The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (20 page)

Pascal took off, mumbling something in
French.

“He needs to drop a deuce,” Rob translated
for me, flopping down on the ground. “You have to go?”

I didn’t, and neither did Danièle. We sat as
well.

“He seems upset,” I said. I fumbled in my
pocket for my pack of Marlboro Lights and lit one up.

Danièle nodded. “He really wanted to find
the body.”

“It was his MacGuffin,” Rob said.

“His what?” Danièle said.

“Movie talk,” I said. “The object of a
quest.”

“Ah, yes.” She nodded again. “The body would
have been his McMuffin.”

“MacGuffin,” I said.

“Right. McMuffin,” she repeated, smiling,
and I realized she was having me on.

Rob noticed the flirting too. “You guys want
a room or something? There are plenty down here.”

I exhaled a stream of smoke and decided I
was in a good mood. Part of the reason for this was the fact the
expedition was coming to a close. As much as the catacombs had
grown on me, I was filthy and wet and tired and more than ready to
leave. Also, I was looking forward to the dinner with Madame Gabin
and Danièle later this evening. I had no idea what I was going to
cook, but I figured I could find some French recipe on the
internet. And afterward…well, Danièle would stay over, wouldn’t
she? That seemed like a big step for me: having a woman sleep in my
bed. True, I’d already slept in her bed, but her sleeping in my
bed, that felt significant, intimate, like a relationship. “Hey,
Rob,” I said. “You got any of those beers left?”

“Hell yeah.” He unzipped his backpack, took
two out, and lobbed me one.

We cracked the tabs and foam spurted
festively.

“You know,” Rob said, “this has been
surprisingly fun. Thanks for the invite, Danny.”

“I did not invite you,” she told him
sternly. “Pascal did.”

“But you okayed it.”

She shrugged. “Yes, well…I like sharing the
catacombs with people. I guess I am happy you had a good time.”

“Wow,” I said. “Are you two having a moment?
Is this a breakthrough?”

“She says shit about me all the time,” Rob
said, “but it’s just for show. She loves me.”

“I do not!” Danièle said.

“A little bit.”

“Not even a little bit.”

“Bullshit, Danny. If I wanted a sister
sandwich, you’d be all over it like a fat kid on a McMuffin.”

“MacGuffin,” she said, and produced one of
the joints she had rolled back at the Bunker. She sparked it, then
passed it to me.

I was about to decline, but decided what the
hell. We deserved a small celebration. “So where’s the other exit
Pascal knows about?” I asked, inhaling. The smoke burned the lining
of my throat, tickled my lungs. I held it there, then exhaled.

Danièle said, “It is back past that crack in
the floor.”

“Past it? You mean we don’t have to crawl
over the bones again?”

“No.”

“Thank God. You know how many bones we
broke? Rob, you were like a bull in a china shop. You must have
smashed five or six skulls.”

“And you didn’t?”

“Skulls? No, none. I avoided touching
them.”

“Hey,” Danièle said, a bit spacey. “Beef
comes from a cow, right? And a bull is a male cow, right? So is it
not funny that I call Rob ‘Rosbif,’ and you call him a bull?”

Rob shook his head. “I hate to be the one to
break this to you, Danny, but you’re just not funny. You try too
hard.”

“I am too,” she protested, waving at the
smoke in front of her face.

“Nope, you’re not. When God was giving out
shit, you got the looks, and you got a pretty good brain, but I
think you forgot to pick up your sense of humor on the way down to
Earth.”

“Maybe you do not think so, but other people
do. Will, am I funny?”

“Of course he’s going to say you are. You
two are shagging.”

I glanced down the passageway, to check that
Pascal wasn’t within earshot. The corridor was empty.

“Anyway, Danny,” Rob went on, “regarding
your sense of humor problem—”

“I do not have a problem.”

“How about this: whenever you tell a joke,
just say ‘joke’ afterward, so we know it’s a joke.”

“You are a smart guy—joke.”

Pin-dropping silence.

Then Rob exploded in laughter, cackling so
hard I thought he might choke. It was contagious and I got going
too until my eyes started to water.

“See,” Danièle said proudly. “I
am
funny.”

Pascal could hear them laughing. Having one
big party. Without him.

Mumbling a curse, he took the roll of toilet
paper from his backpack and wiped his ass. He stood, pulled his
boxer briefs and pants up, then his waders. He turned and kicked
dirt over the small latrine he had dug with the forked end of his
hammer. Some cataphiles were not so considerate. They came to the
catacombs only to drink and smoke and party, and they left the
place a mess. They were slobs—the Painted Devil had been right
about that much at least—and they were getting worse year by year.
Some of the old-timers Pascal had met, veterans who’d been visiting
the catacombs for decades, told him it was a different world
pre-nineties. Back then, they said, it was a closer-knit community.
They would still have parties, but they weren’t the trashy type
that Danièle liked. Mostly they would cook, they would bring
cooking pots and food, and they would have cooking contests.

Then the internet came along and changed
everything, made it so much easier to find a guide, someone with a
map. Now you had the idiots who took pictures and posted them all
over social media and left their garbage behind and shit
everywhere—all of which cheapened the experience, killed the
feeling that you were exploring a forbidden place.

Really, in the main network beneath the
14
^th
arrondissement, there was nothing sacred anymore.
If you wanted a real adventure, you had to press farther, deeper,
go where no one had been before.

Pascal stomped the ground flat and was about
to return to the others when he heard a noise. Some sort of cluck.
It wasn’t very loud, but when you were used to hearing nothing, you
heard everything.

It came from the far end of the room.

“Rob?” he said. His headlamp revealed
nothing but support pillars and, beyond them, shadowed walls.

Rob didn’t answer.

Pascal thought of the video footage, heard
in his head the woman’s manic screams.

“Rob?” he repeated.

Nothing.

He was still holding the hammer, which gave
him some confidence. He unclipped the MagLite from his belt with
his free hand and swept the powerful beam across the room.

Nobody.

He started forward, slowly, peaking around
each pillar he passed.

At the far end of the room a door led to a
connecting chamber.

He hesitated, considered turning back.

Another cluck. Almost like the sound you
make when you click your tongue against the roof of your mouth.

Pascal froze. Everything inside him
froze.

Who was making that sound?

What
was?

Get out of there! Go! Now!

He whirled to leave.

And screamed.

Once I got my giggling fit under control,
Danièle offered me the spliff. I shook my head. I was already
higher than I wanted to be. Rob finished it off while I lit another
smoke. I was chain smoking and didn’t care.

“Cool how Rascal knew what that
frommager
died from based on his bones,” Rob said. He was
lying on his side in that recumbent position he favored. His eyes
were heavily lidded, and his usual in-your-face energy had been
replaced with lazy meditation. “Weak way to go, no doubt, but
better than the fate of some of the other sad fucks in that grave,
I guess.”

“Have you ever wondered what the worst way
to die is?” Danièle said. She was slumped against the wall so low
her knees poked up in front of her face.

“Getting lost in an underground maze,” I
kidded.

“No, getting torn in half,” Danièle said.
“They used to do that, you know. You bend two young trees close
together, tie a hand and a foot to each one, then release the
trees.”

Rob said, “Have either of you two ever seen
anyone die?”

Danièle shook her head. “But I have seen a
body. I was very young. My sister and I—”

“Dev was with you?” Rob said, surprised.

“Yes. Devan is Rob’s wife, Will.”

I opened my mouth, to tell her I’d gathered
as much, but articulation seemed too difficult right then. I
nodded.

Danièle continued: “We were playing in this
construction site in our neighborhood. The developer had dug holes
for the basements of two dozen houses. Sometimes there were long
pieces of wood descending into the pits, so the workers could climb
in and out. Dev and I were looking for puddles to splash in because
it had just rained, and we found a boy lying facedown in one of the
excavated basements. He lived three blocks away from us. I had seen
him at school, but I did not know him personally. He hit his head
on a cinder block, but that is not how he died. He died from
drowning in two inches of rainwater.”

Rob frowned. “Dev never told me this.”

“We were so young. Maybe she forgot.”

I shifted uncomfortably, thinking of a
different topic to move onto, when Rob said, “There was this guy in
my high school, he was a year or two older, his name was Claude
Linder. He was a rich kid, his parents had their own twin propeller
plane, which he was learning to fly. One day I was at the field
where I played soccer twice a week. We were in the middle of the
match when this plane comes swooping over us, smoking and too low
and shit. It turned out Claude had hit some geese and they fucked
up the engine. The refs stopped the game, and the coaches and
parents called everyone to the sidelines. The plane banked, then
came back. Claude touched it down safely, used the field as a
fucking runway, but the field wasn’t long enough, and he smashed
through the chain-link fence at the far end.”

“But he was okay?” Danièle said.

“No, Danny, the guy died. Why do you think
I’m telling this? When he went through the fence, the propeller
knocked one of the metal fence posts back through the windshield.
It impaled Claude right here.” Rob tapped his chest above the
heart. “When the first of the soccer moms and dads got there to
help, he was still alive, but pinned to the seat. He died before
the cops and firefighters could cut him free.”

“That is awful,” Danièle said, and squirmed.
“He was just stuck there?”

“Saw him up close and personal. Wish I
hadn’t. I had nightmares for months after that.” Then, to me: “What
about you, boss?”

“What about me?”

“You gotta know somebody who’s croaked.”

I shook my head, wondering if he could tell
I was lying—

A scream erupted from farther down the
tunnel.

We started, then leapt to our feet. My head
spun from the pot.

“That was Pascal!” Danièle exclaimed.

“Fucker’s just horsing around,” Rob
said.

“I do not think so.” She cupped her mouth
with her hands and called Pascal’s name. When he didn’t reply, she
called it again, and again.

I didn’t like this one bit.

“Rascal!” Rob shouted, angry. “Stop screwing
around!”

Silence.

“Come on,” Danièle said to us, then started
in the direction the scream had come from.

She and Rob continued to call Pascal’s name,
while I tried to clear the fog from my thoughts and figure out what
the hell was going on. Had Pascal tripped and cracked his head
open, like that kid Danny told us about? Was he lying facedown in a
puddle of water, dead? Had he fallen down a well?

No—that scream had not been one of pain; it
had been fear, fear and surprise, as if all six million catacomb
dead had risen from their graves before his eyes.

So was Rob right then? Was this all a joke?
Was Pascal hiding somewhere, readying himself to jump out from the
dark and yell, “Gotcha!?”

Twenty meters onward a room opened to the
right. We stuck our heads inside, glanced around. It was large and
filled with a number of support pillars.

A lot of places to hide.

“Rascal!” Rob shouted. “Seriously, bro! This
ain’t cool!”

“He never plays these games,” Danièle said,
her concern reflected clearly in her face.

“Are you guys having me on?” I said.
“Because I’m pretty fucked right now, and it’s not funny—”

“We’re not fucking with you,” Rob said,
stone-faced. “Rascal’s fucking with
us
. There!” He pointed
to the corner. “See the dirt?”

We went closer to examine it. There was a
faint odor in the air.

“Knew it!” Rob said, and he half chuckled.
“Rascal! Get your ass out here! We know you’re here! We can smell
your shit!”

No answer.

“Is that a door?” I said, nodding across the
room.

“Yes, you are right,” Danièle said. “He must
be through there.”

We approached quietly, apprehensively. I
don’t know why we bothered with the stealth, but it felt like the
right way to proceed.

This new chamber, it turned out, was smaller
than the last one. There were no pillars to hide behind, and we
could see it was empty.

“Where the fuck is he?” Rob said,
frowning.

“Wait—what is that?” Danièle pointed to a
dark shadow in the lower portion of one wall.

We went closer and discovered a cat
hole.

The three of us crouched before the crevice,
peered inside. It was a couple feet high and appeared manmade,
perhaps carved with a pickaxe or some other crude tool. It
stretched away into blackness.

“Rascal?” Rob called, though not as loudly
or confidently as before. “We’re not coming in after you.”