Family Comes First- ASOUE

Chapter 44: Infiltrating the Mill

*Klaus' POV*

I held up the picture of our parents in front of Lucky Smells Lumbermill, taking a look at its shops and greenery. Then I lowered the picture and compared what it looked like now. The shops were all burnt down and in ruins, and there was a brand new wall outside of the mill.

"Everything's gone..." I said.

"Not everything," Violet corrected. "This has to be where all the clues lead us. We'll get answers here, right?"

"I sure hope so," Duncan said. "And the only thing in between us and the secrets our parents were hiding is this big wall."

"What if we don't like what we find? Knowing could be a terrible thing..." I mumbled.

"Wouldn't not knowing be worse?" Isadora asked me.

Violet handed Sunny to Izzie and grabbed her ribbon from her pocket. "I bet I could invent a catapult to get us over." She said, looking up and tying her hair.

"I've read about walls." I added. "The wall of Jericho, the Great Wall of China..."

"All I need is a lever, a counterweight, and a very large spoon." Violet continued.

"Walls are used very often in poetry as a metaphor for setting limits," Isadora contributed. "But metaphorical walls probably won't help in this case."

"Yoo hoo," Duncan called, getting our attention. He was leaning against the wall with the gate open and a smug grin on his face. "Maybe try checking to see if it's even locked before you go making catapults, Vi." He joked.

Isadora and I snickered as Violet rolled her eyes, smiling anyway. "Well don't act like you did anything too special," she joked back, "It's not like it was locked!" He laughed too and gestured for us to go in. The girls walked in front of me and I followed, reading a sign on the gate as I walked by it.

'WARNING: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PUT TO WORK'

"Hey, you guys?" I called, pointing to the sign. "Does this make us trespassers?"

"We're children," Violet said dismissively.

"Those aren't mutually exclusive," I pointed out.

"If we get caught, we can just say we're on a school trip." Izzie offered. "Come on, Klaus."

I hesitantly followed them inside. "What exactly are we looking for?" I asked.

"It's like what Father said about fine art," Violet answered. "We'll know it when we see it."

"I think we're in the right place..." Isadora said as she looked around.

"Or the very wrong place..." Duncan said, pointing towards a building with a window in the exact shape of the eye on Count Olaf's ankle.

"It could be a coincidence?" Violet said wearily.

"Or it could be Count Olaf..."

I stared at the window a little longer. "Maybe we should leave..." I said uneasily. I felt a hand fall on my shoulder and yelped as I turned around. I heard another shocked sound from the man in front of me. He was tall with short, neat hair and he wore a bright blue vest with a peach pin on it and a button-up shirt underneath.

"Forgive me. I didn't mean to startle you," he said in a kiwi accent. "I thought you might be trespassers, but now I see you're just children."

"They're not mutually-" I began to correct him, but Violet cut me off.

"We're on a school trip." She said.

"Because we go to school." Duncan added, nodding in agreement with Violet's statement.