“Hey, what’s in there?” Killian leaned forward, nearly pushing Emma from his lap.
Maurice fixed his reddish brown dreadlocks, so they hung straight across his forehead again. His eyes gleamed, and he too flipped Sophie to the side, tossing her off the chair entirely as he reached for the backpack. “Here?” he asked with delight.
Emma wrinkled her nose and pouted, taking her new place on the hard armrest as Killian widened his legs, taking the entire seat for himself.
Sophie frowned, rolling her eyes at Maurice from the floor, locking lips only with the bagged bottle now. “Don’t get him started.” Sophie groaned as she wiped drink from her mouth. “Maurice may be good-natured, but he’s a very stupid boy sometimes.”
Emma, now interested, bent forward in their direction. “Why, what’s in there?” She ignored Sophie.
Killian eagerly waited, hiding his fervor well. He watched as Maurice opened his backpack and pulled out several random items most cataphiles carried throughout the tunnels. He stacked water, batteries, food, and a flashlight from out of his backpack, while digging toward the bottom.
“I’m going to be the first cataphile to catch and kill a Dweller down here in the catacombs,” Maurice gaily said, while burrowing through his carefully packed bag.
“Not this again.” Sophie slapped her forehead with her palm, and then removed her button-down gray shirt, revealing a black sleeveless camisole, along with an inked left arm. She proudly revealed skin fully covered in pink, red, blue, and black tattoos from her shoulder to her elbow.
Her eyes asquint, Emma removed herself from the hard armrest and stood. “What’s a Dweller?” She lightly shook her head from side to side.
“Um, uh.” Maurice scratched his scalp rapidly, with a confused look. “Let me show you.” He pulled a flask out first. “This is holy water.” He placed the flask next to the outside of the bag. “And if that doesn’t work, I’ve got this beauty.” He pulled out and flaunted a handgun.
Emma gasped, jolting back. “Are you insane?”
“Relax, it’s safe,” Maurice retorted.
“Yeah, right!” Emma stiffened her back.
“Here,” Maurice put it back in his bag. “Happy now? Anyway, I have this.” He held an old videotape over his head. “This is proof that Dwellers really exist.”
Sophie rolled her head back toward Maurice. “You only see what you want to see.”
The two of them became rowdy, throwing their hands in the air, arguing violently in French, and then abruptly, they began necking and fondling each other all over. Emma put her hands on her hips, her eyes staring, her mouth gaping, but Killian remained detached as a mere calculating bystander.
“Hello! Can you two please stop the gross PDA?” Emma said. Then she pointed at Maurice. “And you, finish what you were saying,” she demanded.
“Oh, yes.” Maurice wiped black lipstick from his lips, pushing Sophie off to the side again. She landed on the ground with a grunt. Maurice kept talking. “How could I have gotten so distracted from such truly important matters?” He bobbed his head and tied his reddish brown, shoulder-length dreadlocks back with a white, industrial rubber band. “This is a grotto.” He crossed his legs, and with palms upward, he flung his arms apart.
“Yeah, I know that,” Emma flippantly answered.
“Okay…well, did you know that this limestone room has evolved over many years into a hangout for cataphiles just before they trek into the deepest parts of the endless tunnels ahead?”
“No,” Emma simply answered.
“You see, when a cataphile makes it deeper than anyone else ever before, he…” Maurice caught a nasty, irritated glance from Sophie. He cleared his throat. “Or when she, in some cases, tags a deep section, it is a badge of honor, which is worthy of respect.” Maurice shook a can of spray paint from his backpack. He rapidly mentioned the rest. “And then you take a picture or video and brag about it to the other cataphiles.” He leered a self-satisfied look down at Sophie.
Maurice went on to tell how Sophie was not as interested in being a real cataphile, but that he was. He also explained how the Romans built the catacombs over fifteen hundred years ago, and how the tunnels cavern deep into the earth, so no one really knows how far the catacombs actually extend.
Maurice wiggled uncomfortably around in his tight, black gothic jeans and basic white t-shirt. He emphatically waved one of his skinny arms in the air, while holding the videotape with his other hand. His long neck swayed as he told of how a fellow cataphile had gone farther than any other cataphile, while traveling deep into the catacombs about two years ago.
Maurice went on to tell that this particular cataphile, like many others in recent times, had gone missing, never to be seen or heard from again. Maurice told how six months later, another cataphile found a recorder in the tunnels, with the videotape he was holding still inside the abandoned video recorder. The tape showed the original cataphile dropping the recorder, with only a sideways shot of the cataphile himself being dragged off into the dark catacombs by some creature.
Maurice’s eyes bugged out. He flipped the videotape back and forth when telling of the monstrous hand with long, bony fingers, and sharp black nails that wrapped around the cataphile’s face, while the cataphile himself kicked and screamed, trying to push the creature’s hand off and away with both of his own. However, the cataphile was no match for the horrific, inhuman strength of the Dweller. Maurice finished by telling how shortly afterward, the recorder battery died, fading into slow black, but not before strange sounds of multiple people whispering, beating hearts, along with occasional bloodcurdling screams, filled the videotape’s last audio portion before the tape went black.
“Is this for real?” Emma closed one eye and tilted her head.
Maurice opened his mouth, but Sophie blurted out, “He wishes.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why don’t you tell them how much of my hard-earned money they swindled out of you for that fake tape?”
“It’s real, and I can prove it.” Maurice again reached into his backpack. “See.” With two hands, he struggled to pull a heavy, thick, large, ancient bound volume out of the bag with his lanky arms.
The story of the videotape did nothing for Killian, but he flinched, nearly climbing the back of his seat when he saw the book. “What’s that?”
“That, my friend, is a borrowed piece of merchandise from the Notre Dame Cathedral, and it is not for sale.” Maurice proudly unsnapped a pair of tarnished steel locks, popping them open with a key attached to a necklace inside his shirt. He gingerly opened the aged, leathery book. The four edged corners were damaged by time and use, with kinked up fringes. He ever so lightly turned the brittle pages, flipping them slowly, each one over onto the next withered, parched sheet.
“Ha!” Tipping the bagged bottle up for a sip, there came protest from Sophie. “You mean stolen. Besides…just because it’s old, doesn’t make it true. It’s another piece of fantasy, trash fiction if you ask me.”
“Shut up, Sophie. I wasn’t asking YOU!” Maurice whipped his head toward her and roared. “Stop being so negative,” he turned and yelled in her face. “Why do you always have to be so negative!” he shouted again.
Sophie and Maurice erupted at each other. Both screaming mere inches from the other’s face.
Killian reached out as the two argued. “Can I see that?” he coolly asked.
Maurice pulled away from Sophie and drew the old book close, holding it cross arm against his chest. “No, no. For it’s written in Latin, but I’ll gladly read some of it to you.”
“You dummy. You can’t read Latin.” Sophie laughed.
Emma sighed and groaned. This was not the night she imagined. She angled her head backward, shaking it in frustration.
“Shut up!” Maurice yelled, threatening Sophie with agitated tones, and bothered, menacing glares.
Emma sat
on the dusty grotto floor, and watched dozens of burning candles lined in single file like quiet soldiers all around and along the walls of the room. The tiny flames shimmered, bouncing images of their shadows, sending them dancing back and forth as living objects of the grotto.
Wax trickled down into hardened droplets as the gleaming fire burned reddish orange at the top of the minuscule flames. Hints of bluish sparks fizzled inside the reddish orange blaze, which were swathed near the bottom of the candles’ black, incandescent wicks. Altogether, the candles’ beauty lit the room with a warm glow, an ignored splendor, leaving behind a coating of oblong waxy secretions on the ground and up the side walls.
Emma’s attention drifted away in a dreamlike stupor. The grotto turned surreal, yet otherworldly with a mystic gleam.
One of the shadows dancing along the walls was not like the other three present that night. This shadow hid its demonic shape to the eyes, but told a starkly different truth to the candles, forming a body not like anyone in the room.
Maurice freed his recoiled grip, and delightfully held the medieval book on his lap.
Sophie swigged from the bottle, with the occasional glance of revulsion toward the others in the room.
Killian, intrigued, tempered his interest with a sly wisdom possessed only by those with the wrong kind of life experience.
Emma, immersed by the goings on, waited intently, leaning forward in expectation of the book’s unveil.
However, all of them failed to notice an ominous tale written among their wicked and playfully dancing shadows on the living walls of the grotto.
“Well…” Emma briefly flipped her palms up and open. “What does it say?”
“Um, it says, uh.” Maurice glossed his index finger under the words in an attempt to translate the Latin from the book.
Sophie let out a short, mocking laugh. “He doesn’t know.” She chugged another nip from the bagged bottle.
Maurice just glared at her. “It says,” he cleared his throat, “these tunnels were built as a prison for those who shall forever dwell in Sheol.”
“Dwell in Sheol?” Now sitting on the ground, Emma, mesmerized, inched closer toward Maurice. “What does that mean?”
“Stop being so bossy!” Sophie barked at Emma.
“Why don’t you shut the hell up,” Emma replied.
“Why don’t you. You rich, little, ugly princess.” Sophie drank again from the bottle. “Don’t kiss a prince, or he might turn back into a toad.” She glared at Emma, while smirking at her own retort.
“Why are you being such a jerk to me? I didn’t do anything to you.” Emma scowled back.
Maurice interrupted. “Now ladies…” He quickly looked up at a stone-faced Killian. “And gentlemen. Sheol means…”
“Ha! Sheol means…” Sophie cut into his reply, but Maurice, with a single hand, swooped down, knocking the bottle away from her mouth, flipping it into the air, and breaking the jug, spilling its liquid contents all over the ground. The glass bottle cracked and the bag saturated with its leaking fluid. The dry brown paper bag soaked up the sugary, fragrant beverage.
Acting as if nothing happened at all, Maurice continued. “Sheol means that I’ve read some of this book before.”
“So.” Killian grinned as Sophie slapped Maurice hard across the back of his head.
“You idiot! Why’d you break my drink?” Sophie growled. “That was mine! I bought it! I paid for it! Just like everything else you don’t have!”
“Stop it!” Frustrated, Maurice shouted at her. “I’ll get you another. Besides, don’t you mean you stole it?”
Sophie attempted to smack him in the face this time, but Maurice caught her wrist in midair. Each glared heatedly at the other for a moment, but then the two began fondling and caressing passionately once more.
“Ahem!” Emma looked away. “I said, ahem!” She crossed her arms and frowned.
“Sorry. The French are a very passionate people, and…” Maurice did not finish his thought, but turned his head to the side and coughed. His eyes regulated a conversation with Sophie, revealing some nature of their relationship between subtle gazes, and then Maurice started talking about his primeval book again. “As far as I can tell, these Dwellers got their name from dwelling in the bowels of the earth, and this Sheol, is a grave, or perhaps a prison of some sort.” Maurice put his face close to the open page. Narrowing his eyes, he ran his index finger along under a row of Latin words as he read parts in jumbled segments, skipping verses he did not know. “The book also mentions that immortal knights saved the world of man when civilization was still new. The knights struck down the Dwellers with the sword of truth, which flamed against the cruelness, pushing evil back into the land of eternal decay until they were no more.”
“Oh, come on.” Sophie held her elbows. She lobbed her eyes upward, and let out a greatly inflated sigh.
“Wow!” Emma ogled and gawked, drawing her knees up to her chest. “That’s really cool, but what does it all mean?”
Maurice rapidly tapped his fingers to his lips. “I don’t exactly know, but a couple friends of mine are working on translating the rest of the book.” His eyes focused on nothing in particular, yet he seemed rather lost in thought.
“Are Dwellers demons?” Emma asked.
“No,” Maurice replied.
“Zombies, vampires, ghosts?” Emma continued guessing.
“No.” Maurice scratched his head. “Apparently they’re some kind of other supernatural beings with great powers. And in this place,” he said, pointing out the door of the grotto. “This place is the borderland.” He blew dust from the spine of the book, which exposed gold sketching all over in circles, symbols, and lines. “Even though I haven’t read the entire book…yet, I have looked at all of the cool pictures.”
“Typical boy,” Sophie said as she smirked. Her hands on her hips with elbows bent outward. “They only like books with lots of cool pictures in them.” She flashed two fingers on each hand for quotation signs. “Ha!” She hooted a laugh.
Ignoring her, Maurice pinched a quarter of the old book’s frail pages. “I’m only this far into reading it, but the next portion talks more about these immortal knights, the Dwellers, and even something called the Shroud.” He squeezed his lips together and shrugged his shoulders. “I guess I’ll find out more later.” Maurice placed his hand vertically along the side of his face, blocking his view of Sophie, and said, “I’ll tell you some things that even she doesn’t know about.” He thumbed toward Sophie with his other hand.
“I’m not deaf you idiot!” Sophie briefly closed her eyes and slanted her head, puffing a loud rush of air out her nostrils.
“Well…go on.” Emma gestured to Maurice.
Killian deeply sighed from his belly. Distracted now, he scowled, while checking out the different mystic, superstitious-like, religious trinkets left throughout the years around the grotto.
“This evening’s a wash.” Sophie lamented. “I wish I at least had my drink to entertain me.” Her eyes darted at all those in the grotto.
“Never mind her.” Maurice flipped to different parts of the book. Emma scooted her bottom toward him. “Now it says here that these Dwellers are like apparitions, or phantoms, though not ghosts.” He scanned several pages. “It also says Dwellers can take human form, using feelings and emotions to trick people.” Maurice changed to a jolly tone. “You know, this book also has a nice collection of stories, poems, and songs, too.”
“Huh?” Emma rubbed the goosebumps along the backs of her arms. “No, tell me the good stuff. I want to hear about the good stuff!”
“Okay,” Maurice continued, “from what I’ve read, these Dwellers secrete a black, tar-like substance, I guess like a poisonous resin or something into their victim. Then they suck the juices, absorbing from inside out and then completely digest that which they hunt. They live a nocturnal
existence, and shudder from the light as reviled fiends in a true form that is both male and female in one, or possibly neither. Dwellers are devoid of life, but beasts of prey. They are dead, damned, and unthinking creatures, lost in the season between summer and winter…”
Killian suddenly rose with an urgent desire to view the book. From a distance, he scowled with a covetous glare. “What is that, fourteenth century?”
“Actually, I think it’s twelfth or thirteenth.” Maurice looked at the binding. “Here, you guys want to see a picture of what a Dweller’s supposed to look like?” His mood rose when his giddy excitement could no longer be contained.
“Sure!” Emma said, at first joyous, but after, she glanced oddly up at Killian. “Hey, why are you standing?”
“No reason.” He gradually sat back in his chair, pretending disinterest. He casually spread his arms and legs, and then he closed up tensely, leaning forward toward the book.
Sophie rolled her eyes. “Ugh, don’t encourage him, and please don’t believe any of this stuff.” She groaned. “Like I said, it’s just bad fiction.”
“For the last time, shut your mouth!” Maurice stuck his nose high in the air, glaring fiercely downward. His nostrils now flared, he expressed a quick, strong outburst in French toward Sophie, before calmly finishing the last part in English for Emma to hear. “All the stuff about the Dwellers is true. And like I said before, I’m going to prove all you doubters wrong.” He quickly glanced at his companion, giving a loud yap of displeasure. He opened to a page near the middle of the book. With a care usually reserved for a mother holding her newborn child, Maurice gently separated the ancient, flimsy pages. He held his breath when a pair of thinly filmed pages gummed together. As if an adhesive bandage stuck to tender skin, he gingerly peeled them apart, wincing, biting his lower lip, and focusing on only the book as he freed one page from the other. A sigh accompanied cheerful eyes when he gazed upon the picture he was looking for. He took a deep breath and delicately flipped the book around so Emma and Killian could both see the picture, too. “Cool…no?” Maurice raised his right eyebrow and curled the right corner of his lip upward with pleasure and pride.
Something Eternal Page 9
