“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 bucktoothed 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 Esmé Squalor had given h
im 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.
To My Kind Editor
A Series of Unfortunate Events
THE BAD BEGINNING
THE REPTILE ROOM
THE WIDE WINDOW
THE MISERABLE MILL
THE AUSTERE ACADEMY
THE ERSATZ ELEVATOR
THE VILE VILLAGE
THE HOSTILE HOSPITAL
THE CARNIVOROUS CARNIVAL
THE SLIPPERY SLOPE
THE GRIM GROTTO
THE PENULTIMATE PERIL
Credits
Cover art © 2002 by Brett Helquist
Cover design by Alison Donalty
Cover © 2002 by HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Copyright
THE CARNIVOROUS CARNIVAL
Text copyright © 2002 by Lemony Snicket
Illustrations copyright © 2002 by Brett Helquist.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub Edition August 2007 ISBN 9780061757211
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Snicket, Lemony.
The carnivorous carnival / by Lemony Snicket ; illustrations by Brett Helquist.
p. cm.—(A series of unfortunate events ; bk. 9)
Summary: On the run as suspected murderers, the unlucky Baudelaire orphans find themselves trapped in the Caligari Carnival, where they must masquerade as freaks in order to hide from the evil Count Olaf.
ISBN 0-06-441012-9—ISBN 0-06-029640-2 (lib. bdg.)
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
A Series of Unfortunate Events #10: The Slippery Slope
A Series of Unfortunate Events
BOOK the Tenth
THE SLIPPERY SLOPE
by LEMONY SNICKET
Illustrations by Brett Helquist
Dear Reader
Like handshakes, house pets, or raw carrots, many things are preferable when not slippery. Unfortunately, in this miserable volume, I am afraid that Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire run into more than their fair share of slipperiness during their harrowing journey up?and down?a range of strange and distressing mountains.
In order to spare you any further repulsion, it would be best not to mention any of the unpleasant details of this story, particularly a secret message, a toboggan, a deceitful trap, a swarm of snow gnats, a scheming villain, a troupe of organized youngsters, a covered casserole dish, and a surprising survivor of a terrible fire.
Unfortunately, I have dedicated my life to researching and recording the sad tale of the Baudelaire orphans. There is no reason for you to dedicate yourself to such things, and you might instead dedicate yourself to letting this slippery book slip from your hands into a nearby trash receptacle, or deep pit.
With all due respect,
Lemony Snicket
For Beatrice—
When we met, you were pretty, and I was lonely.
Now, I am pretty lonely.
CHAPTER
One
A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called “The Road Less Traveled,” describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used. The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn’t hear him as he cried for help. Sure enough, that poet is now dead.
Like a dead poet, this book can be said to be on the road less traveled, because it begins with the three Baudelaire children on a path leading through the Mortmain Mountains, which is not a popular destination for travelers, and it ends in the churning waters of the Stricken Stream, which few travelers even go near. But this book is also on the road less traveled, because unlike books most people prefer, which provide comforting and entertaining tales about charming people and talking animals, the tale you are reading now is nothing but distressing and unnerving, and the people unfortunate enough to be in the story are far more desperate and frantic than charming, and I would prefer to not speak about the animals at all. For that reason, I can no more suggest the reading of this woeful book than I can recommend wandering around the woods by yourself, because like the road less traveled, this book is likely to make you feel lonely, miserable, and in need of help.
The Baudelaire orphans, however, had no choice but to be on the road less traveled. Violet and Klaus, the two elder Baudelaires, were in a caravan, traveling very quickly along the high mountain path. Neither Violet, who was fourteen, nor Klaus, who had recently turned thirteen, had ever thought they would find themselves on this road, except perhaps with their parents on a family vacation. But the Baudelaire parents were nowhere to be found after a terrible fire destroyed their home—although the children had reason to believe that one parent may not have died in the blaze after all—and the caravan was not heading up the Mortmain Mountains, toward a secret headquarters the siblings had heard about and were hoping to find. The caravan was heading down the Mortmain Mountains, very quickly, with no way to control or stop its journey, so Violet and Klaus felt more like fish in a stormy sea than travelers on a vacation.
But Sunny Baudelaire was in a situation that could be said to be even more desperate. Sunny was the youngest Baudelaire, still learning to speak in a way that everyone could understand, so she scarcely had words for how frightened she was. Sunny was traveling uphill, toward the headquarters in the Mortmain Mountains, in an automobile that was working perfectly, but the driver of the automobile was a man who was reason enough for being terrified. Some people called this man wicked. S
ome called him facinorous, which is a fancy word for “wicked.” But everyone called him Count Olaf, unless he was wearing one of his ridiculous disguises and making people call him a false name. Count Olaf was an actor, but he had largely abandoned his theatrical career to try to steal the enormous fortune the Baudelaire parents had left behind. Olaf’s schemes to get the fortune had been mean-spirited and particularly complicated, but nevertheless he had managed to attract a girlfriend, a villainous and stylish woman named Esmé Squalor, who was sitting next to Count Olaf in the car, cackling nastily and clutching Sunny on her lap. Also in the car were several employees of Olaf’s, including a man with hooks instead of hands, two women who liked to wear white powder all over their faces, and three new comrades Olaf had recently recruited at Caligari Carnival. The Baudelaire children had been at the carnival, too, wearing disguises of their own, and had pretended to join Count Olaf in his treachery, but the villain had seen through their ruse, a phrase which here means “realized who they really were, and cut the knot attaching the caravan to the car, leaving Sunny in Olaf’s clutches and her siblings tumbling toward their doom.” Sunny sat in the car and felt Esmé’s long fingernails scratch her shoulders, and worried about what would happen to her and what was happening to her older siblings, as she heard their screams getting fainter and fainter as the car drove farther and farther away.
“We have to stop this caravan!” Klaus screamed. Hurriedly, he put on his glasses, as if by improving his vision he might improve the situation. But even in perfect focus, he could see their predicament was dire. The caravan had served as a home for several performers at the carnival’s House of Freaks before they defected—a word which here means “joined Count Olaf’s band of revolting comrades”—and now the contents of this tiny home were rattling and crashing with each bump in the road. Klaus ducked to avoid a roasting pan, which Hugo the hunchback had used to prepare meals and which had toppled off a shelf in the commotion. He lifted his feet from the floor as a set of dominoes skittered by—a set that Colette the contortionist had liked to play with. And he squinted above him as a hammock swung violently overhead. An ambidextrous person named Kevin used to sleep in that hammock until he had joined Olaf’s troupe, along with Hugo and Colette, and now it seemed like it might fall at any moment and trap the Baudelaires beneath it.
A Series of Unfortunate Events Box: The Complete Wreck Page 99