The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (15 page)

Rob was shaking his head. I could tell that
he was debating with himself whether to say something or not.

“So how long are we resting here for again?”
I said quickly.

“One hour,” Danièle said.

“I’m not really tired.”

“Then drink your wine. It will make you
sleepy. You need to rest.”

Pascal finished setting up his hammock and
joined the table, choosing a spot between Danièle and Rob. He
produced a self-heating meal of meatballs and tomato sauce from his
backpack and poured himself a glass of wine from the cask. He
wouldn’t look at anybody, and now I wasn’t sure he hadn’t overheard
Danièle’s proposed sleeping arrangement after all.

Rob played some music from his iPhone to
kill the background silence. Then he and Danièle began speaking to
Pascal in French, apparently trying to pry him out of his shell. I
took the opportunity to dry my feet. I slipped off my Converse and
was surprised to find steam rising from my socks. I peeled them
off, wrung the water from the fabric, and lay them flat on a stone.
It felt both odd and pleasant to be barefoot in the catacombs, to
feel the chalky dirt between your toes.

When I returned my attention to the others,
a Ziploc bag full of greenish-brown marijuana sat in the middle of
the table. Danièle was rolling a heap of it into a large joint.

I frowned apprehensively. I’d only smoked
pot twice since the boating accident on Lake Placid, and both times
it made me paranoid and anxious.

Danièle perfected a tight cone, licked the
glue, and sparked the thing up. She took two tokes, then handed it
to Pascal. It went to Rob next, then me. I took a single drag and
passed it on. I held the smoke in my mouth, then blew it out
without inhaling.

The joint went around the circle three times
more before Danièle stubbed it out on the ground. Everybody except
me had become mellow and heavy lidded.

Pascal lit a cigarette. I lit one too.

“I love it,” Rob said, a small, wistful
smile on his face. “Smoking a J in the catas. Hell yeah.”

“I have a funny story,” Danièle announced,
sitting ramrod straight as she always seemed to do when she told a
story, her eyes cloudy but bright. “Pascal and I, we were in this
same room years ago, when we first started exploring the catacombs.
We were smoking weed, hanging out, when five other cataphiles
arrived. They were all drunk. One was so drunk he could not
continue with the others. He passed out on the ground here, and his
friends left without him. He snored so loudly. Pascal and I decided
we could not leave him, so we waited until he woke up. But it
turned out he knew the catacombs well, and he could find his own
way out.”

An expectant silence hung in the air.

“That’s the story?” Rob said finally. “Why
the fuck’s that funny?”

“Because…” Danièle twisted her lips, as if
she were reevaluating the story in her head. She shrugged. “Maybe
it is not supposed to be funny.”

“Nuh-uh, you said it was a funny story.”

“Shut your mouth, Rosbif.”

He held up his hands. “I’m just saying it
wasn’t funny.”

“
Mon dieu!
” she exclaimed. “You are
infuriating!”

“Rascal,” Rob said, draining his beer. “You
gotta have a funnier story than that?”

Pascal scratched an eyebrow, nodded, and
began speaking in French.

“English, bro,” Rob said. “How’s Will going
to understand?”

Pascal scowled. “We are four people. Three
speak French. Why must we speak English?”

“Because
four
speak English.”

Pascal mumbled something that sounded like a
curse.

“It’s fine,” I said. “Talk French. I’m
good.”

Pascal flicked his plastic cup away and
stood. Ignoring Rob and Danièle’s protests, he snatched his
flashlight and stalked out of the room.

“He can be emotional sometimes,” Danièle
told me quietly.

I said, “Should someone go get him.”

“Yes, Rosbif, you should go find him.”

“Me?” Rob chuffed. “Why me?”

“Because you made him angry.”

“Bullshit. I just told him to speak
English.”

“It is dangerous for him to be by
himself—especially high like he is.”

“I’ll go,” I said, grinding my cigarette out
in the dirt.

“Fuck that,” Rob said. “He’ll never let you
find him.”

He stood and left.

“About time,” Danièle said, exhaling
heavily. “Some quiet.”

I said, “You understand why he doesn’t like
me, right?”

“Who? Pascal? Yes, I told you. Because he
has a crush on me.”

“Right. So do you think it was a good idea
announcing that we’re going to sleep together? I think that’s what
he’s pissed about.”

“But we are going to sleep together.”

“No, we’re not.”

“The floor—”

“No, Danièle, no way.”

She sighed dramatically. “I cannot help it
if Pascal has a crush on me, Will. What am I supposed to do, never
be with someone to make him happy?”

“You could be more discreet.”

“You know, you are cute when you are
embarrassed.” She plucked some more weed from the Ziploc bag and
began to grind it between her fingers.

“I’ve had enough,” I said.

“Do not be a party pooer.”

“Pooper.”

“Do not be that.”

I didn’t argue. I simply wouldn’t inhale
again.

She lit the joint with my lighter and took
several quick puffs to get the ember burning. But instead of
passing it to me, she flipped it around, stuck the lit end in her
mouth, and beckoned me with her finger.

“Aw, no…”

She made a mmm-mmm noise.

I leaned close to her. Our lips touched. Her
cheeks puffed out as she blew hard. The reverse-engineered joint
shot a jet of smoke straight into my lungs. I jerked backward and
commenced a coughing fit. My eyes watered, my throat burned. It
took me twenty seconds to get myself under control.

“That is good?” Danièle said, offering the
joint to me.

I shook my head: no to it being good, and no
to any more.

She took a long drag, then put it out.
“Come, Honeybear, I want to show you something.”

“What?”

“Come.”

She stood, pulled me to my feet, gathered
the beer can lantern, then led me from room to room. My head was
spinning, and I had to concentrate on walking properly. I’d gone
from sober to stoner-high in a matter of seconds.

Danièle entered one of those rooms with the
iron doors. She went to a wall, raised the lantern to eye-level,
and carved something into the brick with her Swiss-Army knife.

I peered over her shoulder. It was a crudely
drawn heart encircling W + D.

“Should be H plus SG,” I said. “Our
catacombs names.”

She turned, wrapped her arm around my neck,
and kissed me. In the back of my mind was a vague thought of
Bridgette and the cop fiancé, then another of Pascal appearing
unannounced.

Danièle dropped the lantern, though it
continued to burn. She fumbled with my belt buckle, tugging free
the prong. I shoved her tight jeans down her thighs, then her
panties, then entered her. She moaned.

“Shhh,” I whispered into her ear.

I slipped my hands around her waist, down
over her buttocks.
She’s so thin, almost like a child
. I’d
thought the same thing when we had sex at her place on the weekend,
though I didn’t remember thinking that until now.

I’ve always liked rounded girls, like
Bridgette, with curves to them. Someone so thin felt oddly
delicate—and light.

I heaved Danièle off the ground with little
effort, pressed her against the wall.

“Oh Will,” she said. “Yes, keep doing
that.”

I was moving back and forth, trying to find
a rhythm, though it somewhat difficult while standing and
supporting most of her weight.

“Yes, Will, yes.” She was kissing my neck,
running her hands through my hair. “Oh Will, don’t stop, yes, yes,
yes…it feels so good.” She locked her ankles behind my back and
gyrated her hips, talking dirtier and dirtier, kissing, biting,
even fucking snarling…and, man, I got into it, losing myself. She
was so wild, so free, so sensual. Bridgette had never been like
this—

Fuck Bridgette
, I thought. I’m with
Danièle now, and Danièle is nuts,
fun
nuts, I’m totally
enjoying this, and if this is what sex is like with her…well,
damn…why had I been brushing her off for so long…we could have been
doing this every night…

“Oh fuck Will fuck yes harder Will fuck me
fuck me.”

I did what she wanted and drove her harder
into the wall, my hands cupping the bottom of her thighs, holding
her as if she weighed nothing, moving harder, faster, my face
buried in her hair, breathing in the flowery freshness of it, her
body so thin, so sexy, like a model’s… “You ready?” I grunted,
unable to hold off any longer.

“Yes, Will, yes!” Her fingernails tore my
skin like claws.

I swallowed a groan as my body thrust and
convulsed and turned to mush.

Danièle shrieked.

“
Shhh!
” I told her.

She all but screamed.

I shut her up with a long, forceful
kiss.

Pascal had never removed his helmet in the
grotto, so he still had the headlamp to see by. No one had called
out to him. No one had tried to stop him. He was sure they were all
whispering about him in hushed tones. And what were they saying?
Nothing good, or they wouldn’t be whispering.

He had half a mind to sneak back when they
were sleeping, collect his backpack, and leave the lot of them. But
he knew he wouldn’t do that. He didn’t want to return to where he
found the video camera by himself. He wasn’t scared. He was
sensible. Someone did something to the woman, murdered her most
likely. It would be reckless of him to return there by himself.
That’s the reason he didn’t stick around to search for her, or her
body, in the first place. He’d played the footage, heard her
screams…and then he was out of there. Anybody in his position would
have done the same.

He passed through several rooms until he
spotted another makeshift table nestled behind a support column.
This one had been created with bricks for legs and a large circular
saw for the surface. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, he took a
cellophane baggie from his jacket pocket, tapped out two powdery
lines onto the table, thought one was rather small, and added a
third. He rolled a ten euro note and snorted all of them. The
cocaine burned the inside of his right nostril. He sniffed deeply,
then sat there listening to the silence as the high kicked in.

He had first tried coke three years ago when
a friend offered him a key at a party. It didn’t do anything for
him. He didn’t know whether it was bad blow, or whether he didn’t
do enough, but he didn’t try it again until last July. The girl he
was casually seeing,
Marlène,
pressed up
against him while they were at some bar, kissed him, and stuck a
small baggie in his hand. He went to a stall in the restroom,
placed his credit card on top of the toilet tank, and tapped a
single line onto it. For the next hour he was flying, and all he
could think about was when
Marlène
was
going to give him the baggie again. He got in touch with her dealer
a few days later, a yuppie from an affluent family, and had bought
from him ever since.

Pascal recalled how excited he had been to
get Danièle high. They always entered the catacombs at night and
rarely left before dawn. It was sometimes hard to stay alert, and
blow seemed to be a perfect remedy for that. But when he offered
her some at a party at the Beach, she flipped out, asked him all
these questions. Where did he get it? Who did he get it from? How
often did he do it? Defensive, he told her someone gave it to him,
and, no, he’d never tried it before. She accepted this, and he’d
never mentioned it to her again.

Still—maybe he should give
her
a
lecture about smoking so much fucking pot…

“Rascal?” It was Rob.

Pascal considered not answering, but he
said, “Here.”

“Where?” Closer.

“Here.” He peered out from behind the column
and saw the light from Rob’s headlamp ten meters away.

A few moments later Rob stood before him, a
can of beer in each hand. He plopped down across the table. “I
think I get what you dig about this place,” he said affably,
handing a beer to Pascal and cracking open the other. “Peace,
serenity. Awesome.”

Pascal rolled the cool can from one palm to
the other. “Did Danièle send you over here to check up on me?” he
asked. “Because I don’t need her or you or anyone checking up on
me.”

“I’m not checking up on you, boss. I—” He
saw the baggie of coke. “You’re doing that shit down here?”

“So?”

“I thought you were getting clean?”

He shrugged.

“I don’t want to bust your balls—”

“Then don’t, Rob!” he snapped. “You and
Danièle. Fucking Danièle. How much pot does she smoke? You never
say anything to her.”

“Blow’s different. It’s addictive—”’

“Addictive! You’re going to lecture me on
addiction now? What number beer are you on? Five? Six? And those
ones—twelve percent? That means you’ve had like twelve regular
beers. And you’re going to tell me about addiction?”

Rob’s lips tightened. He looked away.

Pascal immediately regretted the outburst,
and he was thinking of something to say, a way to patch things up,
when Danièle cried out.

Rob and Pascal jumped to their feet. Rob
grabbed Pascal’s bicep, preventing him from leaving, but Pascal
tugged free. “Something happened!” he exclaimed.

Rob shook his head, watching Pascal.
Understanding registered in his eyes, and they thundered over. He
flinched backward, almost as if slapped.