no idea how we can reach the peak." "She will invent a way," Quigley said, pointing at Violet. Violet smiled at her friend, grateful for his support, and closed her eyes underneath her mask. Once more, she was thinking of something she had heard sung to her, when she was a very little girl. She had already thought of the way that the three children could take Esme with them when they ascended the hill, but thinking of their journey made her think of a song she had not thought of for many years. Perhaps when you were very young, someone sang this song to you, perhaps to lull you to sleep, or to entertain you on a long car trip, or in order to teach you a secret code. The song is called "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," and it is one of the saddest songs ever composed. It tells the story of a small spider who is trying to climb up a water spout, but every time its climb is half over, there is a great burst of water, either due to rain or somebody turning the spout on, and at the end of the song, the spider has decided to try one more time, and will likely be washed away once again. Violet Baudelaire could not help feeling like this poor spider as she ascended the waterfall for the last time, with Quigley and Klaus beside her and Esme Squalor on her toboggan behind them. After attaching the last two forks to Klaus's shoes, she had told her companions to tie the leather straps of the toboggan around their waists, so they could drag the villainous girlfriend behind them as they climbed. It was exhausting to approach the peak of Mount Fraught in this manner, particularly after staying up all night digging a pit, and it seemed like they might get washed back down by the dripping water of the Stricken Stream, like the spider Violet had heard about when she was a little girl. The ice on the slope was weakening, after two fork-assisted climbs, a toboggan ride, and the increasing temperatures of False Spring, and with each step of Violet's invention, the ice would shift slightly. It was clear that the slippery slope was almost as exhausted as they were, and soon the ice would vanish completely. "Mush!" Esme called from the toboggan. She was using an expression that arctic explorers shouted to their sled dogs, and it certainly did not make the journey any easier. "I wish she'd stop saying that," Violet murmured from behind her mask. She tapped the candelabra on the ice ahead of her, and a small piece detached from the waterfall and fell to the ruins of headquarters. She watched it disappear below her and sighed. She would never see the V.F.D. headquarters in all its glory. None of the Baudelaires would. Violet would never know how it felt to cook in the kitchen and gaze at the two tributaries of the Stricken Stream, while chatting with the other volunteers. Klaus would never know how it felt to relax in the library and learn all of the secrets of V.F.D. in the comfort of one of the library's chairs, with his feet up on one of the matching V.F.D. footstools. Sunny would never operate the projector in the movie room, or practice the art of the fake mustache in the disguise center, or sit in the parlor at tea time and eat the almond cookies made from my grandmother's recipe. Violet would never study chemical composition in one of the six laboratories, and Klaus would never use the balance beams at the gymnasium, and Sunny would never stand behind the counter at the ice cream shop and prepare butterscotch sundaes for the swimming coaches when it was her turn. And none of the Baudelaires would ever meet some of the organization's most beloved volunteers, including the mechanical instructor C. M. Kornbluth, and Dr. Isaac Anwhistle, whom everyone called Ike, and the brave volunteer who tossed the sugar bowl out the kitchen window so it would not be destroyed in the blaze, and watched it float away on one of the tributaries of the Stricken Stream. The Baudelaires would never do any of these things, any more than I will ever see my beloved Beatrice again, or retrieve my pickle from the refrigerator in which I left it, and return it to its rightful place in an important coded sandwich. Violet, of course, was not aware of everything she would never do, but as she gazed down at the vast, ashen remains of the headquarters, she felt as if her whole journey in the Mortmain Mountains had been as useless as the journey of a tiny arachnid in a song she had never liked to hear. "Mush!" Esme cried again, with a cruel chuckle. "Please stop saying that, Esme," Violet called down impatiently. "That mush nonsense is slowing our climb." "A slow climb might be to our advantage," Klaus murmured to his sister. "The longer it takes us to reach the summit, the longer we have to think up what we're going to say to Count Olaf." "We could tell him that he's surrounded," Quigley said, "and that there are volunteers everywhere ready to arrest him if he doesn't let Sunny go free." Violet shook her mask. "He won't believe that," she said, sticking a fork-assisted shoe into the waterfall. "He can see everything and everyone from Mount Fraught. He'll know we're the only volunteers in the area." "There must be something we can do," Klaus said. "We didn't make this journey into the mountains for nothing." "Of course not," Quigley said. "We found each other, and we solved some of the mysteries that were haunting us." "Will that be enough," Violet asked, "to defeat all those villains on the peak?" Violet's question was a difficult one, and neither Klaus nor Quigley had the answer, and so rather than hazard a guess, a phrase which here means "continue to expend their energy by discussing the matter", they decided to hazard their climb, a phrase which here means "continue their difficult journey in silence, until they arrived at last at the source of the Stricken Stream." Hoisting themselves up onto the flat peak, they sat on the edge and pulled the leather straps as hard as they could. It was such a difficult task to drag Esme Squalor and the toboggan over the edge of the slope and onto Mount Fraught that the children did not notice who was nearby until they heard a familiar scratchy voice right behind them. "Who goes there?" Count Olaf demanded. Breathless from the climb, the three children turned around to see the villain standing with his two sinister cohorts near his long, black automobile, glaring suspiciously at the masked volunteers. "We thought you'd get here by taking the path," said the man with a beard but no hair, "not by climbing up the waterfall." "No, no, no," Esme," said quickly. "These aren't the people we're expecting. These are some volunteers I found at headquarters." "Volunteers?" said the woman with hair but no beard, but her voice did not sound as deep as it usually did. The villains gave the children the same confused frown they had seen from Esme, as if they were unsure whether to be scared or scornful, and the hook-handed man, the two white-faced women, and the three former carnival employees gathered around to see what had made their villainous boss fall silent. Although they were exhausted, the two Baudelaires hurriedly untied the straps of the toboggan from their waists and stood with Quigley to face their enemies. The orphans were very scared, of course, but they found that with their faces concealed they could speak their minds, a phrase which here means "confront Count Olaf and his companions as if they weren't one bit frightened." "We built a trap to capture your girlfriend, Olaf," Violet said, "but we didn't want to become a monster like you." "They're idiotic liars!" Esme cried. "I found them hogging the cigarettes, so I captured them myself and made them drag me up the waterfall like sled dogs." The middle Baudelaire ignored the wicked girlfriend's nonsense. "We're here for Sunny Baudelaire," Klaus said, "and we're not leaving without her." Count Olaf frowned, and peered at them with his shiny, shiny eyes as if he were trying to see through their masks. "And what makes you so certain," he said, "that I'll give you my prisoner just because you say so?" Violet thought furiously, looking around at her surroundings for anything that might give her an idea of what to do. Count Olaf clearly believed that the three masked people in front of him were members of V.F.D., and she felt that if she could just find the right