by Jeremy Bates
Dreadlocks pointed down a gaping black hallway to our left and announced that was where the well was. The floor was cobblestone, covered with a sheen of crystalline water, unlike the murky stuff we had passed through earlier. Pascal got all excited. Danièle explained to me that he had never been this way before. It was marked as a dead end on his map.
“How far is the well?” I asked.
“Only ten minutes,” Pascal told me. He glanced at Rob and Danièle. “It is okay?”
“I’m game, boss,” Rob said.
“Me too,” Daniel added.
Pascal looked at me expectantly.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Let’s fill in that map of yours.”
The well was made from carved stone blocks and rose three feet from the ground. The mouth was circular, twice the circumference of a manhole. There was no graffiti here, no litter anywhere, indicating not many cataphiles had been this way before.
While Pascal lit some tealights, Dreadlocks changed into a drysuit. He strapped the twin cylinder rig onto his back, then pulled on short, stiff fins and a compact mask with an opaque skirt. Sucking on the regulator that dangled from the manifold outlet, he lowered himself into the well, a bulky primary light in one hand, a reel of nylon guideline in the other. Everyone gathered close, watching as he sank beneath the surface of the water, though there was little to see. The water was cloudy. The lights from our lamps shattered into emerald oblivion.
The ripples on the surface finally smoothed, then disappeared altogether. The guideline remained taut. I said, “How deep is he going?”
Danièle translated my question. Zéro mumbled something back.
“Probably between five and fifteen meters,” she told me. “That is how deep the others wells they explored have been.”
The wait was tense. One minute inched into two. I glanced at Zéro and Goat, who were staring intensely at the water. They didn’t speak, but I knew what they were thinking.
This was taking longer than expected.
I caught Rob’s eye. He stuck his tongue out the side of his mouth and drew a finger across his neck. Danièle jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.
Zéro glared at them, annoyed.
Finally bubbles materialized on the surface of the water, at first just a few, then an eruption. Dreadlock’s head appeared next, his red helmet glistening.
Zéro and Goat heaved him up onto the lip of the well.
Danièle gasped, and it took me a moment before I saw the skull clutched in Dreadlock’s hand. He spat the regulator from his mouth and jabbered in French. Everyone reacted with exclamations and outbursts. A rapid-fire discussion ensued. Eventually Danièle acknowledged my nagging for clarification and said, “He says there is a complete skeleton at the bottom of the well.”
I waited for more. When nothing was forthcoming I said, “So what? This is the catacombs. There are six million skeletons down here.”
She shook her head. “You do not understand, Will. This one is new.”
“New?” I frowned. “You mean, from a recently deceased person?”
“Yes. There were clothes on it. A T-shirt, blue jeans, rubber boots.”
“Fuck off!”
“Pascal thinks it was a woman.”
I looked at Pascal. He had taken the skull from Dreadlocks and was pointing to different parts of it.
“What, he’s a forensic anthropologist?” I said dubiously.
“He is writing his dissertation on the catacombs. He has studied many bones from here.”
Pascal passed the skull back to Dreadlocks. They were both nodding.
“What’s he saying?” I asked.
“Citerne is going to replace the skull. Then he will return aboveground and tell the police the location of the well. The catacops can investigate what happened.”
“What about us?” I said. “Shouldn’t we go with him?”
“Go with him?” Danièle seemed surprised by the question. “No, Will. He does not need us. Have you forgotten—we have another woman to look for.”
Chapter 21
EXTRACT FROM THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH, OCTOBER 13, 2013
Mummified Man’s Body Found in Paris Catacombs
A group of urban explorers made a shocking discovery last week when they entered an illegal section of the Paris catacombs: the mummified body of a London man who had gone missing in the maze of underground tunnels two years before.
The body has been identified as Stanley Dunn, a twenty-three-year-old man from Enfield, London. In 2011, after friends of Mr. Dunn reported him and two other men missing in the catacombs, police conducted a three-day search to no avail.
A police source said that Mr. Dunn’s remains were discovered in the far western reaches of the catacombs, a remote area that is seldom explored because of the extensive deterioration of the tunnel system there. The body was fully clothed and curled in a fetal position. The two other men remain unaccounted for.
Investigators believe the nearly perfectly mummified remains are due to the cool, dry environment in which they were discovered. Dr. Stephen Murphy, with the Department of Forensic Medicine at Kingston University, explains: “Some parts of the catacombs of Paris are damp, some are dry. In the latter situation, the decomposition process is slowed down, while both drying-up and autolysis of tissues prevail.”
An autopsy is scheduled to determine the exact cause of death.
Claude Provost, a former police officer with the special brigade that monitors the catacombs, told Agence France-Presse that during any given year his unit would discover multiple bodies not reported by the press, some mummified, some not. “They go in to commit suicide,” he says. “Others—they simply get lost and never find their way out again.”
Chapter 22
I had an overactive imagination, especially when it came to death, and as we plodded through the labyrinthine warrens on our way to God knew where next, my thoughts were fixated on the remains at the bottom of the well. What had happened to the person—or the woman, if you believed Pascal’s conclusion? Had she been sitting on the lip of the well, fallen backward, struck their head, and sunk like a stone? Then again, that would have presupposed the fact she was by herself. And who explored these tunnels by themselves? Hadn’t Danièle said the first or second rule of the catacombs was never to go anywhere on your own?
Perhaps the woman’s fate was the result of something more sinister then. Did someone dump her body into the well to conceal a murder? If so, had she been killed aboveground and transported to her final resting spot? Or had she been a cataphile who had the bad luck of running into a meth head or morphine addict—or the Painted Devil?
This last possibility gave me pause. I didn’t think the Devil was a cold-blooded murderer. He was carrying around a flare gun fashioned to look like a pistol after all. He was nothing but a joker, a cowardly bully. Yet at some point did he take his harrying too far and cause someone to have a heart attack and need to get rid of the evidence?
Danièle said Dreadlocks would report the remains to the police, and the catacops would investigate. But what would they learn? What could they learn? All they had were teeth and bones to work with. These were helpful when investigators had dental records to compare them with, or when there were relatives with comparable DNA. But the woman was a total unknown. I guess they could determine her height, age, and ethnicity, and run theses details against recent missing person reports. If they found a likely match, then they could check dental records and so forth. On the other hand, maybe the catacops or whoever came to investigate would get lucky and discover a driver’s license in a pocket of the jeans, or some other form of identification…something so they could give the skeleton a name and offer closure to the next of kin who would have been wondering why their daughter or mother or wife had not come home one day.
“Ciel!” Pascal called out.
“Sky!” Danièle said.
Ahead of me Rob ducked. I did too. The ceiling dropped sharply, and we were forced to troll-wa
lk again. I kept close to Rob, taking advantage of the backsplash of his headlamp.
The next while went past in a blur of hallways and junctions angling off into black infinity. Some were finished with neatly mortared stone and well-designed archways, others were low-ceilinged and half-collapsed and riddled with sinkholes. We hiked for miles and miles, twisting and ducking, climbing and crawling, jack-knifing our bodies in ways most people never did. We went through more cat holes as tight as sphincters and chambers as large as ballrooms. The entire time Pascal kept up his brisk pace, stopping only to consult his map or when Danièle wanted to point out interesting features in the tunnels: the millennia-old fossils of sea creatures embedded in the limestone; black streaks on the ceilings from the torches of seventeenth-century stonecutters; relics of the wooden braces the quarry inspectors had used to shore up weak spots that could lead to cave-ins.
At one point we came across a rocky cavity filled with the skins of dozens and dozens of dead cats. Pascal said it was the lair of a minotaur-like beast that fed upon felines. When Rob told him to go fuck himself, Danièle shined her light above us, illuminating a vertical shaft that vanished into darkness. She explained we were standing at the bottom of a well that connected with the surface. Rumor was, a nearby Chinese restaurant was responsible for the discarded skins.
Despite my back hurting from all the bending over and my feet squishing inside my wet shoes and the run-in with the Painted Devil and the close call in the first cat hole and the discovery of human remains, I found the catacombs were growing on me. There was something quietly comforting about them. Prehistoric man’s evolution, after all, had occurred within the confined spaces of caves and underground tunnels and alcoves such as these. They were where our ancient ancestors built their fires and cooked their meals, sheltered from ice- and thunderstorms, created their first works of art, raised their families. They were, in a sense, home.
I became so absorbed in my Paleolithic recreation I wasn’t aware we had stopped until I ran smack into Rob’s back.
“Sorry,” I said, straightening my helmet. I looked around. “What’s going on?”
“We have reached the Bunker,” Danièle said. “The one the Nazis used.”
I spotted another cat hole in the wall. “And I guess that’s the entrance?”
She nodded. “Yes. But you are getting good at them, no?”
Pascal crawled inside first. I went second. Wiggling forward army-style, I’d found, was much easier than humping along on your back. I tumbled out the exit ass-over-tits and pushed myself to my feet. Pascal and I stood in awkward silence for a moment. I didn’t want to wait there with him until the others arrived, so I wandered off to explore.
The walls here were constructed from red brick. Black wires snaked along some of them, beginning and ending at rusted electrical boxes. Decrepit oil drums sat here or there, remnants of a long-ago time. Spray painted flourescent arrows pointed in conflicting directions. Hand-painted signs read: “Rauchen Veroten” and “Ruhe.” I was familiar with these words, I had seen them around Paris, and they meant “No Smoking” and “Quiet” respectively.
The Bunker was a mini-maze in itself, consisting of numerous small rooms often separated by rusty iron gates and iron doors with round handles that resembled steering wheels, the sort you might find on big walk-in bank vaults.
I stepped past one door and peered into the dark beyond. I couldn’t see much besides rubble and some rubbish.
I was about to head back when I heard the others approaching.
“Over here!” I called.
Danièle, Rob, and Pascal arrived a few moments later.
I hooked my thumb at the door. “What the hell were these used for?”
“Guess the Germans wanted to keep the frogs out of their hideout,” Rob said.
I shook my head. “There’s only the one entrance. They were meant to keep people in.”
“In?” Rob squeezed past me for a look. “Shit, you’re right. But why would they need doors like this to hold some poor shmuck? A bit overboard, don’t you think?”
I did, and another possibility came to mind, though I decided it was too outlandish to mention.
Pascal led us to a small grotto complete with an iron door for a table and stone slabs for seats. Several empty beer cans had been left on the table. Danièle slit the belly of one with a Swiss Army knife. She peeled the tin back and placed a red candle inside the hollow, transforming the contraption into a lantern. If she had string, she could have strung it up by the pop tab.
“Voilà!” she said, clearly pleased with herself.
“Nice work, MacGyver,” Rob said.
She cast him a sharp look. “I do not care what you call me, Rosbif. It does not bother me anymore.”
“MacGyver!” he barked amusedly. “It’s not an insult, Danny. It’s a compliment. He’s like James Bond.”
She eyed him suspiciously.
“It’s true,” I said. “A compliment.”
“Thank you then.”
We unloaded the food we’d brought onto the table to share. Danièle had a package of French biscuits with chocolate centers. Rob had beef jerky and Twizzlers and other junk food. I contributed a bag of trail mix, three apples, and a couple hard-boiled eggs.
“Eggs, boss?” Rob said.
I shrugged. “I didn’t have much in the kitchen.”
“Here.” He tossed me a demon beer.
“No, Will,” Danièle said, slapping my hand away from the can. “Do not touch that hobo drink.” She withdrew the cardboard cask of wine from her backpack. “This is a nice Merlot.”
“And I’m the hobo?” Rob said. “You’re drinking out of a box, Danny.”
“I do not litter, and bottles are almost as heavy to carry empty as they are full.”
She poured two plastic cups and passed me one.
“A votre santé,” she said.
“Santé!” Rob said.
“Cheers,” I said.
We tapped drinks. A dollop of wine sloshed over the rim of mine.
I turned, looking for Pascal. He was at the far end of the room. He began hammering some sort of spike into the wall.
“China’s down, Rascal!” Rob said.
“That is for his hammock,” Danièle explained. “You might be warm now, because you have been moving. But the floor is so cold to sleep on. You will freeze if you lay on it.”
Rob harrumphed. “Fuck you very much for the heads up, Danny. What are Will and me going to do?”
“Will can sleep in my hammock with me. Only you will freeze on the floor.”
I nearly choked on the wine in my mouth. I glanced at Pascal again. Had he heard? He was hammering away, and it didn’t appear so. Still—what was Danièle thinking? She was well aware that Pascal liked her. His disdain for me was written in flashing neon. Did she really believe we were going to be lying up together in a hammock?
Rob was shaking his head. I could tell that he was debating with himself whether to say something or not.
“So how long are we resting here for again?” I said quickly.
“One hour,” Danièle said.
“I’m not really tired.”
“Then drink your wine. It will make you sleepy. You need to rest.”
Pascal finished setting up his hammock and joined the table, choosing a spot between Danièle and Rob. He produced a self-heating meal of meatballs and tomato sauce from his backpack and poured himself a glass of wine from the cask. He wouldn’t look at anybody, and now I wasn’t sure he hadn’t overheard Danièle’s proposed sleeping arrangement after all.
Rob played some music from his iPhone to kill the background silence. Then he and Danièle began speaking to Pascal in French, apparently trying to pry him out of his shell. I took the opportunity to dry my feet. I slipped off my Converse and was surprised to find steam rising from my socks. I peeled them off, wrung the water from the fabric, and lay them flat on a stone. It felt both odd and pleasant to be barefoot in the catacom
bs, to feel the chalky dirt between your toes.
When I returned my attention to the others, a Ziploc bag full of greenish-brown marijuana sat in the middle of the table. Danièle was rolling a heap of it into a large joint.
I frowned apprehensively. I’d only smoked pot twice since the boating accident on Lake Placid, and both times it made me paranoid and anxious.
Danièle perfected a tight cone, licked the glue, and sparked the thing up. She took two tokes, then handed it to Pascal. It went to Rob next, then me. I took a single drag and passed it on. I held the smoke in my mouth, then blew it out without inhaling.
The joint went around the circle three times more before Danièle stubbed it out on the ground. Everybody except me had become mellow and heavy lidded.
Pascal lit a cigarette. I lit one too.
“I love it,” Rob said, a small, wistful smile on his face. “Smoking a J in the catas. Hell yeah.”
“I have a funny story,” Danièle announced, sitting ramrod straight as she always seemed to do when she told a story, her eyes cloudy but bright. “Pascal and I, we were in this same room years ago, when we first started exploring the catacombs. We were smoking weed, hanging out, when five other cataphiles arrived. They were all drunk. One was so drunk he could not continue with the others. He passed out on the ground here, and his friends left without him. He snored so loudly. Pascal and I decided we could not leave him, so we waited until he woke up. But it turned out he knew the catacombs well, and he could find his own way out.”
An expectant silence hung in the air.
“That’s the story?” Rob said finally. “Why the fuck’s that funny?”
“Because…” Danièle twisted her lips, as if she were reevaluating the story in her head. She shrugged. “Maybe it is not supposed to be funny.”
