The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (37 page)

“Katja?” I called.

“Coming!” Her voice was small and scared.
Then she reached the torchlight. From my birds-eye angle only her
forehead and eyes were illuminated—those captivating eyes of hers.
Then the shadows covering her lower face peeled away, and a sadness
welled inside me.

What was going to happen to her? I wondered.
She thought she was going to be living with me and going on picnics
and shopping for dresses. The truth was…what? The media would have
a field day with her, that’s what. She’d become a modern-day
carnival sideshow. She wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without
attracting stares of pity and revulsion. She’d probably have to
wear one of those burn masks to hide her face. She would never find
love, never start a family. She would be doomed to a life of
loneliness—what, ironically, I had naively believed I was saving
her from.

No, that wasn’t true. I never believed I was
saving her from anything.

I had simply been using her.

She stopped at my feet. “Am I doing okay,
Will?”

“You’re doing great, Katja,” I said.

Twenty or so rungs later the shaft came to
an end. One moment nothing was above me, the next some sort of
grate. With a sinking heart I placed my hand against the iron bars,
positive they were going to be welded in place, and pushed.

They lifted away.

The smell took me back to elementary school:
wood polish and industrial cleaners and disinfectants. I turned in
a circle and saw I was in some kind of small closet/office. Against
one wall was a chair and desk on which sat a cup of pens and a
stack of paper and a gooseneck lamp. The rest of the walls were
obscured by shelves crowded with janitorial supplies.

Katja poked her head through the hole and
her eyes widened in wonderment. I helped her out, then Danièle, who
was right behind her.

“Oh God!” Danièle said, covering her mouth
with her good hand. “We made it. Oh God, oh God, oh God. Will!
We made it
.”

I managed a nod. This felt too surreal. If I
spoke, I feared I would break the spell and wake up back in the
catacombs.

I went to the door. Turning the handle
popped the push-lock. The door opened to a long hallway—one with
waxed floors and painted walls and fluorescent lights set into
ceiling fixtures.

Katja squeezed past me and gasped. “Is this
Paris?”

“Almost, Katja,” I said. “Almost.”

I snuffed the torch out on the floor and left
it there, and we followed the hallway past several closed doors to
a staircase. We ascended the steps and emerged in a room filled
with a range of display cases lit by dimmed spotlights.

“Where are we, Danièle?” I said.

“It must be
Val-de-Grâce
.”

“I thought Val-de-Grâce was a military
hospital?”

“Originally it was a church. Then a convent
was added to it. Then the convent was converted into a military
hospital. Then a modern military hospital was built on the same
grounds, and the old one was turned into a medical museum. So that
is where we must be.” She went to the closest display case. “Yes,
see—I am right.”

Katja and I joined her. On the other side of
the glass was a primitive prosthetic hand that would have required
the user to change the attachment—fork, spoon, tweezers—every time
he or she undertook a different task.

“What is that?” Katja asked.

“A hand,” I told her.

“A hand?”

“People who lost theirs stuck that on their
arm.” To Danièle I said, “Which way’s the exit, do you think?”

She shook her head. “I have no idea.”

We went in an arbitrary direction but didn’t
get far before Katja stopped at another display case.

“Katja,” I said, impatient, “there’s no
time.”

But she didn’t move. When I realized what
the exhibit was my stomach dropped. She was staring fixedly at
several wax casts of human faces—those deformed by war injuries and
those same ones put back together with reconstructive surgery.
Katja pointed to one face in particular whose deformities bore an
uncanny resemblance to her own. “What happened to him?” she
asked.

“I don’t know.”

She indicated the post-surgery cast. “Is
that what he looked like before?”

“No, that’s what he looked like after.”

“After?”

“There are medical procedures today…they can
help…”

“Can they make me look like you?”

“I…I don’t know…”

She frowned. “What happened to me?”

“Your father never told you?”

“He said my nose and lips fell off because
of the radiation. But if there is no radiation, that can’t be
true.”

“Will, hurry!” Danièle called softly. She
was twenty feet ahead of us, beckoning us to follow.

“We’ll talk about it later,” I told Katja.
“But we have to keep going. We’re not supposed to be here, and we
need to find help.”

We passed a smorgasbord of other medical
displays: colorful faience apothecary jars, paintings of medics at
work on the battlefield (which made me think of
M.A.S.H.
circa 1814), scale models with old-fashioned dolls taking the place
of patients, even a full-size reconstruction of a surgical anatomy
lesson.

Finally we passed through a large wooden
door and entered a long wide hallway. One wall was lined with
marble busts and memorial tablets dedicated to medics killed in the
field, the other a series of arched windows that overlooked a
cloister and formal garden, though it was night and not much
outside was visible.

We were halfway down the hallway when the
door we were headed toward opened and a man dressed head to toe in
black appeared.

The military guard started at our sudden
appearance before drawing his pistol and pointing it at us. “Who
are you?” he demanded in French. “What are you doing here? The
museum is closed.”

“We were attacked,” Danièle said. “We need
help.”

The guard came closer. He squinted at
Katja’s face and winced. “What’s wrong with her?”

“She was attacked.”

“Turn around. All of you. Hands on your
heads.”

Danièle obeyed. Will and Katja followed her
lead.

“What’s happening?” Katja asked softly.

“Just do as he says.”

Danièle heard a burst of static. The guard
reported a break-in and requested backup. Then: “Who attacked
you?”

“A man,” Danièle said. “His name is
Zolan.”

“Is he here with you?”

“I do not know. He attacked us in the
catacombs.”

“The catacombs?”

“We escaped up a ladder. It led us
here.”

“To the museum?”

“To the basement level. We were looking for
a way out.”

Silence.

“Please,” she said. “We need help—”

“Have you been drinking alcohol
tonight?”

“No!”

“Have you taken any drugs?”

Danièle shook her head in frustration. God!
He likely thought they were a bunch of meth heads. She couldn’t
blame him. They were covered with dirt and sweat, her hand was a
mushy pulp, Will’s neck and face were smeared with blood…and Katja…
Did he think they did that to her?

“Let me show you,” she said.

“Show me what?”

“The ladder that led us here.”

“The ladder in the basement.”

“Yes.”

He was silent.

“Well?”

“Quiet.”

A minute later the door they had rushed
through opened and two more military guards appeared. One of them
had the cleft jaw of a drill sergeant, while the other was younger
and sported dark stubble. They were both dressed in black uniforms
with black folded side caps, black boots, and back ballistic nylon
duty belts loaded with equipment.

Their pistols were trained on Will. When
they saw Katja, they made no effort to hide their expressions of
disgust.

“What happened to her?” Drill Sergeant
said.

“I’m okay actually,” Katja told him.

He ignored her. “They were just walking
around in here?” he said to the guard behind them, outside of
Danièle’s field of view.

“They say someone attacked them in the
catacombs. They climbed a ladder that led here.”

“
Here?
”

“That is what they say.”

Drill Sergeant crouched before Katja and
said, “What happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

He touched his nose.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You don’t know?”

She shook her head.

He glanced at Will, the bleeding wound on
his neck. “Did you do this to her?”

“I don’t understand,” he replied in
English.

Drill Sergeant blinked. “American?”

Will nodded.

Drill Sergeant stood, looked at Danièle.
“And you?”

“I am French.”

“Do you have identification?”

“Not with me.”

“You,” he said to Will in English now.
“Passport? Residence permit?”

Will shook his head.

The three guards conversed with each other
for a few moments, then they handcuffed Danièle’s and Will’s and
Katja’s wrists behind their backs. One of them got on the radio
again.

“What are you doing?” Danièle protested. “We
have done nothing!”

“This is a military facility,” Drill
Sergeant said. “You’re trespassing.”

“We need to see a doctor—”

“Relax, we’re taking you to the hospital.”
He gripped her arm and pulled her to her feet. “But first you’re
going to show me how you got in here.”

Will and Katcha remained behind with the
other two guards while Danièle led Drill Sergeant back to the
basement level.

She pointed down the hallway. “It is that
way.”

“Show me.”

She went slowly, feeling uneasy, suddenly
convinced Zolan was going to be in the room, waiting for them. But
almost immediately she dismissed this worry. It was no longer the
two of them alone in his quarters. Drill Sergeant was here. He was
huge and had a pistol and Zolan wouldn’t stand a chance against
him.

Danièle stopped outside the door to the
janitorial closet and said, “The ladder is in there. There is a
hole in the floor.”

“Step aside.”

She did as he asked. He pushed the door
open, reached inside, and turned on the light. The small room was
empty. Danièle relaxed—until she saw that the grate was back in
place over the shaft. She frowned, trying to recall whether they
had replaced it. She knew she didn’t. Katja wouldn’t have. So had
Will? She couldn’t remember—she couldn’t remember anything of those
first few moments after exiting the shaft except for euphoria at
escaping the catacombs.

“There,” she said, pointing to the
grate.

Drill Sergeant looked at her skeptically,
then entered the room. He stood above the grate and peered down.
She joined him.

Blackness.