It wasn't that tricky. The first sentence meant that his family has been hiding for a while. The second, well he didn't know what the second meant, but one thing was for certain, he couldn't wait to find out.
They continued across the streets until they arrived at the outskirts of the city, where Madam Bazarians house lived. It was an old place, three floors and a great marble stood before the doorway. They headed towards the door, and felt the buzz of a busy place, the same buzz that Verity experience every morning as she walked Sebastian.
Septimus rapped his knuckles on the large door and then stood back, snatching the flyer from Aksel. The door swung open, and Septimus bowed profusely, waving his top hat in great rotations. The man looking down at him stared, unimpressed. Septimus stood up and started, as Verity called it, fumbling around. He did a strange dance around the man, flapping his hands and raising his head up and down, as if to take the gist of the man. He continued, giving the man strange looks, until he'd made his way completely around the man and into the building. Once he'd done that, he tapped the man on the shoulder and took his attention, gesturing for Aksel and Verity to enter. They did so and ran into the crowd, quickly losing the big man amongst the bumbling throng of sweaty hot people. The interior of the building, or at least what they could see of it, was grubby and stained with random doors leading into strange rooms, where other acts from the freak show Bazarian was one of performed. They passed a room with a pink haze emitted from it, where many were queuing to get into it, passing it another room where it sounded as if there was an explosion. More and more people barged past them, pushing them into rooms. They fell into a room full of pigs dressed up as people, and once they'd escaped, were just pushed into another room of bearded women and men in dresses. They climbed back out and continued down the corridor, literally fighting their way past the huge crowd. It smelt acrid, burning the insides of their nostrils. But one smell topped all the other smells. The smell of rotting flesh.
The got to the end of the corridor and found a staircase, which they followed up and onto the next floor. This corridor wasn't as busy, although it did have quite a few people at the end, and at random intervals along the way. And the room at the end was Madame Bazarians. They hurried down the corridors, each room had strange noises coming from them, the busier rooms the weirdest of all. The first of the busy rooms had a strange clunking sound and the second had screams of delight. The third room had angry voices coming from it and the next room was the one Bazarian was in. The Laurisden children managed to force themselves through the crowd that spewed out of the doorway and walked into the deep centre of the room. It was dark with only a read candle to illuminate the people in there. A miserable lady sat behind the table in the centre and she whispered. She turned to a random person and said something, which drove attention to a random man in the audience. A surprised atmosphere filled the air and then Madam Bazarian dribbled something from her hand onto the flame it sparked, obviously aluminium, Septimus smiled. He'd been doing that experiment since he was little.
She clicked her fingers and two men in dark hoods with white masks carried the a cadaver in on a stretcher. They dropped the body onto the table.
Bazarian took the candle away and flapped her hands around. A deep hum filled the room, as the hooded men backed away into the crowd. She whispered more and more and then cried aloud, "Become the Lazarus, forget your mortal qualities."
The cadaver sat bolt up right, screaming. The entire audience, including our heroes, jumped back. The cadaver stopped screaming and looked around scared. The hooded men with the white masks returned and took the body away. Madam Bavarian stood up and bowed, disappearing into thin air, with another spray of aluminium. Everyone vented out of the room, the Laurisdens included. Aksel scratched his head, wondering what the big fuss was about.
They got to the staircase and Septimus stopped him. They waited for everyone else to hurry down the steps, and then they headed back to Madam Bazarians suite. Opening the door, they entered and looked around. It was empty. They turned bigger lights on, illuminating the table in the middle. Septimus and Aksel started peering around, searching for clues, whilst Verity played with one of her dolls on the floor. She did like being curious, but for now, looking for clues sounded boring.
She was playing with her doll when it rolled into the shadowy recesses of the corners of the room and she reached to get it. Her hands touched carpet, wood and rough material, that felt like a cloak. She grabbed her doll and backed away. From all four corners of the room stepped out hooded men, brandishing weapons. One laughed. A voice belonging to the air around them laughed as the four men prepared to kill the Laurisden children.
"Mothballs are rolling, Laurisdens. Will a deathly silence follow, though?" It boomed.
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