Series of Unfortunate Events: The Grim Grotto (9 page)

Chapter Nine 

If you are considering a life of villainy, and I certainly hope that you are not, there are a few things that appear to be necessary to every villain 's success. One thing is a villainous disregard for other people, so that a villain may talk to his or her victims impolitely, ignore their pleas for mercy, and even behave violently toward them if the villain is in the mood of thing. Another thing villains require is a villainous imagination, so that they might spend their free time dreaming up treacherous schemes in order to further their villainous careers. Villains require a small group of villainous cohorts, who can be persuaded to serve the villain in a henchpersonal capacity. And villains need to develop a villainous laugh, so that they may simultaneously celebrate their villainous deeds and frighten whatever nonvillainous people happen to be nearby. A successful villain should have all of these things at his or her villainous fingertips, or else give up villainy altogether and try to lead a life of decency, integrity, and kindness, which is much more challenging and noble, if not always quite as exciting. Count Olaf, of course, was an excellent villain, a phrase which here means "someone particularly skilled at villainy" rather than "a villain with several desirable qualities," and the Baudelaire orphans had known this soon after that terrible day at Briny Beach, when the children learned of the terrible fire that began so many of the unfortunate events in their lives. But as the Queequeg tumbled into the mouth of his dreadful octopus submarine, it seemed to the orphans that the villain had become even more villainous during his brief absence from their lives. Olaf had proven his villainous disregard for other people over and over, from his vicious murder of the children's guardians to his affinity for arson, a phrase which here means "enthusiasm for burning down buildings, no matter how many people were inside," but the children realized that Olaf's disregard had become even more dreadful, as the Queequeg passed through the gaping mouth and was roughly tossed from side to side in a mechanical imitation of swallowing, forcing Violet and Klaus, and Fiona, too, of course, to hang on for dear life as the Main Hall rolled this way and that, spinning Sunny in her helmet like a watermelon in a washing machine. The count had displayed his villainous imagination on a number of occasions, from his dastardly schemes to steal the Baudelaire fortune to his nefarious plots to kidnap Duncan and Isadora Quagmire, but the siblings gazed out of the porthole and saw that Olaf's infernal imagination had run utterly wild in decorating this terrible submarine, for the Queequeg rolled along a rumbling tunnel that was almost as dark and threatening as the Gorgonian Grotto, with every inch of its metallic walls covered in eerie glowing eyes. The count always had an assortment of cohorts, from his original theatrical troupe, many of whom were no longer with him, to some former employees of Caligari Carnival, but the orphans saw that he had lured many others to join him when the tunnel rounded a corner and the elder Baudelaires had a brief glimpse of an enormous room full of people rowing long, metal oars, activating the terrible metal arms of the octopus. And, perhaps worst of all, when the Queequeg finally came to a shuddering stop and Violet and Klaus looked out of the porthole, they learned that the villain had clearly been rehearsing his villainous laugh until it was extra wicked and more theatrical than ever. Count Olaf was standing on a small, metal platform with a triumphant grin on his face, dressed in a familiar suit made of slippery-looking material, but with a portrait of another author whom only a very devoted reader would recognize, and when he peered through the porthole and spied the frightened children, he opened his mouth and began his new villainous laugh, which included new wheezes, bonus snarls, and an assortment of strange syllables the Baudelaires had never heard. "Ha ha ha heepa-heepa ho!" he cried. "Tee hee tort tort tort! Hot cha ha ha! Sniggle hee! Ha, if I do say so myself!" With a boastful gesture, he hopped off the platform, drew a long, sharp sword, and quickly traced a circle on the glass of the porthole. Violet and Klaus covered their ears as the sword shrieked its way around the window. Then, with one flick of his sword, Olaf sent the glass circle tumbling into the Main Hall, where it lay unbroken on the floor, and leaped through the porthole onto the large, wooden table to laugh at them further. "I'm splitting my sides!" he cried. "I'm rolling in the aisles! I'm nauseous with mirth! I'm rattling with glee! I'm seriously considering compiling a joke book from all of the hilarious things bouncing around my brain! Hup hup ha ha hammy hee hee!" Violet dashed forward and grabbed the helmet in which Sunny was still curled, so Olaf would not kick it as he pranced triumphantly on top of the table. She could not bear to think of her sister, who was inhaling the poison of the Medusoid Mycelium as Olaf wasted precious minutes performing his tiresome new laugh. "Stop laughing, Count Olaf," she said. "'There's nothing funny about villainy." "Sure there is!" Olaf crowed. "Ha ha hat rack! Just think of it! I made my way down the mountain and found pieces of your toboggan scattered all over some very sharp rocks! Tee hee torpid sniggle! I thought you had drowned in the Stricken Stream and were swimming with all those coughing fishes! Ho ho hagfish! I was brokenhearted!" "You weren't brokenhearted," Klaus said. "You've tried to destroy us plenty of times." "That's why I was brokenhearted!" Olaf cried. "Ho ho sniggle! I personally planned to slaughter you Baudelaires myself, after I had your fortune of course, and pry the sugar bowl out of your dead fingers or toes!" Violet and Klaus looked at one another hurriedly. They had almost forgotten telling Olaf that they knew the location of the sugar bowl, even though they of course had no idea of its whereabouts. "To cheer myself up," the villain continued, "I met my associates at the Hotel Denouement, where they where they were cooking up a little scheme of their own, and convinced them to lend me a handful of our new recruits." The elder Baudelaires knew that the associates were the man with a beard and no hair, and the woman with hair but no beard, two people so sinister that even Olaf seemed to find them a bit frightening, and that the new recruits were a group of Snow Scouts that these villains had recently kidnapped. "Tee hee turncoat! Thanks to their generosity, I was able to get this submarine working again! Sniggle ha ho ho! Of course, I need to be back at the Hotel Denouement before Thursday, but in the meantime I had a few days to kill, so I thought I'd kill some of my old enemies! Tee hee halbert sniggle! So I began roaming around the sea, looking for Captain Widdershins and his idiotic submarine on my sonar detector! Tee hee telotaxis! But now that I've captured the Queequeg, I find you Baudelaires aboard! It's hilarious! It's humorous! It's droll! It's relatively amusing!" "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 Esme 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. Esme 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," Esme 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?" Esme 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!" Esme 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!" Esme 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 Esme. She was dressed in an outfit perhaps even more absurd than Esme 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 Esme, 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!" Esme 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" Esme 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," Esme 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!" Esme 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.