A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Carnivorous Carnival (13 page)

reporter from The Daily Punctilio, running alongside him. "Olaf told me that the Baudelaires are responsible! I can see the headline now: 'BAUDELAIRES CONTINUE THEIR LIVES OF CRIME!'" "What kind of children would do such a terrible thing?" asked the man with the pimpled chin, but Violet and Klaus could not hear the answer over the voice of Count Olaf. "Hurry up, you two-headed freak!" he called from around the corner. "If you don't come here right this minute, we're leaving without you!" "Grr!" Sunny growled frantically, and at the sound of their baby sister's disguised voice, the older Baudelaires threw the lit torch into the fortune-telling tent, and ran toward Olaf's voice without looking back, although it wouldn't have mattered if they had looked. There was so much fire and smoke around them one more burning tent wouldn't have made the carnival look any different. The only difference was that they would have known that part of the fire was of their own devising, a phrase which here means "because of their part in Count Olaf's treachery," and although neither Violet nor Klaus saw this with their own eyes, they knew it in their hearts, and I doubt that they would ever forget it. When the older Baudelaires rounded the corner, they saw that all of Olaf's other henchmen were already waiting at the long, black automobile, which was parked in front of the freaks' caravan. Hugo, Colette, and Kevin were crowded in the back seat with the two white-faced women, while Esme Squalor sat in the front, with Sunny on her lap. The hook-handed man took the box out of the older Baudelaires' hands and threw it into the trunk while Count Olaf pointed to the caravan with his whip, which looked much shorter, and rough around the edges. "You two will ride in that," he said. "We're going to attach it to the automobile and pull you along with us." "Isn't there room in the car?" Violet asked nervously. "Don't be ridiculous," the hook-handed man said with a sneer. "It's too crowded. Good thing Colette is a contortionist, so she can curl into a ball at our feet." "Chabo already gnawed my whip down so it could be used as a connecting rope," Count Olaf said. "I'll just tie the caravan to the car with a double slipknot, and then we'll ride off into the sunset." "Excuse me," Violet said, "but I know a knot called the Devil's Tongue that I think will hold better." "And if I remember the map correctly," Klaus said, "we should ride east until we find Stricken Stream, so we should drive that way, away from the sunset." "Yes, yes, yes," Count Olaf said quickly. "That's what I meant. Tie it yourself if you want. I'll go start the engine." Olaf tossed the rope to Klaus while the hook-handed man reached into the trunk again, and brought out a pair of walkie-talkies the children remembered from when they were living in Olaf's home. "Take one of these," he said, putting one in Violet's hand, "so we can contact you if we need to tell you something." "Hurry up," Count Olaf snapped, taking the other walkie-talkie. "The air is filling with smoke." The villain and his henchmen got into the automobile, and Violet and Klaus knelt down to attach the caravan. "I can't believe I'm using this knot to help Count Olaf," she said. "It feels like I'm using my inventing skills to participate in something wicked." "We're all participating," Klaus said glumly. "Sunny used her teeth to turn that whip into a connecting rope, and I used my map skills to tell Olaf which direction to head." "At least we'll get there, too," Violet said, "and maybe one of our parents will be waiting for us. There. The knot's tied. Let's get in the caravan." "I wish we were riding with Sunny," Klaus said. "We are," Violet said. "We're not getting to the Mortmain Mountains the way we want, but we're getting there, and that's what counts." "I hope so," Klaus said, and he and his sister stepped into the freaks' caravan and shut the door. Count Olaf started the engine of the car, and the caravan began to rock gently back and forth as the automobile pulled them away from the carnival. The hammocks swayed above the two siblings, and the rack of clothing creaked beside them, but the knot Violet had tied held fast, and the two vehicles began traveling in the direction Klaus had pointed. "We might as well get comfortable," Violet said. "We'll be traveling a long time." "All night at least," Klaus said, "and probably most of the next day. I hope they'll stop and share the food." "Maybe we can make some hot chocolate later," Violet said. "With cinnamon," Klaus said, smiling as he thought of Sunny's recipe. "But what should we do in the meantime?" Violet sighed, and she and her brother sat down on a chair so she could lay her head on the table, which was shaking slightly as the caravan headed out into the hinterlands. The eldest Baudelaire put down the walkie-talkie next to the set of dominoes. "Let's just sit," she said, "and think." Klaus nodded in agreement, and the two Baudelaires sat and thought for the rest of the afternoon, as the automobile pulled them farther and farther away from the burning carnival. Violet tried to imagine what the V.F.D. headquarters might look like, and hoped that one of their parents would be there. Klaus tried to imagine what Olaf and his troupe were talking about, and hoped that Sunny was not too frightened. And both the older Baudelaires thought about all that had happened at Caligari Carnival, and wondered whether or not they had done the right things. They had disguised themselves in order to find the answers to their questions, and now the answers were burning up under Madame Lulu's table, as her archival library went up in smoke. They had encouraged their coworkers to find employment someplace where they wouldn't be considered freaks, and now they had joined Count Olaf's evil troupe. And they had promised Madame Lulu that they would take her with them, so she could lead them to V.F.D. and become a noble person again, but she had fallen into the lion pit and become nothing but a meal. Violet and Klaus thought about all of the trouble they were in, and wondered if it was all due to simple misfortune, or if some of it was of their own devising. These were not the most pleasant thoughts in the world, but it still felt good to sit and think about them, instead of hiding and lying and frantically thinking up plans. It was peaceful to sit and think in the freaks' caravan, even when the caravan tilted slightly as they reached the beginning of the Mortmain Mountains and began to head uphill. It was so peaceful to sit and think that both Violet and Klaus felt as if they were waking up from a long sleep when Count Olaf's voice came out of the walkie-talkie. "Are you there?" Olaf asked. "Press the red button and speak to me!" Violet rubbed her eyes, picked up the walkie-talkie, and held it so both she and her brother could hear. "We're here," she said. "Good," Count Olaf replied, "because I wanted to tell you that I learned something else from Madame Lulu." "What did you learn?" Klaus asked. There was a pause, and the two children could hear cruel peals of laughter coming from the small device in Violet's hand. "I learned that you are the Baudelaires!" Count Olaf cried in triumph. "I learned that you three brats followed me here and tricked me with sneaky disguises. But I'm too clever for you!" Olaf began to laugh again, but over his laughter the two siblings could hear another sound that made them feel as shaky as the caravan. It was Sunny, and she was whimpering in fear. "Don't hurt her!" Violet cried. "Don't you dare hurt her!" "Hurt her?" Count Olaf snarled. "Why, I wouldn't dream of hurting her! After all, I need one orphan to steal the fortune. First I'm going to make sure both of your parents are dead, and then I'm going to use Sunny to become very, very rich! No, I wouldn't worry about this buck-toothed twerp not yet. If I were you, I'd worry about yourselves! Say bye-bye to your sister, Baudebrats!" "But we're tied together," Klaus said. "We hitched our caravan to you." "Look out the window," Count Olaf said, and hung up the walkie-talkie. Violet and Klaus looked at one another, and then staggered to their feet and moved the curtain away from the window. The curtain parted as if they were watching a play, and if I were you I would pretend that this is a play, instead of a book, perhaps a tragedy, written by William Shakespeare and that you are leaving the theater early to go home and hide under a sofa, because you will recall that there was a certain expression that, I'm sorry to say, must be used three times before this story is over, and it is in the thirteenth chapter when this expression will be used for the third time. The chapter is very short, because the end of this story happened so quickly that it does not take many words to describe, but the chapter does contain the third occasion requiring the expression "the belly of the beast," and you would be wise to leave before the chapter begins, because that time didn't count.

Chapter Thirteen

With the curtain parted, Violet and Klaus looked out the window and gasped at what they saw. In front of them was Count Olaf's long, black automobile, winding its crooked way up the road toward the peaks of the Mortmain Mountains, with the freaks' caravan tied to the bumper. They could not see their baby sister, who was trapped in the front seat with Olaf and his villainous girlfriend, but they could imagine how frightened and desperate she was. But the older Baudelaires also saw something that made them frightened and desperate, and it was something they had never thought to imagine. Hugo was leaning out of the back window of the automobile, his hump hidden in the oversized coat Esme Squalor had given him as a present, and he was holding tight to Colette's ankles. The contortionist had twisted her body around to the back of the car so that her head was lying on the middle of the trunk, between two of the bullet holes that had provided air for the Baudelaires on their way to Caligari Carnival. Like her coworker, Colette was also holding tight to someone's ankles the ambidextrous ankles of Kevin, so that all three of Madame Lulu's former employees were in a sort of human chain. At the end of the chain were Kevin's hands, which were gripping a long, rusty knife. Kevin looked up at Violet and Klaus, gave them a triumphant grin, and brought the knife down as hard as he could on the knot Violet had tied. The Devil's Tongue is a very strong knot, and normally it would take a while for a knife to saw through it, even if it was very sharp, but the equal strength in Kevin's two arms meant that the knife moved with a freakish power, instead of normally, and in an instant the knot was split in two. "No!" Violet yelled. "Sunny!" Klaus screamed. With the caravan unhitched, the two vehicles began going in opposite directions. Count Olaf's car continued to wind its way up the mountain, but without anything pulling it, the caravan began to roll back down, the way a grapefruit will roll down a flight of stairs if you let it go, and there was no way for Violet or Klaus to steer or stop the caravan from the inside. The Baudelaires screamed again, all three of them, Violet and Klaus alone in the rattling caravan, and Sunny in the car full of villains, as the two vehicles slipped further and further away from each other, but even though Count Olaf was getting closer and closer to what he wanted and the older Baudelaires were getting further and further away, it seemed to the children that all three siblings were ending up at the same place. Even as Count Olaf's automobile slipped out of view, and the caravan began to slip on the bumpy road, it seemed to the Baudelaire orphans that they were all slipping into the belly of the beast, and that time, I'm sorry to say, counted very, very much.

LEMONY SNICKET published his first book in 1999 and has not had a good night's sleep since. Once the recipient of several distinguished awards, he is now an escapee of several indistinguishable prisons. Early in his life, Mr. Snicket learned to reupholster furniture, a skill that turned out to be far more important than anyone imagined. 

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