A/N: AHH! Thanks for being so patient, school's always in the way lol! The reviews are so awesome, thanks so much! It motivates me to write more and plus I meet new writers that way. ;)
Chapter the Fifth
"Gone?" Sunny asked, her wide eyes full of concern.
Kit nodded gravely and held out the note. Violet ran forward and took it, reading it aloud as Klaus picked up Sunny and looked over her shoulder. The handwriting was almost illegible as his hurried words ran across the paper, bold and black.
"Kit, Baudelaires--- I've received news of my siblings and I must go. I've gone to the Mortmain Mountains; I'll try to be back by Thursday. Please forgive me for leaving so suddenly--- Quigley."
Violet stopped and set the note down on the table. He was gone again, out of her reach. Just like when they were drifting away in the rapids of the Stricken Stream. She fell into one of the dining table chairs and in a sudden, swift movement, threw the fork she held onto the table, landing with a hollow clang.
"He's planning to climb up the slopes with my invention," Violet spoke abruptly, "…oh, why didn't just wait for us to come back?" Violet asked in despair. She stared longingly at the door, hoping he might just walk through it, snow-beaten and smiling with Duncan and Isadora beside him. It remained unmoved.
"It must have been urgent," Klaus thought out loud, standing behind Violet comfortingly with Sunny, "Quigley must have received a sighting of Hector's hot-air balloon nearby. Perhaps they've landed."
"Or perhaps they've crashed," Violet spoke weakly.
There was a silence. Baudelaires couldn't bear to think of losing any of the Quagmires. They were the first, and only, real friends they had since they lost their parents. They understood what it had felt like to lose everything in a second and how to try to carry on… They gave them hope and without that, they had nothing.
Kit suddenly started to gather her things: books, keys, files… The Baudelaires watched her silently until finally Kit opened the door.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" Kit asked in the doorway.
"We're leaving?" Klaus asked. He looked down at Violet, but she said nothing.
"Of course we're leaving," Kit said still beckoning the children to the door.
"But what about Quigley? What if he comes back and we're not here?" Violet responded.
"Well, where do you think we're going? We're going to go find him; he cannot possibly survive out there by himself," Kit said matter-of-factly and tried to give a small smile. She stared at their despairing faces until she saw a faint flicker of hope light up in their eyes. Faces so sad… it's not fair. They're still so very young.
In moments, they were back outside in the taxi Kit left under the great willow. It was late afternoon already and the sun glowed dully behind the thick, post-winter clouds. The road was long and empty ahead of them and Kit turned on the radio softly, crackling a slow jazz tune. It seemed to calm their nerves, as if they were back home sitting in front of their radio and waiting for their nightly shows to come on. It felt like years ago.
"I'd get some sleep if I were you. We're far from where we need to be," Kit explained. She drummed her gloved fingers against the wheel as the road still stretched empty before her.
The Baudelaires didn't bother to ask where they were heading and they didn't have the strength even if they wanted to. Sleep drew over them like a shadow and one by one they fell asleep next to each other to the sound of the soulful jazz on the radio and Kit's soft humming.
"Klaus…"
Klaus opened his heavy eyes and rubbed them behind his glasses. He lifted his head off of Violet's shoulder and looked outside. The sky was orange in the west where the sun was melting on the horizon like butter; a light shower of rain glazed Kit's windshield as towering building bent over them, casting long shadows.
"Where are we?" Klaus yawned but Violet shushed him and pointed down to Sunny sleeping soundlessly next to her.
"We're almost there," Kit said softly and Klaus rubbed his eyes again.
The tall buildings on either side of them suddenly became familiar and Klaus recognized the city as the one they used to live in. They were still very far east from where the smoldered remains of their mansion lay, and Klaus was glad of it. He hated the site. He looked over to Violet who was staring outside as she put her arm around Sunny.
"Kit," Violet said vaguely as she stared blankly at the handful of carriages and cars dashing past them, "Are we really going to the Hotel Denouncement on Thursday?"
Kit nodded and Klaus snapped up out of his thoughts of his life before and looked over to Violet's anxious face. "Kit, we can't go there. On the Carmelita, Count Olaf spoke about how everyone from his troupe would be there. Wouldn't we just be walking into a trap?"
Kit looked back at them through her mirror, "Yes, I know. Quigley told me the exact same thing. I was unaware of this until he told me but there's one person who will know if this is true and that's where we're going."
"Will they help us find Quigley?" Violet asked.
Kit nodded.
"Who?" Klaus asked. He ran his hand through his hair, almost considering falling back asleep until Violet pulled his arm sharply over to her window to a dreadful site. Klaus scrambled to her side by the window and they gasped.
"I don't understand," Klaus choked out as Violet rolled the window down. Cold, gray rain hit their faces. Sunny yawned as she stretched over their legs to see what they were both looking at.
Kit had stopped the car outside of house they knew all too well. It was dirty, haunting, sinister… all of those horrible words at once and on top of it all was a sagging tower. An eye stared back at them from the door it was carved on and the house was creaking in the breeze. Violet and Klaus couldn't break their gaze from it; from the moment they first saw it so long ago, it had etched its image into their brains to haunt them wherever they went. However, their misfortune had not brought them back to the house of Count Olaf at all…
"J.S!" Sunny shrieked happily and she pointed eagerly out the window next door. Like a lighthouse in a dreadful fog, stood a gleaming white stature of a house where the Baudelaires had fond memories of reading in a large, peaceful library on how to prepare puttenesca sauce, and in the midst of it all in her flourishing garden, was Justice Strauss waving at the children.
The dead, cold night had become a dead, cold morning. The sky remained an unchanging gray as the clouds grew and spilled freezing rain that turned to sleet by mid afternoon. The snow became slush, froze, became ice, repeated. It was snowing heavily by night, dead and cold as the night before.
Quigley bundled up tightly under a low, icy slope and ate the food he carried with chattering teeth. He had to remember to save some for when he found Duncan and Isadora…
For the entire day, he had been walking, climbing, sliding, falling. He realized he had lost of one of the fork assisting inventions for his shoes, so he had walked in circles, slowly up the mountains on a slippery path. By nightfall, his entire body was screaming at him to stop and rest, and at last here he was.
Shivering, he chewed on another mushroom Kit had sent to him in the basket of food the day before. He never particularly liked mushrooms at all, but he forced himself to swallow. He wasn't going to save food he didn't like for Duncan and Isadora. He coughed as he choked on a piece and with one final chew, swallowed the rest. In seconds, he was asleep.
The next day was worst than the day before. It no longer rained, or hailed, or snowed. Instead, the sun beat down bitterly on the Mortmain Mountains and thawed the snow to mush. A sheer layer of melted ice glazed over his pathway up and tediously, he walked.
There were no signs of a hot-air balloon anywhere.
He walked for hours, sniffling and coughing. He had never been out in the snow this long before. His mother always warned them as children of catching their death outside in the winter when they used to sled for hours on end. If what mother said was true, then I'm on a death sentence, Quigley thought painfully as he slid down a smooth slope to a broad, snowy valley between the east and western mountains.
The whistling wind became unbearable as he climbed up, up, up once again. He recited poetry in his head to pass the time, counted any birds that passed overhead, and even tried to tell himself to think it was the middle of summer to numb the coldness. I'll go crazy if I survive another week of this.
The wind became fiercer and stronger until he couldn't see six feet ahead of him. He hands around blindly for the side of the mountain, stepping carefully along it. Falling down would mean he would have to climb all the way up again.
Bzzzzzz…Quigley waved his hand around his face. The buzzing became louder… Snow gnats. Perfect.
They were invisible in the wind but they stung his face and hands. His foot slipped and he frantically clambered back up. He squinted in the flurried wind. Nothing but white all around.
Bzzz… Bzzzzzzzz…
The snow gnats quickly caught on and suddenly started to sting his hands and feet. His foot slipped dangerously again and this time his notebook fell.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz……He groped and shifted through the wet snow with his bare hands. His fingertips brushed the side of it but it was too late even after he grasped onto it once more. The ledge of snow crumbed under him and he tumbled down the snowy ledge, spinning and plummeting until he hit the bare bottom.
The buzzing was gone. Quigley threw his notebook angrily as he sat up, looking up to where he had spent the entire day climbing up to. This was it. I'm going to die alone and frozen at the bottom of this mountain. All of it was useless. He hugged his knees for warmth, closing his eyes and listening for the wind to stop rushing over him.
He waited.
And the wind stopped.
It was bright… unusually bright. It couldn't be morning already could it? He had wasted the rest of the day sleeping…
I started Tuesday after midnight, Quigley thought wearily, Tuesday morning it had snowed all day. Yes, that was right. Wednesday it had all melted… so if it was morning…?
It was Thursday. The Thursday.
Quigley scrambled up in search of his items. They were gone, lost in the snow. He shifted through the snow for his notebook until his hands throbbed and then lost all feeling. It was gone, all of those notes. Gone.
He got up. There's no time to waste. Thursday was when he promised he'd be back. Thursday was his goal for finding his siblings by. Thursday was the day: Hotel Denouncement.
He walked, trying to remember where he came from. I left towards the setting sun. The sun sets west… I had to have come from the east. Where was east? There.
He trudged on, empty-handed looking for any sign at all. This was his last chance. Just a signal or a voice, perhaps a trail of fresh footsteps or a---
A streak of blue was moving strangely in the distance, obscured by the mountainside. Quigley walked faster and it grew, flowing in the wind. He ran, watching it as it grew and at last the line of blue was no longer a line. It was a large, torn sail caught on the mountain. Like a ship fallen from the sky. It hung on to the ragged edge desperately as if one gust of wind could blow it right off and send it tumbling down.
"Duncan! Isadora!"
Quigley dragged his tired legs through the snow, running as fast as he could carry himself, coughing violently. At the side of the slope he looked up to the fallen balloon and the large baskets that hung under it. Quigley set a hand in a crack in the mountain and pushed himself up. He didn't look down. He never would.
"Duncan? Duncan! Isadora?" Quigley shouted as the hot-air balloon continued to sway oddly.
He was at least thirty feet from the ground before his frozen fingertips could touch the bottom of the baskets.
"Duncan! Are you up there? Isa---"
He looked down to the icy ledge where his feet were. It started to crack and splinter. He jumped for the baskets before it crumbled but he fell all the way back down and landed on his back. He tried to move but it hurt too much. He coughed and wheezed strangely and he clutched his throat. His tears froze on his cheeks as he looked hopelessly up. He was out of ideas, lost in what to do. He stopped calling their names… there could be only one reason why they weren't answering back.
Dead.
Then it went all to black.
"He's slipping!"
"Then hold on tighter!"
"Oh yeah? Let's see you try. At least I'm carrying the wretched thing."
"Oh, why don't you two shut up? It's not in to argue."
Quigley's eyes shot open but it was still black. He couldn't see anything at all… he was blinded by the fall. No. Blindfolded.
He struggled weakly but his feet were locked together, as well as his hands. He tried to talk but it was hard to breathe. He moaned.
"Great! Now you woke the kid up."
"It doesn't matter, just open the car door and throw him in."
Suddenly, Quigley hit what had to be the car seat. It was still taking his brain time to register what was happening. Who were the voices… a car--- he was in a car?
Immediately, his blindfold was ripped off as blinding light filled his eyes. A car engine started and his eyes burned as they adjusted.
The car was filthy, horribly filthy. Trash was cluttered around his feet, the seats were torn, and there were even what looked like bullet holes through the roof. A man with a hunchback sat on his left, the man with hooks on his right, and up in front was Esmè Squalor and Count Olaf, grinning terribly back at him through the broken rearview mirror.
"Enjoy your sleep?" Count Olaf cackled. Quigley struggled to free his hands. Once he would… he didn't know what he'd do.
"Where are you taking me?" Quigley tried to say but his voice cracked and his breathing became short. Hestarted to talk again but he was interrupted by evil laughter. His heart began to pound as he searched for an escape.He tried to swallow, but his throat was swollen and he coughed until he could barely breathe.
"I can't believe our luck! The puny twerp actually fell for it!" Esmè giggled. Quigley's mind was fogging with every short breath he took. What…?
"Please help, stop! Stranded on mountain, stop!"Esmè mocked in a high voice. "It would have never of worked if you didn't force his annoying look-alike to tap out the telegram." Quigley threw himself forward out of the grip of the men beside him.
"You have Duncan!" He gasped. His lungs felt like they were going to burst as he kept wheezing for air. Why can't I breathe...?
Esmè giggled with Count Olaf as she held a jar in her lap, "Of course we do! How else would we be able to lure you to us! Besides, kidnapping is in at the moment."
"So is intercepting packages," Olaf intervened and they all roared laughing.
Quigley stared at the jar on her lap again. Inside was a strange growth, filled with tiny spores and… he wasn't sure what it was until Olaf lifted it up in front of him.
"You must be hungry. Mushroom?" He laughed maliciously and with one final inhale Quigley fell unconscious.
