The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (10 page)

“You know what would be awesome?” Rob said.
“A stripper pole, right over there, in the center of the room.” He
had moved off the bench and was stretched out in a recumbent
position on the sand, his head in one hand, his beer in the other.
He would have been right at home with a couple palm frond-fanning,
grape-dangling servants hovering over him.

“At one of the parties,” Danièle said, “a
woman gave everyone who wanted one a lap dance. I do not know if
she was a stripper, but if she behaves like that, probably.”

I said, “What’s the strangest thing you’ve
seen down here?”

“Oh, so much!” She made a thinking face.
“There used to be a group of women called the catachicks. They
walked around in their bikinis and nothing else.”

Pascal said something.

Danièle replied, shaking her head.

He persisted.

She shrugged and looked at me. “Pascal wants
me to tell you one of our stories,” she said. “I can do this. But I
have to warn you it is very scary. Maybe you do not want to hear
it.”

I set aside my beer, bumped a Marlboro from
my pack, and lit up. “Go for it,” I told her, exhaling a jet of
smoke away from her.

“Okay…but do not say I did not warn you.”
She cleared her throat. “So, it happened a few weeks after Pascal
and I were sent into the catacombs for our initiation at Les Mines.
We wanted to visit the tunnels again on our own, but we knew
nothing then, we had no maps, so we found a guide online. His name
was Henri. He charged us two hundred euros.” She confirmed this
with Pascal, who nodded. “Yes, two hundred,” she went on. “When we
met him, he was with another couple, a guy and girl our age,
Etienne and Mari. They were very sweet. So it was the five of us.
We explored for maybe ten hours. Then suddenly—and this is
crazy—all our lights went.”

“At the same time?” Rob said.

“It is true, Rosbif. We do not know why, but
it happened. And no one had matches or lighters. You do not know
what it is like down here without any light. The darkness, it is so
incredible. Wait—you must experience this. Pascal, put out the
candles.”

I stiffened, then berated myself. There was
no reason to be afraid of the dark. If we couldn’t relight the
tealights for whatever reason, we had our headlamps right next to
us.

I took a final drag and stubbed out my
cigarette while Pascal went around the cavern, snuffing the candles
one by one. I don’t know what I had been expecting, but when Pascal
extinguished the final flame, a darkness like I had never
experienced enveloped us. Only it wasn’t a darkness; it was a
blackness. Black-hole black. I blinked, but that changed nothing.
It was like being in some sort of sensory deprivation chamber. I
couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t smell
anything aside from the omnipresent dank musk, like time stored in
a bottle.

And Danièle had said her lights—everyone’s
lights—had failed them? She had been plunged into this nothingness
without the reassuring knowledge she could leave it anytime she
wanted? That would be a psychological nightmare. Obviously she had
escaped. But what if she hadn’t? I tried to imagine what it would
be like to walk alone in utter blackness, with only your hand on
the wall to guide you, your mouth dry from dehydration, your throat
and lungs burning from the rank air and the countless hours of
screaming for help, your feet weeping with blisters, your legs
jellied with exhaustion, nothing around you but tunnels and more
tunnels, ad infinitum.

At some point it would hit you that you
weren’t getting out of there alive. And then what? Did you give in
to your despair and slump to the cold hard ground? Or did you keep
pressing on, driven by the naïve hope of salvation, the sheer will
to survive? Would you eventually turn on the others with you? Would
you begin knocking them off one by one, either out of primal hunger
or insanity? Or would the insanity not come until later, when you
were little more than skin and bones, when the rats grew bold
enough to sample your living flesh, when you were counting down the
hours and minutes until the end?

“Amazing, yes?” Danièle said softly.

I started at the abrupt sound of her
voice.

“Yeah, great,” Rob said. “Now I know what
it’s like to be dead. Thanks, Danny. I’ve always wondered.”

“Will?” she said.

I found it strange to be speaking in
complete darkness. It was sort of like speaking on the phone to
someone, even though they were next to you.

“Freaky,” I said.

“I am going to finish my story in the dark.
Is that okay?”

“Seriously?” Rob said.

“It will not take long.” She cleared her
throat. “So—Pascal and me were down here with our guide and those
other two people and our lights went out. It was just like
this—only for real. At first we tried to get our lights to turn
back on. When they did not, Henri told us he knew a manhole exit
close by. He said he could lead us there, even in the dark. We
walked for ten minutes, and it was the longest ten minutes of my
life. I thought we were going to die, I really did. But then we saw
light, a pinhole coming through the manhole cover twenty meters up.
We climbed the ladder. The cover was not sealed, and we pushed it
open. We were right in the middle of a street, but it was late, and
there were no cars, so we climbed out.”

There was a long pause.

“That’s it?” Rob said.

“No, that is not. Etienne was missing. Mari
said she had been holding his hand the entire time. Then, at the
ladder, she said he told her to go up, he would be behind her. But
he never came.”

“You’re full of it,” Rob said.

“I am not, Rosbif. Ask Pascal.”

“
C’est vraiement
,” Pascal said.

“So what did you do?” I asked.

“We called down to him. There was no answer.
Henri bought new batteries from a nearby store and put them in his
flashlight. It worked and he and Mari went back down.”

“You and Pascal didn’t go?”

“Are you listening to me, Will? I was so
scared. We waited at the top for them to return. They did, with
Etienne. But he was all…messed up. He was like a zombie and would
not say anything at all. We took him to a café, we gave him food
and water. He finally spoke a little. It was in a flat tone, like
he was not aware he was speaking. He told us he remembered walking
in the dark, then all of a sudden he became very cold. He did not
recall anything after that. Nothing. Not until Henri and Mari found
him again, curled up in a ball on the ground.”

I frowned. “But you said he was holding his
girlfriend’s hand all the way to the manhole.”

“Yes,” Danièle agreed. “And he told her he
would climb up behind her. That is the thing, we have no idea if
she was lying, or if…”

“Or what?” Rob said.

“Or…” I could almost sense Danièle
shrugging. “I cannot answer that.”

“Bullshit!”

“It is true, Rosbif. We exchanged contact
information with the couple, in case they needed to get in touch
again. They did not. But
I
did. I needed to know if they had
been playing a joke on us. So I sent an email to them about one
month later. Only Mari replied. She told me she was no longer with
Etienne. Apparently after that day in the catacombs his mental
condition got worse and worse until his parents could not care for
him and were forced to admit him to a psychiatric hospital. To this
day, Pascal and I have no idea what really happened to him.”

Another long pause. The silence that ensued
was deep and ominous. I wanted to turn on my headlamp. Danièle’s
story might have been laughable had she told it aboveground. But
hearing it here in the catacombs where it happened, in the
unprecedented blackness, was borderline terrifying.

A quick snick. A flame appeared.

Pascal went around the cavern, relighting
the candles.

I looked at Rob, then Danièle. In the
candlelight Rob seemed half confused, half amused, like he’d shit
his pants and didn’t know what to do. Danièle’s eyes were bright
and intense—and not a hint of deception in them.

“Fuck me blue,” Rob said, chugging the last
of his beer, crushing the can, and opening another. “That’s
something, Danny.”

I said, “This Etienne guy must have had some
sort of nervous breakdown.”

“Obviously, boss. Why do you think he got
locked up in a mental asylum.”

“I mean while he was in the catacombs. He
didn’t think he was getting out. His mind snapped.”

“But who was holding the girl’s hand all the
way to the manhole?”

“He must have been.”

“Then he wanders back into the tunnel and
curls up in a ball?”

“Rosbif is right,” Danièle said. “That makes
no sense.”

I said, “So we’re talking about ghosts
now?”

She shook her head, shrugged. “Anyway—you
wanted to know the craziest thing that happened to me. That is
it.”

“But you still come down here all the
time?”

“I did not come again for maybe six months.
But eventually I did, yes. I cannot stay away. This place…it is
magical for me.”

Pascal returned to us and withdrew three
objects from his backpack. At first I thought they were really old
flashlights before realizing they were juggling torches. The
handles appeared to be made of spiral-wound plastic. The upper
portion of the dowels were shrouded in aluminum.

He set a bottle of kerosene on the ground
and held a torch for me to take.

“It is easy,” he said in that French way of
his with equal stress on each syllable. “You try.”

I looked at him, but couldn’t tell whether
he was being friendly or not.

I said, “I can’t juggle.”

“Just one. Like this.” He flicked the torch
into the air, then caught it again. “See, easy.” He smiled at
me—his smug GQ smirk.

No, not friendly, I decided. “I told
you—”

“Okay, okay, I know, you cannot do it, no
problem.”

He doused all three wicks in kerosene and
lit them with his lighter. Orange flames whooshed to life. Still
grinning—now like a showman—he began to freestyle, tossing the
fiery torches from one hand to the other in a jaunty, cascading
fashion.

Danièle clapped to an inaudible beat. Rob
joined her. I didn’t. Pascal was really beginning to get on my
nerves. I’ve been trying to cut him some slack. I knew the attitude
he was giving me stemmed from the fact I was with Danièle. To be
fair, I didn’t blame the guy for that. He had apparently liked her
for several years, couldn’t find the balls to do anything about it,
then some American rolls into town and hooks up with her, and he
gets delegated to yesterday’s news. If I were in his position, I
wouldn’t like me either.

But he wasn’t giving it a rest; it was one
snub after another. And now this: offering to let me juggle only to
prove to everyone he could do it better. He reminded me of a
reporter at the
Brooklyn Eagle
who always caught me in the
kitchenette while I was making coffee. He was a nerdy, know-it-all
sort, and he would ask trivialities like, “Do you know how the
Greek Thales measured the height of the pyramids?” And after you
gave him an inane answer or passed, he would tell you in an offhand
way, like he was an unsung genius, that Thales measured the shadow
the pyramid cast on the ground at noon. He was a phony and an
attention-seeker, and so was Pascal—or Chess—in his own subtle
way.

Pascal reversed the direction of the
torches, now cycling the lead one over as opposed to under the
others. He carried on juggling for another full minute,
accelerating his speed, performing different tricks, at one point
balancing one torch on his chin while flourishing the other two
with his fingers.

For his finale he tossed the three torches
so high they almost touched the twelve-foot ceiling, pirouetted
one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, caught them in descending order,
and bowed—all in one fluid motion.

“
Trѐs bien!
” Danièle cheered.
“
C’est épatant!
” She cupped my knee with
her hand. “Unbelievable, Will, right?”

“Maybe he should join the cir—”

A distant shout cut me off.

We listened. The only sound was the
flickering of Pascal’s torches.

“Put those out,” I told him quietly.

He did so. I thought I could hear some sort
of chanting.

“Who the fuck’s that?” Rob said.

“It must be other cataphiles,” Danièle said.
“They are goofing around.”

“They’re coming closer.”

“Yeah,” I agreed. The chant was getting
louder.

“Guys, it is no big deal,” Danièle said. “We
always see other cataphiles. There is no need to worry—” She
frowned.

“What?” I said.

“It sounds like German.”

She was right, I realized. “Are they sieg
heiling?”

Danièle and Pascal began conversing with
what seemed liked great seriousness.

“Nazis?” Rob said. “Really? You’re shitting
me.”

“Whoever they are, they’re going to be here
soon.” I interrupted Danièle. “Is this going to be a problem?”

“It depends on who they are,” she said with
a shrug, but her expression revealed a quiet trepidation. “Pascal
thinks it might be Le Diable Peint.”

“Who?”

“The Painted Devil,” she said. “There are
many stories about him… I thought they were only stories.”

“You’ve never met him before?”

“No, never. Not once. You are very bad luck,
Will.”

Pascal was shoving the torches into his
backpack.

“Yes, hurry,” Danièle said. “We should
leave.”

“And go where?” I said. “They’re going to be
here any second.”

Pascal stuffed his folded map down the front
of his pants. He passed Danièle his lighter. She tucked it down
south too. There was no time to ask them what the hell they were
doing, for a moment later three men marched into the room, chanting
and saluting in rhythm.