Read Online A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Hostile Hospital by Lemony Snicket - Free Book Online Page B

magazines describing what was in and what was out, so they could only stare at Esme's shoes and wonder why she was wearing footwear that was so violent and impractical. "This is a pleasant surprise," Esme said. "Olaf asked me to break in here and destroy the Baudelaire file, but now we can destroy the Baudelaires as well." The children looked at each other in shock. "You and Olaf know about the file?" Violet asked. Esme laughed in a particularly nasty way, and, from behind her veil, smiled a particularly nasty smile. "Of course we know about it," she snarled. "That's why I'm here--to destroy all thirteen pages." She took one odd, tottering step toward the Baudelaires. "That's why we destroyed Jacques Snicket." She took another stabbing step down the aisle. "And that's why we're going to destroy you." She looked down at her shoe and shook her foot wildly to get the blade out of the library floor. "Heimlich Hospital is about to have three new patients," she said, "but I'm afraid it'll be too late for any doctor to save their lives." Klaus stood up, and followed his sisters as they began to step away from the slave to fashion who was moving slowly toward them. "Who survived the fire?" he asked Esme, holding up the page from the file. "Is one of our parents alive?" Esme frowned, and teetered on her stiletto heels as she tried to snatch the page away. "Did you read the file?'" she demanded in a terrible voice. " What does the file say?" "You'll never find out!" Violet cried, and turned to her siblings. "Run!" The Baudelaires ran, straight down the aisle past the rest of the B files, rounding the corner past the cabinet that read "Byron to Byzantine" and around to the section of the library where all of the C files were stored. "We're running the wrong way," Klaus said. "Egress," Sunny agreed, which meant something along the lines of, "Klaus is right--the exit is the other way." "So is Esme," Violet replied. "Somehow, we'll have to go around her." "I'm coming for you!" Esme cried, her voice coming over the top of the file cabinets. "You'll never escape, orphans!" The Baudelaires paused at the cabinet reading "Conch to Condy's Fluid," which are a fancy seashell and a complex chemical compound, and listened as Esme's heels clattered in pursuit. "We're lucky she's wearing those ridiculous shoes," Klaus said. "We can run much faster than she can." "As long as she doesn't think of taking them off," Violet said. "She's almost as clever as she is greedy." "Shh!" Sunny said, and the Baudelaires listened as Esme's footsteps abruptly stopped. The children huddled together as they heard Olaf's girlfriend mutter to herself for a moment, and then the three youngsters began to hear a terrifying sequence of sounds. There was a long, screechy creak, and then a booming crash, and then another long, screechy creak, and another booming crash, and the pair of sounds continued, getting louder and louder. The youngsters looked at one another in puzzlement, and then, just in the nick of time, the oldest Baudelaire figured out what the sound was. "She's knocking over the file cabinets!" Violet cried, pointing over the top of Confetti to Consecration. "They're toppling over like dominos!" Klaus and Sunny looked where their sister was pointing and saw that she was right. Esme had pushed over one file cabinet, which had pushed over another, which had pushed over another, and now the heavy metal cabinets were crashing toward the children like a wave crashing on the shore. Violet grabbed her siblings and pulled them out of the path of a falling file cabinet. With a creak and a crash, the cabinet fell to the floor, right where they had been standing. The three children breathed a sigh of relief, having just narrowly avoided being crushed beneath files on congruent triangles, coniferous trees, conjugated verbs, and two hundred other topics. "I'm going to flatten you!" Esme called, starting on another line of cabinets. "Olaf and I are going to have a romantic