The Wide Window (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #3)

by Lemony Snicket

CHAPTER One

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.

“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.”

“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.”

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 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

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.

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.

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.

“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 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.”

“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.

CHAPTER Three

My name is Captain Sham, and I have a new business renting sailboats out on Damocles Dock.

CHAPTER Four

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.

CHAPTER Five

Oftentimes, when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.

Aunt Josephine is not dead. Not yet.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that Aunt Josephine wrote on both these pieces of paper,” Mr. Poe said.

“And that,” Mr. Poe said, “makes it a legal document.” “Does that mean we have to live with Captain Sham?” Violet asked, her heart sinking. “I’m afraid so,” Mr. Poe replied.

“But you can’t invent things like time,” Violet said. “You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers. You can invent things like steam-powered window washers. But you can’t invent more time.”

CHAPTER Seven

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Poe said, “but after we’ve finished our cheeseburgers, Captain Sham, there are some important papers for you to sign. I have them in my briefcase, and after lunch we’ll look them over.” “And then the children will be mine?” Captain Sham asked. “Well, you will be caring for them, yes,” Mr. Poe said. “Of course, the Baudelaire fortune will still be under my supervision, until Violet comes of age.”

If you are allergic to a thing, it is best not to put that thing in your mouth, particularly if the thing is cats.

The Baudelaires knew that they had invented just a little bit of time for themselves, and they had to use every second of it.

CHAPTER Eight

“I still can’t understand you,” Violet said. She took Sunny’s coat off, and then her own, and dropped them both on the floor. Normally, of course, one should hang up one’s coat on a hook or in a closet, but itchy hives are very irritating and tend to make one abandon such matters. “I’m going to assume, Klaus, that you said something in agreement. Now, unless you need us to help you, I’m going to give Sunny and myself a baking soda bath to help our hives.” “Bluh!” Sunny shrieked. She meant to shriek “Gans!” which meant something along the lines of “Good, because my hives are driving me crazy!”

“Curdled Cave,” Klaus repeated. “If you take all the letters involved in the grammatical mistakes, that’s what it spells.

“Not that library,” Violet pointed out. “All that library had were books on grammar. We need her books on Lake Lachrymose.” “Why?” Klaus asked. “Because I’ll bet you anything that’s where Curdled Cave is,” Violet said, “in Lake Lachrymose. Remember she said she knew every island in its waters and every cave on its shore? I bet Curdled Cave is one of those caves.”

“You’ve been so busy figuring out the message,” Violet said, “that you don’t understand what it means. Aunt Josephine isn’t dead. She just wants people to think she’s dead. But she wanted to tell us that she was hiding. We have to find her books on Lake Lachrymose and find out where Curdled Cave is.”

“Underneath the bed,” Violet said. “Underneath the bed,” Klaus agreed. “Seeka yit,” Sunny agreed, and without another word the three children ran down the hallway to Aunt Josephine’s room.

“The Tides of Lake Lachrymose,” Violet said, reading the title of the top book. “That won’t help.” “The Bottom of Lake Lachrymose,” Klaus said, reading the next one. “That’s not useful.” “Lachrymose Trout,” Violet read. “The History of the Damocles Dock Region,” Klaus read. “Ivan Lachrymose—Lake Explorer,” Violet read. “How Water Is Made,” Klaus read. “A Lachrymose Atlas,” Violet said. “Atlas? That’s perfect!” Klaus cried. “An atlas is a book of maps!”

“There it is!” Violet pointed a finger at the tiny spot on the map marked Curdled Cave. “Directly across from Damocles Dock and just west of the Lavender Lighthouse. Let’s go.” “Go?” Klaus said. “How will we get across the lake?” “The Fickle Ferry will take us,” Violet said, pointing at a dotted line on the map. “Look, the ferry goes right to the Lavender Lighthouse, and we can walk from there.” “We’re going to walk to Damocles Dock, in all this rain?” Klaus asked. “We don’t have any choice,” Violet answered. “We have to prove that Aunt Josephine is still alive, or else Captain Sham gets us.”

Klaus was the first to reach the front door, and yanked it open as the house gave another lurch, followed by a horrible, horrible crunching sound. “Come on!” Violet screamed again, and the Baudelaires crawled out of the door and onto the hill, huddling together in the freezing rain. They were cold. They were frightened. But they had escaped.

I have seen a series of corridors built entirely out of human skulls. I have seen a volcano erupt and send a wall of lava crawling toward a small village. I have seen a woman I loved picked up by an enormous eagle and flown to its high mountain nest. But I still cannot imagine what it was like to watch Aunt Josephine’s house topple into Lake Lachrymose.

CHAPTER Nine

“It’s closed,” Klaus cried, his voice rising with despair and in order to be heard over Hurricane Herman. “How will we get to Curdled Cave now?” “We’ll have to wait until it opens,” Violet replied. “But it won’t open until the storm is past,” Klaus pointed out, “and by then Captain Sham will find us and take us far away. We have to get to Aunt Josephine as soon as possible.” “I don’t know how we can,” Violet said, shivering. “The atlas says that the cave is all the way across the lake, and we can’t swim all that way in this weather.”

Brobdingnagian—a word which here means “unbelievably husky”—that

Aunt Josephine’s book of maps had saved them once, in showing them the location of Curdled Cave, and now it had saved them again.

CHAPTER Ten

The piece of advice is as follows: If you ever need to get to Curdled Cave in a hurry, do not, under any circumstances, steal a boat and attempt to sail across Lake Lachrymose during a hurricane, because it is very dangerous and the chances of your survival are practically zero. You should especially not do this if, like the Baudelaire orphans, you have only a vague idea of how to work a sailboat.

If you had come across the three Baudelaires at this moment, you would have thought their lives were filled with joy and happiness, because even though they were exhausted, damp, and in very great danger, they began to laugh in their triumph.

In front of the cave there was a sign saying it was for sale, and the orphans could not imagine who would want to buy such a phantasmagorical—the word “phantasmagorical” here means “all the creepy, scary words you can think of put together”—place. The mouth of the cave had jagged rocks all over it like teeth in the mouth of a shark.

But it was not these sights that made the children pause. It was the sound coming out of the cave. It was a high-pitched, wavering wail, a hopeless and lost sound, as strange and as eerie as Curdled Cave itself.

It was Aunt Josephine, sitting in a corner of the cave and sobbing with her head in her hands. She was crying so hard that she hadn’t even noticed the Baudelaires come into the cave.

The Baudelaires looked at one another in sadness and anger. They understood. They understood that Aunt Josephine was more concerned with grammatical mistakes than with saving the lives of the three children. They understood that she was so wrapped up in her own fears that she had not given a thought to what might have happened to them. They understood that Aunt Josephine had been a terrible guardian, in leaving the children all by themselves in great danger. They understood and they wished more than ever that their parents, who never would have run away and left them alone, had not been killed in that terrible fire which had begun all the misfortune in the Baudelaire lives.