Chapter 5: New Places, Old Faces
Excerpt from the memory of Klaus Baudilaire
"Violet, wake up. It's twelve o' clock in the afternoon." I shook my sister a little to wake her up, she rolled over on her back and was now facing me. "Wha?" She sat up and looked at the clock, "Wow. Okay, I'm up." She got out of bed and walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. "Is Violet up yet? It's past twelve." Quigley asked standing in the doorway buttoning the rest of the buttons on his shirt. "Yeah, she just went into the bathroom, she'll be out in a bit. Why?" I asked, as I started to make Violet's bed, "Just want to talk to her about something." He admitted and went back into his own room. Sunny was at the table looking at a picture book Kitt had gotten her while out last night. Violet came out of the bathroom a few minutes later fidgeting with her hair. "I'm still getting use to this hair, it's really weird looking. Where's Quigley?" She asked looking into the mirror and fixing her hair, "I think he's in his room, he wants to talk to you." I said pointing to the door. "Ok." She bent over and flipped her hair before going into his room and closing the door behind. Even though the door was closed I could hear them talking about something, "…I know we haven't known each other for that long…" was all I heard before Sunny said "Rude!" which meant something along the lines of "Klaus you know it's rude to eaves drop unless it is a life or death situation." She had a point, so I went back to the book I was reading.
Time Passes
"Well that wasn't awkward at all, was it?" Quigley asked sarcastically, "Everyone just kept staring at me like I was a ghost." Violet went over to where he sat on the bed and joined him, "That's because you practically are. Everyone thought you were dead until tonight. Other than that, I thought the meeting went pretty well. We cleared our names, so we're not 'murderers' anymore, and now we get to move in with someone from V.F.D. instead of staying in this hotel!" She looked at all of us and realized we weren't as enthusiastic. "Oh come on, you guys have to be at least a little bit happy were getting out of this Hotel." She looked at me and thought for a moment before adding, "Klaus, he says he has a library full of different kinds of books. Sunny, he says he has a giant kitchen that you can cook in. Come on you guys it's going to be fine, Count Olaf doesn't know where we are, things are actually going good for once." When she finished I thought about what she had said and decided she was right, Count Olaf's not after us, we are getting out of this cramped hotel and maybe we'll finally find out which one of our parents is still alive. "Your right Violet, but, what if something happens later on, like our guardian gets hurt or Olaf finds us? What would we do then?" She smiled at me and simply said "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."
The next day we moved into Dr. Archibald Hardgrove's home, he greeted us at the door and showed us to our rooms. Like Kitt he had to go out during the night and said he'd be back in the morning. Violet, Quigley, and I decided to explore the house, and see if we could find anything interesting. Sunny was asleep in her room that was in between Violet's and Quigley's and mine. Quigley and I had to share a room because, what was supposed to be Quigley's room, was being redone and won't be finished for a while. When we had finished searching the house completely we had found the library, four bathrooms, one very large kitchen, and a parlor. The Parlor was a small one, and stuffed to the max with shelves upon shelves of books. The books ranged from animals to molecular science. It was almost like another library, but much smaller. After looking around for a while we reached the back. "The books back here are really dusty." Quigley said, pointing out the obvious. I pulled a random book off the third from the bottom self. I opened it expecting to see typed words, but instead I saw writing. The writing was messy and I couldn't read all of it. I couldn't even read the date, "Violet what does this say?" I asked waving her to come over to me. " Wow, I thought I would never see the day when you asked me to help you pronounce a word." She joked. Quigley laughed at this and so did I. When she finally began to read she had to squint as well, "Wow this is hard to read." With that Quigley came over and began to squint to as he tried to read it over Violet's shoulder. "He must have been in a hurry when he wrote this." Violet said after staring at the page for quite some time. "I can't make out any of it." Quigley added, rubbing his eyes. "What's the date on it again?" he asked looking back at the page, "Um, June 16th, 19-" I was cut off as the doorbell rang. "It's eleven thirty at night, who rings the doorbell at eleven bloody thirty at night?" we heard the maid mumbling to herself as she went to open the door.
In the doorway stood a phantasmagoric looking person, we had seen him many times before and hoped to never see him again. "Hello, my name is Dr. Boris Scallion I'm hear to see Archie." Said the man standing in the doorway. "He's not here right now, but you can come in and stay until he comes back. May I take your coat?" He looked at us standing just outside of the parlor door and an evil smile crept across his face, " That would be wonderful, thank you." He said "What are these youngsters doing up so late." He asked the maid after she had hung up his coat "Shouldn't they be in bed by now sleeping soundly?" The maid looked at us and took us to our rooms after showing Dr. Scallion to the parlor. "How did he find us?" I asked Quigley. After the maid was down the hall a little ways we crept out of our room and went into Violet's. She had gotten Sunny and was sitting on her bed. "What are we going to do?" she asked us as soon as we stepped in the room. I put a finger to my mouth to signal her to whisper "I'm not sure. It looks like we're going to have to cross one of those bridges sooner than we thought." I said sitting next to the sleeping Sunny. "Lets all sleep in here tonight, okay? It makes me feel better knowing you're all in the same room as me," Violet said nearly on the verge of tears. Quigley noticed that she was about to cry so he went over and gave her a reassuring hug. "We're all in this together. We'll find a way to get rid of Count Olaf."
A/N: Pretty sweet names right? 1,233 words second longest, I'm trying to get over 1,500 but I just run out of things to say. I apologize to all of you who were at all offended by my language in the third paragraph. Please yell at me if you feed the need to, but first Va te faire foutre and have a good night.
