“One of the shrubs around here contains a nutrient that acts as a natural stimulant,” Cleo explained. “If you chew on a rolled-up piece of bark, you don’t feel as tired.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said.
“It was someone else’s good idea,” Cleo said. “I found a rolled-up bark cigarette in the trash, near 350 Wayward Way.”
“The bark’s been stripped away from most of the shrubs,” Jake said. “Someone has been out here fighting the effects of laudanum for quite some time.”
“There’s not enough to go around,” Cleo said. “That’s why Moxie’s in such bad shape.”
I gave Moxie a gentle nudge. “What’s the news?”
Moxie’s eyes fluttered. “I’m afraid I’m missing most of it,” she murmured, “but I’m glad to see you. I missed you too, Snicket.”
Ellington took another knotted handkerchief out of her pocket. “If we can find water, I can make some coffee,” she said. “That should sharpen us up a little.”
“There’s a sink behind the librarian’s desk,” Kellar said, and Ellington hurried toward her errand. The others looked at me, except Moxie, whose eyes were open but looking at nothing.
“I know Ellington hasn’t always been trustworthy,” Cleo said, in a quiet murmur, “but without her coffee I’m not sure we’d be here talking to you.”
“Tell me what’s been going on,” I said.
“Here’s someone who knows more than we do,” Jake said, gesturing to the girl I didn’t know. “Snicket, this is Ornette Lost.”
I shook the girl’s hand and told her I knew her father.
“How is he?” she asked me.
“Worried about you.”
“He should be,” Ornette said. “Everyone should be worried about everyone here. After my school burned down, the Department of Education told us we’d get a top-drawer education, but everybody in the drawer is wandering around in a daze.” She tilted the paper this way and that and in no time had a folded pyramid in front of her. She was quick with it, a marvel to watch. “This isn’t a school,” she said, and flicked the pyramid my way. “Not really. There are classrooms, but there aren’t any classes. There are desks but no desk work. We were searched and told to stay in our rooms, and we stay there, and that’s it and that’s all.”
“The occasional meal is left outside our doors,” Kellar said, with a bitter shake of his head. “My mother was never a good cook, and now the food is laced with laudanum.”
“This morning they made us unload a bunch of equipment off a school bus,” Ornette said, “and then drag it downstairs into a damp basement.”
“What kind of equipment?” I asked her, and flicked the pyramid back to her.
“Fish tanks,” she said.
“Small ones, about the size of a book?”
She shook her head. Now the pyramid was a ladder, leaning against her coffee cup. “Bigger than that.”
We all looked at one another, all of us who knew, Jake and Cleo and Moxie. “It’s the same plan as last time,” I said in agreement. “He had the Colophon Clinic all ready to hold a number of children prisoner, along with a prominent naturalist and who knows who else. Now he’s doing it at the Wade Academy. He’s just switched from shackles to sleeping potion.”
“But why?” Kellar asked. “What for?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” I said to him. “You and your mother are part of the plan.”
Kellar sighed, and took an envelope out of his pocket. He tipped it and a photograph fell out. Another photograph, I thought. Another sad story for a file full of them.
“This is my sister Lizzie,” he said, and showed me a girl. She looked older than any of us, but it could just have been her glamorous dress. She had a wide and eager smile, and a long string of pearls around her neck she was fiddling with. “My sister was born for the stage,” Kellar told us. “She always wanted to be an actress, and a few months ago she was invited to study with a theatrical legend here in Stain’d-by-the-Sea.”
“Sally Murphy,” I said.
Kellar’s eyes grew even wider. “How did you know?”
“It’s a long story,” I said, referring to a volume you likely don’t want to read.
“She was so happy to go,” Kellar said, “but after a few months we stopped getting letters. We worried for a while, and then we heard from someone else.”
“Hangfire,” Moxie said, with a sleepy shudder.
Kellar nodded. “He told us that if we ever wanted to see Lizzie again, we had to follow his instructions exactly.”
“All those fires,” I said.
“We didn’t burn those buildings down,” Kellar said. “Tricking you and Theodora was our part. Someone else framed the librarian.”
“You helped,” Jake said. “You and your mother helped plenty.”
“I know,” Kellar said, “but we’re desperate about my sister. She’s all we have. We’re the only ones who can help her.”
He was wrong about that, but just then Ellington returned with coffee for everyone on a large, wide book she was using as a tray. “I found these mugs in a closet,” she said, “and washed them out repeatedly in case they had laudanum in them. Drink up, everyone—but try to make it last. We’re running low on coffee.”
I drank up, and it wasn’t hard to try to make it last. Each sip was a mudslide in my mouth. I looked around at the table of wincing people. Only Ellington was enjoying her coffee, and I think she was also enjoying watching us not enjoy ours. Cleo helped Moxie drink from the mug, and the journalist’s eyes began to flutter and focus around the room.
“So?” she said to me. “Have you figured out what Hangfire’s up to?”
“I only heard Kellar’s part of the plan,” I said. “I haven’t heard Ellington’s.”
Everyone at the table looked at Ellington Feint. She kept sipping. “My part?” she asked, in the tone of voice you use when you’re standing next to a broken vase and don’t want to be blamed for it.
“I heard every word of your conversation with Sharon Haines,” I said. “Tomorrow’s a big day, and she’s counting on you. You said you’d do your part, and now you have to tell us what it is.”
Ellington moved her mug to the center of the table. Her eyebrows, curved like question marks, felt like they belonged to all the questions in my mind, and then she gave me her smile, the one that might have meant anything. “It is a big day tomorrow,” she said. “That Haines woman is driving all of the students into town for a field trip.”
“A field trip?” Moxie repeated doubtfully.
“Most field trips contain sinister plots,” I said.
Ellington nodded. “Hangfire needs something for whatever he’s going to do in that basement. I don’t know what it is, but everyone is being sent to help fetch it. Everyone but me.”
“And what are you going to do?” I asked. “What’s your part?”
“I’m supposed to climb to the top of the tower,” Ellington said, “and ring the bell at one o’clock sharp.”
“Why you?” Moxie asked.
“I got the job the way anyone gets an important job at school,” Ellington answered. “I’ve been behaving sickeningly well.”
“But why are you supposed to ring that bell?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Ellington said. “I’ve been thinking about the reason for all the bell-ringing in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. I don’t think it’s to warn people about water pressure, or salt lung. Maybe it used to be. But now I think Hangfire rings the bell when he wants the town to be nervous and masked, so it’s easier for him to skulk around.”
“And where is he going to skulk,” I wondered, “at one o’clock tomorrow?”
Ellington shook her head. “I don’t know, but he won’t be back until very late.”
Kellar gave her a curious look. “Did he tell you this himself?”
Ellington turned to face him, and they stared at each other for a moment, the two people in the room who had helped Hangfir
e in order to help someone else. I didn’t like them together. It was like watching a lit match near a book. “No,” she said.
“Who told you, then?” Kellar asked.
“Your mother,” Ellington replied sharply. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Hangfire since I arrived.”
“Maybe he doesn’t need to see you,” I said, “now that he has the statue he needs.”
“You gave it to him?” Moxie sputtered, looking at Ellington in astonishment.
“I had no choice,” Ellington said quietly. “It was confiscated from me when I enrolled here. Tomorrow, while everyone else is in town, I’m going to search every inch of Wade Academy and Offshore Island for my father. Maybe if I can rescue him, Hangfire’s plot will be ruined, and the Bombinating Beast won’t matter.”
“What’s the Bombinating Beast?” Ornette asked, and I was sad to shake my head in reply.
“I still don’t know,” I admitted, and looked around the room. “I need to spend more time in the library.”
“Not in this library,” Jake said with a grimace, as if one of his recipes hadn’t worked out. “See for yourself.”
I stood up and saw for myself. The first book I plucked from the shelf had a plain cover, which is not too unusual at a library. The first few pages were blank, which is not too unusual in a book. But then everything was blank, each page as white and empty as an iceberg, and this is unusual everywhere but a paper factory. The others at the table watched me. It did not take long to see that all the books were the same. It made my eyes ache.
“I couldn’t believe it either,” Kellar said. “I have no idea why they would do such a thing.”
“At first glance, this looks like a real library,” I said, “just like Wade Academy looks like a top-drawer school. I guess Hangfire wanted to fool any parent who might have come to check on their child.”
“Snicket,” Moxie said quietly, “what are we going to do?”
“Not what everyone’s parents did,” I said. “Not nothing.”
My associates looked at me, and I felt very weary. It wasn’t only the laudanum’s doing. My life felt heavy that night, with each year of my life like a weighty crate, so I had almost thirteen crates to carry around inside me, with each crate full of notebooks and each notebook full of secrets. It is hard to lug such a heavy load around with me and to keep everyone from seeing it. But some secrets are so strange and so dangerous that showing them to people makes the strangeness and the danger pour into their lives like dark, dark ink. I lived with this ink myself, emblazoned on my ankle for me to see each morning when I got out of bed, except for the days when I collapsed exhausted with my shoes on. But I did not want to stain anyone else’s life. Moxie still had a bandage on her arm, and all the others at the table were exhausted and desperate creatures, caught in a web of Hangfire’s devising, saved only by chewing on the bark of shrubs and drinking coffee filtered through a handkerchief. I did not want to burden them further. But the treachery of the world will continue no matter how much you worry about it, my sister had said to me. So I put my foot up on the table.
“What is that?” Cleo said, after a pause.
Jake leaned forward and frowned. “It’s an eye,” he said. “No, wait. It’s initials.”
“V.F.D.,” Moxie said. “Is that real?”
“As real as literature,” I said.
“What’s V.F.D.?” Cleo asked.
“It’s a secret organization,” Moxie said. “I’ve seen mentions of it here and there.”
“V.F.D. stands for Volunteer Fire Department,” I said.
“So you put out fires?” Kellar asked.
“When we can,” I said, “but there’s more to it than that. We try to do what good we can in the world.”
Jake frowned. “Doesn’t everybody try to do that?”
“Not enough people,” I said.
“I don’t understand this,” Moxie said. “What is it, exactly, that you do? What does V.F.D. believe?”
“We believe in an aristocracy,” I said.
Moxie wanted to type so badly that she rattled her fingers on the table. “Doesn’t that mean people who are rich and powerful?”
“Not that kind of aristocracy,” I said, with both feet on the floor. “Not an aristocracy of power, based on rank or wealth, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Our members are found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between us when we meet.”
“Like us,” Cleo said. “We’ve all read The Wind in the Willows, so we decided to use that as a code.”
“Exactly,” I said, watching Ellington frown out of the corner of my eye. “We represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory over cruelty and chaos. We’re an invincible army, but not a victorious one. We’ve had different names throughout history, but all the words that describe us are false and all attempts to organize us fail. Right now we’re called V.F.D., but all our schisms and arguments might cause us to disappear. It won’t matter. People like us always slip through the net. Our true home is the imagination, and our kingdom is the wide-open world.”
It was quite a speech, and I’m not ashamed to say that most of it was paraphrased, a word which here means “more or less stolen from another one of my associates.” But Edward had always managed to capture everyone’s attention when he made that speech, and sure enough when I was done I could tell everyone was nodding silently. I took another sip and realized I was trembling.
“Can we join?” Cleo said finally.
“It seems to me you already have joined,” I said.
“I hope that doesn’t mean we have to get tattoos,” Moxie said.
“I’ve never liked this,” I said, frowning at my ankle. “It is unwise to make something permanent when the whole world is shifting. There may be a time when this symbol means something treacherous and terrible, rather than something noble and literate.”
“And there may be a time,” Cleo said darkly, “when our town disappears altogether, and Stain’d-by-the-Sea only survives as a name for Hangfire’s villainous deeds.”
“Not if we stop him,” I said. “But right now we’d better scatter. This has been a long meeting, and we have a big day tomorrow.”
“You mean we’re actually going to go on that field trip?” Jake asked.
“Of course,” I said. “I have a taxi to catch tomorrow, but the rest of you should get on that school bus. Keep your eyes and ears open and then meet up and share information.”
“When will we meet?” Cleo asked.
“And where?” Moxie said.
“Hungry’s,” I said. “Just after one o’clock. Ellington will ring the bell, so it’ll be easier to skulk away.”
“So I guess we’ll see each other on the school bus tomorrow morning,” Moxie said, and we all nodded quietly. I couldn’t help smiling. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed attending secret meetings just like this one. We left the way V.F.D. always ended meetings—separately, quietly, and with firm handshakes. Cleo went out first, then Jake, then Ornette, then Moxie, and then Kellar, whose handshake felt strange in my palm.
“I feel like this is all my fault, Snicket,” he said. “That’s why I tried to give you messages about what was really happening. I knew helping Hangfire was the wrong thing to do, but you know how it is, arguing with a difficult mother.”
“You did everything you could think of,” I told him.
“I hope I’m still doing that,” he said, still gripping my hand. “I’d like to think you can trust absolutely all of us. Well, good night.”
I told him good night and he went out and I held tight to the object Kellar Haines had just slipped me. It was small, round, and cold, like a very thick coin. I’d like to think you can trust absolutely all of us, he’d said, so I thought it was best not to look at it in front of Ellington Feint. It occurred to me suddenly to wonder if I would spend the night tucked into her bed again.
“I know it�
��s been a long night, Snicket,” Ellington said to me, “but there’s something else I need to show you.”
“Is that so?” I asked.
“It is so.”
Maybe this is her part, I thought. Maybe this is something else she promised Hangfire she’d do. “Lead the way,” I said, and she did, sneaking down staircases, sneaking down hallways, sneaking through doors, until we were outside in the night and at once I knew I was in the wrong place.
The air was still warm, and the rain had slowed to a spit. The ground was hot slush beneath my bare feet. A watery moon was out, but only half of it showed up in the overcast sky. A cloud drifted in front of it, with jagged edges like teeth, and the insects were still hissing in the crowded air. It was dark, but not so dark that I could not see Ellington’s green eyes as she leaned in to murmur to me.
“Do you see that big rock”—and here she pointed with one finger that disappeared in the darkness—“way over there, that looks like the mouth of some weird animal?”
I saw that big rock, way over there, that looked like the mouth of some weird animal.
“There’s a fire pond over there,” she said. “That’s where we’re headed.”
“Fire pond?” I said, and wished I had not sounded so quivery.
“A deep pit of water,” she said. “Isolated places have them in case of fire, because there are no hydrants around. There’s something I need to show you there. Come on.”
She stepped nimbly out of sight. I had to follow her to see her. Good idea, I told myself. Follow a girl who has brought you nothing but trouble, toward a deep pit of water in an isolated location in the dark of night. If you were a book, Snicket, you would throw yourself down because your hero was acting foolishly. The Bombinating Beast is under her bed, Snicket, and you’re following her into the darkness. You’re unsupervised, Snicket, as Theodora would have told me. You’re unsupervised and you’re scared.
Get scared later, I told myself.
Myself told me very rude things in return.
We walked in silence across the grounds of Wade Academy, with its rocks and roots of shrubs and the chatter of worried insects. We headed steadily toward the mouth of some strange animal. My feet got dirty and sore. Ellington’s slender shadow teetered in front of me as she moved across the landscape. We passed an awkward shape in the darkness that revealed itself, when I was close enough. It was a well, like the one Hangfire had used in the basement of the Sallis mansion, when he tried to drown Sally Murphy. I thought of Kellar’s sister then, and my own. What will happen? I kept asking myself, but I knew it was the wrong question.
Shouldn't You Be in School? Page 10