The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel)

by Jeremy Bates

  I crept silently through the Bunker, though it wasn’t the Bunker, more of a mile-long corridor. Everything was bathed in red light. The floor was shiny with blood the color of jelly and lumps of what might have been fecal matter. Those iron doors with the steering wheel handles were set into the brick walls on both sides of me at even intervals. Some were fitted with barred windows. Occasionally a door stood ajar, a bad overhead fluorescent flickering inside, revealing mutilated bodies strapped to gurneys, experimented on, tortured, dismembered.

  Straight ahead, at the end of the passage, was a door larger than all the others. I was drawn to it, slowly, inexorably. Abruptly the dream reality hiccupped, and I stood before the door. I spun the wheel handle. This activated a bolt-lock system. Gears churned. The door swung inward on silent hinges.

  I stepped into a dark room and moved forward cautiously. Shadows closed around me so I could barely see a few feet ahead.

  A noise froze me to the spot.

  “Come out,” I heard myself say.

  Nobody appeared.

  “Who are you?”

  No reply.

  I pressed on. Two steps, three.

  A gurney rolled from the margins of my vision. The wheels clattered on the stone floor. It stopped before me. A person lay on it, covered by a white sheet.

  “Hello?” I said.

  No reply.

  I pulled away the sheet. My lung shallowed up.

  Maxine lay on her back, staring at me with liquid-black eyes. Her face and hands were bloated and as white as a slug’s belly. Her long hair was wet, as if she had just exited the shower—except she was wearing the off-the-shoulder cream dress with the hanky hemline that she had died in. The fabric was soaked through and clung to her body, so I could see the outline of her small breasts, her nipples. She sat up, swung her legs to the floor. “Am I going to miss it?” she said.

  “Miss what?” I asked.

  “The wedding.”

  “We’re not getting married anymore. Things didn’t work out.”

  “Things didn’t work out for me either.”

  “I’m sorry, Max.”

  “You left me.”

  “She was drowning.”

  “I was drowning—and I’m your sister, Will.”

  Bridgette and I had wanted a small wedding, fifty guests, mostly family, some close friends. At the rehearsal dinner Max, who was one of Bridgette’s bridesmaids, toasted me. It had been touching and honest and peppered with wit. Later that evening, after the older folks had retired to their bedrooms, Bridgette and I had been in the main lodge with all the bridesmaids and groomsmen. There were eight of us in total. Everyone was drinking except for Bridgette and me. We didn’t want to be hung over for the ceremony the following day.

  Brian, one of my best friends since high school, suggested we take the boat out for a spin. We had rented a fully-restored 1950s mahogany Chris-Craft Capri for the weekend. I was chosen as the designated driver.

  I said, “That guy shouldn’t have been out there without lights.”

  Max was still sitting on the gurney, still dripping wet. It seemed the water was leaking from her pores. “And we shouldn’t have had so many people in the boat,” she said.

  “That didn’t cause the accident.”

  “Didn’t it?”

  It had been a tight fit with the seven of us in the Chris-Craft—Liz, Bridgette’s maid of honor, had remained behind on the dock—and everyone was laughing and whooping. Then, out of nowhere, a fisherman in an aluminum bass boat appeared directly before of us. I should have plowed straight over him. If I had, he likely would have been the sole fatality. But how do you do that? How do you run a man down like road kill? Anyway, it wasn’t my choice to make. Instinct took over. I yanked the wheel to the right, and the Chris-Craft’s port side slammed into the bass boat’s bow at a forty-five degree angle. The sound of the impact had been unremarkable, like a giant plastic milk jug buckling, followed by another, smaller wooden thunk. I think this was the Chris-Craft’s propeller taking off the top of the fisherman’s skull.

  “You’re right,” I told Max. “There were too many of us. We were too loud. I didn’t hear him. Still, he shouldn’t have been out there without any lights.”

  I hit the water facefirst. It felt as though I’d kissed concrete. I went under and didn’t know up from down. When I finally burst through the surface, the Chris-Craft was upside down. The wooden hull side rose from the water a few yards away from me. The six-cylinder engine gurgled and sputtered.

  Three bodies, the only bodies I could see, floated nearby. They began to sink almost immediately.

  “I was closer to you, wasn’t I?” Max said.

  “I don’t know.” I shook my head. “You were there one second, then gone the next.”

  “But you chose to save her?”

  This was what no one understood. I didn’t choose anybody. I didn’t weigh the pros and cons of whom to rescue, the way you might ponder different brands of the same product at the supermarket. There was no reasoning, no calculating happening inside my brain at that moment. Nothing but an overwhelming need to act, to do something, anything.

  And then I was swimming to where Bridgette’s body had been moments before. I dived. The water was black. I couldn’t see. But my hand brushed her back. I slipped my arms around her body and kicked until we surfaced.

  The aluminum boat drifted past the stern of the Chris-Craft. I swam to it, pulling Bridgette with me. I gripped the gunwale and yelled for help. Liz, who was still on the dock, heard me. She woke my parents. My father and Bridgette’s father arrived in one of the lodge’s boats. Bridgette’s father gave Bridgette CPR, while my father and I dived for Max, but the lake was too deep.

  Police divers recovered all six missing bodies—including the fisherman’s—the following morning.

  “What was I supposed to do?” I said. “Bridgette was unconscious. If I let go of her…”

  “So you let me drown?”

  “I’m sorry, Max.”

  “And how did she repay you?” Maxine said, staring at me with those black, haunting eyes. “She left you. I wouldn’t have left you, Will. I’m your sister. I wouldn’t have left you no matter what anybody said.”

  I woke stiff and cold and disorientated, though the fog cleared quickly. I was beneath Paris, in the catacombs. Candles glowed softly. I tried to recall the dream I’d been having. The Bunker that wasn’t the Bunker. The rooms with the bodies on the gurneys, peeled open like oranges, their insides exposed—rooms my sleeping mind had no doubt extrapolated from the real one with the bank-vault door, the one I’d outlandishly speculated (but didn’t say out loud) to be a torture chamber where Nazis had performed hideous experiments on the French freedom fighters they’d caught in the catacombs. And Max—Jesus, Max, in the dress she’d worn on the night she’d died…

  I sat up, shaking my right arm, working feeling back into it. Rob lay a few feet away from me, folded into a ball to keep warm, a string of drool stuck to his cheek.

  Then—shft. The sound was loud in the empty silence. I snapped my head toward it and started.

  Someone stood at the doorway.

  Chapter 26

  He was old, over sixty, and tall, maybe six feet. Wisps of spider web hair curled out from beneath a mud-caked green bandana. What I could see of his face in the poor candlelight was pointed and fierce, his complexion as dusky as damp earth. He wore an olive fatigue jacket over a black T-shirt, black jeans, and black Doc Martins, maybe steel-toed. No backpack, no waders, no helmet. No cataphile gear whatsoever.

  “Zeigen sie ihren ausweist!” he barked in a commanding voice.

  “Jesus,” I said, stumbling to my feet.

  Rob stirred. “Wha…?” He saw the guy and sprang into a crouch, then lost his balanced and toppled backward onto his butt. “Who the fuck…?”

  Danièle and Pascal sat up in their hammocks, alarmed.

  “Zeigen sie ihren ausweist!” the man repeated.

  “A
nd if we do not?” Danièle said loudly, now standing.

  The man seemed momentarily surprised she understood German.

  “What’s he saying?” I asked.

  “He wants to see our IDs.”

  “IDs…?” The guy couldn’t be a catacop; he looked like a bum. Another prankster then—?

  Was he in cahoots with the Painted Devil?

  The man switched to heavily accented English. “Don’t you know it is illegal to be here?” he said sternly. He eyed Danièle’s cask of wine, Rob’s empty beer cans. “What are you drinking? Mind if I join you?” Before anyone could reply he plopped down at the table and withdrew a bottle from his jacket. “Vodka and vitamins,” he announced, offering it to Rob. “Try—it is good for you.”

  Grinning, Rob accepted the bottle—stupidly, I thought—and took a belt. A moment later he cringed, wooted, and shook himself like a wet dog, all at the same time. “Motherfucker!” He passed the bottle back.

  Danièle and Pascal began dismantling their hammocks. I figured they wanted to move on as soon as possible. I was fine with that plan. The old guy’s BO smelled like onions left uncovered in the fridge.

  I fetched my still-wet socks and shoes and pulled them on.

  “My name is Zolan,” the man said, sipping the vodka as if it were water. A shark-tooth necklace encircled his neck. It seemed to be missing as many teeth as he was. Black wool gloves covered his hands. The tips of the gloves’ fingers and thumbs were cut off.

  “I’m Roast Beef,” Rob said. “That’s Stork Girl, he’s Chess, and he’s…”

  I was at a loss. “Macaroni,” I said.

  Rob gave me a look. Zolan passed him the bottle again, and he took another belt, longer than the first. His reaction was tempered this time.

  “Do you know someone called the Painted Devil?” I asked.

  Zolan fixed me with dark and feral eyes. “Le Diable Peint is a stupid shit.”

  I blinked in surprise. Rob hooted in delight. Danièle and Pascal paused their packing and watched us.

  “How do you know him?” I asked.

  “I have come across him many times. He thinks he owns these tunnels. He knows nothing.”

  “He speaks German, like you.”

  Zolan spat. “He pretends to be German to scare people. He is a fake.”

  I was about to remind Zolan that he’d tried to scare us too, but Rob said, “How long you been coming down here, boss?” He was clearly enjoying the old guy’s company—that, and the free vodka.

  “A long time,” Zolan said simply. “Do you have anything to eat? I’m hungry.”

  “Danny,” Rob said, “where’re your cookies?”

  “I have packed them already.”

  “Break them out. Zolan’s hungry.”

  Danièle had been buckling her backpack closed. She reopened the main pocket, searched through it, and withdrew the package of biscuits. She offered them to Zolan. He shoved one biscuit into his mouth, then another, crumbs spilling onto his chest.

  “Okay, everyone ready?” Danièle said. “We must continue now.”

  “So soon?” Zolan said, appearing disappointed by our abrupt departure. “Where are you going?”

  “We’re looking for a woman,” Rob told him, oblivious to the smoldering look Danièle shot him. “Rascal—Chess found her video camera about a week ago. Someone was chasing her. She dropped the camera and started screaming and—”

  Danièle kicked him in the side. “Get your stuff, Rosbif. We are leaving.”

  “Ow, Danny, fuck.” But Rob seemed to get the message. He got his stuff together and stood. “Guess we’re off, boss. Thanks for the drink.”

  The rest of us said goodbye, and we were at the exit to the grotto when Zolan said, “Val-de-Grâce.”

  We stopped, turned.

  “Excuse me?” Danièle said.

  “The video camera,” Zolan said, his back to us. “It was beneath Val-de-Grâce.”

  Pascal and Danièle exchanged glances.

  Then Pascal spoke for the first time: “How do you know that?”

  “I met the woman you talk about,” he said. “I saved her life.”

  Chapter 27

  Zolan’s revelation caused temporary pandemonium. Everyone began talking at once, raising voices, no one making an effort to mask their skepticism. Zolan grinned, as if he had expected this reaction. He withdrew a folded square from his jacket pocket, opened it, and spread a map onto the table. We went over to examine it. Pascal gasped audibly, obviously impressed. Indeed, it made Pascal’s beloved map look barebones in comparison, and I guessed it must have detailed almost every nook and cranny beneath Paris. It was hand drawn in black ink. The torn, aged parchment had at some point been laminated, and the plastic was covered with burn marks and stains and additional annotations scribbled in permanent marker.

  Zolan pointed with a chipped and dirty fingernail to a spot in the upper right corner. “Val-de-Grâce hospital is here.” He indicated another spot several inches away. Had there been a legend, the distance likely would have measured a few hundred meters or so. “The woman was here, fifty meters deep, in the lowest level of the catacombs.”

  Pascal bent close to study the squiggle of lines.

  “Is this correct, Pascal?” Danièle asked him. “Is he right? Is that where you found the video camera?”

  Pascal nodded slowly, clearly devastated, and I actually felt sorry for the guy. This had been his show, his little Goonies adventure, he’d been convinced he was going to find that woman’s body. Now it turned out it was all for naught.

  “So what happened to the woman?” I asked Zolan.

  “I guided her to the surface,” he said simply.

  “I mean, why’d she scream? How’d you save her life?”

  “Ah.” He nodded. “There had been a cave in. She was separated from her friends. She wandered for two days by herself. Then she stumbled upon a nest of rats.”

  “Rats?” Danièle said, surprised.

  “Large ones. The size of cats. They sensed she was weak, they sensed a meal, and they attacked her. I heard her screaming. That is how I found her. I scared them off. She had many bites. Here, here, here.” He touched different parts of his body. “But she was okay. She could walk.”

  “You never took her back to get her camera?” I said.

  “She never mentioned a video camera to me.” He shrugged. “Given what she had been through, and the condition she was in, I suspect it had been the last thing on her mind.”

  Danièle and Pascal moved away from the rest of us to converse with themselves. When they returned, they explained that the expedition was over and we would return the way we had come. It was an anticlimactic outcome, surely, but with the woman safe on the surface, there was little reason for us to continue farther. So we kitted up, turned our headlamps on, said goodbye to Zolan for a second time, then backtracked through the maze of World War Two era rooms. I was the last one to enter the cat hole that led back to the tunnel system at large, and when I climbed out the other side I was surprised to find Danièle and Pascal speaking to Rob in hushed, conspiratorial tones. “What’s going on?” I said, going over to them.

  “He was lying,” Danièle told me in a harsh whisper. Her eyes were wide, luminous, concerned.

  “Who?” I said, confused. “Zolan?”

  “He told us the woman was attacked by rats,” she said. “But there are no rats in the catacombs, Will. There is nothing for them to eat here. He made that up because he does not want us to know the real reason why the woman screamed.”

  “And why’s that, Danny?” Rob asked.

  “Because he killed her,” Pascal stated.

  I looked at him, then at Danièle. They both seemed serious—and frightened?

  “You two are bat shit crazy!” Rob blurted.

  “You are!” Danièle said. “You drank with him. Like he was your best friend. You drank with a killer!”

  “He’s not a killer,” I said.

  She whir
led on me. “Why not?”

  “He’s just some bum.”

  “Bums do not kill people?”

  “I’ve never heard of any killing people, no.”

  “He sees a woman, lost, alone. He knows he will never be caught…”

  A chill touched my spine as I pictured Zolan straddling the Australian woman, his dirty hands locked around her throat, squeezing, cutting off the screams that nobody could hear.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Okay, Will,” Danièle said. “Why did he lie about the rats?”

  “We don’t know he did.”

  “There are no rats in the catacombs! None! Pascal and I have never seen one. Not one.”

  “Maybe not here, maybe deeper—”

  “No,” Pascal said, shaking his head adamantly.

  “Think about it,” Rob said. “If that old fuck Zolan killed this woman, why tell us he met her at all? Why incriminate himself?”

  “Because thanks to you, Rosbif,” Danièle said, “he knew that we knew where she was, and that we were going looking for her. He did not want us to discover her body. That is why he told us he guided her to the surface—so we would not go looking for her anymore.”

  “Man oh man,” Rob said, chuckling. “You buying this, Will?”

  Danièle and Pascal glared at me. They had become openly hostile.

  “No, not really,” I said.

  Danièle huffed and started away from us down the corridor.

  “Hey—where you going?” I called after her. “I thought we were going back? That’s the wrong way.”

  She stopped, turned. Her face beneath her red helmet was set in a mask of determination. “No, Will, that is only what we told Zolan. We are still going to look for the woman, and we are going to find her.”

  Chapter 28

  Twenty minutes or so after setting out from the Bunker we arrived at a low crawl that looked no different than the dozens of others we had passed through. However, this one, Danièle explained, was special. It was the entrance to the tunnel system beneath Val-de-Grâce.