Catacombs of Terror!

by Stanley Donwood

  We lay on the grass staring up at the pale grey sky with the delicious rain falling on our faces for about a minute before we both simultaneously scrambled up and wedged the door shut again. We were outside a church.

  “Let’s get far away from here,” said Kafka in one exhaled breath. I was with him on that. We walked smartly away from the door, across a graveyard, and jumped down a wall on to the pavement. I looked up at a noticeboard, and then further up at the pinnacles of the church tower.

  Saint Stephen’s Church,” I said. “We’re halfway up Lansdown Hill. Halfway back to the city from Charlcombe. That spiral staircase must have started hundreds of feet down.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” answered Colin. “And I’m never climbing it again. Full stop. End of fucking story. End of story. This is it, Valpolicella. No more. I thought I was sticking my neck out dealing with those lowlifes at the Lud Club. But they were a fucking breeze. They were great people.”

  We were walking down the hill. We could see the city, veiled in grey, below us. Just a couple of early rising fresh-air enthusiasts, that’s what we were.

  “From now on I’ll help you, but strictly from a research perspective. However much cocaine you show me, I’m not doing any more fieldwork. No siree fucking Bob.”

  I just nodded, silently. Again, I wasn’t in any kind of mood to argue. We walked down the hill, and I almost didn’t mind the rain.

  Chapter 15

  Pigs

  We parted at the junction near my flat. I wanted to go back there, and pretty badly. Kafka didn’t say where he was going, but I guessed it would be somewhere with a bed. I let myself into my pad and crashed. I didn’t have any desire to do anything else. But I couldn’t sleep. That droning, moaning chant filled my mind. Round and round. I couldn’t get it to shut up. Another thing was bothering me. Why hadn’t there been any rats? Underground passages and rats went together like grand buildings and tourists. And that squealing. That hadn’t been rats, for sure. What had it been the sound of? That horrible, unearthly sound that was like hungry children?

  And then it came to me. Pigs. When I was a kid I’d had to walk past a pig farm on the way to school. And that was the same sound. Pigs. Did pigs eat rats? Not that I knew of. But pigs, a hundred feet underground? It didn’t make sense. Well, yeah. For that matter, none of this whole business made sense. Not the kind of sense I was used to, anyway. I gave up the idea of sleep. It was properly light outside now. I got up and splashed my face with water.

  My eyes didn’t look so good, so I closed them and turned away from the mirror. I looked at my watch. For a couple of seconds I couldn’t focus, but then it swam into view. Nearly 7:30 A.M. Sunday morning. Not much time left. I remembered that Stonehenge was going to call at 8. The battery on my mobile was nearly down, so I plugged it into the charger. I tried to eat a piece of toast, but it tasted worse than cardboard. I resigned myself to a few mugs of instant coffee.

  I sat on the edge of my bed and reviewed the events of the last few hours. Moving walls? Probably. Eerie, horrifying sounds? Definitely. And pigs. Well, probably pigs, anyway. Miles of tunnels. I dug out my A–Z and tried to work out where we’d been. The dig was more or less directly south of the church at Charlcombe. The church crypt that we’d escaped at was . . . south again. I grabbed a magazine, and used it as a ruler to draw a line from the dig straight down. The Circus was dead south from the dig. Saint Stephen’s Church, where we’d come out at on Lansdown Hill, was a notch or two off the line. That would account for the left-hand turning and the curving stairway. Interesting.

  Stonehenge had said that there were three tunnels from a chamber below the Circus. And a few miles due north was another chamber, also with three tunnels radiating from it. Where all these tunnels led to didn’t bear thinking about. I couldn’t imagine how far they might go. And what was that horrible darkness, that seemed to consume light? It almost had texture. A really disgusting texture.

  Chapter 16

  Efficient and Decisive

  I sat there for a little while, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Then my mobile rang. I went over and unplugged it from the charger.

  “Valpolicella,” I said tonelessly.

  “Hello. I’m glad you’re still with us.” It was Stonehenge’s voice. It was exactly 8 A.M.

  “I’m still alive, if that’s what you mean. But it was a close thing. Probably.”

  “Is Colin still—with us?”

  “He is. Sort of. He says that he doesn’t want to be directly involved any more, though. It was pretty spooky. It was the pigs that really got to him.”

  “Did you say—pigs?”

  “They sounded like pigs. We didn’t know what they were at the time. I figured it out later. Hell of a noise. Sounded like hungry devil children to us. But I think it was pigs. Lots of them.”

  “That is extremely likely. Are you able to meet? Soon?”

  “Am I able to meet? My life is full of meetings. Meet this girl here, that guy there, do this, go there. I can’t remember when I last made a decision unaided.”

  “I’ll be in Parade Gardens at nine A.M. Do you know where that is? I’ll be sitting in a deckchair by the bandstand. All right?”

  “Mm-hmm. I’ll be there. Haven’t got much else to do. Might as well turn up. Talk to you for a while.”

  “Will Mister Kafka be with you?”

  “I’ll give him a call, but don’t count on it.”

  “Goodbye, Valpolicella.” The connection was terminated. Okay. I put my mobile back on charge. What was that I’d said to myself? I was going to be the one pulling the strings? Yeah, right. Oh, for sure.

  Parade Gardens is a park down in the city, next to the river, where old folk hang around on striped deckchairs waiting for the good old days to come around again. Why the hell Stonehenge wanted to meet there, I couldn’t be bothered to work out. I lay back on my couch and watched the ceiling. I think I might have slept. Whatever, I was unconscious for a time. I woke up fighting a cushion and my jacket bunched up painfully under my arms. It was my mobile that woke me. I reared about like someone in a straitjacket until I finally located my phone somewhere behind my shoulder blade.

  “What? Who?” I mumbled.

  “It’s Colin. I’ve got some disturbing news. Are you free?”

  “No. Yes.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” I fumbled around some more and got my cigarettes. “Yes, I’m free, if you can call it that. What time is it?”

  “Almost nine.”

  “In the morning?”

  “Yes, in the morning. Can you meet?”

  “What is this? Of course I can meet. I do very little else but meet people and get into trouble. In fact, I’m supposed to be meeting Stonehenge in about a minute down at Parade Gardens. He’ll be wearing a deckchair so’s I don’t miss him.”

  “Right then. I’ll see you there right away. Bye.”

  It seemed like everyone was being all efficient and decisive except me. Phoning up on the dot. Coming out with sentences like ‘I’ll see you there right away . . . .’ Good grief. I rearranged my clothes, lit a cigarette, did some swearing, and walked as fast as I could be bothered to down to the Gardens. I saw Stonehenge from the balustrade overlooking the park. He wasn’t in a deckchair because it was raining. Of course. Him and Kafka were the only people fool enough to go to a park in a downpour. They were standing in the bandstand, and by the look of it they were waiting for me. I wandered down with what I hoped was a nonchalant swagger. But it was probably obvious it was an exhausted wobble.

  “Hello Colin and hello Stonehenge. This is nice. Fresh air. Weather.”

  “It was fine until about five minutes ago,” said Kafka.

  “Oh, sure it was,” I said bitterly, “now why don’t we go somewhere dry? That serves coffee? Chairs, tables, clean ashtrays, that sort of thing? There’s a place just over the road. Come on.”

  I was pleased with myself. I was in charge. In control. It was a good feeling, e
ven if it was only to do with where we drank coffee. They followed me through the rain to the café. It was empty, so getting a table wasn’t a problem. I ordered coffee and toast. I figured it was worth giving food another try.

  “Okay,” I said as we waited. “Colin, you have some disturbing news. And don’t tell me—Stonehenge has some disturbing news, too, am I right?” Stonehenge nodded. “I thought so. A double helping of disturbing news for Mister Valpolicella on this wet July Sunday morning. I am so pleased. I was just dreading anything nice. It would be hard trying to adjust, for one thing.” I blew out a plume of smoke and stared at them. “So, who wants to go first?”

  They looked at each other. Kafka spoke. “What happened last night was probably the most frightening thing I’ve ever encountered. I don’t know what I was expecting, but . . . I tried to sleep when I got home but I couldn’t. Too much in my brain. I couldn’t forget the darkness, and I couldn’t forget those—those horrible sounds. Then I realised that my tape recorder was still running. I rewound the tape. I felt like my memory was, I don’t know, rewriting itself or something. I thought that maybe we hadn’t heard anything at all. That we’d got sort of hysterical and imagined it.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Oh, so that was okay, then. We’d imagined it. I bowed my head and gave my temples a squeeze. I gestured for Kafka to carry on.

  “Well, anyway. I had to get my head clear about whether we’d heard anything or not. So I rewound the tape and had a listen. It started off okay. I could hear us whispering and there was ambient noise from us wandering about inside that chamber. But pretty soon, when we were walking along the corridor, there was this weird noise. It started way before we noticed it. It was chanting of some kind, but it was really distant. By the time the tape picked us up, whispering about it, it had been going on for nearly twenty minutes. We just hadn’t heard it at all. I couldn’t make out what the words were. I think they were in another language. Something like, ‘memvola sintrompo, memvola sintrompo, kontentiga morto, kontentiga morto.’ But the worst thing was, amongst all the gobbledegook chanting that I couldn’t make sense of, there was your name. Repeatedly. Martin Valpolicella. Martin Valpolicella. Like they were calling you. As if they knew you were there.”

  “I never heard that. I never heard that. I did not hear that,” I said, and I could feel sweat pricking on my scalp. I felt very cold.

  “Nor did I, Martin. But it was on the fucking tape! I swear it. Look, I don’t know myself what the hell it means. But the tape picked up stuff that we didn’t hear. This Latin or whatever the fuck it was, it’s there, on the tape. And your name. There is some extremely heavy-duty sinister shit going on, Martin, and whoever’s doing it . . . I don’t know. But this tape scared me, maybe as much as being in the tunnel scared me. It sounded—evil. I could hardly bear to listen to that noise on the tape. But I get the feeling that you’re being trapped. The tunnels are a trap. You’re walking into it. If I was you I’d take a hard look at what I was doing. I’d leave it all well alone . . . .”

  “That wouldn’t necessarily solve anything,” said Stonehenge. I smoked my cigarette and looked out of the window. Their voices were just wallpaper. I looked out and I watched the raindrops running down the glass. I could see the woods on the other side of the valley, hazy in the rain. Everything looked calm. Hardly anyone walked past the café, and those who did were huddled up against the weather. In couples or alone, they passed by, on their way to the next episode in their lives. Sunday dinner somewhere, maybe. The cinema. The rain veiled the horizon, and I felt like I was inside a cloud. My eyes began to lose focus. I was drifting away. With a conscious effort I pulled myself back to wherever I was supposed to be. Stonehenge and Kafka were looking at me quizzically.

  “What?” I asked a little bitterly. The brief escape had been pleasant. Maybe the best thing that had happened to me in a while.

  “I was saying we mustn’t frighten ourselves,” said Stonehenge. “If we do, we’re doing Their work for Them. They’ll have won before we’ve begun. They’ll have scared us off. And if this tape really does reveal that AFFA are calling your name, so what? They know it already. It doesn’t mean they know you were there, though of course they may well have known, or been alerted somehow that you were there. AFFA already plan to use you as Their fall guy. The chanting might have been to do with that. There are less than twenty-four hours until the time that’s been set for your arrest. I suggest to you both that we use this time as productively as possible, rather than getting tied up in knots over what may have sounded terrifying but probably, in reality, was not.”

  He took a slurp at his coffee, and waited for one of us to respond. I kind of spluttered. Kafka replied in a taut squeal.

  “Sounded terrifying? You weren’t there, mister. It was more than terrifying. And that was before I heard the tape. I think we’re in trouble, really bad trouble, and I think the quicker we leave this stuff alone the quicker we’ll be able to have some kind of normal life. Get it?”

  “I get it. But I don’t think you do. I think you’re so freaked out that you can’t think straight. Listen. Scaring people is nothing to Them. It’s a sideline. If, as you think, They knew you were there, why didn’t They come and get you? AFFA know the tunnels inside out. If They knew you were there then They could have got you. Easy. No problem. But They didn’t. Why not? It’s my opinion that They didn’t know you were in the catacombs. So, Valpolicella’s name might have come up. So? They’ve already decided to use him as the scapegoat for their next human sacrifice. It’s just coincidence that you were down there when they were chanting his name.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” I said, “and very reassuring. Okay. Okay, Stonehenge, here’s my verdict. You are full of shit. And you’re going to stay full of shit until you agree to come with me, into the tunnels, tonight.”

  “Christ, Martin, you can’t be serious,” said Kafka, almost shouting. We were still the only customers in the café. The waiters were looking at us with interest. I shot them a glare.

  “Shut up, Colin,” I said quietly. “Let him answer me.” Stonehenge looked me in the eye for a time. Maybe a minute. Maybe a little less.

  “You’re on,” he said. “I’ve never been more serious. Tonight is our last chance to stop AFFA. I’m coming. Colin? Are you coming?”

  Kafka choked. He looked like he was close to spraying the table with coffee.

  “No. I am not. I’m staying up here, thanks. Look, I don’t mind finding stuff out for you. I don’t even mind sticking my neck out for you. But I am not going back down there. I’m scared. I don’t mind admitting it. Okay?”

  “Okay, Colin,” I replied. “And if my name wasn’t already known to them, if they hadn’t already planned where in the basket my head was going to land, I’d be right with you. But I’ve got to do this. Otherwise they’re going to fuck me up and I won’t even know why. I might be crazy already, but trying to figure stuff out after the event isn’t my style. Now, Stonehenge. Let me get this straight. You and me are going underground tonight. Okay. That’ll be just peachy. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Colin’s told me his disturbing news, and it was lots of fun. If I remember rightly, you had some disturbing news, too. So, do we get to hear it?”

  I waved to one of the waiters for more coffee. The toast had got cold, but it wasn’t any great shakes when it was hot either. I’d had a couple of bites, but the bread had turned to cotton wool in my mouth. It had taken a little while to swallow. My mouth was pretty dry anyway, for some reason. Yeah, well. I looked at my watch. 11 A.M. More coffee arrived, so I drank some of it while Stonehenge gave us his news.

  “You said something about pigs,” he said.

  “I did,” I answered.

  “What? What the hell are you talking about?” demanded Kafka.

  “That horrible squealing? The noise that really got us moving? That was pigs, I’m pretty sure. I realised when I got home. That’s what a load of pigs sound like at feeding time.”

  I hoped
I sounded as bored as I felt.

  “So, yeah, Mister Stonehenge. What about them? What about the pigs?”

  “Well, when you mentioned pigs on the phone, I knew it must be true. It makes sense. This city was founded because of pigs.”

  “Just fuck off, why don’t you,” said Kafka.

  “Ah, give the guy a break,” I said. “It’s maybe hard work being a professor or whatever.”

  “Thank you,” said Stonehenge wryly. “Now. Listen. Just as there are arguments in science, in politics, there are arguments about history. You’ve heard the cliché about history being written by the winners, yes?”

  I nodded for Stonehenge to continue.

  “Well, the history you were, presumably, taught at school is simply one account of many that exist. Most of the history you were taught is the invention of the Victorians, of the builders of the British Empire; of course, it pleased them to interpret history as a succession of empires, of continuous development, of increasing scientific enlightenment. But their history is not the only history. The real history of this city—a history that predates the Romans, never mind the Victorians—is that Bladud, the son of a certain King Lud—the ruler of Babylon-on-Thames, or, as we now know it, London—was exiled from the royal palace because he contracted leprosy. Bladud, who had been destined to become king of England, became a humble pig herder after his exile, and if that were not humiliating enough, his pigs caught his leprosy from him.

  “That city, the ancient city of Babylon-on-Thames, is rumoured to still exist, metres below the modern edifice, below the sewers, below the underground railways. And in that subterranean city, below Ludgate Circus and Farringdon Road, where the River Fleet still flows below the surface, live the Fleet Pigs. An ancient race of pigs who have existed underground for centuries, feeding on the various sorts of debris that fall through the layers down to old Babylon. They’re said to steal and consume human children . . . adults disappear as well. Vagrants. Drunks. Addicts. The lost, the miserable. Nothing more is heard of them. It may be that these disappearances are the work of the Fleet Pigs . . . .