by Jeff Gunhus
The staircase was steep and carved out of natural stone. It spiraled around, deeper and deeper. As we walked, Pahvi’s accented voice rose up from below to give us a short history of the place.
“This was first a quarry, all the way to the Roman times. The limestone you see all over Paris was mined here. For hundreds of years, men worked underground, digging out the slabs of rock, carving tunnels and great caverns. When they were done, there were over a hundred miles of tunnels, how do you say, cross-crissing underneath Paris.”
“Crisscrossing,” Eva said.
“Yes, apologies. Crisscrossing,” Pahvi said. “By this time Paris had grown bigger and bigger. The cemeteries that were once far outside of the city were now surrounded by houses and shops. There was much disease and problems. So they came up with a plan. Every night for over two years, they dug up graves, piled bones in carts and rolled them through the streets of Paris.”
“And they just dumped them here?” I asked from several steps above where Pahvi stood.
“It was a ceremony every night. Priests led the way, chanting and praying. They did a ritual over the bones every night. But, yes, even with all that, they basically brought them here and dumped them. The mines were not used any more so it was perfect. Over a thousand years’ worth of bodies were taken from their final resting places and put here, making this the biggest mass grave in the world.”
“How many bodies are buried here?” Eva asked.
“The scientists, they say there are over six million people here,” Pahvi said. “Maybe more.”
I felt a chill pass through my body, trying to imagine what the bones for six million people might look like. I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
We reached bottom of the staircase just as Pahvi finished his story. I had to give it to him that he had a knack for theater. He swung his arms open and invited us into a room where the first of the bones were on display.
“But, as you can see, they did more than just dump them here.”
We stepped into a low-ceilinged room carved out of solid limestone. It was tall enough to walk in but I could reach up and touch the ceiling. The far wall was segmented into three sections, each a wide archway. Inside each segment, stacked perfectly like cords of firewood, was a wall of bones. Not the bleached white kind you see on Halloween skeletons, but mottled brown, stained with dirt and age. More disconcerting were the skulls. Worked into the stack of bones in regular intervals were lines of skulls arranged in rows, their empty eyes and gaping mouths all staring at us. In the light of day it would have been disturbing. At night in a room lit only by three flickering candles, it was incredibly spooky.
Pahvi waved us forward, knowing better than to speak over the power of the place. He pointed to the gap between the top of the pile of bones and the arched ceiling. He raised his candle and we could see that the pile extended back at least twenty feet. It dawned on me that there were probably the remains of over a thousand people just in that one section.
We moved on to the next room, Pahvi speaking to us in a hushed whisper, adding to the general creepiness of the place. Well, I say us, but really he was staying close to Eva and speaking only to her. “The bones are like art, very different designs in each place. You can feel there is a power here. An energy, yes?”
As much as I wanted to roll my eyes for Pahvi being overly dramatic, I had to admit that I felt it. There was an aura to the place. It seemed the collective history of all the lives represented by the bones created a weight of their own.
After a short tunnel, we entered a spectacular round room with a pillar in the center. The outer walls were again lined with stacks of bones, this time with skulls in a variety of patterns. One formed an X. Another a swirling pattern. The third just a solid wall of skulls with their teeth intact, giving them an unsettling appearance of laughing at some secret joke only they heard. The pillar in the center of the room was also covered with skulls so that the limestone was completely covered. This made it look like the room was supported entirely by a thick column of skulls.
“The King of France, Louis XIV, used to have enormous feasts down here,” Pahvi said, his voice echoing. “Supposedly, this was one of his favorites. There is a painting in the Louvre that shows it. Very sandleness.”
“Do you mean scandalous?” Eva asked, laughing at Pahvi’s charming accent. I was starting to wonder if his small mispronunciations were on purpose. I’d noticed that he sometimes fell into perfect English and then lapsed into all-too cute misuses of words. I was thinking how wary I still was of our gypsy tour guide when I heard a noise coming from the tunnel ahead of us.
“What’s that?” I asked.
Eva heard it too. She was in a fighting stance, staring at the passageway. Only Pahvi didn’t seem concerned. He did, however, check out the way Eva was standing.
“Don’t worry, it’s just another tour. Unofficial,” he said.
Murmuring voices grew louder as the tunnel flickered with light. Soft laughter rolled toward us, followed by giggling when other voices hushed them. The first person appeared and, even in the dim light, I could make out that he looked just like Pahvi. He wore the same type of clothes, had a dark complexion with deep, brooding eyes, and slicked back hair. He didn’t look surprised to see Pahvi but looked annoyed when more giggling burst out behind him. He shot Pahvi a withering look. The newcomer looked like he’d had about enough of the people on his tour.
“Aiy, Kuchar,” Pahvi called cheerfully. “It sounds like you brought a large group with you tonight.” Underneath his over-the-top cheeriness, I thought I heard disapproval in his voice.
“Aiy, Pahvi,” the other guide replied miserably. “They make the noise of a crowd and the smell of one too.” He wrinkled his nose. “Germans.”
“Ahh,” replied Pahvi as if no other explanation were necessary.
“I charged them double price,” Kuchar confided. “But it should have been triple.”
Just then eight burly German guys barreled into the chamber. At least I thought they were all guys until two of them broke down into giggles again, and I realized they were just husky girls with short-cropped hair. They were a little older than us but probably still teenagers.
They barely gave us a second look as they gawked at the new room. One of the guys went up to the pillar in the center of the room and started tapping on a skull’s teeth, making some joke in German. He pinched one of the molars and wiggled it mercilessly until it popped out. The others roared with laughter, and it echoed in the small space. Kuchar glanced at us as if to say, See what I have to deal with? and then hurried forward to ask the German not to touch the skulls.
I pulled Pahvi aside. “Do we have to stay with them? To tell you the truth, I was more hoping to see some areas outside of the tourist areas.”
Pahvi held his candle up toward Eva. “Is that what you want?” Eva nodded. “Very well. I know many miles of the catacombs. But Kuchar here does not. My apology, but he and his…friends…must come with us.”
I was about to object and try to buy the gypsy off with more money, but Pahvi turned and strode from the room without another word. Kuchar was doing his best to shepherd his Germans back out of the room to follow him, using a flow of broken German, English, and French to convince them. I heard the phrase, Get lost down here, along with some choice curse words, and this seemed to hit home. The Germans quieted down, resorting to short, stifled comments and giggling as opposed to the outright rebellion against their guide earlier.
“Come on,” Eva said. “Let’s try to stay ahead of these guys.”
I agreed, and we quickly ducked into the tunnel where Pahvi had disappeared. His candle was surprisingly far ahead of us. We jogged to catch up to him, careful not to let our candles go out. Soon we reached an old, rusted door with a sign that translated into all languages. A circle with a diagonal line through it. The word DANGER was written below it in at least ten languages. Pahvi already had the door propped open and waved us through. “Welcome to the rea
l adventure,” he said.
I stepped through the door and the change was immediate. While the tourist areas had rock floors, an effort had been made to keep them clean and to even apply concrete in some places to make it level. On the other side of the door, the floor was covered in thick dust. Debris was scattered around, human trash like soda cans and plastic bags, but also chunks of rock from the walls and ceiling. There was graffiti spray painted on the walls on either side of us, mostly names and dates. I hoped it was a list of people who had toured the catacombs from this entrance and not a memorial for the people who had gotten lost in its dark tunnels.
Eva and Pahvi stepped in behind me and I heard the Germans even farther back.
“Flashlights would make it easier to see everything,” Eva said to Pahvi.
“Sometimes it is better only to see part of something,” Pahvi replied in his most seductive voice, “and leave the rest to imagination. Besides, I find the candles…how you say…very romantic. Come, this way.”
Pahvi led the way down the left branch in a tunnel. I stuck my finger in my throat and pretended to gag myself. Eva punched me in the shoulder and followed him.
We spent the next half hour exploring room after room, enjoying the experience of seeing the catacombs in their raw state. The piles of bones continued to line the walls as did the macabre ways they were displayed. There was a deep sense of history and permanence to the place, as I guess you might expect from a place holding the remains of six million human beings who had died hundreds of years ago. Each chamber held its own mystery. It was strangely soothing to inspect the walls by candlelight, exploring the shadows for interesting peculiarities. Well, soothing until the Germans would catch up to us and turn our quiet candlelit tour into an unruly mosh-pit.
As we passed from room to room going deeper in the tunnels, Pahvi stayed close to Eva and spoke to her in low tones. He pointed out where there were carvings in the limestone. Or some interesting bit of graffiti from trespassers from the eighteenth century. Eva nodded and served as a good listener, but she also asked the questions that were important to us. How many entrances did he know of? (At least a dozen) Were there markings on the tunnel walls used for navigating the labyrinth? (Yes, certain geometric shapes carved into the base of the stone matched up with known paths.) Did the tunnels ever flood? (Not that he knew of.) Were there creatures that lived in the tunnels?
This last one brought Pahvi up short. I noticed his posture change from slouchy and easy-going to rigid. He stopped where he was and held his candle up a little higher as if seeing Eva for the first time.
“Sorry, what was your question?” he asked.
Either Eva missed the body language or she masterfully played it off. She ignored the fact that her escort had stopped in his tracks as she idly inspected a pile of skulls. “Are there creatures who live down here? You know, like giant rats? Or maybe crocodiles like they say are in the sewers in New York?”
Pahvi relaxed a little, but I could tell he was suddenly more wary. I wondered if he had faced a creature in the caves before. Or perhaps knew rumors of the vampires whose lair was somewhere in these forsaken tunnels.
“No. No, creatures that I know of,” Pahvi said. “But there are wild things to be found here. I’ll take you to one of them if you want.”
I didn’t much care for the new Pahvi. There was a smooth fluidity to his movements now, his voice dropped an octave or two, and his hands flexed at his side. Alarms went off in my head. We were in danger.
“No, I think we’re fine,” I said. “Eva, we have friends waiting for us, remember?”
I bit my tongue as soon as I said her real name. Pahvi cocked his head. “Eva? That’s a much better name for you than Ashley. Here, will you hold my candle for me for a minute?” He held out his candle toward Eva’s left hand. Up to now, she’d been able to keep her missing hand hidden, a habit she had when in public to keep from sticking out and being noticeable. She stared at the candle, then at Pahvi. She reached out with the hook on her left hand, sank the sharp tip into the soft wax, and took the candle from him. The gypsy looked surprised, but his reaction appeared calculated to me, like a performance. Something told me he expected to see a hook. If so, then we really were in trouble.
Pahvi put his fingers to his lips and let out a piercing whistle so loud that Eva and I brought our hands up to cover our ears. When he was done, he took the candle back from Eva with an apologetic grin. “Sorry,” he said, “I should have warned you it was going to be loud.”
Seconds later, other whistles sounded from deep in the tunnels. Each had a slightly different signature to it. Some higher pitched, others low. Some ended with a musical flourish. There were dozens of them. Kuchar walked into the chamber in the middle of doing his own whistle. The Germans followed behind.
“Time to paaahr-tay,” one of them said, the only English any of them had spoken. The girls giggled and the guys high-fived one another.
“He’s right,” Pahvi said. “This is when we join the other unofficial tours and recreate the scene from the days of Louis XIV when these catacombs were used for lavish parties by the nobles. Come. Please.” He ducked through a door.
Eva was about to follow him when I caught her sleeve and pulled her back. “I don’t like this,” I said. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
“We wanted to get a firsthand look at the catacombs. Who better to get on our side than a group of gypsies who give illegal tours through the off-limits areas?”
“Didn’t you notice how he reacted to your name?” I said. “I feel like there’s something odd about your buddy, Pahvi.”
“Maybe it’s his ravishing good looks?” Eva teased. “Or his sultry eyes?”
“You don’t feel like anything’s off about him?” I asked.
“The Romani are hard to read. Their history goes all the way back to the mystics in Northern India. They’re known to be well versed in magic and the occult. Maybe that’s what you’re feeling,” Eva said.
“Everything okay?” Pahvi said, poking his head back through the door.
“Yes,” Eva said pointedly. “Everything is fine. My young friend here was nervous about going to a party with older people is all.”
Pahvi gave me a sad shake of his head. “I remember what it was like to be young and inexperienced. Not to worry. I’ll take care of you personally.”
I gave what I hoped was a thankful grin, and Pahvi gave me a thumbs up and ducked back through the door.
“See?” Eva said. “I don’t think bad guys use the thumbs up sign. Come on, it’ll be fine.” She followed after Pahvi into the tunnel.
Reluctantly, I followed, a single question rattling around me head. Which one did Eva find the most interesting, Pahvi’s ravishing good looks or his sultry eyes? Maybe if I hadn’t been distracted by those ridiculous thoughts, I’d have seen we were walking right into a disaster.
Chapter Fifteen
We traveled quickly through a series of narrow tunnels, making so many turns that I could have sworn we were walking in circles. Finally, a murmuring noise rolled down the tunnel toward us. At first I thought we had reached an underwater river, but as we got closer, the wall of sound broke up into individual voices. It was the underground party in full swing.
We entered a large, natural cave brightly it by hundreds of candles, each sitting on top of a skull, wax drippings pouring down the side. At least twenty other illegal explorers were already there, drinking bottles of wine and eating bread, cheese, and grapes presented on cutting boards spread throughout the room. It struck me that they were all young, under twenty by the look of it. They were an international crowd, from Latin America, Asia, India. I counted six other Romani guides milling among the customers, filling glasses, making sure their clients were comfortable. One of them strummed a guitar in the corner and sang softly, adding to the festive atmosphere. The Germans shoved past us and joined in the party, rudely grabbing a bottle from one of the other backpackers.
Eva and I rema
ined apart from the group, taking it all in. Pahvi and Kuchar stood on either side of us.
“Look at them,” Pahvi said. “So much history around them, so much death to admire, and yet this is what they pay for.” His voice had dropped again into a deep, resonant tone, the lilting tone of the street hustler long gone. I noticed his accent drop away and he spoke flawless English. The hair on my arms stood on end. “They want to eat and drink among the strange and the macabre. To feel dangerous. To feel the weight of their own mortality.”
I noticed the Romani guides moved slowly but deliberately through the crowd, spacing themselves evenly throughout. They glanced at Pahvi as if awaiting instructions. Only too late did I realize what was really going on here.
Pahvi’s voice grew bitter. “They look down on us. The Romani have been here for centuries and will be here centuries from now. Yet, they think their money can make us do their bidding. Jump like trained dogs. So we show them the gypsy they expect, we chase their money because it’s what they understand, we play the street urchin and the beggar who will do tricks for that night’s bread. And then we bring them here.”
I put my hand on the dagger secretly strapped to my outer leg. The movements of the other Romani were too practiced, too well executed. If I wanted to set up an attack on the revelers, I would position my fighters exactly where the Romani had placed themselves.
“Here they see both their history and their future. They see death. If it touches them as it should, we part ways with respect.” Pahvi held up his hand in front of him. The other Romani watched, their bodies coiled.
“And if they aren’t touched by what you show them?” Eva said. I saw her own hand was on her weapon.
