The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (36 page)

Empty.

He started forward slowly.

I lay perfectly still and listened. I heard
my pursuers not far away. They sounded like feral animals. But what
were they doing? Why had they stopped?

Suddenly a white light cut through the
darkness. Footsteps followed, bones splintering. I held my
breath.

Were they coming toward me?

Had they noticed where I’d dug?

I was a sitting duck
.

I tensed, waited for one of them to cry
out.

None did.

The footsteps passed close by, one set after
the other, continuing in succession for what seemed like far too
long. But then they began to fade.

I waited a full minute before shoving the
layer of bones off me. I sat up and used Danièle’s matches to
relight the torch I had snuffed out. The room was deserted. I tried
to stand, toppled over, tried again, and succeeded. I lurched
through the bone field back the way I had come. As soon as I
reached solid ground I stumbled on legs that felt like slats of
splintery wood. I pinballed from wall to wall, believing the next
step would be my last, or the one after that.

Abruptly a childhood memory appeared in my
mind’s eye. I was running along one of my favorite bike trails,
carrying Maxine on my back, ducking overhanging branches, jumping
roots, skipping over tire ruts.

I often biked there with my best friend,
Stevie, but that Sunday afternoon in mid-August of 1997 Stevie
bailed on me, so I invited Max along for the first time. Although
the trail was in Ravenna Park, in the middle of U-District, it felt
like it was in a sprawling, isolated forest, for conifers and
old-growth trees towered above us, the canopy blocking out the sky,
creating a premature twilight. With me leading the way, we weaved
down into the ravine, spraying through foot-deep brooks and
crunching over rotting deadfall. Some of the hills were a pain, and
I was always puffing for breath when I reached the top. But,
surprisingly, Max never walked her bike up them; she likely wanted
to prove to me she could keep up, so she would be allowed to come
back.

We were about an hour along the trail when
the accident happened. I was zipping down a gradual incline,
getting air on small jumps, glancing back to see if Max was doing
the same. She wasn’t; her tires remained firmly on the ground as
she tackled each peak and trough. Even so, about halfway down, she
picked up too much speed and lost control. Her front tire caught a
rut, then hit a root. Her handlebars jerked, and she crashed
through the thick vegetation for about twenty feet before plowing
into a large tree. She suffered a greenstick fracture in her left
leg, though all we knew right then was that her leg was bloody and
bruised. She was crying, as much out of fear as pain, I suspected,
but eventually I coaxed her onto my back. I must have carried her
for two kilometers before we emerged from the park behind a
7-Eleven. The employee on shift called our dad, who picked us up
and took Max to the hospital.

The memory left as abruptly as it came, and
the stone hallway refocused around me. However, I must have gotten
a second wind, because I was now moving at a good trot and arrived
at the foot ladder a minute later. I took a moment to catch my
breath, then gripped the ladder’s uprights and shifted my feet onto
the rungs. I climbed one step—and hesitated. I looked into the
black shaft below me.

No
, I thought. Danièle was dead. She
had to be. I heard her screams. They were the screams of someone
having a dagger plunged into their chest. She was dead.

But what if she wasn’t?

She was. Had to be.

But what if she isn’t? You left her once,
you didn’t have a choice, but you have a choice now.

“Fuck,” I mumbled.

I stabbed out my torch on the wall and
started down.

Danièle’s left hand felt ten times its
original size and pulsed with electrifying pain, as if it had been
pricked with a thousand different needles. The skin on it was
already bubbling with large, clear blisters, especially on the palm
and between the fingers. She wondered if she’d ever be able to use
it again, but that was only a passing thought, because she had much
more immediate concerns.

Like the four zombie-bitches standing watch
over her.

Two were overweight, one average, one
skinny, though they all resembled each other. This wasn’t
surprising given they were related through inbreeding. Their ragtag
clothing was filthy and torn, and their elbows were black, stained
permanently, Danièle presumed, with dirt. These observations,
combined with their undead stench, made her wonder whether they had
ever bathed in their lives.

They watched Danièle, barely blinking. Their
eyes shone with a dull luster—dull but not dumb, for they were
cognizant enough to understand Zolan’s orders to keep guard over
her and Katja. They wouldn’t even let her soothe her hand in the
cool water of the pool. When she attempted to stand to do this, the
skinny bitch shoved her roughly back to her rear.

Katja sat quietly next to her, staring at
the ground for the most part, like a kid who knew she was in deep
trouble and didn’t want to make it any worse.

Danièle tried not to think about Will, but
it was a futile attempt. She still couldn’t believe he had
abandoned her the way he had. She was so furious with him she
almost wanted Zolan to catch him…almost. Because she knew she
couldn’t blame him. If their positions had been reversed, she would
have done the same as he had—

Will emerged from the shadows like a
wraith.

Were her eyes playing tricks on her?

Could that really be him?

Yes! Because Katja, gasping in excitement,
saw him too. Yet before Danièle could tell her to shut up, she
blurted, “Will!”

The four women whirled around, amazingly
quick for such despondent creatures. They shrieked and raised their
bone-weapons…and everything that followed happened very fast.

Danièle rocked forward, grabbed the ankle of
the bitch closest to her with her good hand, and yanked. The woman
lost her balance but didn’t go down. Hopping on one leg, she
attempted to kick free. Danièle tugged again, this time dropping
her. She landed on her chest. Danièle scrambled onto her back. Her
body, wiry and powerful, thrashed violently.

“Katja!” Danièle shouted. “Help!”

Katja didn’t know what to do; she was frozen
with conflicting loyalties. Danièle wanted her to help attack Toni.
But she couldn’t do that! Toni was her aunt. She’d helped raise
Katja from birth.

Toni twisted and knocked Danièle off
her.

Screeching, she raised her bone.

Katja leapt forward and grabbed the shaft,
just above where she held it.

Toni whirled toward her, hissing her
name.

Katja tugged the bone free and stumbled
backward.

I overwhelmed the two fat women with brute
force, smashing through their raised femurs with mine and landing
critical blows to their skulls. The skinny one, however, got behind
me and leapt onto my back, her arms and legs locking around me. She
bit me above the collarbone, tearing out a chunk of flesh.

Bellowing, I dropped the femur, reached over
my shoulders, grabbed her with both hands by the greasy hair, and
launched her into the wall. She hit it hard but recovered quickly,
pushing herself to her hands and knees. I drove a foot into the
back of her neck and heard a popping crack. She expelled a drilling
shriek that splintered into something inhuman. She dropped to her
chest and jerked her head back and forth, still shrieking, though
unable to move her body from the neck down.

Katja knew Romy must be badly hurt because of
the sounds she was making, but she didn’t understand why her aunt
was just lying there. Nevertheless, if she didn’t quiet down,
Katja’s father was surely going to hear her and know they were
escaping. He would come back with the others and catch everyone
again.

Understanding this, Katja rushed beside Will
and grabbed Romy’s long hair in her hands.

“Get out of the way, Katja!” Will growled.
He looked as angry as she’d ever seen anybody, and she knew he was
going to stomp on Romy’s head the way he’d stomped on Hann’s.

Katja ignored him and began dragging Romy
toward the water. She feared Will would stop her, but he was
already turning his attention to the struggle between Danièle and
Toni.

“Katja!” Romy hissed between her shrieks.
“
Hilf mir!
”

Her German wasn’t very good, not like
Katja’s father’s or Katja’s herself, she only knew a few basic
words, and they were usually garbled by her pronunciation, but what
she said now was easy enough to understand: “Help me.”

Katja kept dragging her toward the
water.

“
Hilf mir!
”

“I am!” she shouted.

Suddenly the cool water shimmered around
Katja’s ankles. She backed up a few more steps until it was up to
her knees.

Romy was shaking her head wildly, but she
still wasn’t moving her body at all. Her rounded eyes blazed and
she hissed, “Katja
—
”

Katja released her hair and her head sank
below the surface and her shrieks turned into bubbles.

“Go to sleep,” she said softly.

I didn’t know what Katja wanted with the
skinny woman, but I didn’t care; the woman was a quadriplegic and
no longer a threat. I turned to Danièle, who was grappling with the
last remaining woman. I snatched up the femur and went to help.
Danièle flipped the woman onto her back, pinning her to the
ground.

Holding the bone with a wide grip, I pressed
the middle of its length against the woman’s throat and leaned onto
it, crushing the cartilage in her windpipe and depriving her of
air. She writhed and gasped and spat until she went limp.

“Will!” Danièle said when it was over,
throwing her arms around me. We folded onto the rock together.

I couldn’t believe she was in my arms, safe,
alive
.

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled into her hair,
squeezing her tighter.

“You came back.”

“I left.”

“You came back.”

“Shit, Danièle,” I said, noticing her
hand.

“It is okay.”

I sat up, easing her aside. “Zolan’s still
looking for me, he’s going to come back. We have to go.” I glanced
around for Katja through a film of blurry fatigue. She was by the
pool, crouched next to a pair of legs that extended from the water.
Had she drowned her own aunt?
“Katja…?”

She looked at me. “She isn’t going to wake
up, is she?”

“No.”

She began to cry.

“Katja, I’m sorry. I didn’t want any of
this—”

“I didn’t either!”

I glanced at Danièle. She shook her head. I
got up and went to Katja and pulled her to her feet and shushed her
and stroked her hair.

“It’s almost over,” I said softly.

She sobbed, and her body trembled.

“Can you climb the ladder?” I asked her.

“I—I don’t know.”

“You need to.”

“I don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Just climb the ladder.”

“I want this to end.”

“Can you climb the ladder?”

“I…” She sniffed, nodded. “Okay.”

“Faster this time?”

She nodded again against my chest.

Danièle had collected one of the discarded
yet still-burning torches and joined us at the pool. She waded in,
apparently intent on swimming back through the submerged passage.
The mere thought of doing so made me shiver.

“Forget it,” I told her. “I can’t do that
swim again. I won’t make it.”

“We have to. We cannot stay here—”

“We’re going to take the ladder.”

“The ladder!” she exclaimed. “That is the
way Zolan went!”

“No—I got off it before I reached the top,
so did Zolan, but it kept going up, through the rock. It might lead
back to all those tunnels beneath Val-de-Grâce. We could easily
lose Zolan in them, and we’d be closer to a way out.”

Danièle frowned, contemplating this. “And if
you are wrong, and it leads nowhere?” she said.

“I can’t do that swim again,” I said
simply.

I ascended the ladder first, carrying the
torch, followed by Katja, then Danièle. At the lateral hallway, I
half expected to find Zolan and the others, waiting to jump me, but
it was all clear, and for the first time in…I don’t know how long…I
felt the nascence of hope.

We were going to do this.

We were going to escape.

These thoughts spurred me on, and I didn’t
realize I had left Katja and Danièle behind until I glanced down
and all I could see was blackness.