بخش 01

CHAPTER One

If you didn’t know much about the Baudelaire orphans, and you saw them sitting on their suitcases at Damocles Dock, you might think that they were bound for an exciting adventure. After all, the three children had just disembarked from the Fickle Ferry, which had driven them across Lake Lachrymose to live with their Aunt Josephine, and in most cases such a situation would lead to thrillingly good times.

But of course you would be dead wrong. For although Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were about to experience events that would be both exciting and memorable, they would not be exciting and memorable like having your fortune told or going to a rodeo. Their adventure would be exciting and memorable like being chased by a werewolf through a field of thorny bushes at midnight with nobody around to help you. If you are interested in reading a story filled with thrillingly good times, I am sorry to inform you that you are most certainly reading the wrong book, because the Baudelaires experience very few good times over the course of their gloomy and miserable lives. It is a terrible thing, their misfortune, so terrible that I can scarcely bring myself to write about it. So if you do not want to read a story of tragedy and sadness, this is your very last chance to put this book down, because the misery of the Baudelaire orphans begins in the very next paragraph.

“Look what I have for you,” Mr. Poe said, grinning from ear to ear and holding out a small paper bag. “Peppermints!” Mr. Poe was a banker who had been placed in charge of handling the affairs of the Baudelaire orphans after their parents died. Mr. Poe was kindhearted, but it is not enough in this world to be kindhearted, particularly if you are responsible for keeping children out of danger. Mr. Poe had known the three children since they were born, and could never remember that they were allergic to peppermints.

“Thank you, Mr. Poe,” Violet said, and took the paper bag and peered inside. Like most fourteen-year-olds, Violet was too well mannered to mention that if she ate a peppermint she would break out in hives, a phrase which here means “be covered in red, itchy rashes for a few hours.” Besides, she was too occupied with inventing thoughts to pay much attention to Mr. Poe. Anyone who knew Violet would know that when her hair was tied up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes, the way it was now, her thoughts were filled with wheels, gears, levers, and other necessary things for inventions. At this particular moment she was thinking of how she could improve the engine of the Fickle Ferry so it wouldn’t belch smoke into the gray sky.

“That’s very kind of you,” said Klaus, the middle Baudelaire child, smiling at Mr. Poe and thinking that if he had even one lick of a peppermint, his tongue would swell up and he would scarcely be able to speak. Klaus took his glasses off and wished that Mr. Poe had bought him a book or a newspaper instead. Klaus was a voracious reader, and when he had learned about his allergy at a birthday party when he was eight, he had immediately read all his parents’ books about allergies. Even four years later he could recite the chemical formulas that caused his tongue to swell up.

“Toi!” Sunny shrieked. The youngest Baudelaire was only an infant, and like many infants, she spoke mostly in words that were tricky to understand. By “Toi!” she probably meant “I have never eaten a peppermint because I suspect that I, like my siblings, am allergic to them,” but it was hard to tell. She may also have meant “I wish I could bite a peppermint, because I like to bite things with my four sharp teeth, but I don’t want to risk an allergic reaction.”

“You can eat them on your cab ride to Mrs. Anwhistle’s house,” Mr. Poe said, coughing into his white handkerchief. Mr. Poe always seemed to have a cold and the Baudelaire orphans were accustomed to receiving information from him between bouts of hacking and wheezing. “She apologizes for not meeting you at the dock, but she says she’s frightened of it.”

“Why would she be frightened of a dock?” Klaus asked, looking around at the wooden piers and sailboats.

“She’s frightened of anything to do with Lake Lachrymose,” Mr. Poe said, “but she didn’t say why. Perhaps it has to do with her husband’s death. Your Aunt Josephine—she’s not really your aunt, of course; she’s your second cousin’s sister-in-law, but asked that you call her Aunt Josephine—your Aunt Josephine lost her husband recently, and it may be possible that he drowned or died in a boat accident. It didn’t seem polite to ask how she became a dowager. Well, let’s put you in a taxi.”

“What does that word mean?” Violet asked.

Mr. Poe looked at Violet and raised his eyebrows. “I’m surprised at you, Violet,” he said. “A girl of your age should know that a taxi is a car which will drive you someplace for a fee. Now, let’s gather your luggage and walk to the curb.”

“‘Dowager,’” Klaus whispered to Violet, “is a fancy word for ‘widow.’”

“Thank you,” she whispered back, picking up her suitcase in one hand and Sunny in the other. Mr. Poe was waving his handkerchief in the air to signal a taxi to stop, and in no time at all the cabdriver piled all of the Baudelaire suitcases into the trunk and Mr. Poe piled the Baudelaire children into the back seat.

“I will say good-bye to you here,” Mr. Poe said. “The banking day has already begun, and I’m afraid if I go with you out to Aunt Josephine’s I will never get anything done. Please give her my best wishes, and tell her that I will keep in touch regularly.” Mr. Poe paused for a moment to cough into his handkerchief before continuing. “Now, your Aunt Josephine is a bit nervous about having three children in her house, but I assured her that you three were very well behaved. Make sure you mind your manners, and, as always, you can call or fax me at the bank if there’s any sort of problem. Although I don’t imagine anything will go wrong this time.”

When Mr. Poe said “this time,” he looked at the children meaningfully as if it were their fault that poor Uncle Monty was dead. But the Baudelaires were too nervous about meeting their new caretaker to say anything more to Mr. Poe except “So long.”

“So long,” Violet said, putting the bag of peppermints in her pocket.

“So long,” Klaus said, taking one last look at Damocles Dock.

“Frul!” Sunny shrieked, chewing on her seat belt buckle.

“So long,” Mr. Poe replied, “and good luck to you. I will think of the Baudelaires as often as I can.”

Mr. Poe gave some money to the taxi driver and waved good-bye to the three children as the cab pulled away from the dock and onto a gray, cobblestoned street. There was a small grocery store with barrels of limes and beets out front. There was a clothing store called Look! It Fits!, which appeared to be undergoing renovations. There was a terrible-looking restaurant called the Anxious Clown, with neon lights and balloons in the window. But mostly, there were many stores and shops that were all closed up, with boards or metal gratings over the windows and doors.

“The town doesn’t seem very crowded,” Klaus remarked. “I was hoping we might make some new friends here.”

“It’s the off-season,” the cabdriver said. He was a skinny man with a skinny cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and as he talked to the children he looked at them through the rearview mirror. “The town of Lake Lachrymose is a resort, and when the nice weather comes it’s as crowded as can be. But around now, things here are as dead as the cat I ran over this morning. To make new friends, you’ll have to wait until the weather gets a little better. Speaking of which, Hurricane Herman is expected to arrive in town in a week or so. You better make sure you have enough food up there in the house.”

“A hurricane on a lake?” Klaus asked. “I thought hurricanes only occurred near the ocean.”

“A body of water as big as Lake Lachrymose,” the driver said, “can have anything occur on it. To tell you the truth, I’d be a little nervous about living on top of this hill. Once the storm hits, it’ll be very difficult to drive all the way down into town.”

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny looked out the window and saw what the driver meant by “all the way down.” The taxi had turned one last corner and arrived at the scraggly top of a tall, tall hill, and the children could see the town far, far below them, the cobblestone road curling around the buildings like a tiny gray snake, and the small square of Damocles Dock with specks of people bustling around it. And out beyond the dock was the inky blob of Lake Lachrymose, huge and dark as if a monster were standing over the three orphans, casting a giant shadow below them. For a few moments the children stared into the lake as if hypnotized by this enormous stain on the landscape.

“The lake is so enormous,” Klaus said, “and it looks so deep. I can almost understand why Aunt Josephine is afraid of it.”

“The lady who lives up here,” the cabdriver asked, “is afraid of the lake?”

“That’s what we’ve been told,” Violet said.

The cabdriver shook his head and brought the cab to a halt. “I don’t know how she can stand it, then.”

“What do you mean?” Violet asked.

“You mean you’ve never been to this house?” he asked.

“No, never,” Klaus replied. “We’ve never even met our Aunt Josephine before.”

“Well, if your Aunt Josephine is afraid of the water,” the cabdriver said, “I can’t believe she lives here in this house.”

“What are you talking about?” Klaus asked.

“Well, take a look,” the driver answered, and got out of the cab.

The Baudelaires took a look. At first, the three youngsters saw only a small boxy square with a peeling white door, and it looked as if the house was scarcely bigger than the taxi which had taken them to it. But as they piled out of the car and drew closer, they saw that this small square was the only part of the house that was on top of the hill. The rest of it—a large pile of boxy squares, all stuck together like ice cubes—hung over the side, attached to the hill by long metal stilts that looked like spider legs. As the three orphans peered down at their new home, it seemed as if the entire house were holding on to the hill for dear life.

The taxi driver took their suitcases out of the trunk, set them in front of the peeling white door, and drove down the hill with a toot! of his horn for a good-bye. There was a soft squeak as the peeling white door opened, and from behind the door appeared a pale woman with her white hair piled high on top of her head in a bun.

“Hello,” she said, smiling thinly. “I’m your Aunt Josephine.”

“Hello,” Violet said, cautiously, and stepped forward to meet her new guardian. Klaus stepped forward behind her, and Sunny crawled forward behind him, but all three Baudelaires were walking carefully, as if their weight would send the house toppling down from its perch. The orphans couldn’t help wondering how a woman who was so afraid of Lake Lachrymose could live in a house that felt like it was about to fall into its depths.

CHAPTER TWO

“This is the radiator,” Aunt Josephine said, pointing to a radiator with a pale and skinny finger. “Please don’t ever touch it. You may find yourself very cold here in my home. I never turn on the radiator, because I am frightened that it might explode, so it often gets chilly in the evenings.”

Violet and Klaus looked at one another briefly, and Sunny looked at both of them. Aunt Josephine was giving them a tour of their new home and so far appeared to be afraid of everything in it, from the welcome mat—which, Aunt Josephine explained, could cause someone to trip and break their neck—to the sofa in the living room, which she said could fall over at any time and crush them flat.

“This is the telephone,” Aunt Josephine said, gesturing to the telephone. “It should only be used in emergencies, because there is a danger of electrocution.”

“Actually,” Klaus said, “I’ve read quite a bit about electricity. I’m pretty sure that the telephone is perfectly safe.”

Aunt Josephine’s hands fluttered to her white hair as if something had jumped onto her head. “You can’t believe everything you read,” she pointed out.

“I’ve built a telephone from scratch,” Violet said. “If you’d like, I could take the telephone apart and show you how it works. That might make you feel better.”

“I don’t think so,” Aunt Josephine said, frowning.

“Delmo!” Sunny offered, which probably meant something along the lines of “If you wish, I will bite the telephone to show you that it’s harmless.”

“Delmo?” Aunt Josephine asked, bending over to pick up a piece of lint from the faded flowery carpet. “What do you mean by ‘delmo’? I consider myself an expert on the English language, and I have no idea what the word ‘delmo’ means. Is she speaking some other language?”

“Sunny doesn’t speak fluently yet, I’m afraid,” Klaus said, picking his little sister up. “Just baby talk, mostly.”

“Grun!” Sunny shrieked, which meant something like “I object to your calling it baby talk!”

“Well, I will have to teach her proper English,” Aunt Josephine said stiffly. “I’m sure you all need some brushing up on your grammar, actually. Grammar is the greatest joy in life, don’t you find?”

The three siblings looked at one another. Violet was more likely to say that inventing things was the greatest joy in life, Klaus thought reading was, and Sunny of course took no greater pleasure than in biting things. The Baudelaires thought of grammar—all those rules about how to write and speak the English language—the way they thought of banana bread: fine, but nothing to make a fuss about. Still, it seemed rude to contradict Aunt Josephine.

“Yes,” Violet said finally. “We’ve always loved grammar.”

Aunt Josephine nodded, and gave the Baudelaires a small smile. “Well, I’ll show you to your room and continue the rest of the tour after dinner. When you open this door, just push on the wood here. Never use the doorknob. I’m always afraid that it will shatter into a million pieces and that one of them will hit my eye.”

The Baudelaires were beginning to think that they would not be allowed to touch a single object in the whole house, but they smiled at Aunt Josephine, pushed on the wood, and opened the door to reveal a large, well-lit room with blank white walls and a plain blue carpet on the floor. Inside were two good-sized beds and one good-sized crib, obviously for Sunny, each covered in a plain blue bedspread, and at the foot of each bed was a large trunk, for storing things. At the other end of the room was a large closet for everyone’s clothes, a small window for looking out, and a medium-sized pile of tin cans for no apparent purpose.

“I’m sorry that all three of you have to share a room,” Aunt Josephine said, “but this house isn’t very big. I tried to provide you with everything you would need, and I do hope you will be comfortable.”

“I’m sure we will,” Violet said, carrying her suitcase into the room. “Thank you very much, Aunt Josephine.”

“In each of your trunks,” Aunt Josephine said, “there is a present.”

Presents? The Baudelaires had not received presents for a long, long time. Smiling, Aunt Josephine walked to the first trunk and opened it. “For Violet,” she said, “there is a lovely new doll with plenty of outfits for it to wear.” Aunt Josephine reached inside and pulled out a plastic doll with a tiny mouth and wide, staring eyes. “Isn’t she adorable? Her name is Pretty Penny.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Violet, who at fourteen was too old for dolls and had never particularly liked dolls anyway. Forcing a smile on her face, she took Pretty Penny from Aunt Josephine and patted it on its little plastic head.

“And for Klaus,” Aunt Josephine said, “there is a model train set.” She opened the second trunk and pulled out a tiny train car. “You can set up the tracks in that empty corner of the room.”

“What fun,” said Klaus, trying to look excited. Klaus had never liked model trains, as they were a lot of work to put together and when you were done all you had was something that went around and around in endless circles.

“And for little Sunny,” Aunt Josephine said, reaching into the smallest trunk, which sat at the foot of the crib, “here is a rattle. See, Sunny, it makes a little noise.”

Sunny smiled at Aunt Josephine, showing all four of her sharp teeth, but her older siblings knew that Sunny despised rattles and the irritating sounds they made when you shook them. Sunny had been given a rattle when she was very small, and it was the only thing she was not sorry to lose in the enormous fire that had destroyed the Baudelaire home.

“It is so generous of you,” Violet said, “to give us all of these things.” She was too polite to add that they weren’t things they particularly liked.

“Well, I am very happy to have you here,” Aunt Josephine said. “I love grammar so much. I’m excited to be able to share my love of grammar with three nice children like yourselves. Well, I’ll give you a few minutes to settle in and then we’ll have some dinner. See you soon.”

“Aunt Josephine,” Klaus asked, “what are these cans for?”

“Those cans? For burglars, naturally,” Aunt Josephine said, patting the bun of hair on top of her head. “You must be as frightened of burglars as I am. So every night, simply place these tin cans right by the door, so that when burglars come in, they’ll trip over the cans and you’ll wake up.”

“But what will we do then, when we’re awake in a room with an angry burglar?” Violet asked. “I would prefer to sleep through a burglary.”

Aunt Josephine’s eyes grew wide with fear. “Angry burglars?” she repeated. “Angry burglars? Why are you talking about angry burglars? Are you trying to make us all even more frightened than we already are?”

“Of course not,” Violet stuttered, not pointing out that Aunt Josephine was the one who had brought up the subject. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“Well, we’ll say no more about it,” Aunt Josephine said, looking nervously at the tin cans as if a burglar were tripping on them at that very minute. “I’ll see you at the dinner table in a few minutes.”

Their new guardian shut the door, and the Baudelaire orphans listened to her footsteps padding down the hallway before they spoke.

“Sunny can have Pretty Penny,” Violet said, handing the doll to her sister. “The plastic is hard enough for chewing, I think.”

“And you can have the model trains, Violet,” Klaus said. “Maybe you can take apart the engines and invent something.”

“But that leaves you with a rattle,” Violet said. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“Schu!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant something along the lines of “It’s been a long time since anything in our lives has felt fair.”

The Baudelaires looked at one another with bitter smiles. Sunny was right. It wasn’t fair that their parents had been taken away from them. It wasn’t fair that the evil and revolting Count Olaf was pursuing them wherever they went, caring for nothing but their fortune. It wasn’t fair that they moved from relative to relative, with terrible things happening at each of their new homes, as if the Baudelaires were riding on some horrible bus that stopped only at stations of unfairness and misery. And, of course, it certainly wasn’t fair that Klaus only had a rattle to play with in his new home.

“Aunt Josephine obviously worked very hard to prepare this room for us,” Violet said sadly. “She seems to be a good-hearted person. We shouldn’t complain, even to ourselves.”

“You’re right,” Klaus said, picking up his rattle and giving it a halfhearted little shake. “We shouldn’t complain.”

“Twee!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant something like “Both of you are right. We shouldn’t complain.”

Klaus walked over to the window and looked out at the darkening landscape. The sun was beginning to set over the inky depths of Lake Lachrymose, and a cold evening wind was beginning to blow. Even from the other side of the glass Klaus could feel a small chill. “I want to complain, anyway,” he said.

“Soup’s on!” Aunt Josephine called from the kitchen. “Please come to dinner!”

Violet put her hand on Klaus’s shoulder and gave it a little squeeze of comfort, and without another word the three Baudelaires headed back down the hallway and into the dining room. Aunt Josephine had set the table for four, providing a large cushion for Sunny and another pile of tin cans in the corner of the room, just in case burglars tried to steal their dinner.

“Normally, of course,” Aunt Josephine said, “‘soup’s on’ is an idiomatic expression that has nothing to do with soup. It simply means that dinner is ready. In this case, however, I’ve actually made soup.”

“Oh good,” Violet said. “There’s nothing like hot soup on a chilly evening.”

“Actually, it’s not hot soup,” Aunt Josephine said. “I never cook anything hot because I’m afraid of turning the stove on. It might burst into flames. I’ve made chilled cucumber soup for dinner.”

The Baudelaires looked at one another and tried to hide their dismay. As you probably know, chilled cucumber soup is a delicacy that is best enjoyed on a very hot day. I myself once enjoyed it in Egypt while visiting a friend of mine who works as a snake charmer. When it is well prepared, chilled cucumber soup has a delicious, minty taste, cool and refreshing as if you are drinking something as well as eating it. But on a cold day, in a drafty room, chilled cucumber soup is about as welcome as a swarm of wasps at a bat mitzvah. In dead silence, the three children sat down at the table with their Aunt Josephine and did their best to force down the cold, slimy concoction. The only sound was of Sunny’s four teeth chattering on her soup spoon as she ate her frigid dinner. As I’m sure you know, when no one is speaking at the dinner table, the meal seems to take hours, so it felt like much, much later when Aunt Josephine broke the silence.

“My dear husband and I never had children,” she said, “because we were afraid to. But I do want you to know that I’m very happy that you’re here. I am often very lonely up on this hill by myself, and when Mr. Poe wrote to me about your troubles I didn’t want you to be as lonely as I was when I lost my dear Ike.”

“Was Ike your husband?” Violet asked.

Aunt Josephine smiled, but she didn’t look at Violet, as if she were talking more to herself than to the Baudelaires. “Yes,” she said, in a faraway voice, “he was my husband, but he was much more than that. He was my best friend, my partner in grammar, and the only person I knew who could whistle with crackers in his mouth.”

“Our mother could do that,” Klaus said, smiling. “Her specialty was Mozart’s fourteenth symphony.”

“Ike’s was Beethoven’s fourth quartet,” Aunt Josephine replied. “Apparently it’s a family characteristic.”

“I’m sorry we never got to meet him,” Violet said. “He sounds wonderful.”

“He was wonderful,” Aunt Josephine said, stirring her soup and blowing on it even though it was ice cold. “I was so sad when he died. I felt like I’d lost the two most special things in my life.”

“Two?” Violet asked. “What do you mean?”

“I lost Ike,” Aunt Josephine said, “and I lost Lake Lachrymose. I mean, I didn’t really lose it, of course. It’s still down in the valley. But I grew up on its shores. I used to swim in it every day. I knew which beaches were sandy and which were rocky. I knew all the islands in the middle of its waters and all the caves alongside its shore. Lake Lachrymose felt like a friend to me. But when it took poor Ike away from me I was too afraid to go near it anymore. I stopped swimming in it. I never went to the beach again. I even put away all my books about it. The only way I can bear to look at it is from the Wide Window in the library.”

“Library?” Klaus asked, brightening. “You have a library?”

“Of course,” Aunt Josephine said. “Where else could I keep all my books on grammar? If you’ve all finished with your soup, I’ll show you the library.”

“I couldn’t eat another bite,” Violet said truthfully.

“Irm!” Sunny shrieked in agreement.

“No, no, Sunny,” Aunt Josephine said. “‘Irm’ is not grammatically correct. You mean to say, ‘I have also finished my supper.’”

“Irm,” Sunny insisted.

“My goodness, you do need grammar lessons,” Aunt Josephine said. “All the more reason to go to the library. Come, children.”

Leaving behind their half-full soup bowls, the Baudelaires followed Aunt Josephine down the hallway, taking care not to touch any of the doorknobs they passed. At the end of the hallway, Aunt Josephine stopped and opened an ordinary-looking door, but when the children stepped through the door they arrived in a room that was anything but ordinary.

The library was neither square nor rectangular, like most rooms, but curved in the shape of an oval. One wall of the oval was devoted to books—rows and rows and rows of them, and every single one of them was about grammar. There was an encyclopedia of nouns placed in a series of simple wooden bookshelves, curved to fit the wall. There were very thick books on the history of verbs, lined up in metal bookshelves that were polished to a bright shine. And there were cabinets made of glass, with adjective manuals placed inside them as if they were for sale in a store instead of in someone’s house. In the middle of the room were some comfortable-looking chairs, each with its own footstool so one could stretch out one’s legs while reading.

But it was the other wall of the oval, at the far end of the room, that drew the children’s attention. From floor to ceiling, the wall was a window, just one enormous curved pane of glass, and beyond the glass was a spectacular view of Lake Lachrymose. When the children stepped forward to take a closer look, they felt as if they were flying high above the dark lake instead of merely looking out on it.

“This is the only way I can stand to look at the lake,” Aunt Josephine said in a quiet voice. “From far away. If I get much closer I remember my last picnic on the beach with my darling Ike. I warned him to wait an hour after eating before he went into the lake, but he only waited forty-five minutes. He thought that was enough.”

“Did he get cramps?” Klaus asked. “That’s what’s supposed to happen if you don’t wait an hour before you swim.”

“That’s one reason,” Aunt Josephine said, “but in Lake Lachrymose, there’s another one. If you don’t wait an hour after eating, the Lachrymose Leeches will smell food on you, and attack.”

“Leeches?” Violet asked.

“Leeches,” Klaus explained, “are a bit like worms. They are blind and live in bodies of water, and in order to feed, they attach themselves to you and suck your blood.”

Violet shuddered. “How horrible.”

“Swoh!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant something along the lines of “Why in the world would you go swimming in a lake full of leeches?”

“The Lachrymose Leeches,” Aunt Josephine said, “are quite different from regular leeches. They each have six rows of very sharp teeth, and one very sharp nose—they can smell even the smallest bit of food from far, far away. The Lachrymose Leeches are usually quite harmless, preying only on small fish. But if they smell food on a human they will swarm around him and—and…” Tears came to Aunt Josephine’s eyes, and she took out a pale pink handkerchief and dabbed them away. “I apologize, children. It is not grammatically correct to end a sentence with the word ‘and’, but I get so upset when I think about Ike that I cannot talk about his death.”

“We’re sorry we brought it up,” Klaus said quickly. “We didn’t mean to upset you.”

“That’s all right,” Aunt Josephine said, blowing her nose. “It’s just that I prefer to think of Ike in other ways. Ike always loved the sunshine, and I like to imagine that wherever he is now, it’s as sunny as can be. Of course, nobody knows what happens to you after you die, but it’s nice to think of my husband someplace very, very hot, don’t you think?”

“Yes I do,” Violet said. “It is very nice.” She swallowed. She wanted to say something else to Aunt Josephine, but when you have only known someone for a few hours it is difficult to know what they would like to hear. “Aunt Josephine,” she said timidly, “have you thought of moving someplace else? Perhaps if you lived somewhere far from Lake Lachrymose, you might feel better.”

“We’d go with you,” Klaus piped up.

“Oh, I could never sell this house,” Aunt Josephine said. “I’m terrified of realtors.”

The three Baudelaire youngsters looked at one another surreptitiously, a word which here means “while Aunt Josephine wasn’t looking.” None of them had ever heard of a person who was frightened of realtors.

There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational—or, in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don’t. For instance, the Baudelaire orphans have a fear of Count Olaf, which makes perfect sense, because he is an evil man who wants to destroy them. But if they were afraid of lemon meringue pie, this would be an irrational fear, because lemon meringue pie is delicious and has never hurt a soul. Being afraid of a monster under the bed is perfectly rational, because there may in fact be a monster under your bed at any time, ready to eat you all up, but a fear of realtors is an irrational fear. Realtors, as I’m sure you know, are people who assist in the buying and selling of houses. Besides occasionally wearing an ugly yellow coat, the worst a realtor can do to you is show you a house that you find ugly, and so it is completely irrational to be terrified of them.

As Violet, Klaus, and Sunny looked down at the dark lake and thought about their new lives with Aunt Josephine, they experienced a fear themselves, and even a worldwide expert on fear would have difficulty saying whether this was a rational fear or an irrational fear. The Baudelaires’ fear was that misfortune would soon befall them. On one hand, this was an irrational fear, because Aunt Josephine seemed like a good person, and Count Olaf was nowhere to be seen. But on the other hand, the Baudelaires had experienced so many terrible things that it seemed rational to think that another catastrophe was just around the corner.

CHAPTER Three

There is a way of looking at life called “keeping things in perspective.” This simply means “making yourself feel better by comparing the things that are happening to you right now against other things that have happened at a different time, or to different people.” For instance, if you were upset about an ugly pimple on the end of your nose, you might try to feel better by keeping your pimple in perspective. You might compare your pimple situation to that of someone who was being eaten by a bear, and when you looked in the mirror at your ugly pimple, you could say to yourself, “Well, at least I’m not being eaten by a bear.”

You can see at once why keeping things in perspective rarely works very well, because it is hard to concentrate on somebody else being eaten by a bear when you are staring at your own ugly pimple. So it was with the Baudelaire orphans in the days that followed. In the morning, when the children joined Aunt Josephine for a breakfast of orange juice and untoasted bread, Violet thought to herself, “Well, at least we’re not being forced to cook for Count Olaf’s disgusting theater troupe.” In the afternoon, when Aunt Josephine would take them to the library and teach them all about grammar, Klaus thought to himself, “Well, at least Count Olaf isn’t about to whisk us away to Peru.” And in the evening, when the children joined Aunt Josephine for a dinner of orange juice and untoasted bread, Sunny thought to herself, “Zax!” which meant something along the lines of “Well, at least there isn’t a sign of Count Olaf anywhere.”

But no matter how much the three siblings compared their life with Aunt Josephine to the miserable things that had happened to them before, they couldn’t help but be dissatisfied with their circumstances. In her free time, Violet would dismantle the gears and switches from the model train set, hoping to invent something that could prepare hot food without frightening Aunt Josephine, but she couldn’t help wishing that Aunt Josephine would simply turn on the stove. Klaus would sit in one of the chairs in the library with his feet on a footstool, reading about grammar until the sun went down, but when he looked out at the gloomy lake he couldn’t help wishing that they were still living with Uncle Monty and all of his reptiles. And Sunny would take time out from her schedule and bite the head of Pretty Penny, but she couldn’t help wishing that their parents were still alive and that she and her siblings were safe and sound in the Baudelaire home.

Aunt Josephine did not like to leave the house very much, because there were so many things outside that frightened her, but one day the children told her what the cabdriver had said about Hurricane Herman approaching, and she agreed to take them into town in order to buy groceries. Aunt Josephine was afraid to drive in automobiles, because the doors might get stuck, leaving her trapped inside, so they walked the long way down the hill. By the time the Baudelaires reached the market their legs were sore from the walk.

“Are you sure that you won’t let us cook for you?” Violet asked, as Aunt Josephine reached into the barrel of limes. “When we lived with Count Olaf, we learned how to make puttanesca sauce. It was quite easy and perfectly safe.”

Aunt Josephine shook her head. “It is my responsibility as your caretaker to cook for you, and I am eager to try this recipe for cold lime stew. Count Olaf certainly does sound evil. Imagine forcing children to stand near a stove!”

“He was very cruel to us,” Klaus agreed, not adding that being forced to cook had been the least of their problems when they lived with Count Olaf. “Sometimes I still have nightmares about the terrible tattoo on his ankle. It always scared me.”

Aunt Josephine frowned, and patted her bun. “I’m afraid you made a grammatical mistake, Klaus,” she said sternly. “When you said, ‘It always scared me,’ you sounded as if you meant that his ankle always scared you, but you meant his tattoo. So you should have said, ‘The tattoo always scared me.’ Do you understand?”

“Yes, I understand,” Klaus said, sighing. “Thank you for pointing that out, Aunt Josephine.”

“Niku!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant something like “It wasn’t very nice to point out Klaus’s grammatical mistake when he was talking about something that upset him.”

“No, no, Sunny,” Aunt Josephine said firmly, looking up from her shopping list. “‘Niku’ isn’t a word. Remember what we said about using correct English. Now, Violet, would you please get some cucumbers? I thought I would make chilled cucumber soup again sometime next week.”

Violet groaned inwardly, a phrase which here means “said nothing but felt disappointed at the prospect of another chilly dinner,” but she smiled at Aunt Josephine and headed down an aisle of the market in search of cucumbers. She looked wistfully at all the delicious food on the shelves that required turning on the stove in order to prepare it. Violet hoped that someday she could cook a nice hot meal for Aunt Josephine and her siblings using the invention she was working on with the model train engine. For a few moments she was so lost in her inventing thoughts that she didn’t look where she was going until she walked right into someone.

“Excuse m—” Violet started to say, but when she looked up she couldn’t finish her sentence. There stood a tall, thin man with a blue sailor hat on his head and a black eye patch covering his left eye. He was smiling eagerly down at her as if she were a brightly wrapped birthday present that he couldn’t wait to rip open. His fingers were long and bony, and he was leaning awkwardly to one side, a bit like Aunt Josephine’s house dangling over the hill. When Violet looked down, she saw why: There was a thick stump of wood where his left leg should have been, and like most people with peg legs, this man was leaning on his good leg, which caused him to tilt. But even though Violet had never seen anyone with a peg leg before, this was not why she couldn’t finish her sentence. The reason why had to do with something she had seen before—the bright, bright shine in the man’s one eye, and above it, just one long eyebrow.

When someone is in disguise, and the disguise is not very good, one can describe it as a transparent disguise. This does not mean that the person is wearing plastic wrap or glass or anything else transparent. It merely means that people can see through his disguise—that is, the disguise doesn’t fool them for a minute. Violet wasn’t fooled for even a second as she stood staring at the man she’d walked into. She knew at once it was Count Olaf.

“Violet, what are you doing in this aisle?” Aunt Josephine said, walking up behind her. “This aisle contains food that needs to be heated, and you know—” When she saw Count Olaf she stopped speaking, and for a second Violet thought that Aunt Josephine had recognized him, too. But then Aunt Josephine smiled, and Violet’s hopes were dashed, a word which here means “shattered.”

“Hello,” Count Olaf said, smiling at Aunt Josephine. “I was just apologizing for running into your sister here.”

Aunt Josephine’s face grew bright red, seeming even brighter under her white hair. “Oh, no,” she said, as Klaus and Sunny came down the aisle to see what all the fuss was about. “Violet is not my sister, sir. I am her legal guardian.”

Count Olaf clapped one hand to his face as if Aunt Josephine had just told him she was the tooth fairy. “I cannot believe it,” he said. “Madam, you don’t look nearly old enough to be anyone’s guardian.”

Aunt Josephine blushed again. “Well, sir, I have lived by the lake my whole life, and some people have told me that it keeps me looking youthful.”

“I would be happy to have the acquaintance of a local personage,” Count Olaf said, tipping his blue sailor hat and using a silly word which here means “person.” “I am new to this town, and beginning a new business, so I am eager to make new acquaintances. Allow me to introduce myself.”

“Klaus and I are happy to introduce you,” Violet said, with more bravery than I would have had when faced with meeting Count Olaf again. “Aunt Josephine, this is Count—”

“No, no, Violet,” Aunt Josephine interrupted. “Watch your grammar. You should have said ‘Klaus and I will be happy to introduce you,’ because you haven’t introduced us yet.”

“But—” Violet started to say.

“Now, Veronica,” Count Olaf said, his one eye shining brightly as he looked down at her. “Your guardian is right. And before you make any other mistakes, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Captain Sham, and I have a new business renting sailboats out on Damocles Dock. I am happy to make your acquaintance, Miss—?”

“I am Josephine Anwhistle,” Aunt Josephine said. “And these are Violet, Klaus, and little Sunny Baudelaire.”

“Little Sunny,” Captain Sham repeated, sounding as if he were eating Sunny rather than greeting her. “It’s a pleasure to meet all of you. Perhaps someday I can take you out on the lake for a little boat ride.”

“Ging!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant something like “I would rather eat dirt.”

“We’re not going anywhere with you,” Klaus said.

Aunt Josephine blushed again, and looked sharply at the three children. “The children seem to have forgotten their manners as well as their grammar,” she said. “Please apologize to Captain Sham at once.”

“He’s not Captain Sham,” Violet said impatiently. “He’s Count Olaf.”

Aunt Josephine gasped, and looked from the anxious faces of the Baudelaires to the calm face of Captain Sham. He had a grin on his face, but his smile had slipped a notch, a phrase which here means “grown less confident as he waited to see if Aunt Josephine realized he was really Count Olaf in disguise.”

Aunt Josephine looked him over from head to toe, and then frowned. “Mr. Poe told me to be on the watch for Count Olaf,” she said finally, “but he did also say that you children tended to see him everywhere.”

“We see him everywhere,” Klaus said tiredly, “because he is everywhere.”

“Who is this Count Omar person?” Captain Sham asked.

“Count Olaf,” Aunt Josephine said, “is a terrible man who—”

“—is standing right in front of us,” Violet finished. “I don’t care what he calls himself. He has the same shiny eyes, the same single eyebrow—”

“But plenty of people have those characteristics,” Aunt Josephine said. “Why, my mother-in-law had not only one eyebrow, but also only one ear.”

“The tattoo!” Klaus said. “Look for the tattoo! Count Olaf has a tattoo of an eye on his left ankle.”

Captain Sham sighed, and, with difficulty, lifted his peg leg so everyone could get a clear look at it. It was made of dark wood that was polished to shine as brightly as his eye, and attached to his left knee with a curved metal hinge. “But I don’t even have a left ankle,” he said, in a whiny voice. “It was all chewed away by the Lachrymose Leeches.”

Aunt Josephine’s eyes welled up, and she placed a hand on Captain Sham’s shoulder. “Oh, you poor man,” she said, and the children knew at once that they were doomed. “Did you hear what Captain Sham said?” she asked them.

Violet tried one more time, knowing it would probably be futile, a word which here means “filled with futility.” “He’s not Captain Sham,” she said. “He’s—”

“You don’t think he would allow the Lachrymose Leeches to chew off his leg,” Aunt Josephine said, “just to play a prank on you? Tell us, Captain Sham. Tell us how it happened.”

“Well, I was sitting on my boat, just a few weeks ago,” Captain Sham said. “I was eating some pasta with puttanesca sauce, and I spilled some on my leg. Before I knew it, the leeches were attacking.”

“That’s just how it happened with my husband,” Aunt Josephine said, biting her lip. The Baudelaires, all three of them, clenched their fists in frustration. They knew that Captain Sham’s story about the puttanesca sauce was as phony as his name, but they couldn’t prove it.

“Here,” Captain Sham said, pulling a small card out of his pocket and handing it to Aunt Josephine. “Take my business card, and next time you’re in town perhaps we could enjoy a cup of tea.”

“That sounds delightful,” Aunt Josephine said, reading his card. “‘Captain Sham’s Sailboats. Every boat has it’s own sail.’ Oh, Captain, you have made a very serious grammatical error here.”

“What?” Captain Sham said, raising his eyebrow.

“This card says ‘it’s,’ with an apostrophe. I-T-apostrophe-S always means ‘it is.’ You don’t mean to say ‘Every boat has it is own sail.’ You mean simply I-T-S, ‘belonging to it.’ It’s a very common mistake, Captain Sham, but a dreadful one.”

Captain Sham’s face darkened, and it looked for a minute like he was going to raise his peg leg again and kick Aunt Josephine with all his might. But then he smiled and his face cleared. “Thank you for pointing that out,” he said finally.

“You’re welcome,” Aunt Josephine said. “Come, children, it’s time to pay for our groceries. I hope to see you soon, Captain Sham.”

Captain Sham smiled and waved good-bye, but the Baudelaires watched as his smile turned to a sneer as soon as Aunt Josephine had turned her back. He had fooled her, and there was nothing the Baudelaires could do about it. They spent the rest of the afternoon trudging back up the hill carrying their groceries, but the heaviness of cucumbers and limes was nothing compared to the heaviness in the orphans’ hearts. All the way up the hill, Aunt Josephine talked about Captain Sham and what a nice man he was and how much she hoped they would see him again, while the children knew he was really Count Olaf and a terrible man and hoped they would never see him for the rest of their lives.

There is an expression that, I am sad to say, is appropriate for this part of the story. The expression is “falling for something hook, line, and sinker,” and it comes from the world of fishing. The hook, the line, and the sinker are all parts of a fishing rod, and they work together to lure fish out of the ocean to their doom. If somebody is falling for something hook, line, and sinker, they are believing a bunch of lies and may find themselves doomed as a result. Aunt Josephine was falling for Captain Sham’s lies hook, line, and sinker, but it was Violet, Klaus, and Sunny who were feeling doomed. As they walked up the hill in silence, the children looked down at Lake Lachrymose and felt the chill of doom fall over their hearts. It made the three siblings feel cold and lost, as if they were not simply looking at the shadowy lake, but had been dropped into the middle of its depths.

CHAPTER Four

That night, the Baudelaire children sat at the table with Aunt Josephine and ate their dinner with a cold pit in their stomachs. Half of the pit came from the chilled lime stew that Aunt Josephine had prepared. But the other half—if not more than half—came from the knowledge that Count Olaf was in their lives once again.

“That Captain Sham is certainly a charming person,” Aunt Josephine said, putting a piece of lime rind in her mouth. “He must be very lonely, moving to a new town and losing a leg. Maybe we could have him over for dinner.”

“We keep trying to tell you, Aunt Josephine,” Violet said, pushing the stew around on her plate so it would look like she’d eaten more than she actually had. “He’s not Captain Sham. He’s Count Olaf in disguise.”

“I’ve had enough of this nonsense,” Aunt Josephine said. “Mr. Poe told me that Count Olaf had a tattoo on his left ankle and one eyebrow over his eyes. Captain Sham doesn’t have a left ankle and only has one eye. I can’t believe you would dare to disagree with a man who has eye problems.”

“I have eye problems,” Klaus said, pointing to his glasses, “and you’re disagreeing with me.”

“I will thank you not to be impertinent,” Aunt Josephine said, using a word which here means “pointing out that I’m wrong, which annoys me.” “It is very annoying. You will have to accept, once and for all, that Captain Sham is not Count Olaf.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the business card. “Look at his card. Does it say Count Olaf? No. It says Captain Sham. The card does have a serious grammatical error on it, but it is nevertheless proof that Captain Sham is who he says he is.”

Aunt Josephine put the business card down on the dinner table, and the Baudelaires looked at it and sighed. Business cards, of course, are not proof of anything. Anyone can go to a print shop and have cards made that say anything they like. The king of Denmark can order business cards that say he sells golf balls. Your dentist can order business cards that say she is your grandmother. In order to escape from the castle of an enemy of mine, I once had cards printed that said I was an admiral in the French navy. Just because something is typed—whether it is typed on a business card or typed in a newspaper or book—this does not mean that it is true. The three siblings were well aware of this simple fact but could not find the words to convince Aunt Josephine. So they merely looked at Aunt Josephine, sighed, and silently pretended to eat their stew.

It was so quiet in the dining room that everyone jumped—Violet, Klaus, Sunny, and even Aunt Josephine—when the telephone rang. “My goodness!” Aunt Josephine said. “What should we do?”

“Minka!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant something like “Answer it, of course!”

Aunt Josephine stood up from the table, but didn’t move even as the phone rang a second time. “It might be important,” she said, “but I don’t know if it’s worth the risk of electrocution.”

“If it makes you feel more comfortable,” Violet said, wiping her mouth with her napkin, “I will answer the phone.” Violet stood up and walked to the phone in time to answer it on the third ring.

“Hello?” she asked.

“Is this Mrs. Anwhistle?” a wheezy voice asked.

“No,” Violet replied. “This is Violet Baudelaire. May I help you?”

“Put the old woman on the phone, orphan,” the voice said, and Violet froze, realizing it was Captain Sham. Quickly, she stole a glance at Aunt Josephine, who was now watching Violet nervously.

“I’m sorry,” Violet said into the phone. “You must have the wrong number.”

“Don’t play with me, you wretched girl—” Captain Sham started to say, but Violet hung up the phone, her heart pounding, and turned to Aunt Josephine.

“Someone was asking for the Hopalong Dancing School,” she said, lying quickly. “I told them they had the wrong number.”

“What a brave girl you are,” Aunt Josephine murmured. “Picking up the phone like that.”

“It’s actually very safe,” Violet said.

“Haven’t you ever answered the phone, Aunt Josephine?” Klaus asked.

“Ike almost always answered it,” Aunt Josephine said, “and he used a special glove for safety. But now that I’ve seen you answer it, maybe I’ll give it a try next time somebody calls.”

The phone rang, and Aunt Josephine jumped again. “Goodness,” she said, “I didn’t think it would ring again so soon. What an adventurous evening!”

Violet stared at the phone, knowing it was Captain Sham calling back. “Would you like me to answer it again?” she asked.

“No, no,” Aunt Josephine said, walking toward the small ringing phone as if it were a big barking dog. “I said I’d try it, and I will.” She took a deep breath, reached out a nervous hand, and picked up the phone.

“Hello?” she said. “Yes, this is she. Oh, hello, Captain Sham. How lovely to hear your voice.” Aunt Josephine listened for a moment, and then blushed bright red. “Well, that’s very nice of you to say, Captain Sham, but—what? Oh, all right. That’s very nice of you to say, Julio. What? What? Oh, what a lovely idea. But please hold on one moment.”

Aunt Josephine held a hand over the receiver and faced the three children. “Violet, Klaus, Sunny, please go to your room,” she said. “Captain Sham—I mean Julio, he asked me to call him by his first name—is planning a surprise for you children, and he wants to discuss it with me.”

“We don’t want a surprise,” Klaus said.

“Of course you do,” Aunt Josephine said. “Now run along so I can discuss it without your eavesdropping.”

“We’re not eavesdropping,” Violet said, “but I think it would be better if we stayed here.”

“Perhaps you are confused about the meaning of the word ‘eavesdropping,’” Aunt Josephine said. “It means ‘listening in.’ If you stay here, you will be eavesdropping. Please go to your room.”

“We know what eavesdropping means,” Klaus said, but he followed his sisters down the hallway to their room. Once inside, they looked at one another in silent frustration. Violet put aside pieces of the toy caboose that she had planned to examine that evening to make room on her bed for the three of them to lie beside one another and frown at the ceiling.

“I thought we’d be safe here,” Violet said glumly. “I thought that anybody who was frightened of realtors would never be friendly to Count Olaf, no matter how he was disguised.”

“Do you think that he actually let leeches chew off his leg,” Klaus wondered, shuddering, “just to hide his tattoo?”

“Choin!” Sunny shrieked, which probably meant “That seems a little drastic, even for Count Olaf.”

“I agree with Sunny,” Violet said. “I think he told that tale about leeches just to make Aunt Josephine feel sorry for him.”

“And it sure worked,” Klaus said, sighing. “After he told her that sob story, she fell for his disguise hook, line, and sinker.”

“At least she isn’t as trusting as Uncle Monty,” Violet pointed out. “He let Count Olaf move right into the house.”

“At least then we could keep an eye on him,” Klaus replied.

“Ober!” Sunny remarked, which meant something along the lines of “Although we still didn’t save Uncle Monty.”

“What do you think he’s up to this time?” Violet asked. “Maybe he plans to take us out in one of his boats and drown us in the lake.”

“Maybe he wants to push this whole house off the mountain,” Klaus said, “and blame it on Hurricane Herman.”

“Haftu!” Sunny said glumly, which probably meant something like “Maybe he wants to put the Lachrymose Leeches in our beds.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe,” Violet said. “All these maybes won’t get us anywhere.”

“We could call Mr. Poe and tell him Count Olaf is here,” Klaus said. “Maybe he could come and fetch us.”

“That’s the biggest maybe of them all,” Violet said. “It’s always impossible to convince Mr. Poe of anything, and Aunt Josephine doesn’t believe us even though she saw Count Olaf with her own eyes.”

“She doesn’t even think she saw Count Olaf,” Klaus agreed sadly. “She thinks she saw Captain Sham.”

Sunny nibbled halfheartedly on Pretty Penny’s head and muttered “Poch!” which probably meant “You mean Julio.”

“Then I don’t see what we can do,” Klaus said, “except keep our eyes and ears open.”

“Doma,” Sunny agreed.

“You’re both right,” Violet said. “We’ll just have to keep a very careful watch.”

The Baudelaire orphans nodded solemnly, but the cold pit in their stomachs had not gone away. They all felt that keeping watch wasn’t really much of a plan for defending themselves from Captain Sham, and as it grew later and later it worried them more and more. Violet tied her hair up in a ribbon to keep it out of her eyes, as if she were inventing something, but she thought and thought for hours and hours and was unable to invent another plan. Klaus stared at the ceiling with the utmost concentration, as if something very interesting were written on it, but nothing helpful occurred to him as the hour grew later and later. And Sunny bit Pretty Penny’s head over and over, but no matter how long she bit it she couldn’t think of anything to ease the Baudelaires’ worries.

I have a friend named Gina-Sue who is socialist, and Gina-Sue has a favorite saying: “You can’t lock up the barn after the horses are gone.” It means simply that sometimes even the best of plans will occur to you when it is too late. This, I’m sorry to say, is the case with the Baudelaire orphans and their plan to keep a close watch on Captain Sham, for after hours and hours of worrying they heard an enormous crash of shattering glass, and knew at once that keeping watch hadn’t been a good enough plan.

“What was that noise?” Violet said, getting up off the bed.

“It sounded like breaking glass,” Klaus said worriedly, walking toward the bedroom door.

“Vestu!” Sunny shrieked, but her siblings did not have time to figure out what she meant as they all hurried down the hallway.

“Aunt Josephine! Aunt Josephine!” Violet called, but there was no answer. She peered up and down the hallway, but everything was quiet. “Aunt Josephine!” she called again. Violet led the way as the three orphans ran into the dining room, but their guardian wasn’t there either. The candles on the table were still lit, casting a flickering glow on the business card and the bowls of cold lime stew.

“Aunt Josephine!” Violet called again, and the children ran back out to the hallway and toward the door of the library. As she ran, Violet couldn’t help but remember how she and her siblings had called Uncle Monty’s name, early one morning, just before discovering the tragedy that had befallen him. “Aunt Josephine!” she called. “Aunt Josephine!” She couldn’t help but remember all the times she had woken up in the middle of the night, calling out the names of her parents as she dreamed, as she so often did, of the terrible fire that had claimed their lives. “Aunt Josephine!” she said, reaching the library door. Violet was afraid that she was calling out Aunt Josephine’s name when her aunt could no longer hear it.

“Look,” Klaus said, and pointed to the door. A piece of paper, folded in half, was attached to the wood with a thumbtack. Klaus pried the paper loose and unfolded it.

“What is it?” Violet asked, and Sunny craned her little neck to see.

“It’s a note,” Klaus said, and read it out loud:

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny—

By the time you read this note, my life will be at

it’s end. My heart is as cold as Ike and I find

life inbearable. I know your children may not

understand the sad life of a dowadger, or

what would have leaded me to this desperate akt,

but please know that I am much happier this

way. As my last will and testament, I leave you

three in the care of Captain Sham, a kind and

honorable men. Please think of me kindly even

though I’d done this terrible thing.

—Your Aunt Josephine

“Oh no,” Klaus said quietly when he was finished reading. He turned the piece of paper over and over as if he had read it incorrectly, as if it said something different. “Oh no,” he said again, so faintly that it was as if he didn’t even know he was speaking out loud.

Without a word Violet opened the door to the library, and the Baudelaires took a step inside and found themselves shivering. The room was freezing cold, and after one glance the orphans knew why. The Wide Window had shattered. Except for a few shards that still stuck to the window frame, the enormous pane of glass was gone, leaving a vacant hole that looked out into the still blackness of the night.

The cold night air rushed through the hole, rattling the bookshelves and making the children shiver up against one another, but despite the cold the orphans walked carefully to the empty space where the window had been, and looked down. The night was so black that it seemed as if there was absolutely nothing beyond the window. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny stood there for a moment and remembered the fear they had felt, just a few days ago, when they were standing in this very same spot. They knew now that their fear had been rational. Huddling together, looking down into the blackness, the Baudelaires knew that their plan to keep a careful watch had come too late. They had locked the barn door, but poor Aunt Josephine was already gone.