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For Dolores –
You may not move, but still you move me.
Dear reader, welcome to our story.
I would advise that you stop reading now, while it still ends on a happier note.
The tale of the Hargreeves siblings is not one I tell lightly, nor one should you read lightly. It is full of sadness and woe, heartbreak and misfortunate, and frankly I can’t imagine why any good and decent person like yourself (for I assume you must be) would take time out of your day to hear it.
So please, before it is too late, as it was for all of us.
Do not continue to read this story.
For if you do, you will encounter descriptions of a terrible fire, lost children, secret societies, very rich men with very dubious morals, missing sugar bowls, incredible powers, and a host of dangerous individuals and situations that I shudder to even recall. Your mood will be absolutely ruined, your appetite spoiled, your dreams haunted by nightmares, and I do not want to be held responsible for that. Which is why I will continue to urge you to turn away now, like I wish I could have all those years ago.
My name is Five Hargreeves, and not only am I the narrator of this story but I am also a character in it. Needless to say, I survived our ordeals and have now taken it upon myself to record these solemn events so that no other children will be forced to endure what my brothers and I did when we were small. Solemn is a word which here means “incredibly depressing and unfortunate,” and it fits our tale well.
Ask yourself: is this the right story for you? Do you want to subject yourself to such dire retellings? I truly hope that you do not.
But if you do choose to continue on, please know that I did my best to warn you.
When Five Hargreeves grew up, he wanted to invent a device that would stop fires before they could start.
He was only fourteen years old, still a boy, but his mind was sharp and inventive and he often thought of clever contraptions that he spent afternoons building with the help of his mother, Efa. She was an engineer herself, and Five took after her in many ways. Which is why he wanted to build things that would help others, just as she did.
Of course, Five’s ability to travel through space with nothing but a jump was not something he had inherited from either of his mothers. The blue electric glow that lit up his hands when he blinked from one place to another was all his own.
No one knew where Five’s power had come from, just like no one knew how or why both of his brothers had been born with unique abilities as well. But neither Efa nor Rachel Hargreeves had shied away from adopting each boy once they discovered how special they truly were, and Five was grateful each day that they had not.
When he was three years old, they brought Five’s first younger brother home. Rachel placed the baby in his arms and spoke to him softly.
“This is your brother. His name is Klaus,” she’d practically whispered. “He sees things that no one else can see, and sometimes those things are scary. So it’s your job to look after him, okay? Make sure he’s not scared.”
Five held the little boy in his arms tight to his chest. The baby whined quietly and shifted in the blankets against him.
“Okay,” Five had promised. He meant it as truly and deeply as he could for a boy his age, and as they got older, Five found that his affection for Klaus only grew. Affection is a word which here means “Five loved Klaus very, very much, even if he did not say it often.”
His little brother was silly and loud and compassionate and sensitive and so, so smart, smart enough to rival Five himself. But even though Klaus could read quickly and retain each piece of information with hardly any effort at all, he spent most of his time listening to records or watching old movies. Anything to get his mind off the ghosts that surrounded him.
Five had never seen the ghosts himself, but Klaus had told him all about them. There wasn’t much Five could do to stop them from tormenting his brother, but he could sit with him and tinker on his latest invention while Klaus did all he could to tune them out. And, on most days, that proved to be enough.
Klaus had just turned five years old, and Five eight, when their baby brother Ben joined them in the Hargreeves mansion.
This time, Klaus was the first one to hold the child while Efa and Rachel sat with them on either side of the couch. Five was squished in between Efa and Klaus, but that was alright. He was close enough to pet Ben’s hair as Rachel murmured to both of them just like she had when Klaus arrived.
“Ben is your baby brother, and he needs both of you to watch out for him,” she explained gently. “There is a monster inside of him, children, but you don’t need to be afraid. It will never hurt you. But Ben needs you to protect him. Promise that you will protect him, no matter what.”
“Promise,” Five replied without even having to think. He was the oldest brother, and that’s what he would always be. He was the protector, the inventor, the traveler. He wasn’t scared of anything.
“Me, too,” Klaus echoed as he kissed the child’s forehead. Ben smiled, which made Klaus smile, which made Five smile at them both.
Their baby brother Ben was as kind as they come, always with a small smile on his face and a hand ready to help anyone who needed one. He loved to read and draw and cook with their mothers in the kitchen, and though he was a boy of few words, the ones he did give were always just the ones that were needed. Both Five and Klaus completely adored Ben, even though he had tentacles living in his stomach.
The Horror, they eventually came to call it, did not show itself often. But when it did choose to make itself known, it was a terrifying sight to behold. Ben hated when the monster came to call, but his brothers would never hate him. After one of the Horror’s visits, Five would bring Ben cookies, and Klaus would tell him stories, and they would laugh until all was forgotten, at least for the time being.
Efa and Rachel raised their boys well. They taught them about a wide variety of subjects and made sure they were resourceful and quick-witted. The family often studied together, played board games together, and occasionally went out to the movies. They were, simply put, happy. But, as is so often the case with happiness, it was not meant to last.
And that is how there came to be three brothers standing on a beach on a cloudy afternoon six years later. You might think a cloudy day would have kept the boys away from the beach at all, but they in fact preferred the quiet shores and brisk breezes to the hot sun and crowded sand. The Hargreeves children were unusual in a good number of ways.
“Finally, a decent beach day!” Klaus exclaimed as he laid out the bright yellow blanket they’d brought with them. Five sat down the picnic basket beside it and knelt in the sand, relishing the cool dampness it brought him.
“It’s much better when there’s no one else we have to share it with,” he agreed, and Ben nodded beside him. The youngest Hargreeves dug his hands into the sand and soon had the beginnings of a castle in the works, just as he did each time they visited Briney Beach. He hummed as he sculpted, a comforting sound that Five cherished as he shifted through the basket.
“Did you remember the mustard this time?” Klaus asked from his spot on the blanket, and Five tossed him the bottle in lieu of a response. His brother grinned widely as he pulled out his cassette player, settling on David Bowie as usual. If Five could count on one thing, it was that Klaus would always listen to Ziggy Stardust at the beach.
With both of his brothers occupied, Five moved into a more comfortable position and pushed his hair back from his eyes to think. It was a sort of tell he had, one that let everyone around him know that the gears of his mind were turning at impressive speeds. On this particular afternoon, Five was working on a device meant for Ben, one that he hoped would somehow give them an inkling of a warning as to when the Horror might make its next appearance. Ben’s birthday was coming up, and Five hoped to finish the project in time to use it as a gift. It was a strange present, all things considered, but they had a strange life – might as well embrace it.
And with Klaus singing along to David Bowie on his left, and Ben building a sandcastle on his right, Five was content to embrace anything life might choose to throw his way.
Which was precisely when a mysterious figure emerged from the mist.
It is at this point, dear reader, where I must again insist that you turn away from this story before things become altogether too unpleasant.
“Klaus, do you see that mysterious figure emerging from the mist?” Five asked as he carefully lifted Ben from his spot in the sand. The younger boy didn’t protest; he never did whenever someone carried him. He was getting a bit old to be picked up like this, but he wasn’t quite there yet, and Five had a feeling Ben enjoyed the closeness. Now he clung to Five nervously as the figure drew closer.
“At first I thought I was the only one who could see him,” Klaus admitted, pressing pause on the cassette player and removing his headphones. He rose from the blanket and stood next to Five, and they watched the figure walk toward them.
The mist finally parted to reveal a chimpanzee in a finely-pressed suit standing before them, a bowler hat on his head and bifocals perched on the bridge of his nose. He carried a briefcase in one hand and a handkerchief in the other, and he cleared his throat viciously before he spoke.
“Good afternoon, children,” the chimpanzee greeted them formally.
“Good afternoon,” Five and Klaus repeated, if only to be polite, and Klaus stepped closer until his arm pressed against Five’s. The chimpanzee coughed into his handkerchief again.
“My name is Mr. Phinneus Pogo, and I work for the downtown branch of Mulctuary Money Management,” he continued. “I also happen to be the executor of your parents’ will.”
“How do you do,” Five grew tired of the pleasantries as he shifted Ben’s weight in his arms. Nothing about this situation felt right, and their mothers had always taught them to trust their instincts. Something in Five’s stomach clenched.
“Very well, thank you,” Mr. Pogo said. “Now, unfortunately, I have some bad news for you boys.”
Five did not want to hear what Mr. Pogo had to tell them. He knew it was rude, and he knew that the chimpanzee was going to deliver his news whether they wanted him to or not, but everything in Five’s mind screamed at him to take his brothers and run fast, run far, and never look back.
Unfortunately for them, they did not run. But the Hargreeves children would spend their entire lives afterward wishing that they had.
“Your parents have died in a terrible fire that has destroyed your entire home.”
Perhaps you are familiar with the expression: “Past the point of no return.” It is a saying used most often when a situation has reached its peak – when it is too late to go back, to turn around, to find what once was.
On that day in Briney Beach, with mist in the air and Mr. Pogo’s eyes on them, the Hargreeves siblings had reached the point of no return.
Ben cried as they stood in the blackened rubble of their home, surrounded by burnt wood and charred stone and the smoldering remains of everything they had once loved. Everything except Efa and Rachel.
Klaus cried, too.
Five did not cry. Five simply held both Klaus and Ben close to him and allowed their situation to wash over him in deep, continuous waves. His inventive brain churned relentlessly as the smoke must have when it consumed their home with their parents inside. He supposed he should feel lucky that he and his brothers were not inside when the blaze began, but all he could feel instead is a terrible dread.
“Klaus,” Five said into the eerie, unfathomable silence. Klaus sniffed, but he turned to Five.
“Yeah?”
“Are they here now?”
Five’s first little brother stopped shuffling across the debris for a moment, and he went still. His eyes flickered across the empty space where their home had once been before they came to rest on Five once again. His face was drawn, closed, impossibly sad. Five held Ben tighter.
“No. They’re not. We’re alone.”
Well, dear reader, what did I tell you?