I used to be that young man, almost thirteen, walking alone down an empty street in a half-faded town. I used to be that person, eating stale peanuts and wondering about a strange, dusty item that was stolen or forgotten and that belonged to one family or another or their enemies or their friends. Before that I was a child receiving an unusual education, and before that I was a baby who, I’m told, liked looking in mirrors and sticking his toes into his mouth. I used to be that young man, and that child, and that baby, and the building I stood in front of used to be a city hall. Stretched out in front of me was my time as an adult, and then a skeleton, and then nothing except perhaps a few books on a few shelves.
And now stretched out in front of me was a scraggly lawn and a tall metal statue so worn from rain and age that I could not tell what it was a statue of, even when I was close enough to touch it. The shadows of the building’s two pillars were wiggly stripes, and the building itself looked like it had been slapped several times by a giant creature that had lost its temper. The pillars held an arch with the words STAIN’D-BY-THE-SEA written in letters that had once been darker, and carved into the wall were the words CITY and HALL, although they were difficult to read, as someone had hurriedly nailed up two other signs on top of them. Over CITY was a sign that read POLICE STATION, and over HALL was a sign that read LIBRARY. I walked up the steps and made the sensible choice.
The library was one enormous room, with long, high metal shelves and the perfect quiet that libraries provide for anyone looking for an answer. A mystery is solved with a story. The story starts with a clue, but the trouble is that you usually have no idea what the clue is, even if you think you know. I thought the clue was the Bombinating Beast, sitting under a sheet in a forgotten room of a lighthouse, and I wondered how I might find out more. I crossed the room looking for the librarian, and soon found him behind a desk, swatting at a couple of moths with a checkered handkerchief. The moths were fluttering over a small sign at the desk that read DASHIELL QWERTY, SUB-LIBRARIAN. He was younger than I think of librarians as being, younger than the father of anyone I knew, and he had the hairstyle one gets if one is attacked by a scissors-carrying maniac and lives to tell the tale. He was wearing a black leather jacket with various metallic items up and down the sleeves, which jangled slightly as he went after the moths.
“Excuse me,” I asked, “are you the librarian?”
Qwerty waved his handkerchief one more time at the moths and then gave up. “Sub-librarian,” he said in a voice so deep I thought for a moment we were both at the bottom of a well. “Stain’d-by-the-Sea cannot afford a permanent librarian, so I am here instead.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Since I replaced the other one,” he said. “Can I help you?”
“I am looking for information on local legends,” I said.
“Dame Sally Murphy is probably Stain’d-by-the-Sea’s most famous actress,” Qwerty suggested. “There should be a book about her career in the Theater Section.”
“Not that kind of legend,” I said. “I mean old stories about strange creatures.”
Qwerty stepped around the desk. “Allow me to lead you to Mythology,” he said, and without hesitating he walked me toward a row of shelves in the center of the room. “There’s also a good Zoology and Oceanography Section, if you’re interested in real animals.”
“Not today, thank you.”
“One never knows. They say in every library there is a single book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind.”
“Perhaps, but not today.”
“Very well. Shall I help you further, or do you like to browse on your own?”
“Browse on my own, please,” I said, and Qwerty nodded and walked away without another word. The Mythology Section had several books that looked interesting and one that looked like it would be helpful. Sadly, it was not one of the ones that looked interesting. I found a table in a far corner where I could read without being disturbed and opened Stain’d Myths.
According to chapter 7, the Bombinating Beast was a mythological creature, half horse and half shark—although some legends claim half alligator and half bear—that lurked in the waters just outside Stain’d-by-the-Sea. It had a great appetite for human flesh and made a terrifying bombinating sound—I had to get up from the table and find a dictionary to learn that “bombinating” was a word which here meant buzzing—when looking for prey. Moxie had struck me as a somewhat unusual girl but not a liar, and, sure enough, there was a story that Lady Mallahan had slain the Bombinating Beast hundreds of years ago, although the author said that in all likelihood Lady Mallahan had just found a dead walrus on the beach at the bottom of the lighthouse’s cliffs, and the local townspeople gossiped about it until it became much more interesting. Other stories said that people could tame the Bombinating Beast by imitating its fearsome buzz, and there was a myth about a wizard who held the beast under his power, as long as the terrible monster was kept fed. In the olden days, a gong was rung in the town square to warn away the beast on moonless nights. The gong was long gone, but the legend lingered. Mothers still told their children and their husbands that the Bombinating Beast would eat them if they did not finish their vegetables, and locals still dressed as the Bombinating Beast on Halloween and Purim, with masks that looked not very different from the one I’d donned in the roadster, at least in the book’s illustrations. Supposedly sailors still saw the Bombinating Beast, swimming with its body curled up like an underwater question mark, although with the sea drained, I couldn’t imagine that this could be true, at least not anymore.
The book did not say anything about a statue, valuable or otherwise, and so I stopped reading about the Bombinating Beast and got interested in the chapter about the Stain’d witches, who had ink instead of blood in their veins. I wondered what they kept in their pens.
I read for quite some time before I was distracted by a noise that sounded like a rock being thrown against the wall, just above my head. I looked up in time to see a small object fall to the table. It was a rock, which had been thrown against the wall, just above my head. It would be nice to think of something clever to say when something like that happens, but I always ended up saying the same thing.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey,” repeated a mocking voice, and a boy about my age stuck his head out from behind a shelf. He looked like the child of a man and a log, with a big, thick neck and hair that looked like a bowl turned upside down. He had a slingshot tucked into his pocket and a nasty look tucked into his eyes.
“You almost hit me,” I said.
“I’m trying to get better,” he said, stepping closer. He wanted to tower over me, but he wasn’t tall enough. “I can’t be expected to hit my target every time.”
“That’s your idea of fun?” I said. “Slinging rocks at people in the library?”
“I prefer to hit birds,” he said, “but there aren’t very many birds around here anymore.”
“I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to be frolicking with a nice guy like you,” I said.
“Hold still,” the boy replied, taking out his slingshot. “Let me see if I can hit that idiotic smile of yours from across the room.”
Qwerty appeared as if from nowhere. “Stew,” he said, a word that sounded much scarier in such a deep voice. “Leave this library at once.”
“I’m allowed in here,” Stew said, glaring at the librarian. “This is a public library.”
“And you are a public nuisance,” Qwerty replied, grabbing Stew’s arm and propelling him toward the door. “Out.”
“See you soon,” Stew called out nastily to me, but he left without further insult, and Qwerty went over to examine the wall.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said, frowning at a small dent and rubbing it with his finger. “Stew Mitchum is like something stuck at the bottom of a waste bin. I try and try to throw him out, but he just sticks there, getting older and older. Did you find what you were looking
for?”
“Sort of,” I said. “Can I check out books if I don’t live in town?”
“Regrettably, no,” Qwerty said. “But I open the library very early every day. You’re always welcome to come in and read anything you like. It’s not often we get people interested in theater.”
I did not bother to remind him that famous actresses were not the legends I was researching. “Thank you,” I said. “I suppose I should get going.”
“Of course,” Qwerty said, “if you have a library card, you can send requests for books from the library close to where you live.”
“You mean, my library in the city can send books here that I can check out?”
“No,” Qwerty said, “but you could fill out the paperwork here, and the book would be waiting for you in the city.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be back there,” I said. The city, and the people I liked best in it, seemed even farther away than they were.
Qwerty reached into a pocket of his jacket and pulled out a blank card. “You see, how it works is that you write down your name and the title of the book, and the person working at the research desk sees what book you are requesting.”
I thought quickly. “So the person at the research desk sees the title of the book I want?”
“Yes.”
“Or their apprentice?”
“I suppose so,” Qwerty said. “Have you changed your mind?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’d like to request a book from the Fourier Branch.”
“The Fourier Branch?” Qwerty repeated, taking a pencil from behind his ear. “Isn’t that near where they’re building that new statue?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, perfectly sure.
“And what is your name?” he asked me.
I told him, and told him it was spelled like it sounded. He wrote it down in careful block letters and then paused with his pencil in the air.
“And the author of the book you’re looking for?”
I was blank for a moment. “Sorry,” I said.
“Sorry is the author’s name?”
“Yes,” I stammered. “I believe she’s Belgian.”
“Belgian,” he said, and looked at me and wrote it down and looked at me again. “And the title of the book?” he said, and it was a perfectly reasonable question. I hoped my answer sounded reasonable, too.
“But I Cannot Meet You at the Fountain.”
Qwerty looked at me, his face as blank as one of those extra pages tucked in the back of a book for notes or secrets. “So your complete request,” he said, “is ‘Sorry, But I Cannot Meet You at the Fountain.’”
“That’s right,” and Qwerty looked at me just for a second before slowly writing it down.
CHAPTER FIVE
I walked back to the Lost Arms feeling much lighter than I had all day. The library had been restorative, a word an associate of mine used to describe activities that clear the brain and make the heart happy. A root beer float is restorative, as is managing to open a locked door. Hopefully, I thought, this associate of mine would soon receive my request at the Fourier Branch of the library and save herself some trouble.
It was trouble that was waiting for me at the Lost Arms, and one could spot it half a block away, as there was a car parked out front with a red light on top. It looked like a police car, but when I got closer, I saw it was a run-down station wagon with a flashlight taped to its roof. Nevertheless, there were two adults in uniform standing at the steps of the Lost Arms, where Theodora was sitting. She had to look up to speak to them, and her eyes looked serious and worried beneath her hair. As part of my education, I’d learned that one should never have a serious conversation in a position in which one has to look up at the other person. I’d thought this was a ridiculous thing to teach children, who tend to be shorter than anyone else, and said so. As punishment for speaking out in class, I had to sit in the corner. The teacher looked even taller from there.
“Snicket,” Theodora said as I reached our hotel. “These are the Officers Mitchum.”
The two officers turned to look at me, and I found myself facing a man and a woman who looked so much alike they could only be twins or two people who had been married for a very long time. They both had pear-shaped bodies, with short, thick legs and grumpy-looking arms, and it looked like they had both tried on heads that were too small for them and were about to ask the head clerk for a larger size.
“My wife and I have questions for you,” said the first Officer Mitchum, rather than “Hello” or “Nice to meet you” or “I thought you might be hungry, so I took the liberty of bringing you some lamb chops.”
“Harvey,” the other officer said sharply. “You’re not supposed to call me your wife when we’re on official business.”
The first officer sighed. “Mimi, you’re my wife whether we’re on duty or not.”
“Don’t remind me,” his wife replied. “I’m having a bad enough day as it is. It was your turn to empty the dishwasher, Harvey, but as usual you forgot, and I had to do it myself.”
“Mimi, stop nagging me.”
“I’m not nagging you.”
“Yes you are.”
“Harvey, gently pointing something out is not nagging.”
“That was gentle? I’ve seen a pack of wolves act as gentle as that.”
“When have you ever seen a pack of wolves?”
“Well, not actual wolves, but I’ve visited your sister’s house, and her kids—”
I can’t imagine there is anyone reading this who needs to be told that when two married adults start to argue, it can last for hours, if not days, and the only way to stop it is to interrupt them. “You said you had some questions for me?” I asked.
“We’ll ask the questions around here,” Mimi Mitchum said. “We’re the law in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. We’re the ones who catch criminals and put them on the train back to the city to be locked up. From the outskirts of town in the hinterlands to the boundary of the Clusterous Forest, we know every single thing that happens in this town. So when strangers arrive, we feel it is our duty to welcome them and ask them what exactly it is that they’re doing here.”
“We love ink,” Theodora tried.
“You told Mr. Mallahan you loved lighthouses.”
“We love everything,” Theodora said with a desperate smile.
“What my chaperone means,” I said, “is that although we’re here on business, we hope to take in some of the fantastic sights of this wonderful community. I was just admiring your police station, for instance.”
“Harvey hung that sign himself,” Mimi Mitchum said proudly.
“It’s true,” the male Officer Mitchum said, “but what we’re here to say is that one sight we hope you will not enjoy is the inside of our only jail cell. We couldn’t help but notice that soon after the arrival of two strangers, this town experienced a crime. It is a small crime, to be sure, but it is a crime nonetheless.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“A streetlight was vandalized,” Harvey Mitchum said. “Right around the corner from the library, someone slung a small rock and shattered the bulb. It’s still too early to make assumptions, but it wouldn’t be surprising if this crime could be traced to the two of you. Where have you been for the last hour, Snicket?”
“In the library,” I answered.
“Can anyone verify this?”
“Dashiell Qwerty, the librarian.”
“That ruffian,” Mimi Mitchum scoffed. “I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t spend time on his appearance.”
“I’d say he spent lots of time,” I said. “That haircut looked like it took hours. He and I were interrupted by a young boy with a slingshot. Qwerty said his name was Stew.”
The Officers Mitchum looked sternly at me, their mouths set in identical snarls. “Our son, Stewart,” the female Mitchum said, “is a genius and a gentleman. He is certainly not a criminal. Why, he begged to come with us just in order to welcome you.”
She
gestured to the station wagon, and I saw for the first time Stew’s thick, sneering head peering out the open window. When the eyes of the adults were upon him, he found an enormous smile someplace and plastered that on his face instead. “Nice to meet you, Lemony,” he said to me in a falsely cheerful voice. “I love meeting nice people my own age! I do hope we become the bestest of friends!”
“You see?” Harvey Mitchum said to me as Stew stuck his tongue out at me without anyone seeing. “A charming boy.”
“A darling boy,” Mimi Mitchum said. “Lately he’s been interested in local bird life.”
“I bet he grows up to be a brilliant scientist,” her husband said.
“Or a doctor,” said his wife.
“A brilliant doctor.”
“Of course, Harvey. You know I meant a brilliant doctor. You don’t have to embarrass me like that.”
“I wasn’t trying to embarrass you.”
“Well, then you were wasting time.”
“I wasn’t wasting time! It only took a second!”
“Then what were you trying to do? Why would you even say such a thing if you weren’t trying to embarrass your wife?”
“You said I shouldn’t call you my wife when we’re on duty!”
“And you said I was still your wife whether we were on duty or not.”
“Excuse me,” I said, “but if you don’t have any more questions, I’d like to go to my room.”
The Officers Mitchum looked at me in irritation for interrupting their argument. “We’ll be keeping an eye on you two,” Mimi Mitchum said, pointing a surprisingly long finger, and after a brief dispute over which Mitchum would drive, the station wagon rattled away down the street, and Theodora stood up to stare down at me.
“We’re not in town one day,” she said, “and already you’re in trouble with the law. I’m disappointed in you, Snicket.”
“I didn’t vandalize a streetlight,” I said.
“That’s not important,” she said with a shake of her hair. “We need to move tonight.”
“Let’s look for a place with two separate rooms.”