The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (11 page)

The men halted at parade rest: chins up,
chests out, legs apart, arms behind their backs. They were in their
mid-forties and dressed identically in high leather boots,
military-style peaked caps, trousers, and tunics. Everything was
black except the red arm bands emblazoned with the swastika and the
white runic insignias patched onto their collars. They each carried
6D flashlights.

Pascal was right! Danièle thought. It’s
them—the Painted Devil and his henchmen. It has to be. Who else
dresses up in SS uniforms?

Fear shot down her spine like a bullet as
she wondered what they had planned, and they surely had something
planned, because this meeting was no coincidence. They had not been
surprised to see her and Will and the others when they entered the
room, which meant they had heard them and had come specifically for
them.

Pascal, she was sure, would not say or do
anything stupid. He knew how dangerous these men were. Not Rob and
Will though. Rob was a brawler by nature. Back when he and Dev were
still courting, he used to get into bar fights on a regular basis.
He was like a ferret, fearless. He would antagonize men twice his
size for no other reason than to pick a fight. But becoming a
husband and father seemed to have put some sense into him. She
couldn’t remember the last time he’d lost his temper. She prayed he
could keep it in check now too.

And Will?

Danièle didn’t know. He had always been so
laid-back, soft-spoken. That’s why she was so surprised when he got
into that full-out fistfight with that over-muscled rhinoceros on
the train tracks. He had been swearing and swinging and so
intense—yes, that was the word,
intense
—that he had scared
her a little.

She glanced at him now, trying to catch his
eye, but he was focused fully on the Painted Devil.

And he was smiling.

As I studied the three men in the Nazi
uniforms before us I couldn’t help but think of my Pi Kappa Alpha
fraternity initiation at NYU. All the pledges, which had included
myself, had been blindfolded and taken to a hotel ballroom. When
the blindfolds came off, we found ourselves surrounded by candles,
robed, chanting frat members, and various alumni. I kept things
together well enough until I had to kneel in front of the frat
president while he read the secret oath from a large embossed book.
That’s when I broke out in giggles; I couldn’t help it. The guy was
a good friend of mine. I hung out with him all the time under more
ordinary circumstances. Seeing him in his getup, reciting Latin,
which I knew he didn’t understand, was a gag.

It was one of those times when something
that was supposed to be serious came across as ridiculous.

Like now.

I mean, these three geezers from equally
mediocre gene pools went around the catacombs trying to scare
harmless cataphiles?

Fuck them.

The one in the middle had birdish features
and resembled the actor Ed Harris. His blue eyes locked on me and
narrowed. He barked something that had the inflection of an
order.

“I don’t speak German,” I told him.

“Ah!” He raised his plucked eyebrows in
surprise. “American, am I right?”

He might be outfitted as a Nazi, but his
French accent was clear as day.

“You guys like playing dress up?”

“Will,” Danièle cautioned me.

I looked at her, wondering what she was
worried about. There were four of us. Douchebags like these three
were all bark and no bite. I doubted they would start anything
unless the odds were squarely in their favor, which they were
not.

“I asked you a question,” Ed Harris said to
me.

“Yeah, I’m American. He’s Canadian. These
two are French.”

“I love America,” the man said, flashing a
bright white smile. “Especially your movies. Batman, what a
guy.”

His buddies had yet to do anything more than
stare myopically ahead. One had a wormy red scar that followed his
left smile line. The other had a drooping mouth corner.

Danièle said, “
Nous partons
—”

“Shut your mouth, whore,” Ed Harris snapped.
“I wasn’t speaking to you.”

I blinked, shocked into silence.

“Yo, whale shit,” Rob snarled. “That’s my
sister-in-law. Watch your mouth.”

“Are you threatening me?” Harris said
calmly.

“You better believe it.”

“You do not know who I am, do you?”

“You’re a joke,” I said.

Danièle touched my arm. “Will, stop.”

“Yes, you know who I am, don’t you,
chérie
?” Harris said to her.

She nodded. “Le Diable Peint.”

“
Merci, mon amour.
” He glared at Rob,
then me. “Maybe if
you
and
you
knew what your friend
knows, you would show more respect. For I should warn you,
messieurs
, that I am not partial to the aegis of
ignorance.”

I turned my back to the guy. Danièle and
Pascal appeared pale, even in the weak candlelight. Rob had his
manic grin on again, which I was glad to see.

I said, “We’re wasting our time here—”

Abruptly Danièle and Pascal’s eyes sprang
open in alarm. Rob’s grin vanished.

Frowning, I turned back to the Painted
Devil, and discovered he now held a matte-black pistol in his hand,
pointed at me.

Pascal could hear his heartbeat in his head,
the way you could when nursing a really bad hangover, and he felt
strangely light, as if he were floating. He would have run already,
his legs wanted to, but the Painted Devil and the other two stood
between him and the exit. His eyes darted around the room. There
was nowhere else to flee to. They were trapped.

At least the pistol wasn’t aimed at him. He
had never seen one up close before, and it filled him with a
sickening dread. One wrong move on his part, a jumpy finger on the
Painted Devil’s part, that’s all it would take, and he would be
lying on the ground, bleeding into the sand.

Pascal realized he was frozen with fear, and
he had to work his throat to swallow. He licked his suddenly dry
lips.

Maybe Will would attack the Painted Devil,
he thought hopefully. He was the biggest one here. He should be the
one to try that.

He would probably get shot first, but it
might give the rest of them a chance to get away.

“Whoa, man,” I said, raising my hands. “What
are you doing?” Although I was facing down a lunatic with a gun, I
was surprised to find myself not so much afraid as calmly
alert.

“Getting your attention,” Ed Harris
said.

“You have our attention. No need for
guns.”

“Who am I?” he demanded with bright malice.
His blue eyes were chips of ice. His jaw was clenched tight,
causing his right cheek to twitch. In fact, he was one tightly
wound coil, everything about him screaming, “Deranged.”

How had I not noticed this before? I
wondered. But the answer was simple. I had been distracted by the
silly uniforms, and cocky because I believed we had the strength
advantage.

“The Painted Devil,” I said.

“Then address me as such!”

I cleared my throat. “There’s no need for
guns…Painted Devil.”

“Tell me what you are doing here.”

“In the catacombs?” I kept my voice even. I
didn’t want him to interpret anything I said as insolence or
sarcasm. Who knew what would set his trigger finger off? Prowling
the catacombs dressed as a Nazi and carrying a pistol—the guy
should be locked away in a mental asylum. I said, “I’ve never been
here before. My friends wanted to show it to me. We’re
exploring.”

“Address me properly!”

“Painted Devil,” I said promptly, raising my
hands higher. “We’re exploring, Painted Devil.”

He took a snarly breath, wiped the hand
holding the flashlight across his mouth, looked at Danièle. “Is
this true,
mon amour
?”

“
Oui, Diablo Peint
.”

“You,” he said to Pascal. “How often do you
come here?”

“
Des fois, Diablo Peint
.”

“You have heard of me too?”

“
Oui, Diablo Peint
.”

“Then you should know how I detest Ravioli
like you. You are
pigs
. You desecrate this area.
My
home
.” He was scowling, his blue eyes dancing madly. “How would
you like it if stupid ugly pigs came into your home and shit on
your floors and painted on your walls?” He leveled the pistol at
Pascal’s head. “Answer me!”

Pascal’s face melted into a plea. His mouth
hung open, but he didn’t say anything. Either he couldn’t find his
voice or didn’t understand what the Devil was spewing.

I said, “We wouldn’t like it, Painted
Devil.”

He swung the pistol back at me. “Of course
you wouldn’t. You would call the police. They would arrest the
pigs.” He wiped his hand across his mouth again. “Do you know what
the police do to the pigs they find here?”

“They fine them,” Danièle said softly.

“Yes,
mon amour
, they fine them. But
these quarries are very large, they cannot find every pig, this is
why I help them, why I help them help
me
. I fine each
Ravioli I come across for their transgression.”

“You want money, Painted Devil?” Rob said.
“We got cash.”

He scowled. “I don’t want money. I don’t
need
money. But I will take something else. Your batteries.
All of them—right now.” He waved the pistol between us. “Do not
keep me waiting!”

“We won’t be able to see,” I said, adding
belatedly, “Painted Devil.”

He grinned that white smile. “Exactly.”

Reluctantly—there was no other option with a
pistol trained on you—we retrieved our helmets from where we had
set them on the limestone bench and popped the headlamp batteries
free. Wormface collected them from each of us, sticking them in his
pockets.

“Your bags,” the Devil said. “Dump out your
bags.”

Cursing under my breath—I had been hoping
these would be overlooked—I unzipped my backpack’s main pocket and
upended it in front of me. Wormface confiscated the brand new
Energizers I had brought. He moved on to Danièle, Rob, and finally
Pascal.

The Devil continued smiling; he was
obviously enjoying this. “Well? Where are they? Give me your
lighters too.”

For a moment I considered telling the
asshole that we didn’t have any. But then how were the goddamn
tealights burning? I glanced at the others—and remembered Pascal
stuffing the map down his pants…and Danièle the lighter down hers.
They must have heard of shit like this happening before.

At least we’ll have one lighter to help
us find our way out again
.

I took the yellow Bic from my pocket and
tossed it to Wormface.

“Who else?” the Devil asked.

“Only me,” I said.

He nodded to Wormface, who searched us one
by one. He gave the Devil a shrug. All clear.

The Devil nodded and focused on Danièle. She
fidgeted, looking anywhere but at him.

“Look at me,” he told her.

She did so hesitantly.

“You are very beautiful,
chérie
. It
is a shame to cover up that beauty. Take off your clothes.”

“You motherfucker!” Rob said, clenching his
hands into fists, his shoulders and neck muscles bunching into ropy
knots.

I tensed more than I already was and
calculated my chances of tackling the Devil successfully. But this
thought came and went in a flash. It was too risky. He was a good
ten feet away. He could put a bullet in me before I got halfway to
him.

“Please try,” the Devil hissed, brandishing
the pistol between Rob and me. “Please. Someone. I am waiting.”

“It is okay,” Danièle said hollowly, to no
one in particular. She stepped out of her waders, kicking them
aside, then pulled her T-shirt off, revealing a flower-patterned
bra. She dropped the tee on the ground and unbuttoned her jeans,
shoving them down her thighs.

I met Rob’s eyes over her head and read in
them what he was thinking:
He can’t take both of us out
.
That probably wasn’t true, but I was keyed up on adrenaline. I
couldn’t stand there and do nothing. I gritted my teeth and nodded
imperceptibly.

“What is this?” the Devil exclaimed. He was
referring to the hidden lighter outlined against the thin fabric of
Danièle’s panties. “Let me see—” Abruptly he cocked his head to one
side, the way nutty people do when listening to nonexistent voices.
But then I heard it too.

Music.

It was some sort of techno-pop, and it wasn’t
very far away. That was the thing with sound down here. It didn’t
travel. As we’d discovered with the Painted Devil and his cohorts,
you didn’t know anyone was there until they were almost upon
you.