A Tale of Wretched Occurrences: The Beginning

𝓒𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓽𝓮𝓻 𝓣𝓱𝓲𝓻𝓽𝔂-𝓞𝓷𝓮

“I hope Mr. Poe isn’t too worried about us,” Violet says.

You, Klaus, and Sunny just stare at her.

Violet shrugs. “Good point.”

Klaus shakes his head and goes back to examining the photograph. You adjust your position. You’ve been drifting in and out of sleep the whole ride, so you’re not exactly sure how long you’ve been riding for, but you do know it’s been several hours given the fact the sun was just beginning to rise when you were back on Damocles Dock, and now it’s fully in the sky.

“I’m going to see if we’re almost there,” Violet decides.

She sits up, glancing into the truck’s cab.

“What the gum?” you hear the truck driver yell.

The truck jerks to a sudden stop.

“Get a job, hitchhikers!” he yells, and you have no choice but to climb out of the truck.

As soon as your feet hit the forest floor, the truck speeds off again, quickly fading into just another green dot in the distance.

“What now?” you ask dejectedly.

“We walk,” Klaus answers.

“Uuh?!” Sunny exclaims, which means, “Walk?!”

“It’s okay, Sunny. I got you,” Violet says.

You weave through the sparse trees for what feels like days, but is probably only another hour or so. Eventually, you arrive at a familiar-looking building. Well, sort of. Klaus holds up the photograph to compare the two buildings. While the Lucky Smells building itself is mostly the same, the surrounding area is no longer full of color and life, but instead ashes and debris.

“It looks like there was a fire here,” Klaus observes.

You look around. “Everything but the lumbermill is gone.”

“Maybe this is where all the clues lead us,” Violet suggests as you begin to walk towards the lumbermill building. “The secret safe and the strange photographs at Aunt Josephine’s.”

“The secret message and the strange statue lady at Uncle Monty’s,” Klaus adds.

“The secret use for the spyglass and the strange symbol of the eye,” you say.

“Ee bu,” Sunny babbles, which means, “Count Olaf. He’s just strange.”

“The only thing standing between us and our parents' secrets…” Violet begins.

“...is an enormous wooden wall,” Klaus finishes.

“What if we don’t like what we find?” you worry.

“Knowing can be a terrible thing,” Klaus agrees.

“But isn’t not knowing even more terrible?” Violet asks.

Though none of you say anything, you all silently decide that it is. You need to go inside the mill. As soon as you figure out how to go inside the mill. Violet sets Sunny down in a wheelbarrow full of coal and ties her hair up.

“I bet I could invent a catapult to get us over.”

“I’ve read about walls,” Klaus says thoughtfully. “The Wall of Jericho, the Great Wall of China.”

“All I need is a lever, a counterweight, and a very large spoon,” Violet says.

“Pink Floyd’s The Wall,” Klaus continues. “Although Mother wouldn’t let me listen to it.”