The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (18 page)

“He’s not a killer,” I said.

She whirled on me. “Why not?”

“He’s just some bum.”

“Bums do not kill people?”

“I’ve never heard of any killing people,
no.”

“He sees a woman, lost, alone. He knows he
will never be caught…”

A chill touched my spine as I pictured Zolan
straddling the Australian woman, his dirty hands locked around her
throat, squeezing, cutting off the screams that nobody could
hear.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Okay, Will,” Danièle said. “Why did he lie
about the rats?”

“We don’t know he did.”

“There are no rats in the catacombs! None!
Pascal and I have never seen one. Not one.”

“Maybe not here, maybe deeper—”

“No,” Pascal said, shaking his head
adamantly.

“Think about it,” Rob said. “If that old
fuck Zolan killed this woman, why tell us he met her at all? Why
incriminate himself?”

“Because thanks to you, Rosbif,” Danièle
said, “he knew that we knew where she was, and that we were going
looking for her. He did not want us to discover her body. That is
why he told us he guided her to the surface—so we would not go
looking for her anymore.”

“Man oh man,” Rob said, chuckling. “You
buying this, Will?”

Danièle and Pascal glared at me. They had
become openly hostile.

“No, not really,” I said.

Danièle huffed and started away from us down
the corridor.

“Hey—where you going?” I called after her.
“I thought we were going back? That’s the wrong way.”

She stopped, turned. Her face beneath her
red helmet was set in a mask of determination. “No, Will, that is
only what we told Zolan. We are still going to look for the woman,
and we are going to find her.”

Twenty minutes or so after setting out from
the Bunker we arrived at a low crawl that looked no different than
the dozens of others we had passed through. However, this one,
Danièle explained, was special. It was the entrance to the tunnel
system beneath Val-de-Grâce.

Pascal called a break to study his map, and
Danièle went on to tell me that from here on in the passageways
became increasingly dense and complicated, and if we weren’t
careful, we could easily become lost and wander aimlessly
forever—which, apparently, was exactly what happened to one of the
first ever cataphiles.

His name, Danièle said, was Philibert
Aspairt. He was the
doorkeeper of the
Val-de-Grâce hospital
. He entered the quarries
via a staircase located in the hospital’s court. No one knew why
for sure. Some suspected he was hunting for treasure. Others
believed he was searching for the cellars of the Carthusian
convent, under the Jardin du Luxembourg, to steal bottles of their
famous Chartreuse. Whatever the reason, he was never seen alive
again. Eleven years later, however, his remains were discovered in
one of the quarry galleries. He was identified by the hospital key
ring hanging from his belt. “You can visit his grave,” Danièle
concluded. “
He was buried where his remains were found, and
a tombstone marks the spot. Many cataphiles made a pilgrimage there
every year, where they light a candle to pay respect to his
memory.”

“Have you been to the grave?” I asked.

She nodded. “Several times.”

“Are we going to pass it tonight?”

“Unfortunately, we are not going in that
direction.”

A moment later Pascal stuffed his map away,
said, “
Vas-y
,” and ventured into the small tunnel.

I gestured for
Danièle to
proceed next. “Ladies first,” I said.

I had no idea how long we walked for, but it
felt like a very long time. This section of the catacombs was
honeycombed not only with the traditional horizontal hallways, but
shafts angling through the stone at zany angles. It was as if we
were wandering an Escher drawing where the rules of physics no
longer applied.

Moreover, the farther we went, the less
graffitied and more desolate the tunnels became, so soon they all
looked the same. Pascal had taken a piece of chalk from his
backpack and was marking the walls with arrows, to make sure we
could find our way out again. But getting hopelessly lost wasn’t my
only concern. The ceilings and chambers here were crumbling and in
shockingly bad shape, raising the concern of a potential collapse
and cave-in.

Despite all of this, however, I had faith in
Pascal’s navigating abilities to see us through safely. He threaded
the maze with an uncanny confidence, seeming to rely as much on
experience and features in the rock he recognized as he did on his
trusty map. A few times, though, he made wrong turns, and we were
forced to backtrack and try different routes.

It was hard to gauge how deep you were when
you were underground, as there was no sky to reference. When I
asked Danièle to guestimate our depth, she only shrugged and told
me we were very deep.

Then, from ahead of us, Pascal issued an
excited cry. We joined him a moment later at a dead end. He was
already fussing over a jumble of stones and timber in one corner,
moving them aside piece by piece. We joined the effort and soon
cleared al the debris to reveal a symmetrical hole in the ground. A
rusted foot ladder descended into bottomless blackness.

“Jesus, Rascal,” Rob said, whistling softly.
“You went down there alone?”

“Yes, of course,” he said proudly.

“How much farther is it to the fucking video
camera?”

“Not far. Just down the ladder, then a short
walk.” He grinned. “And there is a surprise on the way.”

Pascal went first, and I volunteered to go
next. I sat at the rim of the hole so my legs dangled into the
abyss. Then with Rob and Danièle supporting me, I attached myself
to the iron foot ladder. The rungs were cool to the touch, and rust
sloughed off beneath my grip. I started down. The shaft was only a
little wider than the width of my shoulders, which meant I had to
keep my elbows tucked awkwardly into my sides. I felt as snug as a
cigar in a tube case, and I tried not to think what would happen if
one of the rungs broke free.

I guessed I must have descended a good
thirty feet before the shaft opened around me. From there it was
another ten or so feet until I reached the ground. My legs, I
found, were rubbery from the stress of the descent.

I glanced up and saw a distant light:
Danièle or Rob.

Pascal stood nearby, watching me.

“What?” I said.

“So you and Danièle—you like her, yes?”

Shit, I thought. Really? “Like her?” I said,
playing dumb.

“You fucked her in the Bunker?”

“Listen,” I said, keeping my voice neutral.
“I don’t know what’s gone on between you and her in the past. But
to my knowledge she’s single now. And what she and I do is none of
your business. Okay?”

“She’s using you, you know? She just broke
up with her longtime boyfriend. She is lonely. You’re
convenient.”

“Thanks for the tip. I’ll keep that in
mind.”

He glowered at me a beat longer, then
stalked off into the darkness.

I stared after him. Fucking guy!
You
fucked her in the Bunker
. Who said shit like that?

I should have told him, Yeah, I did, and it
was fan-fucking-tastic.

When Danièle reached me a minute later, I
was still fuming over Pascal’s gull to confront me like he did.
“Wanna know what your buddy asked me?” I said.

She frowned. “What?”

“He asked me if I fucked you in the
Bunker.”

“He
asked
you? What did you say?”

“What does it matter what I said?”

“Did you tell him it was true?”

“I told him it was none of his
business.”

“What’s none of my business?” Rob asked. He
was coming out of the hole in the ceiling.

“How ugly you are,” Danièle said.

Rob slid down the remaining distance,
fireman-style. “Seriously, you talking about me?”

“No, Pascal,” I said.

“He heard Will and me making love
earlier—”

“All right, Danièle, enough,” I said,
cutting her off.

“Yeah, I heard you fuck bunnies too,” Rob
said. “I was with Rascal. Couldn’t you have turned down the volume
a bit, Danny?”

“It was impossible,” she said. “Will was too
good—”

“Jesus,” I said, and started off in the
direction my arch nemesis had gone. Danièle was crazy. She really
was. Bragging about the sex we had to her brother-in-law?

I passed through a doorway into a cavernous
chamber and came to an abrupt halt. Giant, soaring pillars, carved
to resemble naked men and women, lined the four walls. The capitals
supported a bas-relief frieze depicting more naked figures, these
masked and dancing alongside winged, mythological creatures.
Perched atop the cornice were dozens of ornamental gargoyles, their
grotesque faces staring down at us.

“Holy Zeus!” Rob exclaimed from behind me.
“What is this place?”

“
Marveilleux
,” Danièle said softly,
stopping at my side. “Pascal told me about this room, but I never
imagined… He thinks it was built by King Charles the tenth.”

“The
king
?” Rob said.

“When he was still the Comte d’Artois. He
often held torch-lit parties—what he called
f
ê
tes
macabres
—in the catacombs.”

“Bullshit!”

“It is well documented, Rosbif. He invited
all the ladies in waiting from the court in Versailles. It is
rumored he built several grand rooms in which to host these
parties. This was likely one of them.”

“Parties?” I said, studying the frieze.
“More like orgies.”

Danièle nodded. “You are probably right,
Will. The nobility of the Old Regime were a depraved lot. They also
loved novelty. The fact they could dance and make love directly
above millions of human remains would have been a thrill for
them.”

“Directly above?” I said, surprised.

Danièle took my hand. “Yes, you must see
this.” She led me to the center of the room. A stone staircase,
built into the floor, circled away into darkness. “Pascal?” she
called.

“
Ici!
” His voice floated up from
below.

“Come,” she told me, grinning.

My heart was beating fast in my chest as we
started down the steps. They spiraled around a center column before
terminating in the middle of a small stone island. My breath
hitched audibly. Spreading away from us, for as far as the light
from our headlamps would allow, was a sea of moldering bones.

“
Bienvenue
à
L’Empire de la Mort
,
” Danièle whispered.

The Mystery of the Missing Skulls

In July, 2011, three British men were
reported missing in the Paris catacombs. Two years later, the
mummified remains of one of those men was discovered in a remote
area of the tunnels. Now, in a final twist to this story, the
decomposed remains of the two other men have also been found—and
each was missing his skull.

The remains of Roger Hiddleston (24) from
Bexley, London, and Craig Formby (25) also from Bexley, were
located by French urban explorers—known colloquially as
cataphiles—roughly ten miles from the remains of fellow doomed
adventurer, Stanley Dunn (23) of Enfield, London.

According to police, DNA tests confirmed the
victims’ identities. What authorities have not yet determined is
why their skulls were missing.

Although the answer may never be known for
certain, police captain Vincent Reno told French radio he believes
the skulls were taken by cataphiles as souvenirs. People, he
asserts, are fascinated with human bones. He points to the 1.7
kilometer catacombs museum open to the public at Place
Denfert-Rochereau as an example, where every day security guards
catch dozens of tourists attempting to smuggle bones out of the
ossuary in their bags and purses.