The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (31 page)

“You’re going to see them again, Rob—”

“Pascal’s dead!” he snapped. “Danièle’s
gone! You think we’re walking out of here? You and me—we’re next.
Dead. I’m not seeing my girls again. They’re going to grow up with
some knob jockey stepdad and forget what I ever fucking looked
like.”

Rob flopped onto his back and rapped the back
of his head on the hard-packed floor, overwhelmed with memories and
emotions. He plucked a good memory, a pleasant one, out of the
whirlwind. His wedding day—when everything in his life had been
working, when everything had been right. Dev, so beautiful in her
dress, stunning, unreal, entering the chapel, walking down the
aisle slowly the way all brides do, her father beside her, proud to
the point of bursting, Dev stopping at the altar, eyes so bright,
filled with excitement for what their future together held. Later,
searching for an apartment, one with a spare room that they could
convert to a nursery, Dev stumbling out of the bathroom, her pants
and knickers down around her ankles, shrieking that she was
pregnant. Her water breaking during an episode of
Friends
,
rushing her to the hospital, seeing Bella for the first time, a
tiny dusky blue thing covered in ropes of blood and vernix,
watching her take her first breath, her color turning to a rosy
pink. Her first birthday, the flat filled with foil balloons; her
second birthday, the flat filled with other toddlers. A couple
weeks after that, having dinner in a nice restaurant, Dev saying
she was pregnant again, celebrating with a bottle of wine, chatting
like they were the only two in the place, in love…

Rob rapped the back of his head on the
ground again, harder.

Into the darkness he said, “You’re right,
boss. We’re going to get out of here. I’m going to see my girls
again. We’re…” He squeezed his eyes tight. “Who’s Max?”

Will sounded startled. “How do you know that
name?”

“You were mumbling it in your sleep.”

“What did I say?”

“Don’t know. Just heard Max a bunch of
times.”

A long pause. “She was my younger
sister.”

“Was?”

“I killed her.”

Rob pushed himself to his elbows, staring,
unseeing. “You
what
?”

“I crashed a boat.” Another pause. “Six
people died. I could have saved Max, I saw her in the water,
floating there, but I chose to save my girlfriend instead.”

“You chose?”

“I always told myself it wasn’t a choice, I
acted on instinct, but that’s only what I wanted to believe.”

“Did the girlfriend make it?”

“Survive? Yeah.”

“So—you split up?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit, I mean… Did you do time?”

“I wasn’t drinking, if that’s what you mean.
The guy I hit wasn’t following maritime safety rules. He was under
oars, didn’t need navigation lights, but he should have had a
flashlight or a lantern.”

“So it was an accident.”

“An accident…yeah. I chose my girlfriend’s
life over my sister’s. I let my sister drown. An accident.”

“That’s not what I meant…”

Will didn’t reply. Seconds slipped away,
then minutes. The comfort that speaking had provided quickly faded,
and the misery inside Rob returned. He summoned the faces of Dev
and the girls, praying for a miracle.

“Hey! Will! Wake up!” Rob hissed. “Someone’s
coming!”

“Huh?” I opened my eyes and winced against
the pain pulsing through my head and body.

“
Someone’s coming
.”

I sat up and saw the faint glow of an
approaching light. I was instantly alert. “If it’s Katja,” I said
hoarsely, “let me do the talking, I think I can get through to
her—”

“Tell her that if she lets us go we’ll—”

“I know! Now quiet!”

He fell silent. We waited.

The light filled the entrance to the room,
yellow at first, then a warmer orange. A silhouette appeared.
“Will!” Katja exclaimed in a hushed whisper, then she charged
across the room. For a moment I thought her intention was to attack
me. Instead she collapsed next to me and gripped my arm tightly.
“You were right!” she sobbed. “My father lied to me. He lied to me
about everything. Paris wasn’t destroyed, was it? Tell me this is
true.”

“Yes—it’s true,” I said, baffled.

“I knew it! I checked my books, but there
were no publication pages like you said. My father ripped them out.
But there was a book in his study that still had the publication
page. It said 2011. It was printed
after
the war. And I
looked inside one of your bags and found a wallet. There was
money
in it. And why would you have money if there were
nowhere to spend it? Am I right?”

“Yes, you’re right. I—we—use money every
day.”

“And I found this too! What is it?”

She withdrew a slip of paper from an
incongruous pink purse dangling from her shoulder. She held it in
front of my face. The words were too small to read in the
candlelight, but it was recognizable enough. “That’s a receipt,
Katja. That’s what you get when you purchase something, so you have
a record of it.”

“A receipt.”

“Yes—see, those are the purchased items on
the left, and those are the prices they cost on the right.”

“I knew it! I knew it was something like
that. Please, Will, I want to see the surface! Please take me. You
have to take me there.”

“I’ll take you, Katja, I promise you, I’ll
take you right now if you release me.”

“Will you let me live with you? I won’t know
anyone else or anywhere to go…”

“I, yeah, sure, you can live with me. You
can stay as long as you want.”

“And we can have a picnic outside, on grass?
And you can take me shopping for a dress and help me make friends
my age?”

“I’ll do whatever you want. But you have to
get these cuffs off me first.”

“That’s why I brought this.” She pulled a
hammer from the purse triumphantly—Pascal’s hammer, I realized.
“Will it work?”

“Yes!” I extended my arms behind my back,
pressed my palms flat on the dirt, and splayed my wrists apart so
the chain links connecting them went taut. “Can you hit the chain
without hitting my hands?”

“I think so.”

“Okay, do it.”

She moved behind me. I tensed. Then—whack.
The hammer struck the chain…with about as much force as you might
slap at a pesky fly.

I said, “You’re going to have to hit it
harder than that, Katja. As hard as you can.”

“I don’t want to hit your hands.”

“You won’t. Try again.”

This time the hammer struck the chain with
more conviction.

“Did it break?”

“No—nothing happened.”

“Keeping hitting it.”

She struck the chain five times, each time
harder than the last, but with no success.

I said, “You need to find a rock, Katja, to
put under the chain.”

“Okay.” She searched the room for what
seemed like an eternity before exclaiming, “Found one!” She
returned to me and slipped the rock beneath the chain. Hopefully it
would act as an anvil and channel the energy from the hammer into
the chain. A moment later came the now familiar whack—only this
time my wrists sprang apart.

I was free!

I held my hands before me. Old cast-iron
manacles encircled each wrist. Two chain links dangled from
each.

I turned toward Katja and gave her a huge
hug. “Thank you!” I gushed, and planted a kiss on her cheek. To my
surprise she smelled earthy and fresh.

I released her and lumbered to my feet. My
body protested as if it were a hundred years old. I swooned and
doubled over.

“Are you okay?” Katja asked, eyes wide.

I nodded. “Just dizzy.” I buttoned and
fastened my jeans that Katja had unfastened earlier and scooped up
the hammer and the rock and told her to get the candle. “We need to
help my friend now.”

She glanced in Rob’s direction. “But he’s
not awake.”

“Yeah, he is. He woke up a little while ago.
Right, Rob?”

“Yeah.”

Katja stiffened at his voice.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “You can trust him.
I promise.”

Rob was on his back. I hadn’t heard him move
since Katja had entered the room, and I guess he had been playing
dead. I helped him into a sitting position. His jaw was pebbly with
a day’s growth of beard shadow.

When he saw Katja’s mutilations for the
first time, I felt his body flinch, though he remained pokerfaced.
“Hiya!” he said. “I’m Rob.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Rob. I’m
Katja.”

Rob stared at her, and I smiled, an alien
feeling right then. I told Rob to spread his hands behind him. I
slipped the rock under the three-inch chain connecting his
manacles, lined the hammer true, and brought the head down. The
chain links exploded apart.

“Fuck, yes!” Rob cried, holding his hands in
front of him as I had done.

“Katja,” I said quickly, “we have another
friend. A woman. Do you know where she is?”

She nodded. “I asked my uncles about her
earlier. My father is keeping her in a room near his quarters.”

“His quarters? Where are his quarters?”

“Where they always are.”

“Yes, but—”

Rob asked, “How big is your home down
here?”

“How big?”

She didn’t have any conception of size, I
realized. This section of catacombs was all she knew. She had
nothing to compare it against.

“How long does it take you to walk from here
to your father’s quarters?” I tried instead.

She glanced at her wristwatch, as if it held
the answer. “Ten minutes,” she stated.

“And how far is it from here to the
exit?”

“Ten minutes.”

I frowned. Did she have no concept of time
either? Or was it really equidistance to each location?

I drew a large circle in the dirt with the
hammer claw and punched a dot in the middle of it. “If we are here,
Katja, and that door there leads this way”—I pointed to the door a
few yards away and marked a corresponding arrow in the dirt—“where
are your father’s quarters?”

She cocked her head to the side. “They would
be…here.” She pointed to a spot that would fall into the two to
three o’clock wedge on a clock.

“And where’s the exit?”

She pointed at another spot in the eight to
nine o’clock wedge.

“Are there any other exits?”

“No, that’s the only way in or out, and I’ve
searched every tunnel.”

“Can you take us to where our friend is
being held without running into anybody else?”

“I think so,” Katja said. “Most of my aunts
and uncles stay in the Great Hall. They don’t have their own rooms
like I do. But we still need to be careful. They wander when they
want to.”

“We’ll have to take our chances.” I turned
to Rob. “Ready?”

He looked pale but resolved. “Let’s do
it.”

Zolan stopped massaging Danièle’s shoulders
and slid his hands down over her chest. She clenched her jaw but
didn’t protest. He cupped her breasts and drew his thumbs over her
nipples in small circles. She wanted to leap to her feet and run,
but she forced herself to remain seated and relaxed.

He slid his hands lower over her abdomen, to
the top of her groin. He pulled up her shirt. His hands touched her
skin.

“You’re cold,” he said.

“A little,” she replied, allowing a hint of
throatiness in her voice.

He dug his fingers beneath the waistband of
her pants, played them left and right along the top of her panties,
pushed them farther, lower, but his hands wouldn’t fit. He withdrew
them, unfastened the button on her jeans.

“Stand up,” he told her.

Danièle did so, turning, pressing her rear
against the front of his desk. She did nothing to mask the fear and
vulnerability she felt—it’s what drove insecure sickos like Zolan;
it fed their need for mastery, strength, authority. Marcel had been
the same. He had wanted to control Danièle to assert his
competency, and the more she resisted that control, the more she
fought him, the more he enjoyed it.

“Don’t be afraid of me,” Zolan said, his
eyes burning with desire. “I know what I’m doing. I’m good. You’ll
enjoy it.”

A tear tripped down her cheek.

He brushed it away with his fingertip.
“There’s no need for that. You’re going to like what I’ve got.”

When he looked down, to undo his pants,
Danièle reached for the bottle of vodka on the desk behind her. She
grabbed the neck in an upside down fist and swung it around like a
baton. Zolan glanced up at the last second and leaned backward. The
bottle smashed his jaw instead of his temple. Blood flew in a fine
spray from his mouth. He stumbled away from her and dropped into
the chair she had been seated in.

Danièle swung the bottle again. It smashed
into pieces against his forearms, which he had raised to protect
his face.

“Fucking bitch!” he spat.

She darted around to the other side of the
desk, almost slipping on the limestone floor in her haste. She
planted her hands against the front of the desk. Zolan was holding
his hand over his mouth, to slow the flowing blood.

Danièle shoved the desk. It was not too
large and moved easily on the smooth stone. Zolan tried to push
himself out of the chair, out of the way, but the desk caught him
in the gut, knocked him back into the seat, and drove him into the
wall behind him. There was a loud crack, which she hoped were his
ribs fracturing. His breath burst from his mouth in a twisted gasp.
He slumped forward, pinned in place.

She ran.

We had been moving for about five minutes,
creeping from one passageway to the next, when Katja whispered,
“Someone’s coming! We have to hide!” She turned and hurried back
the way we’d come, Rob and I sticking right behind her. We ducked
into one of the corridors we’d just passed, and she pinched out the
flame of her candle.