“Is that you, Snicket?”
I smiled. “Is that you, Pip and Squeak?”
The boy at the wheel smiled, and his brother crawled up from his position at the brake pedal so they could both hand me cards through the taxi’s open window. The cards told me what I already knew. Bouvard and Pecuchet Bellerophon, better known as Pip and Squeak, provided discreet transportation, a phrase which meant they drove the only taxi left in Stain’d-by-the-Sea whenever their father was sick or couldn’t do it for some other reason, which was almost all the time and always. They weren’t quite tall enough to drive by themselves, but with Pip steering and Squeak on the pedals, they’d gotten me out of a few tight spots after getting me into them more or less on time.
I hurried into the back of the cab. “I need you two on a tail job.”
“Neat,” Squeak said, in the voice that gave him his nickname. “Since we started driving this taxi, I’ve been waiting for someone to say ‘follow that car.’”
“It’s not a car I want you to follow,” I said. “It’s a train.”
“Follow a train?” Pip repeated with a laugh. “That’s hardly a tail job. It runs on tracks, doesn’t it? Why do we need to follow a train when we already know where it goes?”
“I need you to take me to where it goes before it gets there,” I said.
“So instead of ‘follow that car’ it’s ‘precede that train’?” Squeak asked, sliding down to his pedal spot. He sounded a little disappointed.
“I need to get onto The Thistle of the Valley,” I said, “but I couldn’t manage it here.”
Pip frowned. “But there’s nowhere else you can get on board. They canceled all the old stops in town.”
“That’s why I need you to take me to Partial Foods,” I said. “The back entrance, off the alley, where the train tracks are.”
“Didn’t you hear us, Snicket?” Pip asked. “The Thistle of the Valley doesn’t stop there or anyplace else.”
“I heard you.”
Pip put the car in gear. “I hope you’re not going to do anything foolish.”
“I hope you’re not hoping too hard,” I said. Squeak hit the gas and we pulled away from Stain’d Station and took a shortcut toward our destination. I heard the train whistle blow again, and thought of Theodora’s phony snores. Breathe and keep still, I told myself, thinking of the foolish thing in my immediate future.
“It’s been a busy night,” Squeak said, as we rounded the corner.
“I was supposed to be in bed early,” I said.
Pip grinned at me in the rearview mirror. “That’s always the way, isn’t it? The most interesting things happen when we’re supposed to be in bed. What were you doing at Stain’d Station, anyway?”
“Official business,” I said.
“I guess we should keep all our actions quiet,” Squeak said. “That way Hangfire won’t catch on.”
“We hope,” Pip said.
“We hope,” I agreed, but I didn’t feel agreeable. I wondered what the Bellerophons were up to. And Ornette, I thought. And Theodora, and Sally Murphy and her strange porter. And my sister, and a thousand other people I might not see again. Not after what I was about to do. I looked out at the night, and the taxi turned left and swung into the shadow of Ink Inc., the pen-shaped tower making the dark even darker just where we were.
“Snicket,” Squeak said, braking and breaking the silence, “how about you give us a tip like you do?”
I had a system with the Bellerophon brothers, recommending books in exchange for their services. It’s a system I wish were used more widely in the world. “Have you read a book called The Turn of the Screw?” I asked.
Pip pointed his thumb at the hood of the taxi. “We get enough hardware in our ordinary lives,” he said.
“It’s not about hardware,” I told him. “It’s about a babysitter and some ghosts. It’s difficult but it’s spooky, and speaking of which, stop here, will you?”
The Bellerophons stopped their taxi, and I peered out at the loading dock of Partial Foods. It was empty and eerie, with a crumbling cement ramp and the back door of the grocery store, locked now and probably forever. I could see a discarded apple core, sad and mushy in a clump of weeds, and the torn wrapper of a long-gone candy bar, balled up and forgotten near the train tracks.
“You never told us the whole story of what happened here, with all those stolen honeydew melons,” Pip reminded me, referring to recent events chronicled in a report that is not recommended for the general public.
“True,” I admitted.
“The train won’t stop here,” Squeak said to me. “It’ll just race on by.”
“I know it,” I replied.
Pip turned around to look at me. “Do we have to ask again about doing something foolish?”
“No,” I said. “You definitely don’t have to ask.”
“Maybe that’s the wrong question,” Squeak said, looking at the strange, bare place where he and his brother had taken me. “Maybe the right question is, do you really want to be here?”
I thought of all the places I wanted to be, not as difficult and not as spooky. I stepped out of the car and deeper into a mystery of which I couldn’t make head nor tail, and I answered the question the best I could.
“No,” I said, “I don’t want to be here,” and I thanked them for taking me there and sent them on their way.
CHAPTER THREE
The night kept me in its shadows as I waited by Partial Foods and listened for the train. I kept breathing and I kept still. From down the alley came the scufflings of some animal that lurked around at night. Most such animals won’t bother you, but their noises are still unnerving. I sat, unnerved, and tried to get un-unnerved. It’s just nature, I told myself. Nature’s not interested in you, Snicket. I was wrong about that too.
The train whistle blew and the clatter and hiss of the engine grew louder, frightening whatever was behind the shack to scuffle off elsewhere. Soon the train would pass where I was waiting, moving with great speed and a greater clanging. It wouldn’t stop. It wouldn’t stop here or anyplace else. It would just rush by, billowing air into my face as it headed out of town, into the valley where the ocean once thrived, and toward the city, carrying passengers and prisoners and perhaps a stowaway. I stood up. “Stowaway” is a word for a person hiding on a ship, so they can travel without paying. Of course, I thought to myself, it doesn’t have to be a ship. It couldn’t be a ship anyway, Snicket. Not in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. There’s nowhere to sail a ship. There’s still a train, though. The train is called The Thistle of the Valley and it’s racing toward you now. First the engine will appear, and then the tender, brimming with coal, and then a long line of cargo cars marked with the name of the town’s greatest industry, now almost completely gone. And the end of the train will appear, moving as quickly as anything, a few passenger cars brightly painted and decorated with old-fashioned railings.
And you, I thought to myself, are going to grab on to one of those railings as the train goes past, and then try to open one of the windows and get inside while the train barrels through the countryside.
The engine raced by me, its headlight like an angry eye, its steam fading into the purple sky, and the noise everywhere in the air.
Nothing will happen to you, I told myself. You’ve already had a very interesting childhood, Lemony Snicket. At a very young age you were recruited into a secret organization. When you were six you were taken deep into the forest for nine days of archery training. In the evenings you caught and roasted wild pheasant, and at night you could hear the wolves gnawing on the bones as you shivered in your tent. Everything since then has been anticlimactic, a word which here means “nowhere near as exciting.” It will be very boring, in fact, when you leap onto the train as it rattles its way out of Stain’d-by-the-Sea and then crawl your way inside. Very dull indeed, Snicket.
The cargo cars began to go by with great swooshes, one after the other.
Look, everybody has a turn
, Snicket. Giacomo Casanova had a turn. Marcel Duchamp had a turn. Beverly Cleary had a turn. People have done difficult things for more or less noble reasons. Your turn now.
I stepped closer. The railings were skinny metal bars, bolted here and there to the side of the train. They were just for decoration. There was no way of knowing how much weight they might hold. Below them were three small grooves in the metal, like three footprints on each car of the train. You might be able to balance your feet on these grooves and you might not. Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh. I leaned down and cast my eyes toward the last cars of the train. They were almost there. In a moment it would be time to jump. My palms were sweaty and I wiped them on my pants and they were sweaty again in seconds. Here it comes, I thought. It is coming quickly, so you do not have time to be scared, Snicket. Not scared, not now.
“Get scared later,” I said out loud, and I leapt toward the speeding train. If you’re wondering what it’s like to cling to a decorative railing on the side of a moving railway car, don’t. But I didn’t have to wonder what it was like because I learned immediately it was terrible. It was as terrible as it was loud, and it was deafening. From the moment my hands touched the metal railing and grasped it tightly, my ears were full of noise. There was the noise of the wheels of the train, rough and clattery like wild teeth on the tracks, and there was the sound of complaining metal as the railing heaved with my weight. And there was another sound, throaty and trembly. I did not know what it was. I did not care. My every thought was focused on keeping my hands on the railing even as the train rocked back and forth and the sweat on my palms made the whole plan slippery. My face was pressed against a bright red design. My feet found the topmost groove and slipped out of it, and then the middle groove and slipped out of it, and then the bottommost groove and slipped out of it, so my feet struggled and dangled below me, just inches from the racing wheels. The railing kept complaining. It shook in my hands like it wanted to leave. I didn’t blame it. It was so difficult to hold on that it was tempting to let go. I held on, though. Dear Kit, went another imaginary letter to my sister. I write to you from outside a roaring train, where I am about to lose my life. All I can see is a design the color of those rain boots they used to make you wear. I send best wishes and warm personal regards.
The train rounded a curve, and without anywhere for my feet to go, I found my body thrown hard against the side of the train, over and over again, like a swinging door. It hurt every time in a new place. First it was my knee and then it was my chin and then my shoulder and then my nose and then it was my knee again and then I lost track. I was tired of looking at the design and tilted my head to try and see where the window was. It was above me. It was not open, of course. Why should it be open? No one was around to make this easier for me. The train rattled again and my body slammed again against the side. The metal complained more and the trembly sound grew louder. I looked up at the window again. I would have to climb up the shaking, smooth wall of the train and hope there was a crack in the window somewhere to slip through. Very easy, if I were a spider.
The railing told me what it thought of this plan by spitting out a bolt with a terrible creak. It was not the only bolt holding the railing to the train, but it was one of them and it was gone. The railing complained louder and began to shake against my hands. The other sound grew louder too. It was me, I realized. I’d been crying out since I leapt onto the train. I was crying out because I was going to die.
But I didn’t die, of course. Not then. I let go of the railing with one arm and raised my fist to bang against the window of the train. My arm felt weak as it swung upward, and the knock against the glass was nowhere near as loud as I wanted it to be. I stopped to hold on again and let the train throw me against the side of the car several more times. It hurt. The railing curved terribly away from the train, like a tree struggling in a hurricane, and another bolt sprang loose and fell into the night. Things like that make the world seem unfair, I thought to myself, and heaved my arm up again and banged on the window. The railing bent further, and I could feel the breath of the spinning wheels on my feet. One more inch and the wheels would eat me alive. My fist kept knocking. A terrible scrape of metal came from where the bolts had escaped. I got tired of looking at the bright red design. I did not want it to be the last thing I saw, so I closed my eyes, and I knocked and knocked and felt my mouth go raw with the noise I was making.
Something slid above me. I tried to knock again and only hit air. I heard other sounds I could not hear over the train. And then like a miracle something grabbed my arm as I was giving up. I heard more sounds and then I was heaved, slowly, slowly, out of my predicament. I kept my eyes closed. My aching body scraped against something and then fell in a heap. Someone stood over the heap. I blinked at the carpet and tried to sit up. It didn’t work as well as I would have liked. The carpet was a faded sort of ugly. I was not bleeding and I was not broken, but it took all the strength I had just to raise my head. All I saw were the shoes of whoever had rescued me. It surprised me that I recognized them. They were ordinary brown shoes, a little scuffy. But friends know more about one another than they might think.
“What’s the news, Moxie?” I asked, when I was in a condition to ask anything.
Moxie Mallahan, Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s last journalist and one of my most loyal associates, knelt down beside me. The hat she usually wore lay on the floor next to me, with a few scattered business cards stating her name and occupation. I could tell she had a thousand questions, but she only asked me one. “What are you doing here?”
“Recuperating,” I told her. “I was hanging on the outside of this train.”
“You ever hear of buying a ticket?”
“It’s an unexpected journey,” I said. “How did you manage to pull me up here?”
“You don’t lug around a typewriter for years without getting a few muscles,” she said.
She picked up her hat, and I managed to sit up and look at my surroundings. It was an ordinary train compartment, about the size of the bedroom given the least-favorite child. Two walls had two benches, facing each other like silent strangers, and there was a wooden door, closed and tired, that probably led to a corridor outside. Underneath the window, still open and full of rushing scenery, was a small, scuffed table attached to the wall. Above each bench was a rack for luggage, but the only luggage I could see was the case where Moxie kept her new typewriter, and a small parcel wrapped in newspaper and string.
“What are you doing here?” I said.
Moxie shook her head and grinned. “Only Lemony Snicket,” she said, “would hang off the outside of a train and then ask a passenger what they were doing there. A stunt like that could have killed you.”
“That did occur to me,” I admitted. “But it seemed important to be on this very train on this very night. My chaperone went to the trouble of stealing herself a disguise just to get aboard.”
Moxie’s eyes widened. “Theodora’s here?”
I nodded. “And she’s not the only one. Sally Murphy boarded The Thistle of the Valley moments before it departed.”
Moxie looked from me to her typewriter case, hungry to take notes. “Do you think she’s still working with Hangfire?”
“I don’t know,” I told her. “She said something about an actress giving the performance of a lifetime. And there’s something else.”
“What is it?”
I reached into my pocket and drew out the paper train. By now it was quite crumpled, but you could still see how cleverly it was constructed.
“Ornette Lost,” Moxie said. “She can make anything out of a scrap of paper.”
“She has quite a few impressive skills,” I said, thinking of what Prosper Lost had told me about the fire. “She made this out of one of her cards and left it for me at the Lost Arms. It’s a message. She was telling me something about this train.”
Moxie glanced quickly at her typewriter again. “Telling you what?”
“You know perfectly well
what,” I said. “That’s why you keep looking over at that parcel. You might as well fetch it, along with your typewriter, so you can take notes while you tell me what’s going on.”
“Are you sure I should tell you? You’re the one who said we should work separately, Snicket. I haven’t even told Kellar Haines what I’m doing tonight, and he’s still living with my father and me at the lighthouse. Every night he stares at that photograph of his sister he showed us. He’s really itching to defeat Hangfire and rescue Lizzie.”
“I think we all have that itch,” I said. “Is that why you’re on this train with that mysterious package?”
Moxie sighed and reached up to the luggage rack. “I guess I’m not a very good secret-keeper,” she said, taking down the two items.
“You’re a very good journalist,” I said, “which is the opposite of secret-keeping. I bet you’re here following a story.”
She shook her head and put down the typewriter case on one of the benches. The parcel she kept in her hands. “‘Following’ isn’t the right word,” she said. “‘Following’ means that you’re trailing behind somebody, and I’m trailing ahead. What’s the word for that, Snicket?”
I leaned against the other bench. Even that hurt. “Preceding,” I said.
“Well,” she said, “then I’m on this train preceding a very important person, who will accompany me to the city.”
I looked out the compartment window, where I could see the town’s traffic lights, flickering in the darkness as they pretended there was still traffic on the vanishing streets. It was a strange sight. I never got used to it in all my time in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. “The Thistle of the Valley won’t stop again in town,” I said. “Nowadays the train travels across the sea to the city before continuing on to various villages and tourist attractions. A retired grocer told me that herself.”