"So I think Aunt Bluhsephine meant 'cold as ice"' Klaus said.
"Okay, so we have ice and unbearable. So far this doesn't mean anything to me," Violet said.
"Me neither," Klaus said. "But look at bluh next part. 'I know your children may not understand the sad life of a dowadger.' We don't have any children."
"That's true," Violet said. "I'm not planning to have children until I am considerably older."
"So why would Aunt Josephine say 'your children'? I think she meant 'you children.' And I looked up 'dowadger' in The Correct Spelling of Every English Word That Ever, Ever Existed.'"
"Why?" Violet asked. "You already know it's a fancy word for widow."
"It is a bluhncy word for widow," Klaus replied, "but it's spelled D-O-W-A-G-E-R. Aunt Josephine added an extra D."
"Cold as ice" Violet said, counting on her fingers, "unbearable, you children, and an extra D in dowager. That's not much of a message, Klaus."
"Let me finish," Klaus said. "I discovered even more grammbluhtical mistakes. When she wrote, 'or what would have leaded me to this desperate akt,' she meant 'what would have led me,' and the word 'act,' of course, is spelled with a C."
"Coik!" Sunny shrieked, which meant "Thinking about all this is making me dizzy!"
"Me too, Sunny," Violet said, lifting her sister up so she could sit on the table. "But let him finish."
"There are just bluh more," Klaus said, holding up two fingers. "One, she calls Captain Sham 'a kind and honorable men,' when she should have said 'a kind and honorable man.' And in the last sentence, Aunt Josephine wrote 'Please think of me kindly even though I'd done this terrible thing,' but according to the Handbook for Advanced Apostrophe Use, she should have written 'even though I've done this terrible thing.'"
"But so what?" Violet asked. "What do all these mistakes mean?"
Klaus smiled, and showed his sisters the two words he had written on the bottom of the note. "Curdled Cave," he read out loud.
"Curdled veek?' Sunny asked, which meant "Curdled what?"
"Curdled Cave," Klaus repeated. "If you take all the letters involved in the grammatical mistakes, that's what it spells. Look: C for ice instead of Ike. U for unbearable instead of inbearable. The extra R in your children instead of you children, and the extra D in dowager. L-E-D for led instead of leaded. C for act instead of akt. A for man instead of men. And V-E for I've instead of I'd. That spells CURDLED CAVE. Don't you see? Aunt Josephine knew she was making grammatical errors, and she knew we'd spot them. She was leaving us a message, and the message is Curdled-"
A great gust of wind interrupted Klaus as it came through the shattered window and shook the library as if it were maracas, a word which describes rattling percussion instruments used in Latin American music. Everything rattled wildly around the library as the wind flew through it. Chairs and footstools flipped over and fell to the floor with their legs in the air. The bookshelves rattled so hard that some of the heaviest books in Aunt Josephine's collection spun off into puddles of rainwater on the floor. And the Baudelaire orphans were jerked violently to the ground as a streak of lightning flashed across the darkening sky.
"Let's get out of here!" Violet shouted over the noise of the thunder, and grabbed her siblings by the hand. The wind was blowing so hard that the Baudelaires felt as if they were climbing an enormous hill instead of walking to the door of the library. The orphans were quite out of breath by the time they shut the library door behind them and stood shivering in the hallway.
"Poor Aunt Josephine," Violet said. "Her library is wrecked."
"But I need to go back in there," Klaus said, holding up the note. "We just found out what Aunt Josephine means by Curdled Cave, and we need a library to find out more."
"Not that library," Violet pointed out. "All that library had were books on grammar. We need her books on Lake Lachrymose."
"Why?" Klaus asked.
"Because I'll bet you anything that's where Curdled Cave is," Violet said, "in Lake Lachrymose. Remember she said she knew every island in its waters and every cave on its shore? I bet Curdled Cave is one of those caves."
"But why would her secret message be about some cave?" Klaus asked.
"You've been so busy figuring out the message," Violet said, "that you don't understand what it means. Aunt Josephine isn't dead. She just wants people to think she's dead. But she wanted to tell us that she was hiding. We have to find her books on Lake Lachrymose and find out where Curdled Cave is."
"But first we have to know where the books are," Klaus said. "She told us she hid them away, remember?"
Sunny shrieked something in agreement, but her siblings couldn't hear her over a burst of thunder.
"Let's see," Violet said. "Where would you hide something if you didn't want to look at it?"
The Baudelaire orphans were quiet as they thought of places they had hidden things they did not want to look at, back when they had lived with their parents in the Baudelaire home. Violet thought of an automatic harmonica she had invented that had made such horrible noises that she had hidden it so she didn't have to think of her failure. Klaus thought of a book on the Franco-Prussian War that was so difficult that he had hidden it so as not to be reminded that he wasn't old enough to read it. And Sunny thought of a piece of stone that was too hard for even her sharpest tooth, and how she had hidden it so her jaw would no longer ache from her many attempts at conquering it. And all three Baudelaire orphans thought of the hiding place they had chosen.
"Underneath the bed," Violet said.
"Underneath the bed," Klaus agreed.
"Seeka yit," Sunny agreed, and without another word the three children ran down the hallway to Aunt Josephine's room. Normally it is not polite to go into somebody's room without knocking, but you can make an exception if the person is dead, or pretending to be dead, and the Baudelaires went right inside. Aunt Josephine's room was similar to the orphans', with a navy-blue bedspread on the bed and a pile of tin cans in the corner. There was a small window looking out onto the rain-soaked hill, and a pile of new grammar books by the side of the bed that Aunt Josephine had not started reading, and, I'm sad to say, would never read. But the only part of the room that interested the children was underneath the bed, and the three of them knelt down to look there.
Aunt Josephine, apparently, had plenty of things she did not want to look at anymore. Underneath the bed there were pots and pans, which she didn't want to look at because they reminded her of the stove. There were ugly socks somebody had given her as a gift that were too ugly for human eyes. And the Baudelaires were sad to see a framed photograph of a kind-looking man with a handful of crackers in one hand and his lips pursed as if he were whistling. It was Ike, and the Baudelaires knew that she had placed his photograph there because she was too sad to look at it. But behind one of the biggest pots was a stack of books, and the orphans immediately reached for it.
"The Tides of Lake Lachrymose," Violet said, reading the title of the top book. "That won't help."
"The Bottom of Lake Lachrymose," Klaus said, reading the next one. "That's not useful."
"Lachrymose Trout," Violet read.
"The History of the Damocles Dock Region," Klaus read.
"Ivan Lachrymose-Lake Explorer," Violet read.
"How Water Is Made," Klaus read.
"A Lachrymose Atlas," Violet said.
"Atlas? That's perfect!" Klaus cried. "An atlas is a book of maps!"
There was a flash of lightning outside the window, and it began to rain harder, making a sound on the roof like somebody was dropping marbles on it. Without another word the Baudelaires opened the atlas and began flipping pages. They saw map after map of the lake, but they couldn't find Curdled Cave.
"This book is four hundred seventy-eight pages long," Klaus exclaimed, looking at the last page of the atlas. "It'll take forever to find Curdled Cave."
"We don't have forever," Violet said. "Captain Sham is probably on his way here now. Use the index in the back. Lo
ok under 'Curdled.'"
Klaus flipped to the index, which I'm sure you know is an alphabetical list of each thing a book contains and what page it's on. Klaus ran his finger down the list of the C words, muttering out loud to himself. "Carp Cove, Chartreuse Island, Cloudy Cliffs, Condiment Bay, Curdled Cave-here it is! Curdled Cave, page one hundred four." Quickly Klaus flipped to the correct page and looked at the detailed map. "Curdled Cave, Curdled Cave, where is it?"
"There it is!" Violet pointed a finger at the tiny spot on the map marked Curdled Cave. "Directly across from Damocles Dock and just west of the Lavender Lighthouse. Let's go."
"Go?" Klaus said. "How will we get across the lake?"
"The Fickle Ferry will take us," Violet said, pointing at a dotted line on the map. "Look, the ferry goes right to the Lavender Lighthouse, and we can walk from there."
"We're going to walk to Damocles Dock, in all this rain?" Klaus asked.
"We don't have any choice," Violet answered. "We have to prove that Aunt Josephine is still alive, or else Captain Sham gets us."
"I just hope she is still-" Klaus started to say, but he stopped himself and pointed out the window. "Look!"
Violet and Sunny looked. The window in
Aunt Josephine's bedroom looked out onto the hill, and the orphans could see one of the spidery metal stilts that kept Aunt Josephine's house from falling into the lake. But they could also see that this stilt had been badly damaged by the howling storm. There was a large black burn mark, undoubtedly from lightning, and the wind had bent the stilt into an uneasy curve. As the storm raged around them, the orphans watched the stilt struggle to stay attached.
"Tafca!" Sunny shrieked, which meant "We have to get out of here right now!"
"Sunny's right," Violet said. "Grab the atlas and let's go."
Klaus grabbed A Lachrymose Atlas, not wanting to think what would be happening if they were still leafing through the book and had not looked up at the window. As the youngsters stood up, the wind rose to a feverish pitch, a phrase which here means "it shook the house and sent all three orphans toppling to the floor."
Violet fell against one of the bedposts and banged her knee. Klaus fell against the cold radiator and banged his foot. And Sunny fell into the pile of tin cans and banged everything. The whole room seemed to lurch slightly to one side as the orphans staggered back to their feet. "Come on!" Violet screamed, and grabbed Sunny. The orphans scurried out to the hallway and toward the front door. A piece of the ceiling had come off, and rainwater was steadily pouring onto the carpet, splattering the orphans as they ran underneath it. The house gave another lurch, and the children toppled to the floor again. Aunt Josephine's house was starting to slip off the hill. "Come on!" Violet screamed again, and the orphans stumbled up the tilted hallway to the door, slipping in puddles and on their own frightened feet. Klaus was the first to reach the front door, and yanked it open as the house gave another lurch, followed by a horrible, horrible crunching sound. "Come on!"
Violet screamed again, and the Baudelaires crawled out of the door and onto the hill, huddling together in the freezing rain. They were cold. They were frightened. But they had escaped.
I have seen many amazing things in my long and troubled life history. I have seen a series of corridors built entirely out of human skulls. I have seen a volcano erupt and send a wall of lava crawling toward a small village. I have seen a woman I loved picked up by an enormous eagle and flown to its high mountain nest. But I still cannot imagine what it was like to watch Aunt Josephine's house topple into Lake Lachrymose. My own research tells me that the children watched in mute amazement as the peeling white door slammed shut and began to crumple, as you might crumple a piece of paper into a ball. I have been told that the children hugged each other even more tightly as they heard the rough and earsplitting noise of their home breaking loose from the side of the hill. But I cannot tell you how it felt to watch the whole building fall down, down, down, and hit the dark and stormy waters of the lake below.
CHAPTER Nine
The United States Postal Service has a motto. The motto is: "Neither rain nor sleet nor driving snow shall halt the delivery of the mails." All this means is that even when the weather is nasty and your mailperson wants to stay inside and enjoy a cup of cocoa, he or she has to bundle up and go outside and deliver your mail anyway. The United States Postal Service does not think that icy storms should interfere with its duties.
The Baudelaire orphans were distressed to learn that the Fickle Ferry had no such policy. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny had made their way down the hill with much difficulty. The storm was rising, and the children could tell that the wind and the rain wanted nothing more than to grab them and throw them into the raging waters of Lake Lachrymose. Violet and Sunny hadn't had the time to grab their coats as they escaped the house, so all three children took turns wearing Klaus's coat as they stumbled along the flooding road. Once or twice a car drove by, and the Baudelaires had to scurry into the muddy bushes and hide, in case Captain Sham was coming to retrieve them. When they finally reached Damocles Dock, their teeth were chattering and their feet were so cold they could scarcely feel their toes, and the sight of the CLOSED sign in the window of the Fickle Ferry ticket booth was just about more than they could stand.
"It's closed" Klaus cried, his voice rising with despair and in order to be heard over Hurricane Herman. "How will we get to Curdled Cave now?"
"We'll have to wait until it opens," Violet replied.
"But it won't open until the storm is past," Klaus pointed out, "and by then Captain Sham will find us and take us far away. We have to get to Aunt Josephine as soon as possible."
"I don't know how we can," Violet said, shivering. "The atlas says that the cave is all the way across the lake, and we can't swim all that way in this weather."
"Entro!" Sunny shrieked, which meant something along the lines of "And we don't have enough time to walk around the lake, either."
"There must be other boats on this lake," Klaus said, "besides the ferry. Motorboats, or fishing boats, or-" He trailed off, and his eyes met those of his sisters. All three orphans were thinking the same thing.
"Or sailboats" Violet finished for him. "Captain Sham's Sailboat Rentals. He said it was right on Damocles Dock."
The Baudelaires stood under the awning of the ticket booth and looked down at the far end of the deserted dock, where they could see a metal gate that was very tall and had glistening spikes on the top of it. Hanging over the metal gate was a sign with some words they couldn't read, and next to the sign there was a small shack, scarcely visible in the rain, with a flickering light in the window. The children looked at it with dread in their hearts. Walking into Captain Sham's Sailboat Rentals in order to find Aunt Josephine would feel like walking into a lion's den in order to escape from a lion.
"We can't go there," Klaus said.
"We have to," Violet said. "We know Captain
Sham isn't there, because he's either on his way to Aunt Josephine's house or still at the Anxious Clown."
"But whoever is there," Klaus said, pointing to the flickering light, "won't let us rent a sailboat."
"They won't know we're the Baudelaires," Violet replied. "We'll tell whoever it is that we're the Jones children and that we want to go for a sail."
"In the middle of a hurricane?" Klaus replied. "They won't believe that."
"They'll have to," Violet said resolutely, a word which here means "as if she believed it, even though she wasn't so sure," and she led her siblings toward the shack. Klaus clasped the atlas close to his chest, and Sunny, whose turn it was for Klaus's coat, clutched it around herself, and soon the Baudelaires were shivering underneath the sign that read: CAPTAIN SHAM'S SAILBOAT RENTALS-EVERY BOAT HAS IT'S OWN SAIL. But the tall metal gate was locked up tight, and the Baudelaires paused there, anxious about going inside the shack.
"Let's take a look," Klaus whispered, pointing to a window, but it was too high for him or Sunny to use. Standing on tip
toe, Violet peered into the window of the shack and with one glance she knew there was no way they could rent a sailboat.
The shack was very small, with only room for a small desk and a single lightbulb, which was giving off the flickering light. But at the desk, asleep in a chair, was a person so massive that it looked like an enormous blob was in the shack, snoring away with a bottle of beer in one hand and a ring of keys in the other. As the person snored, the bottle shook, the keys jangled, and the door of the shack creaked open an inch or two, but although those noises were quite spooky, they weren't what frightened Violet. What frightened Violet was that you couldn't tell if this person was a man or a woman. There aren't very many people like that in the world, and Violet knew which one this was. Perhaps you have forgotten about Count Olaf's evil comrades, but the Baudelaires had seen them in the flesh-lots of flesh, in this comrade's case-and remembered all of them in gruesome detail. These people were rude, and they were sneaky, and they did whatever Count Olaf-or in this case, Captain Sham-told them to do, and the orphans never knew when they would turn up. And now, one had turned up right there in the shack, dangerous, treacherous, and snoring.
Violet's face must have shown her disappointment, because as soon as she took a look Klaus asked, "What's wrong? I mean, besides Hurricane Herman, and Aunt Josephine faking her own death, and Captain Sham coming after us and everything."
"One of Count Olaf's comrades is in the shack," Violet said.
"Which one?" Klaus asked.
"The one who looks like neither a man nor a woman," Violet replied.
Klaus shuddered. "That's the scariest one."
"I disagree," Violet said. "I think the bald one is scariest."
"Vass!" Sunny whispered, which probably meant "Let's discuss this at another time."
"Did he or she see you?" Klaus asked.
"No," Violet said. "He or she is asleep. But he or she is holding a ring of keys. We'll need them, I bet, to unlock the gate and get a sailboat."
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