The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (29 page)

She rounded her father’s desk and discovered
four bags in total, all different colors. She knelt before the
orange one and unzipped the main pocket. She cringed at the sound
the zipper made, but there was nothing she could do to quiet it.
She pulled out a red sweatshirt. Beneath this was a black can. She
turned it so she could read the label:
Bière du
Démon
. She had never seen this particular beer before, but
she had seen several other kinds. Her father drank them often. Like
the books in this room, they were for Adults Only. The only other
item in the bag was a scrunched piece of white paper. She unfolded
it and discovered a list of some sort. She recognized a few of the
words—bread, cereal, milk—but not others. Schweppes? Nivea? And
what were those numbers on the right?

Katja stuck this in her tights and unzipped
the bag’s smaller pocket. There was a blue wallet inside, what
people used to use to hold their money. She opened it and gasped.
There were several bills inside. She had never seen actual money
before, and she reached for one—

“Katja, what are you doing?”

Her lungs locked in her chest. She dropped
the wallet back into the pocket and yanked the zipper closed and
stood just as her father stormed around the desk.

“What in God’s name are you doing?” he
shouted.

Katja shrank away from him. He had never hit
her before like he hit her aunts and uncles, but she was sure he
was going to hit her right then.

“I couldn’t sleep!” she blurted.

“You know you’re not allowed in here when
I’m not up.”

“I know! I’m sorry! I’m scared!”

Through the tears that blurred her vision,
she saw his face change. The hard lines softened. “What are you
scared of?”

“The visitors! I had a nightmare of them
attacking us. That’s why I couldn’t sleep. So I came here, and I
saw these bags.”

“Did you open all of them?”

“Only that one.”

Her father picked up the orange bag, took
the beer out. “This is all that was in it?”

“And this.” She handed him the red
sweatshirt.

“Did you go through the other bags?”

“No, I promise.”

He tossed the bag aside and held out a hand
for her. She took it. He pulled her to her feet and kissed her on
the cheek. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, my mouse,” he said with a
sigh. “But you know better than to come in here when I’m not up. We
have rules for a reason. Without rules there would be no order, and
without order, there would be chaos.”

“I’m sorry, Papa. I won’t do it again.”

“Good. And you have no need to fear the
visitors. They’re chained up in the Dungeon. They can’t go anywhere
I don’t want them to.”

Katja wanted to ask him where the woman had
gone, because only Will and the other man were in the Dungeon, but
that would give away that she had visited them. Instead she asked,
“What’s going to happen to them?”

“Once I speak to them, and make sure they
are not a threat to our way of life here, I will return them to
where they came from, just as I have done with all the previous
visitors.”

If her father had told Katja this a few
hours ago, she would have believed him wholeheartedly. She still
wanted to, but she couldn’t.

She couldn’t believe him about anything
anymore.

“Now,” he said, stifling a yawn with his
knuckles, “it is still some time until Colin crows. You can sleep
in my bed with me if you wish.”

“No, I feel better now. I will return to my
room.”

She started for the door.

“Katja?”

She paused. “Yes?”

“I love you. I would never let anybody harm
you.”

“I know, Papa,” she said, fighting a fresh
onslaught of tears. “I know.”

Danièle’s “room” was furnished with nothing
but a hammock, a plastic table meant for a four year old, a candle
melted onto a ceramic plate, and a book of matches. She had waited
a couple minutes after Zolan escorted her there, to make certain he
was gone, then she stuck her head out the door. The hallway was lit
with torches set in wall sconces, and some twenty meters to the
right (the hallway ended abruptly to the left) she made out two
zombie-men. One stood with his back against the wall, tapping a
bone-weapon against his forehead. The other paced back and forth.
At every about-turn he would touch a wall with a finger or toe
ritualistically.

Apparently she wasn’t free to do as she
wished after all.

Of course she wasn’t, she thought. How could
she have allowed herself to believe this?

Danièle summoned her nerve and walked toward
the zombie-men. She wanted to test her boundaries, but she also
needed to find someplace to relieve her bladder and bowels.

The pacing zombie stopped. His left index
finger remained pressed to the wall, as if he were ringing a
doorbell. He stared at her, though she couldn’t read anything in
his hellish face. The one tapping his head with the bone stared
too, then licked the end of the bone with his tongue. Danièle
didn’t know if this was sexual innuendo or an unconscious act, but
it made her want to turn around and return to her room.

She didn’t. She kept her back straight, her
chin high. She was sure Zolan would have warned them not to touch
her. But the question was: would they obey him? Zombies did
whatever they wanted, didn’t they?

Zombie #1 with the wall fetish didn’t move
to let her pass, and she was forced to stop directly before him. He
stank. She couldn’t remember ever smelling something so vile. There
was the feces and urine and body odor, but there was something else
mixed with all this, a peaty rottenness she associated with bogs.
She guessed he was anywhere between forty and sixty. He was mostly
bald, with greasy tufts of white hair sprouting above his ears. He
had the normal disfigurements (God, was she already beginning to
think no nose or lips as “normal?”), and his albino-white skin was
etched with burst capillaries and scabs and smeared with mud. He
wore a torn Rolling Stones T-shirt and frayed track pants soiled in
the groin and knees. The body beneath the clothes seemed lean and
hard.

She stepped right, to go around him. He
matched her step. She went left; he went left. Zombie #2 issued a
wobbly bellow that she assumed to be a laugh. Zombie #1 joined him,
laughing in her face.

His breath was so foul she acted without
thinking, shoving him aside so she could get past and get fresh
air. When she realized what she’d done, she expected him to grab a
fistful of her hair and drag her back to her room like cavemen did
in the Sunday morning comics. He didn’t, and she kept walking,
staring straight ahead as she passed Zombie #2.

Danièle didn’t know if they were following
her, she couldn’t hear them if they were, but she didn’t check. She
didn’t want to show uncertainty, which would be interpreted as
weakness. She went straight until a secondary hallway broke off
from the one she followed. This led to Zolan’s study, she knew from
memory. As she glanced down it, she saw in her peripheral vision
that the two zombie-men had indeed followed her. They hovered about
ten yards back.

She resumed walking and came to another
intersecting corridor, this one unlit. She paused at it.
Make a
dash into the darkness?
No. She wouldn’t get far. The zombies
would catch her. They would tell Zolan she attempted to escape.
Whatever privileges she had been afforded would likely be
withdrawn. She needed to be patient, wait for a better
opportunity.

She continued straight and after several
minutes arrived at what seemed to be a kitchen of sorts. It was a
large room with a high ceiling and a central fire pit, the embers
within the circle of rocks glowing hotly. The air smelled of smoke
and stale produce. Lining the walls were homemade shelves that
overflowed with boxes and containers. On the ground sat a basket of
potatoes, and another of mushrooms. On a crudely constructed table
were an assortment of pots and pans, plates and bowls. And
scattered everywhere: junk. Broken chairs, slabs of wood, sheets of
rusted metal, a stack of flattened cardboard boxes.

She entered the room reverently, as you
would enter somewhere you were not supposed to be—and sensed
movement from the shadows. A zombie-woman sat among a pile of
trash. She watched Danièle but didn’t say anything. She held her
gnarled hands tightly against her sunken chest. Her head was cocked
to one side. Through a gap where several teeth had once been, her
tongue protruded like a worm, liver red, running back and forth
over her gums. She cackled, almost as if she were trying to speak.
She repeated the cackle at intervals, cricket-like. From ahead,
through an arched doorway, a loud, terrible groan responded.

Danièle recoiled a step, then dashed back
past the zombie-men, all the way to her room.

The rest of the day passed with excruciating
slowness. A zombie-woman—a different one than the decrepit thing
that had made those cricket noises—brought Danièle breakfast a
little after the rooster cock-a-doodle-dooed again: eggs scrambled
with mushrooms and a cup of black tea. Danièle was hesitant to eat
the eggs, but her hunger proved too great. Afterward she used the
plate and spoon to dig a hole in the corner of the room to serve as
a latrine. She had no toilet paper and felt disgustingly dirty
after she did her business, but what could she do?

Sometimes the zombie-men in the hallway made
loud noises, which she assumed passed for communication, but for
the most part they were quiet, and when she checked on them,
sedentary. They simply sat and stared, the way old people in
nursing homes sat and stared at the same spot on the wall.

Danièle wanted to stay awake, stay alert,
but her eyelids turned impossibly heavy, and she dozed off in the
hammock. She woke later to Zolan standing in the entrance to the
room.

“What time is it?” she asked, completely
disorientated.

“Time?” He seemed amused, as if he was about
to ask her if she had somewhere to be. Instead he said, “It is time
to eat. Come.”

“I am not hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten anything but eggs
today.”

“I am not hungry.”

The simian smile remained on Zolan’s face.
“Come anyway,” he said, though he was no longer asking.

Danièle got up and followed him. The two
zombie-men were gone.

“You said I would be free to do as I
wished,” she said.

“You haven’t been?”

“Two of your nephews or grandnephews sat
outside my room all day.”

“Jörg and Karl, yes. They were there for
your protection. Only a fraction of these hallways are lighted. I
did not want you to get lost.”

“I would not have gotten lost.”

“Maybe not. But you might have run into some
of my other family members who aren’t as…civilized…as Jörg and
Karl.”

Danièle recalled the groan from the room
beyond the kitchen. She said, “Are we going to discuss the
‘arrangement’ for my friends and myself now?”

Zolan shook his head. “Unfortunately your
friends have yet to regain consciousness.”

This was the news she’d feared. “What if
they are in comas? What if—”

“As I told you—”

“They need help!” She stopped on the spot.
“I want to see them.”

“That’s not a good idea right now.”

“Why not?”

“They need their rest.”

“Are they dead?” Her voice cracked on
“dead.”

“Of course not.”

“I want to see them,” she repeated
stubbornly.

“They are being cared for, and they will
recover. You must be patient. That is all I am willing to say on
the matter.”

Zolan began to walk. Frustrated, feeling
helpless, Danièle fell into step behind him. They didn’t speak. The
only sound was their footsteps and the spitting of the torches.

Zolan turned right at the corridor that led
to his quarters.

Danièle stopped again. “Are we not going to
the kitchen?”

“Our food will be brought to us.”

She hesitated. She didn’t want to be alone
with him in his study again—or bedroom, for that matter. Almost
immediately, however, she realized how foolish that concern was. If
he wanted to do something to her, he would do it, regardless of
where they were. Those zombie-things wouldn’t interfere. In fact,
they would likely join in.

They continued on. Zolan’s quarters were
located at the end of the corridor. He pushed open the door, and
they entered. He saw her glance at the tomes scattered everywhere
and said, “I’m a voracious reader, and the catacombs is as good a
place as anywhere for such a pastime.”

Danièle sat in the chair she had sat in
earlier, while he took the one across the desk. She said, “What
else do you do here?”

“In the catacombs?” He shrugged. “What you
do: I explore. It has turned into an obsession of sorts for me.
Also, I enjoy meeting the variety of cataphiles who now occupy the
tunnels. It is nice to have fresh conversation sometimes.”