The Grim Grotto

by Lemony Snicket

  "How dare you capture this submarine!" Fiona cried. "I'm the captain of the Queequeg, and I demand that you return us to the sea at once! Aye!"

  Count Olaf peered down at the mycologist. "Aye?" he repeated. "You must be Fiona, that little fungus freak! Why, you're all grown up! The last time I saw you I was trying to throw thumbtacks into your cradle! Ha ha hot polloi! What happened to Widdershins? Why isn't he the captain?"

  "My stepfather is not around at the moment," Fiona replied, blinking behind her triangular glasses.

  "Hee hee terry cloth!" Count Olaf said. "Your stepfather has abandoned you, eh? Well, I suppose it was only a matter of time. Your whole family could never choose which side of the schism was theirs. Your brother used to be a goody-goody as well, trying to prevent fires instead of encouraging them, but eventually –"

  "My stepfather has not abandoned me," Fiona said, though her voice faltered a bit, a phrase which here means "sounded as if she weren't so sure." She did not even add an "Aye!" to her sentence.

  "We'll see about that," Olaf said, grinning wickedly. "I'm going to lock all of you in the brig, which is the official seafaring term for Jail."

  "We know what the brig is," Klaus said.

  "Then you know it's not a very pleasant place," the villain said. "The previous owner used it to hold traitors captive, and I see no reason to break with tradition."

  "We're not traitors, and we're not leaving the Queequeg," Violet said, and held up the diving helmet.

  Sunny tried to say something, but the growing fungus made her cough instead, and Olaf frowned at the coughing helmet.

  "What's that?" he demanded.

  "Sunny is in here," she said. "And she's very ill."

  "I was wondering where the baby brat was," Count Olaf said. "I was hoping she was trapped underneath my shoe, but I see that it's just some ridiculous book."

  He lifted his slippery foot to reveal Mushroom Minutiae, the book Fiona had been using for her research, and kicked it off the table where it skittered into a far corner.

  "There is a very deadly poison inside that helmet," Fiona said, staring at the book in frustration. "Aye! If Sunny doesn't receive an antidote within the hour, she will perish."

  "What do I care?" Olaf growled, once again showing his villainous disregard for other people. "I only need one Baudelaire to get my hands on the fortune. Now come with me! Ha ha handiwork!"

  "We're staying right here," Klaus said. "Our sister's life depends on it."

  Count Olaf drew his sword again, and traced a sinister shape in the air. "I'll tell you what your lives depend on," he said. "Your lives depend on me! If I wanted, I could drown you in the sea, or have you strangled by the arms of the mechanical octopus! It's only out of the kindness of my heart, and because of my own greed, that I'm locking you in the brig instead!"

  Sunny coughed inside her helmet, and Violet thought quickly. "If you let us help our sister," she said, "we'll tell you where the sugar bowl is."

  Count Olaf's eyes narrowed, and he gave the children a wide, toothy grin the two Baudelaires remembered from so many of their troubled times. His eyes shone brightly, as if he were telling a joke as nasty as his unbrushed teeth.

  "You can't try that trick again," he sneered. "I'm not going to bargain with an orphan, no matter how pretty she may be. Once you get to the brig, you'll reveal where the sugar bowl is – once my henchman gets his hands on you. Or should I say hooks? Hee hee torture!"

  Count Olaf leaped back through the porthole as Violet and Klaus looked at one another in fear. They knew Count Olaf was referring to the hook-handed man, who had been working with the villain as long as they had known him and was one of their least favorite of Olaf's comrades.

  "I could race up the rope ladder," Violet murmured to the others, "and fire up the engines of the Queequeg."

  "We can't take the submarine underwater with the window gone," Fiona said. "We'd drown."

  Klaus put his ear to the diving helmet, and heard his sister whimper, and then cough. "But how can we save Sunny?" he asked. "Time is running out.

  Fiona eyed the far corner of the room. "I'll take that book with me," she said, "and –"

  "Hurry up!" Count Olaf cried. "I can't stand around all day! I have plenty of people to boss around!"

  "Aye!" Fiona said, as Violet, still holding Sunny, led Klaus through the porthole to join Count Olaf on the platform. "I'll be there in a second," she said, and the mycologist took one hesitant step toward Mushroom Minutiae.

  "You'll be there now!" Olaf growled, and shook his sword at her. "He who hesitates is lost! Hee hee sniggle!"

  At the mention of the captain's personal philosophy, Fiona sighed, and stopped her furtive journey – a phrase which here means "sneaking" – toward the mycological book. "Or she," she said quietly, and stepped through the porthole to join the Baudelaires.

  "On the way to the brig, I'll give you the grand tour!" Olaf announced, leading the way out of the round, metal room that was serving as a sort of brig for the Queequeg itself.

  There were several inches of water on the floor, to help the captured submarine move through the tunnel, and the Baudelaires' boots made loud, wet splashes as they followed the boasting villain. While Sunny coughed again in her helmet, Olaf pressed an eye on the wall, and a small door slid open with a sinister whisper to reveal a corridor.

  "This submarine is one of the greatest things I've ever stolen," he bragged. "It has everything I'll need to defeat V.F.D. once and for all. It has a sonar system, so I can rid the seas of V.F.D. submarines. It has an enormous flyswatter, so I can rid the skies of V.F.D. planes. It has a lifetime supply of matches, so I can rid the world of V.F.D. headquarters. It has several cases of wine that I plan to drink up myself, and a closet full of very stylish outfits for my girlfriend. And best of all, it has plenty of opportunities for children to do hard labor! Ha ha hedonism!"

  Gesturing with his sword, he led the children around a corner into an enormous room – the room they'd had a glimpse of as the Queequeg tumbled inside this terrible place. It was quite dark, with only a few lanterns hanging from the tops of tall pillars scattered around the room, but Violet and Klaus could see two large rows of uncomfortable-looking wooden benches, on which sat a crowd of children, hurriedly working long oars that stretched across the room and even beyond the walls, where they slid through metal holes in order to control the tentacles of the octopus.

  The elder Baudelaires recognized some of the children from a troop of Snow Scouts they had encountered in the Mortmain Mountains, and a few looked quite a bit like other students at Prufrock Preparatory School, where the siblings had first encountered Carmelita Spats, but some of the others were children with whom the Baudelaires had had no prior experience, a phrase which here means "who had probably been kidnapped by Count Olaf or his associates on another occasion."

  The children looked very weary, quite hungry, and more than a little bored as they worked the metal oars back and forth. In the very center of the room appeared to be another octopus – this one made of slippery cloth. Six of the octopus's arms hung limply at its sides, but two of them were waving high in the air, one of them clutching what looked like a long, damp noodle.

  "Row faster, you stupid brats!" the octopus cried in a familiar, wicked voice. "We have to get back to the hotel Denouement before Thursday, and it's Monday already! If you don't hurry up I'm going to hit you with this tagliatelle grande! I warn you, being struck with a large piece of pasta is an unpleasant and somewhat sticky experience! Ho ho sniggle!"

  "Hee hee snaggic!" Olaf cried in agreement, and the octopus whirled around.

  "Darling!" it cried, and the siblings were not surprised to see that it was Esmé Squalor, Count Olaf's treacherous girlfriend, in another one of her absurd, stylish outfits.

  Using the slippery cloth of the submarine's uniforms, the villainous girlfriend had fashioned an octopus dress, with two large plastic eyes, six extra sleeves, and suction cups stuck all over her boots, just as real
octopi have on their tentacles to help them move around. Esmé took a few sticky steps toward Olaf and then peered at the children beneath the slippery hood of the dress.

  "Are these the Baudelaires?" she asked in astonishment. "How can that be? We already celebrated their deaths!"

  "It turns out they survived," Count Olaf said, "but their good luck is about to come to an end. I'm taking them to the brig!"

  "The baby certainly has grown," Esmé said, peering at Fiona. "But she's just as ugly as she ever was.

  "No, no," Olaf said. "The baby's locked up in that helmet, coughing her little lungs out. This is Fiona, Captain Widdershin's stepdaughter. The captain abandoned her!"

  "Abandoned her?" Esmé repeated. "How in! How stylish! How marvelous! This calls for more of our new laughter! Ha ha hedgehog!"

  "Tee hee tempeh!" Olaf cackled. "Life keeps getting better and better!"

  "Sniggle ho ho!" Esmé shrieked. "Our triumph is just around the corner!"

  "Ha ha hepplewhite!" Olaf crowed. V.F.D. will be reduced to ashes forever!"

  "Giggle giggle glandular problems!" Esmé cried. "We are going to be painfully wealthy!"

  "Heepa deepa ho ho ha!" Olaf shouted. "The world will always remember the name of this wonderful submarine!"

  "What is the name of this submarine?" Fiona asked, and to the children's relief the villains stopped their irritating laughter.

  Olaf glared at the mycologist and then looked at the ground. "The Carmelita" he admitted quietly. "I wanted to call it the Olaf, but somebody made me change it."

  "The Olaf is a cakesniffing name!" cried a rude voice the siblings had hoped never to hear again, and I'm sorry to say that Carmelita Spats skipped into the room, sneering at the Baudelaires as she did so.

  Carmelita had always been the sort of unpleasant person who believed that she was prettier and smarter than everybody else, and Violet and Klaus saw instantly that she had become even more spoiled under the care of Olaf and Esmé. She was dressed in an outfit perhaps even more absurd than Esmé Squalor's, in different shades of pink so blinding that Violet and Klaus had to squint in order to look at her. Around her waist was a wide, frilly tutu, which is a skirt used during ballet performances, and on her head was an enormous pink crown decorated with light pink ribbons and dark pink flowers. She had two pink wings taped to her back, two pink hearts drawn on her cheeks, and two different pink shoes on each foot that made unpleasant slapping sounds as she walked. Around her neck was a stethoscope, such as doctors use, with pink puffballs pasted all over it, and in one hand she had a long pink wand with a bright pink star at the end of it.

  "Stop looking at my outfit!" she commanded the Baudelaires scornfully. "You're just jealous of me because I'm a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian!"

  "You look adorable, darling," purred Esmé, patting her on the crown. "Doesn't she look adorable, Olaf?"

  "I suppose so," Count Olaf muttered. "I wish you would ask me before taking disguises from my trunk."

  "But Countie, I needed your disguises," Carmelita whined, batting her eyelashes, which were covered in pink glitter. "I needed a special outfit for my special tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian dance recital!"

  Several of the children groaned at their oars.

  "Please, no!" cried one of the Snow Scouts. "Her dance recitals last for hours!"

  "Have mercy on us!" cried another child.

  "Carmelita Spats is the most talented dancer in the entire universe!" Esmé growled, snapping the noodle over the rower's heads. "You brats should be grateful that she is performing for you! It'll help you row!"

  "Ugh," Sunny could not help saying from inside her helmet, as if the idea of Carmelita's dance recital were making her even sicker.

  The elder Baudelaires looked at one another and tried to imagine how they could help their young sibling.

  "I think we have a pink cape aboard the Queequeg," Klaus said hurriedly. "It would look perfect on Carmelita. I'll just run back to the submarine, and –"

  "I don't want your old clothes, you cakesniffer!" Carmelita said scornfully. "A tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian doesn't wear hand-me-downs!"

  "Isn't she precious" Esmé cooed. "She's like the adopted child I never had – except for you Baudelaires, of course. But I never liked you much."

  "Are you going to stay and watch me, Countie?" Carmelita asked. "This is going to be the most special dance recital in the whole wide world!"

  "There's too much work to do," Count Olaf said hastily. "I have to throw these children in the brig, so my associate can force them to reveal the location of the sugar bowl."

  "You like that sugar bowl more than me," Carmelita pouted.

  "Of course we don't, darling," Esmé said. "Olaf, tell her that sugar bowl doesn't mean a thing to you! Tell her she's like a wonderful marshmallow in the middle of our lives!"

  "You're a marshmallow, Carmelita," Olaf said, and pushed the children out of the enormous room. "I'll see you later."

  "Tell Hooky to be extra vicious with those brats!" Esmé cried, whipping the tagliatelle grande over her fake octopus head. "And now, on with the show!"

  Count Olaf ushered the children out of the room as Carmelita Spats began tapping and twirling in front of the rowers. The elder Baudelaires were almost grateful to go to the brig, rather than being forced to watch a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian dance recital. Olaf dragged them down another hallway that twisted every which way, curving to the right and to the left as if it were a snake the mechanical octopus had eaten, and finally stopped in front of a small door, with a metal eye where the metal eye where the doorknob ought to have been.

  "This is the brig!" Count Olaf cried. "Ha ha haberdasher!"

  Sunny coughed once more from inside her helmet – a rough, loud cough that sounded worse than before. The Medusoid Micelium was clearly continuing its ghastly growth, and Violet tried one more time to convince the villain to let them help her.

  "Please let us go back to the Queequeg," she said. "Can't you hear her coughing?"

  "Yes," Count Olaf said, "but I don't care."

  "Please!" Klaus cried. "This is a matter of life and death!"

  "It certainly is," Olaf sneered, turning the knob. "My associate will make you reveal the location of the sugar bowl if he has to tear you apart to do it!"

  "Listen to my friends!" Fiona said. "Aye! We're in a terrible situation!"

  "Oh, I wouldn't say that," Count Olaf said, with a wicked smile, as the door creaked open to reveal a small, bare room. There was nothing in it but a small stool, at which a man sat, shuffling a deck of cards with quite a bit of difficulty. "How can a family reunion be a terrible situation?" Olaf said, and shoved the children inside the room, slamming the door behind them.

  Violet and Klaus faced Olaf's associate, and turned the diving helmet so Sunny could face him, too. The siblings were not surprised, of course, that the person shuffling the cards was the hook-handed man, and they were not at all happy to see him, and they were quite scared that their time in the brig would make it impossible to save Sunny from the mushrooms growing inside her helmet. But when they looked at Fiona, they saw that the mycologist was quite surprised at who she saw in the brig, and quite happy to see the man who stood up from his stool and waved his hooks in amazement.

  "Fiona!" the hook-handed man cried.

  "Fernald!" Fiona said, and it seemed they just might save Sunny after all.

  Chapter Ten

  The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches. A
nd you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down.

  The Baudelaire orphans, of course, had had a great sadness in their life from the moment they first heard of their parents' death, and sometimes it felt as if they had to wave smoke away from their eyes to see even the happiest of moments. As Violet and Klaus watched Fiona and the hook-handed man embrace one another, they felt as if the smoke of their own unhappiness had filled the brig. They could not bear to think that Fiona had found her long-lost brother when they themselves, in all likelihood, would never see their parents again, and might even lose their sister as the poisonous spores of the Medusoid Mycelium made her coughing sound worse and worse inside the helmet.

  "Fiona!" the hook-handed man cried. "Is it really you?"

  "Aye," the mycologist said, taking off her triangular glasses to wipe away her tears. "I never thought I would see you again, Fernald. What happened to your hands?"

  "Never mind that," the hook-handed man said quickly. "Why are you here? Did you join Count Olaf, too?"

  "Certainly not," Fiona said firmly. "He captured the Queequeg, and threw us into the brig."

  "So you've joined the Baudelaire brats," the hook-handed man said. "I should have known you were a goody-goody!"

  "I haven't joined the Baudelaires," Fiona said, just as firmly. "They've joined me. Aye! I'm the captain of the Queequeg now."

  "You?" said Olaf's henchman. "What happened to Widdershins?"