The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (5 page)

Mr. Mullet appeared with a huge tray of
food. We had to clear the condiments from the center of the table
so everything could fit: oysters, soufflé, pork belly, garlic
sausage, and a platter of cheese.

While everyone ate, and I nibbled, Danièle
said, “So this is the plan, Will. We will arrive at the entrance to
the catacombs around ten o’clock. We will continued for four hours,
then rest for one. Then it is another two hours or so to the spot
where the camera was found.” She consulted Pascal. “Is that
right?”

He nodded without looking up from his
food.

“Which means we finish around 7 a.m.,” she
added. “Still enough time to get to work.”

I was surprised. “Work?”

“You must work tomorrow, yes?”

“I figured I’d write the day off.”

“Then you do not need to worry.”

“You’re working tomorrow?”

“Of course. But I do not start until
nine.”

“Lucky you,” Rob said, sawing a piece of
pork. “I start at eight.”

I did Danièle’s math in my head. “If we
start at ten, walk for four hours, rest for one, walk for another
two, that’s seven hours in total. That will take us to five in the
morning. Seven hours back, it won’t be noon until we
resurface.”

“No, Will,” Danièle said. “Pascal knows a
different exit close to where we will rest. We will leave that
way.”

I looked at her, wondering if I had to state
the obvious. Apparently I did, and said, “Why don’t we just enter
through that exit?”

“Because that is not what we do,” she
stated. “The catacombs, it is an experience, every time, even for
Pascal and me. It is not something to rush through. You and Robert
will see. You will understand.”

Rob Stratton cast another passing glance
across the table at Danièle’s friend Will, trying to get a read on
him. He wasn’t your typical American expat, not loud, not wanting
to be the center of attention. Not all American expats were like
that, of course; they ran the spectrum like expats from any
nationality did. But Yanks could be loud. Yanks, then Aussies, then
Spaniards—especially the senoritas. That’s how he’d rank them all
on the loud meter. The worst of the lot weren’t only loud but
didn’t adapt. They brought their native country with them wherever
they went.

Rob was thinking about a friend of a friend
in particular, a Texan in the import-export business who’d made a
fortune selling Chinese junk to the French bourgeoisie. He didn’t
wear a cowboy hat around, that would have made him the
laughing-stock of Paris, but he did wear these fancy-ass
pointed-toe cowhide boots. You could hear the Cuban heels
click-clack across the cobblestone streets from a block away. And
if this fashion faux pas wasn’t bad enough, the sad fuck shouted
everything he said. “Y’all” this and “I’m fixin’ tuh” that. It made
you want to smack him one.

Anyway, generalizations aside, Rob wanted to
like Will, he was trying to, but it was tough, knowing how much
angst—albeit unintentional—his presence was causing poor Pascal,
who’d held a flame for Danny for as long as Rob had known him.

If Rob were Pascal, he probably would have
popped Will one right in the kisser by now. But Pascal was a lover,
a romantic, whatever you called dudes with more heart than
testosterone. He didn’t have it in him to hurt a fly.

When Pascal rang Rob two days ago, and
explained the pathetic situation, he had been trying to act blasé
about the whole deal, but it was obvious he was crushed. Initially
Rob declined his invitation to come along; he knew Pascal was only
asking because he didn’t want to be the third wheel at his own
party; also, the wife had some work thing, and Rob had promised to
watch the girls.

Nevertheless, the little bugger wouldn’t let
up, even offered to pay for a babysitter, and Rob finally relented.
Why not? he’d thought. Pascal and Danny had been going on about the
catacombs for years now, and he figured it was about time to find
out what all the fuss was about.

Pascal Gayet slurped an oyster from the wide
end of the shell, doing his best to ignore Danièle and the American
Will. He still couldn’t believe he’d missed out on his chance to
hook up with Danièle yet again. He’d wanted to ask her out ever
since they’d first met years earlier at Le Mines. However, he’d
been in a relationship then, and by the time he got out of it, she
was in one. Ever since, it’d been the same thing: whenever she was
single, he wasn’t, and vice versa. Eventually she’d gotten serious
with a tattoo artist named Marcel, and for the next three years he
had to listen to Danièle complain about what an asshole the guy was
to her. Pascal told her repeatedly to dump him, but she never
listened. Then, a few months ago, he dumped
her
for a TV
actress who had a part in some kid’s show about a family trying to
run a Bed and Breakfast. Pascal figured this was finally his
chance. He and Danièle were both single. He’d give her a couple
weeks to get over Marcel, then he’d tell her how he felt about
her.

Before he could do this, however, she began
going on about this American she was doing language exchange
lessons with. She obviously liked him. She didn’t shut up about
him:
Why doesn’t he like me? Do you think he’s gay? Do you think
he has a girlfriend? Should I ask him out? Do American women do
that?
By the time of her birthday party Friday evening Pascal
had expected some Fabio-type to stroll through the door with her.
To his satisfaction, Will was no Fabio. He had short scruffy black
hair, seemed to be in good shape, girls probably found him
attractive. But Fabio? Not a chance.

Still, that didn’t stop Danièle from fawning
over him. At one point she hopped right onto his lap, her arms
hooked around his neck, throwing her head back, laughing.
Eventually Pascal couldn’t stand it anymore and left the pub with
Danièle’s friend Fanny. She wasn’t attractive, he didn’t have sex
with her, he didn’t want to. He just wanted company—that, and he
wanted Danièle to find out, though if she did, she never mentioned
it.

Across the table Danièle was sitting ramrod
straight, her hand out before her, fingers splayed, as she told of
the time she had met the Russian ambassador to France at Place de
la Bastille. She was up to the point when she had pretended to be
Russian to gain access to the VIP room, where all the diplomats
were knocking back free champagne during the ballet’s intermission.
Obviously she was trying to impress Will, who was listening
stoically beside her, staring into the beer he’d ordered.

Pascal slurped a second oyster from the
shell and entertained himself for a bit with all the different ways
the American could meet a grisly demise in the catacombs
tonight.

Outside the restaurant, rue Jean-Pierre
Timbaud was alive with lights and bustle and noise. We walked two
blocks, turned down a side street, and walked another half block
before arriving at Pascal’s ride: an old, beat-up Volkswagen
campervan. Pascal and Rob got in the front while Daniel and I
climbed in the back through the sliding side door. We sat next to
one another on a bench seat that I suspected folded down into a
bed.

Was this Pascal’s Lovemobile? I wondered.
Did he drive girls to the top of Montmartre, booze them up, then
shag them back here?

To my left was a long counter with knobs
protruding vertically from the surface. I lifted one, which raised
a section of countertop, and discovered a sink beneath.

As Pascal pulled onto the street and made a
tight U-turn, Rob swiveled the front passenger seat around so he
was facing us and opened a cupboard below the counter, revealing a
mini fridge. He snagged three Belgium beers and tossed one to
Danièle and one to me. “To the catacombs fuckers!” he rasped.

We popped the tabs, toasted.

Rob swiveled forward again and turned up Bob
Dylan on the stereo.

“So this is fun, right?” Danièle said to me,
leaning close to be heard.

“Sure,” I said.

I peeled back the tatty chintz curtain and
looked out the window. I had never traveled Paris by car, and as we
rattled down a wide avenue lined with chestnuts, I watched the
stream of closed shops float past.

Nearly everyone had a similar idealized
image of Paris in their heads. A mecca of culture and history
populated by beautiful architecture, stylish women clad in Gautier
or Givenchy, and mustachioed mimes carrying easels under one arm
and baguettes under the other. I guess this was sort of true—aside
from the mustachioed mimes—but already the gloss had begun to wear
off for me, and it had become just another steel-skied, rambling
city.

“What are you looking at?” Danièle asked
me.

I dropped the curtain. “I’ve never been this
way before.”

“You have not seen much of Paris, have
you?”

“Just the bars and clubs, mostly,” I
said.

“Why not sightsee more?”

“I haven’t gotten around to it.”

“You know, Will, you are a hermit crab.”

“A hermit crab?”

“You like to be by yourself.”

I thought about tweaking her analogy, but
didn’t.

A hermit crab. Fuck. I sort of liked it.

I said, “What’s wrong with being a hermit
crab?”

“What made you change your mind
tonight?”

“About coming out?”

“Yes, you were so against this idea.”

“I still am.”

“Then why are you here?”

Because the alternative was sitting around
my apartment all night thinking about Bridgette and her cop
boyfriend and their yet-to-be child…

“I wanted to hang out with you,” I said—and
this was true. I hadn’t wanted to be alone, and I’d always felt
comfortable around Danièle.

She stared at me for a long moment. I waited
for a sarcastic zinger. In the front Rob and Pascal were joking
back and forth in French. Dylan was warbling about how the times
were a-changin’.

Then, suddenly: “Oh, Will, look!” Danièle
pointed out my window.

Far in the distance, visible between a break
in the buildings, the iron lady rose into the sky, lit up in a
twinkling light show.

“You must come to the
Trocadéro with me,” she added. “We will go early in the
morning, before the tourists come. It feels like you have the
Eiffel Tower all to yourself. What do you think?”

“Sure.”

I caught Pascal watching
us via the rearview mirror. His eyes met mine, then he looked
away.

Rob swiveled his chair around again, opened
the mini fridge, and grabbed a second beer. “Anyone?” he said.

Mine was still half full. “No, thanks.”

“I will,” Danièle said cheerfully, and she
caught the one he tossed her.

Tabs popped again. Carbonation hissed. Cans
foamed over.

“I take it you saw the video?” Rob said to
me.

I nodded.

“What do you think?”

“It’s something.”

“What do you think got her?”

I had considered this a fair bit since I
decided to come on the excursion. My revised conclusion was not as
ominous as the one I had initially jumped to. I said, “I think she
snapped.”

“Went crazy?”

I nodded. “If you assume she was lost down
there for days without food or water, she would have been weak and
dehydrated. She would have been exhausted, mentally and physically.
So she snapped.”

“Why’d she start running?”

I shrugged. “When you go crazy, you go
crazy. Maybe she was hearing voices and stuff in her head.”

“And the scream?”

“She dropped the camera. She no longer had
light to see by. She was lost in absolute blackness. That was the
last straw.”

“You know, Will,” Danièle said, touching my
knee, “that is a good deduction. Maybe you are right. See—you had
nothing to be scared of to begin with.”

Pascal chortled from up front.

“I was never scared,” I said. “I was
concerned—for you.”

“Is that not the same thing?”

“What do you think?” I asked Rob.

“Sounds like you were scared, boss.”

I ignored that. “I mean, what do you think
happened to her?”

“What you said makes sense,” he agreed.
Then, with a campfire grin, he added, “But on the other hand, maybe
there
is
something down there. A mop-wielding Toxic Avenger
mutant that stripped her, fucked her, ate her, then tossed her
bones to one of those rooms with all the other bones.”

Danièle rolled her eyes at this. Rob winked
at us and chugged his beer. The van tooled on through the night
with Dylan singing in his campy, folky voice.

Later, somewhere in the southern suburb of
Port D’Orléans, Pascal pulled up to the curb twenty feet shy of a
dark street corner and killed the engine.