I just realized that I'll be leaving the country tomorrow and won't be able to post on Sunday (
), so you get the first chapter early!
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CHAPTER ONE
There was a town, and there was a multidimensional portal to another universe, and there was a murder. I was living in the town, and I was hired to investigate the murder, and I thought the multidimensional portal to another universe had nothing to do with it. I was almost thirteen and I was wrong. I was wrong about all of it. I should have asked the question, “How could someone truly be dead if their memory still lives within all of us?” Instead, I asked the wrong question— four wrong questions, more or less. This is the account of the last.
On a Saturday morning, the inside of Hungry’s was occupied by four people, going by the names of Jake Hix, Cleo Knight, Moxie Mallahan, and Lemony Snicket. We were clustered together around the counter. Three of us were on the customer side, Jake Hix was on the business side, and Jake Hix’s elbows were leading a double life. He and his sweetheart were deeply immersed in what appeared to be a fierce game of backgammon.
“I’m telling you, if you use both dice to move into your left quadrant, it will already be statistically impossible for me to win!” Jake exclaimed.
“Have these statistics of yours included the possibility of numerous double rolls?” replied Cleo, raising an eyebrow.
Jake harrumphed and watched morosely as one of Cleo’s black pieces took a sharp turn around the board. Moxie and I, too, watched morosely, as neither of us knew how to play the game, and neither of us were very interested in competitive bickering. Unlike a considerably older and considerably more unhappy couple in Stain’d-by-the-Sea, however, Cleo and Jake did not tend to argue. In fact, the topic at hand, a phrase which here means “The topic which didn’t seem to be sticking to the conversation despite my sincere efforts”, was how we were possibly going to be able to work together in a time like this.
A time like this was a time with a villainous villain named Hangfire at large, a mysterious mystery named Ellington at the local jail, and a librarianous librarian at the end of his rope. Or so I thought. I thought that Dashiell Qwerty was innocent, and I thought that he was sitting on a train to the city, awaiting a trial for debatable crimes. But once again, I thought wrong.
I was just about to interrupt the bickering sweethearts and try to explain my wrong predictions, when an enormous head of hair walked into the diner and interrupted them for me. S. Theodora Markson, 20% incompetent and 80% curls, was supposed to be my chaperone for the duration of my stay in Stain’d-by-the-Sea. So far she had managed to do this in only one respect, which was occasionally driving me along in her dilapidated roadster.
“Why did you sneak off again, Snicket?” scolded Theodora, striding towards me and grabbing onto my ear. This is a common practice among adults of a certain variety. It was the sort of variety that also made it a point not to listen to their apprentices in the morning. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“I told you during breakfast,” I said, glancing towards my friends with an I’m sorry about this look. “You were beating up the hot plate, and I told you I’d just go to Hungry’s instead.”
Theodora glared. “I asked you a question,” she declared. “Why can’t you learn to answer questions?”
“What does the S stand for in your name?” I replied.
“Sensibility!” said Theodora. “That’s what you need. Besides, there’s no point arguing at a time like this. Come along, Snicket.”
I conceded that this was the first reasonable thing Theodora Markson had said in a long while, so instead of arguing at a time like this, I came along. “I’ll be back as soon as possible,” I told my friends as I followed my chaperone out the door. But inside the roadster, I wasn’t so sure about it. Theodora put her helmet on and instead of putting the key in the ignition, she gave a deep sigh and turned to me. Something was wrong.
“There’s been a murder, Snicket,” she said in a hushed voice. “I’m afraid this is very serious business.”
I didn’t say anything. I wanted to close my eyes and picture the people it could be. Not only was Hangfire still at large, he was becoming more treacherous than ever. Despite my sincere efforts, the topic hadn’t stuck to the conversation back in Hungry’s, and now I was paying for it, paying for all those moments off the case, with a murder— I hadn’t stopped fighting, but I hadn’t fought hard enough.
The roadster chugged off down the road, and turned onto Caravan and Parfait.