The Grim Grotto (A Series of Unfortunate Events 11)

The elder Baudelaires looked, although it took them a few moments to realize what Sunny was talking about, as they could not see what direction their sister was pointing. But in a moment they saw two small lights, a short distance from where the volunteers were crawling. Hesitantly, they stood up – except for Sunny, who remained curled up in her helmet – and saw that the lights were coming from a place many lights come from: lamps.

A short distance away, standing against the wall, were three floorlamps, each with a letter on its shade. The first lamp had a large V, and the second had an F. The third floorlamp had burnt out, and it was too dim to read the shade, but the children knew, of course, that it must have had a D.

"What is this place?" Fiona asked, but as the children stepped closer they could see what kind of place it was.

As they had suspected, the currents of the Gorgonian Grotto had carried them to a beach, but it was a beach contained in a narrow room. The youngsters stood at the top of the slope of sand and peered at this small, dim room, with smooth tiled walls that looked damp and slippery, and a sand floor covered in an assortment of small objects, some in piles and some half-buried in the sand. The children could see bottles, some still with their corks and caps, and some cans still intact from their journey. There were a few books, their pages bloated as if soaked in water, and a few small cases that looked locked. There was a roller skate, turned upside down, and a deck of cards sitting in two piles, as if someone were about to shuffle them. Here and there were a few pens, sticking out of the sand like porcupine quills, and there were many more objects the children could not identify in the gloom.

"Where are we?" Fiona asked. "Why isn't this place full of water?"

Klaus looked up, but could not see past a few feet. "This must be a passage of some sort," Klaus said, "straight up to dry land – an island, maybe, or maybe it curves to the shore."

"Anwhistle Aquatics," Violet said thoughtfully. "We must be underneath its ruins."

"Oxo?" Sunny asked, which meant "Does that mean we can breathe without our helmets?"

"I think so," Klaus said, and then carefully removed his helmet, an action for which I would have given him a citation for bravery. "Yes," he said. "We can breathe. Everybody take off their helmets – that way, our oxygen systems will recharge."

"But what is this place?" Fiona asked again, removing her helmet. "Why would anybody build a room way down here?"

"It looks like it's been abandoned," Violet said. "It's full of junk."

"Someone must come to change the light-bulbs," Klaus pointed out. "Besides, all this junk was washed up here by the tide, like us."

"And like sugar bowl," Sunny said.

"Of course," Fiona said, looking down at the objects in the sand. "It must be here someplace."

"Let's find it and get out of here," Violet said. "I don't like this place."

"Mission," Sunny said, which meant "Once we find the sugar bowl, our work here is done."

"Not quite," Klaus said. "We'll still have to return to the Queequeg against the current, I might add. Looking for the sugar bowl is only half the battle."

Everyone nodded in agreement, and the four volunteers spread out and began to examine the objects in the sand. Saying that something is half the battle is like saying something is half a sandwich, because it is dangerous to announce that something is half the battle when the much more difficult part might still be waiting in the wings, a phrase which here means "coming up more quickly than you'd like." You might think learning how to boil water is half the battle, only to learn that making a poached egg is much trickier than you thought and that the entire battle would be much more difficult and dangerous than you ever would have imagined

The Baudelaires and their mycologist friend thought that looking for the sugar bowl was half the battle, but I'm sorry to tell you that they were wrong, and it is lucky that you fell asleep earlier, during my description of the water cycle, so you will not learn about the other half of the Baudelaires' battle, and the ghastly poison they would end up battling not long after their search through the sand.

"I've found a box of rubber bands," Violet said, after a few minutes, "and a doorknob, two mattress springs, half a bottle of vinegar, and a paring knife, but no sugar bowl."

"I've found an earring, a broken clipboard, a book of poetry, half a stapler, and three swizzle sticks," Klaus said, "but no sugar bowl."

"Three can soup," Sunny said, "jar peanut butter, box crackers, pesto, wasabi, lo mein. But nadasuchre."

"This is harder than I thought," Klaus said. "What have you found, Fiona?" Fiona did not answer. "Fiona?" Klaus asked again, and the Baudelaires turned to look at her.

But the mycologist was not looking at the siblings. She was looking past them, and her eyes were wide with fear behind her triangular glasses.

"Fiona?" Klaus said, sounding a bit worried. "What have you found?"

Fiona swallowed, and pointed back down at the slope of sand. "Mycelium," she said finally, in a faint whisper, and the Baudelaires turned to see that she had spoken the truth. Sprouting out of the sand, quickly and silently, were the stalks and caps of the Medusoid Mycelium, the fungus Fiona had described back on the Queequeg.

The invisible threads of the mycelium, according to her mycological book, waxed and waned, and had been waning when the volunteers drifted ashore, which meant that the mushrooms had been hiding underground when the children had arrived at this strange room. But now, as time passed, they were waxing, and sprouting up all over the beach and even along the smooth, tiled walls.

At first just a handful were visible – each one a dark, gray color, with black splotches on the caps as if they were spattered with ink – and then more and more, like a silent, deadly crowd that had gathered on the beach and was staring blindly at the terrified children. The mushrooms only ventured halfway up the slope of sand, so it seemed that the poisonous fungus was not going to engulf them – not yet, anyway. But as the mycelium continued to wax, the entire beach sprouted in sinister mushrooms, and until it waned the Baudelaires had to huddle on the sand, in the light of the floorlamps, and stare back at the venomous mycological crowd.

More and more mushrooms appeared, crowding the strange shore and piling up on top of one another as if they were pushing and shoving to get a good look at the trapped and frightened children.

Looking for the sugar bowl may have been half the battle, but now the Baudelaire orphans were trapped, and that half was much, much more troubling.

Chapter Seven

The word "lousy," like the word "volunteer," the word "fire," the word "department," and many other words found in dictionaries and other important documents, has a number of different definitions depending on the exact circumstances in which it is used. There is the common definition of the word "lousy," meaning "bad," and this definition of "lousy" has described many things in my history of the Baudelaire orphans, from the sinister smells of Lousy Lane, along which the children traveled long ago, to their lousy journey up and down the Mortmain Mountains in search of the V.F.D. headquarters. There is the medical definition of the word "lousy," meaning "infested with lice," and this definition of "lousy" has not appeared in my work at all, although as Count Olaf's hygiene gets worse and worse I may find occasion to use it. And then there is a somewhat obscure definition of the word "lousy," meaning "abundantly supplied," the way Count Olaf is lousy with treacherous plans, or the Queequeg is lousy with metal pipes, or the entire world is lousy with unfathomable secrets, and it is this definition that the Baudelaire orphans pondered, as they huddled with Fiona underneath the mysterious floorlamps of the Gorgonian Grotto, and watched more and more mushrooms sprout from the sand.

As their surroundings became lousy with the Medusoid Mycelium, the children thought of all the other things in their lives with which they were abundantly supplied. The children's lives were lousy with mystery, from the mysteries of V.F.D. to the mysteries of their own futures, with each mystery crowding the others like th

e stalks and caps of the poisonous fungi. Their lives were lousy with danger, from the dangers they had encountered above mountains and underneath buildings, to the dangers they had faced inside the city and out in the hinterlands, from the dangers of villainous people to the dangers of kind people who did not know any better. And their lives were lousy with lousiness, from terrible people to horrible meals, from terrifying locations to horrifying circumstances, and from dreadful inconveniences to inconvenient dreads, so that it seemed that their lives would always be lousy, lousy with lousy days and lousy with lousy nights, even if all of the lousy things with which their lives were lousy became less lousy, and less lousy with lousiness, over the lousy course of each lousy-with-lousiness moment, and with each new lousy mushroom, the cave lousier and lousier with lousiness, it was almost too much for the Baudelaire orphans to hear.

"Lousy," Sunny said.

"This is not good news," Klaus agreed. "Fiona, do you think we've been poisoned already?"

"No," Fiona said firmly. "The spores shouldn't reach us here. As long as we stay here at the far end of the cavern, and the mushrooms don't advance any further, we should be safe."

"It looks like they've stopped advancing," Violet said, pointing at the line of gray mushrooms, and the other volunteers saw that she was right. There were still new mushrooms popping up, but the fungus didn't seem to be getting any closer to the four children.

"I guess the mycelium has only grown that far," Fiona said. "We're very lucky."

"I don't feel very lucky," Klaus said. "I feel trapped. How will we get out of here?"

"There's only one way," Violet said. "The only path back to the Queequeg leads through those mushrooms."

"If we go through the mushrooms," Fiona said, "we'll most likely be poisoned. One spore could easily slip through our suits."

"Antidote?" Sunny asked.

"I might find the recipe for a cure," Fiona replied, "someplace in my mycological library. But we don't want to take that chance. We'll have to exit another way."

For a moment, all four children looked up, into the blackness of the passage above their heads. Violet frowned, and put one hand on the damp and slippery tiles of the wall. With the other hand she reached into the waterproof pocket of her uniform, and drew out a ribbon to tie up her hair.

"Can we go out that way?" Klaus asked. "Can you invent something to help us climb up that passageway?"