Lemony Snicket - The Reptile Room

"Come now, my dears," Uncle Monty said. "We've wasted enough of the morning on talk. We have to- owl" He interrupted himself with a cry of surprise and pain, and fell to the ground.

"Uncle Monty!" Klaus cried. The Baudelaire children saw that a large, shiny object was on top of him, and realized a moment later what the object was: it was the heavy brass reading lamp, the one standing next to the large cushioned chair in Klaus's room.

"Ow!" Uncle Monty said again, pulling the lamp off him. "That really hurt. My shoulder may be sprained. It's a good thing it didn't land on my head, or it really could have done some damage."

"But where did it come from?" Violet asked.

"It must have fallen from the window," Uncle Monty said, pointing up to where Klaus's room was. "Whose room is that? Klaus, I believe it is yours. You must be more careful. You can't dangle heavy objects out the window like that. Look what almost happened."

"But that lamp wasn't anywhere near my window," Klaus said. "I keep it in the alcove, so I can read in that large chair."

"Really, Klaus," Uncle Monty said, standing up and handing him the lamp. "Do you honestly expect me to believe that the lamp danced over to the window and leaped onto my shoulder? Please put this back in your room, in a safe place, and we'll say no more about it."

"But-" Klaus said, but his older sister interrupted him.

"I'll help you, Klaus," Violet said. "We'll find a place for it where it's safe."

"Well, don't be too long," Uncle Monty said, rubbing his shoulder. "We'll see you in the Reptile Room. Come, Sunny."

Walking through the entry hall, the four parted ways at the stairs, with Uncle Monty and Sunny going to the enormous door of the Reptile Room, and Violet and Klaus carrying the heavy brass lamp up to Klaus's room.

"You know very well" Klaus hissed to his sister, "that I was not careless with this lamp."

"Of course I know that," Violet whispered. "But there's no use trying to explain that to

Uncle Monty. He thinks Stephano is a herpe-tological spy. You know as well as I do that Stephano was responsible for this."

"How clever of you to figure that out," said a voice at the top of the stairs, and Violet and Klaus were so surprised they almost dropped the lamp. It was Stephano, or, if you prefer, it was Count Olaf. It was the bad guy. "But then, you've always been clever children," he continued. "A little too clever for my taste, but you won't be around for long, so I'm not troubled by it."

"You're not very clever yourself, " Klaus said fiercely. "This heavy brass lamp almost hit us, but if anything happens to my sisters or me, you'll never get your hands on the Baudelaire fortune."

"Dear me, dear me," Stephano said, his grimy teeth showing as he smiled. "If I wanted to harm you, orphan, your blood would already be pouring down these stairs like a waterfall. No, I'm not going to harm a hair on any Baudelaire head-not here in this house. You needn't be afraid of me, little ones, until we find ourselves in a location where crimes are more difficult to trace."

"And where would that be?" Violet asked. "We plan to stay right here until we grow up."

"Really?" Stephano said, in that sneaky, sneaky voice. "Why, I had the impression we were leaving the country tomorrow."

"Uncle Monty tore up your ticket," Klaus replied triumphantly. "He was suspicious of you, so he changed his plans and now you're not going with us."

Stephano's smile turned into a scowl, and his stained teeth seemed to grow bigger. His eyes grew so shiny that it hurt Violet and Klaus to look at them. "I wouldn't rely on that," he said, in a terrible, terrible voice. "Even the best plans can change if there's an accident." He pointed one spiky finger at the brass reading lamp. "And accidents happen all the time."

Bad circumstances have a way of ruining things that would otherwise be pleasant. So it was with the Baudelaire orphans and the movie Zombies in the Snow. All afternoon, the three children had sat and worried in the Reptile Room, under the mocking stare of Stephano and the oblivious-the word "oblivious" here means "not aware that Stephano was really Count Olaf and thus being in a great deal of danger" – chatter of Uncle Monty. So by the time it was evening, the siblings were in no mood for cinematic entertainment. Uncle Monty's jeep was really too small to hold him, Stephano and the three orphans, so Klaus and Violet shared a seat, and poor Sunny had to sit on Stephano's filthy lap, but the Baudelaires were too preoccupied to even notice their discomfort.

The children sat all in a row at the multiplex, with Uncle Monty to one side, while Stephano sat in the middle and hogged the popcorn. But the children were too anxious to eat any snacks, and too busy trying to figure out what Stephano planned to do to enjoy Zombies in the Snow, which was a fine film. When the zombies first rose out of the snowbanks surrounding the tiny Alpine fishing village, Violet tried to imagine a way in which Stephano could get aboard the Prospero without a ticket and accompany them to Peru. When the town fathers constructed a barrier of sturdy oak, only to have the zombies chomp their way through it, Klaus was concerned with exactly what Stephano had meant when he spoke about accidents. And when Gerta, the little milkmaid, made friends with the zombies and asked them to please stop eating the villagers, Sunny, who was of course scarcely old enough to comprehend the orphans' situation, tried to think up a way to defeat Stephano's plans, whatever they were. In the final scene of the movie, the zombies and villagers celebrated May Day together, but the three Baudelaire orphans were too nervous and afraid to enjoy themselves one bit. On the way home, Uncle Monty tried to talk to the silent, worried children sitting in the back, but they hardly said a word in reply and eventually he fell silent.

When the jeep pulled up to the snake-shaped hedges, the Baudelaire children dashed out and ran to the front door without even saying good night to their puzzled guardian. With heavy hearts they climbed the stairs to their bedrooms, but when they reached their doors they could not bear to part.

"Could we all spend the night in the same room?" Klaus asked Violet timidly. "Last night I felt as if I were in a jail cell, worrying all by myself."

"Me too," Violet admitted. "Since we're not going to sleep, we might as well not sleep in the same place."

"Tikko," Sunny agreed, and followed her siblings into Violet's room. Violet looked around the bedroom and remembered how excited she had been to move into it just a short while ago. Now, the enormous window with the view of the snake-shaped hedges seemed depressing rather than inspiring, and the blank pages tacked to her wall, rather than being convenient, seemed only to remind her of how anxious she was.

"I see you haven't worked much on your inventions," Klaus said gently. "I haven't been reading at all. When Count Olaf is around, it sure puts a damper on the imagination."

"Not always," Violet pointed out. "When we lived with him, you read all about nuptial law to find out about his plan, and I invented a grappling hook to put a stop to it."

"In this situation, though," Klaus said glumly, "we don't even know what Count Olaf is up to. How can we formulate a plan if we don't know his plan?"

"Well, let's try to hash this out," Violet said, using an expression which here means "talk about something at length until we completely understand it." "Count Olaf, calling himself Stephano, has come to this house in disguise and is obviously after the Baudelaire fortune."

"And," Klaus continued, "once he gets his hands on it, he plans to kill us."