The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) (3 page)

“Catacops, yes. But they only patrol the
popular areas. They make sure no one is breaking things or stealing
bones. They do not perform manhunts. They do not go into the
unmapped areas. The catacombs are hundreds of kilometers long.
There are many levels.”

“I still think you need to tell them.”

“We are doing something better. We are going
looking for her.”

“Tonight?” I said. “You’re going looking for
this woman tonight?”

She nodded.

“And you think you’re going to find
her?”

“We have no idea. But we are going to
try.”

“That camera could be years old.”

“The video was time-stamped only three weeks
ago.”

“Aren’t you…I don’t know…scared?”

“You heard her screaming, Will. If we find
her, it will probably be just her body. Whoever attacked her, he
will be long gone.”

“And if he isn’t?”

“There will be four of us.”

“Four? You said—”

She took my hand. “I want you to come with
us.”

I blinked. “You’re kidding?”

“I want you to experience this with me.”

“There’s no way I’m going traipsing around
the catacombs, Danièle, looking for some lost woman, and I think
you should reconsider going as well.”

“I am not reconsidering.”

“This isn’t a game. For all you know that
woman might have been murdered. You don’t want to get involved in
this.”

“Then come with me—protect me.”

I tugged my hand free. “Jesus, Danièle.
Didn’t you just see the same video I saw? What you’re planning on
doing, it’s dangerous and irresponsible.”

“If the woman had been filming aboveground,
in an alleyway, and she dropped the camera and screamed, would you
refuse to search the alleyway for her?”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“I am perfectly comfortable in the
catacombs.”

“Have you been this deep, where Pascal found
the camera deep, before?”

“I told you, Pascal—”

“Not him. You.”

“No, I have not.”

I shook my head. “Okay, take the whole crazy
killer out of the equation, the killer who might have gone back
down there. What if, like that woman, you get lost? What if you
can’t find your way out again?”

“Pascal knows—”

“You’re putting a lot of faith in that
guy.”

“He is my friend. He is the most experienced
cataphile I know. I trust him completely.”

I didn’t say anything.

“So?” she pressed.

“No, Danièle. Absolutely not.”

“It will be fun.”

I stiffened as that statement took me back
to the night on Lake Placid.
Let’s do it,
dude
, Brian had told me minutes before his
death as he tossed me the keys to the Chris-Craft.
It’ll be fun
.

“Is there anything I can say to convince you
not to go?” I said.

“Is there anything I can say to convince you
to come?” she said.

“Don’t be a goddamn idiot, Danièle!” I
snapped, glaring at her.

She stared back, surprised and confused.
Then defiant. Abruptly she closed the laptop, stuffed it in her
bag. She withdrew a pen and scribbled an address on a napkin.

“If you change your mind,” she said stiffly,
standing, “I will be at this location between eight and nine
o’clock tonight.”

She climbed on her bicycle and pedaled
away.

My apartment building was located on a quiet
street close to the St. Germain district and the Jardin des Plants.
St. Germain was lively and full of restaurants and bars, though I
often avoided the area because I didn’t know many people in Paris,
and I wasn’t the type to dine or drink by myself, at least not
outside of work. The botanical gardens were a different story
though. I spent a lot of time in the free sections, walking the
trails for exercise or reading a book on a patch of grass or on a
bench in the shade of a tree.

I climbed the front steps of my building’s
stoop and checked my mailbox. It was one of six organized into two
vertical columns of three each. A locksmith service advertisement
was stuffed inside it. I received several of these a week, from
different locksmiths. It made me wonder if Parisians locked
themselves out of their homes in disproportional numbers compared
to people in other metropolises. Next to the bank of mailboxes was
a placard that read: “
2e etago sonnez 2 fois.
” Ring twice
for the second floor. I lived on the second floor, but no one had
ever buzzed me. Well, except the pizza guy. I ordered from Dominos
two or three times a week. The pies in France were smaller than the
ones you got back in the States, and some came with weird cheeses,
but they were still good.

I entered the foyer and made my way up the
squeaky wooden staircase to the second floor. I was halfway down
the hall when a door opened and my neighbor, Audrey Gabin, called
to me. She was a stooped, frail woman pushing ninety. She wore
smart black-rimmed eyeglasses and had luxurious brown hair that had
to be a wig. As always, she was impeccably dressed. Today she
sported a pumpkin-orange ensemble, a purple brim hat, and a
matching purple scarf.

She caught me walking past her unit nearly
every day. I had a theory that she had either memorized my routine
or she sat near the door, patiently waiting for me to arrive home.
I thought of her as a Miss Havisham type. While not a spinster or
vengeful, she was lonely and heartbroken, and she hermitted away
inside all day. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she had
all her clocks stopped at the exact time her husband died nearly
two decades before.

“
Bonjour, Madame Gabin
,” I
greeted.

“So beautiful the day, do you think?” she
said out of the left side of her mouth. The partial facial
paralysis, she’d told me, was the result of a stroke she’d suffered
while on a train to Bordeaux to attend her sister’s funeral some
time back.

“It’s lovely,” I agreed, a little louder
than conversational because her hearing wasn’t great. “The perfect
temperature.”

“
Un moment
. I ’ave something for
you.”

“No, Madam—”

But she had vanished back inside her flat.
She returned a few moments later carrying a plate of pancakes. She
always had some dessert or another for me.

“You must try real French
crêpes
,”
she said. “I add little…” She seemed to forget for a moment. “Ah,
oui
. I add
un petit peu de Grand Mariner
.”

I took the plate from her, which had begun
to tremble in her hands. “You’re going to make me fat.”

“I ’ope so! You are
t
rès
thin. You must eat.”

The elderly loved to give this advice. My
grandparents had told me the same thing every time I saw them while
I was growing up. And I had seen them a lot. They had lived a few
blocks away from my family in Seattle. Even in my late teens, when
my six-four frame had peaked at two-hundred-plus pounds, my one
surviving grandmother would give me chocolates whenever I visited
her at Bayview Retirement Community, telling me I had to put some
fat on my bones.

Madame Gabin, however, had a valid point. I
had lost a lot of weight recently and could be described as gaunt
for the first time in my adult life. I simply didn’t find myself
hungry of late. I didn’t know whether my suppressed appetite was
because I had started smoking again, or because I was struggling
with the rats of depression. I guess it was a combination of the
two.

“I’ll eat everything,” I assured her. “They
look delicious.”

“Roland, he loved his
crêpes
. I made
them him every mornings.”

Roland Gabin, her long-deceased husband, had
flown Spitfires in World War Two, then spent the next forty years
as a civil servant until his heart gave out at the age of
sixty-four.

I said, “He was a lucky man to have
you.”

Madame Gabin nodded, but her eyes had
clouded over, as if she had lost herself in the past. Poor woman, I
thought. She had nobody. At least I had never seen anyone visit her
since I became her neighbor. No children, no grandchildren. If, or
more probable,
when
she died inside her apartment, she would
likely remain there undiscovered, rotting in her bed or in her
chair or wherever until someone—me?—detected a funky smell. It was
an undeserving fate for a lady I suspect had been as ravishing and
charming as a film star in her prime.

“Well, thanks,” I said, raising the
plate.

She blinked. “
Oui.
De
rien
.”

I started toward my unit, then stopped.
Madame Gabin remained standing out front her door, staring at some
middle distance.

“Madame Gabin?” I said.

She didn’t reply.

“Audrey?”

She turned her head slowly toward me.

“What are you doing tomorrow evening?”

“Tomorrow?”

“I’ve been practicing my French cooking
lately. I think I’m getting the hang of some dishes, but I would
love some feedback. Would you like to come by for dinner?”

“Oh,
non merci.
I—I don’t think…”

“I’d like to hear some more stories about
your husband.”

“
Vraiment?
” She lit up. “Well…yes,
oui
, if it ees okay?”

“How about seven o’clock?”

“Yes, seven o’clock. I will bring
dessert.”

Smiling in her sad-happy way, she hobbled
back into her unit while I continued to mine.

My cracker-box studio had a lack of
idiosyncrasy so jarring it became an idiosyncrasy all of its own.
It was drably furnished with brown wall-to-wall carpet, a
swivel-egg armchair older than me, a small wooden desk, and a
metal-frame bed so short my feet dangled over the end. A television
sat in the corner on a low table. It only got a few channels and I
rarely used it. The walls were mustard and pitted with the holes
from screws and nails which previous tenants had used to hang
pictures. My only additions were an iron and ironing board because
the dryers at the Laundromat a block over didn’t work sufficiently,
leaving my clothes damp and wrinkled.

Nevertheless, I was okay with the place. It
wasn’t much smaller than the one Bridgette and I had shared off the
Bowery. Also, there was an oven, which was great for cooking frozen
pizzas when I was too impatient to order one in, and a balcony,
which Danièle told me was uncommon in Paris.

I grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, then
opened the window that overlooked the small courtyard to let out
the foxed-paper smell that permeated the entire building. The air
was springtime fresh, and the landlord was edging the garden with a
hoe, making some sort of drainage line. I rarely saw any of the
tenants down there. In fact, aside from Audrey Gabin, I rarely saw
any of the tenants anywhere, anytime.

I sat in the armchair, flipped open my
laptop, and accessed the internet.
I typed “paris
catacombs missing person” into the search engine.
The first
page of results mostly referenced the section of catacombs beneath
Montparnasse’s Place Denfert-Rochereau. This was
the tourist attraction open to the public. For a fee you could
descend one hundred thirty steps underground and walk along a dimly
lit circuit passing macabre alleys and pillars artfully constructed
with tibias and femurs and punctuated with vacuous
skulls.

I tried a number of
different keyword combinations, but didn’t come across anything
involving a missing woman or a lost video camera. I had been hoping
to find the video Danièle had shown me, or at least a reference to
it. This would have proved Pascal was full of shit. It was
something he’d downloaded, a hoax, that was all. Unfortunately, the
fact there was no mention of the video indicated the guy had likely
been telling the truth about finding it on his own.