The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (16 page)

Rob wanted to say something to him, but
there was nothing to say.

Pascal left.

Rob didn’t go after him. What was the point?
If Pascal went off on his own, he would want to be by himself. If
he went after Will…well, Will could handle himself.

Rob slumped back to the ground and listened.
Danny, thankfully, didn’t make any more sex shrieks, nor was there
any sound of a confrontation.

He shook his head. Danny needed a fucking
frontal lobotomy. What the hell was she thinking? He got it. She
didn’t like Pascal romantically. Fine. It was perfectly within her
right to see other people. And it was a tough situation. She and
Pascal were friends; they got together on a regular basis. He was
bound to see her with other guys. Nevertheless, did she have to be
so insensitive to his feelings? All the touchy-touchy stuff with
Will in the restaurant and the van was one thing—but having an
orgasm loud enough to wake the dead?

Rob skidded a hand over his face and
wondered if they should cancel the whole expedition. Maybe Pascal
was gone already, heading off to find the woman on his own, and
maybe that would be for the best.

He brought the beer can to his lips,
hesitated, then set it back on the table.

How many
had
he had? Two at the
Beach. Two where they had set up camp. This one. Five.

Was he soused? He had a buzz, but he felt
more high than drunk.

Goddamn Pascal had sounded like the wife
there for a bit. Dev was on his ass all the time about the
drinking. It seemed they fought about it every day. Rob simply
didn’t get her. He’d been drinking ever since they met, it didn’t
bother her then, but all of a sudden it’s some sort of problem?
Fuck that. He’s never become a Mr. Hyde, never gone on a drunken
rampage, never turned violent, never done any of that bad-drunk
shit. So it wasn’t him who’d changed. It was her. They would be
fine if she wasn’t always nagging and getting into moods.

And that last fight, before he’d left to
meet Pascal and Danièle at La Cave—sweet Jesus, that had been bad.
He knew the gloves were off as soon as Dev stepped through the
front door. She’d been tight, withdrawn, you could see it in her
walk, and she had gone immediately to the master bedroom to change.
Rob stayed out of her way, in the kitchen, making macaroni and
cheese for the girls. When she came out, she was wearing an old tee
and joggers.

“Guess your work thing’s no black tie
event?” he kidded.

“I’m not going to the dinner,” she stated,
opening the fridge and snatching a bottle of chardonnay.

Rob stopped stirring the pasta. “Why the
hell not?” Though he knew why, of course. She was making a point.
She was pissed off he was going out—“abdicating his
responsibilities” was the phrase she liked to toss around—and to
make a point, she would stay in.

Rob said, “The babysitters coming in thirty
minutes.”

She took a wine glass from the cupboard,
filled it nearly to the rim. “Better call her and cancel.”

He clenched his jaw. He should have done
just that: called the sitter, cancelled, let Dev stay in and
sulk—but her behavior was so petty it was begging to be rebuked.
Yeah, she’d told him about her work dinner last week, and yeah
Pascal had only invited him to the catacombs two days ago, so she
had dibs on going out, but situations like this were the reason
babysitters existed. How was hiring one abdicating his parenting
responsibility, for Christ’s sake? He had been home with the
girls—and Dev—all weekend. “I’m not canceling,” he told her.
“You’re going to your dinner—”

“No, I’m not.”

“—and I’m going to the catas with Rascal and
Danny.”

“Where you will no doubt get drunk.”

“Give it a break, Dev.”

“We have two daughters, and you’re
abdicating—”

“Don’t fucking start!”

“Don’t worry. The situation is resolved. I
will stay home with Bella and Mary. Go have fun in the catacombs
and drink yourself retarded.”

Rob flicked the wooden spoon he was using to
stir the pasta against the stove’s stainless steel backsplash. It
bounced back at him and clattered to the floor. He kicked it into
the next room.

“Very mature, Robert.”

“Fuck you, Dev.”

He made to leave the kitchen.

“I don’t know anymore,” Dev said.

He stopped, turned. “You don’t know?”

“Nothing,” she said quietly.

“You don’t know?” he repeated.

“Go, Robert.”

“Go fuck yourself, Dev.”

“Yes, maybe I will. Why not? I do everything
else myself.”

He grabbed his jacket and backpack from the
foyer, then left the flat, slamming the door behind him.

Shoving these memories aside, Rob lifted the
beer to his lips again and took a long swallow.

Danièle and I made our way back to the grotto
hand in hand. Rob and Pascal were still gone, for which I was
grateful. I was sure they would have heard Danièle, and I would
rather be asleep, or at least lying on the ground and pretending to
be asleep, when they returned.

We set up her hammock, she climbed in it,
then told me to join her.

“You’re crazy,” I said.

“You will be cold.”

“Better than getting an ice pick in my back
when I’m sleeping.”

“If you change your mind…”

I chose a spot a respectable distance away
from her, stretched out on the slab of stone, used my backpack as a
pillow, and closed my eyes.

I was still ridiculously high. Colors and
images and bizarre thoughts flashed behind my closed eyelids. I
tossed and turned, listening for sounds of Rob and Pascal’s return.
There was nothing but vacuum silence.

Gradually my mind shifted to Danièle, and
how I felt about having sex with her for a second time. The answer:
not as bad as I would have thought. That wasn’t very romantic. I
could imagine how she would react had I voiced this. But it was
true. Despite the bombshell Bridgette had dropped on me earlier
this evening, I couldn’t simply shut off my feelings for her, and
I’d assumed having sex with Danièle again would be nothing more
than rebound sex, cheap and guilt-ridden with no emotional
attachment. Yet that wasn’t the case. In fact, I felt strangely
invigorated. This wasn’t solely because the sex was good—it was
because I felt suddenly closer to Danièle than before. It was as if
a mental curtain had been drawn back, and I was seeing her for the
first time, only now realizing how special she was.

I didn’t think Danièle and I would ever get
too serious—how could we if I was only in France for another two
months—but we had the present, didn’t we?

I opened my eyes, saw Danièle watching me in
the candlelight.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“You sure you do not want to join me?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

She smiled lazily, closed her eyes. I did
the same.

I had no idea of the time. I considered
checking my wristwatch, but didn’t. It didn’t matter. Time didn’t
matter down here.

Still, it must have been late, and I must
have been exhausted, because moments later I was asleep.

I crept silently through the Bunker, though
it wasn’t the Bunker, more of a mile-long corridor. Everything was
bathed in red light. The floor was shiny with blood the color of
jelly and lumps of what might have been fecal matter. Those iron
doors with the steering wheel handles were set into the brick walls
on both sides of me at even intervals. Some were fitted with barred
windows. Occasionally a door stood ajar, a bad overhead fluorescent
flickering inside, revealing mutilated bodies strapped to gurneys,
experimented on, tortured, dismembered.

Straight ahead, at the end of the passage,
was a door larger than all the others. I was drawn to it, slowly,
inexorably. Abruptly the dream reality hiccupped, and I stood
before the door. I spun the wheel handle. This activated a
bolt-lock system. Gears churned. The door swung inward on silent
hinges.

I stepped into a dark room and moved forward
cautiously. Shadows closed around me so I could barely see a few
feet ahead.

A noise froze me to the spot.

“Come out,” I heard myself say.

Nobody appeared.

“Who are you?”

No reply.

I pressed on. Two steps, three.

A gurney rolled from the margins of my
vision. The wheels clattered on the stone floor. It stopped before
me. A person lay on it, covered by a white sheet.

“Hello?” I said.

No reply.

I pulled away the sheet. My lung shallowed
up.

Maxine lay on her back, staring at me with
liquid-black eyes. Her face and hands were bloated and as white as
a slug’s belly. Her long hair was wet, as if she had just exited
the shower—except she was wearing the off-the-shoulder cream dress
with the hanky hemline that she had died in. The fabric was soaked
through and clung to her body, so I could see the outline of her
small breasts, her nipples. She sat up, swung her legs to the
floor. “Am I going to miss it?” she said.

“Miss what?” I asked.

“The wedding.”

“We’re not getting married anymore. Things
didn’t work out.”

“Things didn’t work out for me either.”

“I’m sorry, Max.”

“You left me.”

“She was drowning.”

“
I
was drowning—and I’m your
sister
, Will.”

Bridgette and I had wanted a small wedding,
fifty guests, mostly family, some close friends. At the rehearsal
dinner Max, who was one of Bridgette’s bridesmaids, toasted me. It
had been touching and honest and peppered with wit. Later that
evening, after the older folks had retired to their bedrooms,
Bridgette and I had been in the main lodge with all the bridesmaids
and groomsmen. There were eight of us in total. Everyone was
drinking except for Bridgette and me. We didn’t want to be hung
over for the ceremony the following day.

Brian, one of my best friends since high
school, suggested we take the boat out for a spin. We had rented a
fully-restored 1950s mahogany Chris-Craft Capri for the weekend. I
was chosen as the designated driver.

I said, “That guy shouldn’t have been out
there without lights.”

Max was still sitting on the gurney, still
dripping wet. It seemed the water was leaking from her pores. “And
we shouldn’t have had so many people in the boat,” she said.

“That didn’t cause the accident.”

“Didn’t it?”

It had been a tight fit with the seven of us
in the Chris-Craft—Liz, Bridgette’s maid of honor, had remained
behind on the dock—and everyone was laughing and whooping. Then,
out of nowhere, a fisherman in an aluminum bass boat appeared
directly before of us. I should have plowed straight over him. If I
had, he likely would have been the sole fatality. But how do you do
that? How do you run a man down like road kill? Anyway, it wasn’t
my choice to make. Instinct took over. I yanked the wheel to the
right, and the Chris-Craft’s port side slammed into the bass boat’s
bow at a forty-five degree angle. The sound of the impact had been
unremarkable, like a giant plastic milk jug buckling, followed by
another, smaller wooden thunk. I think this was the Chris-Craft’s
propeller taking off the top of the fisherman’s skull.