“What!” Sophie snatched a few mushy dollars and Emma’s phone from Maurice’s grip. “Are you sure you even searched them?” She raised a distrustful eyebrow.
“Yes!” Maurice started to yell, but soon realized Sophie had the gun, along with an irritated pose, so he repeated more softly, “I mean, yes…my sweet.” He sheepishly smiled.
Sophie knew how to handle a gun. She kept the gun aimed at Emma and Killian, even when her face was turned away from them.
Sophie, thinning her eyes, now glanced several times between Emma and Killian with a slight grin. “Despite Maurice’s fantastic tales of Dwellers and tagging the catacombs, this is what being a cataphile is really all about.” Her smile straightened. “It’s not about superstitious nonsense.” She glowered at Maurice. “It’s not about adventure or fun, it’s about taking back from those that take from us up there.” Sophie nodded toward the ceiling. “Now give me your flashlight,” she angrily demanded.
“Oh, come on.” Killian slanted his head while frowning at Sophie. He stared in disbelief with a marked change in mood. “You’ve got all we have. At least leave us the light.” He let his arms down, overlapping them in open defiance.
Emma anxiously shouted, “Please don’t shoot!” Her arms still reluctantly raised, they floated in midair. “I don’t wanna die. I don’t wanna die,” she repeated, puffing breaths rapidly.
“I said give it to me…NOW!” Sophie screamed at them. “And you can put your arms down, Emma, you’re not under arrest. I’m just robbing you, you ugly dummy.” Sophie aimed the gun at Killian. “Are you stupid and deaf? Give Maurice the flashlight, or I’ll kill her.”
Killian tossed the flashlight in the air to Maurice, who followed Sophie’s lead by shining the blinding ray directly into their eyes. Killian used his hand to shield himself from the light, but Emma just squinted.
“Can I at least have my phone back?” Emma asked. “It’s no good to you, and I can’t get any service down in this hellhole anyway.”
Sophie pulled out and inspected Emma’s expensive-looking phone from the rest of what Maurice collected from them. “You mean this?” She held it, dangling it back and forth in front of Emma.
Her head dipped between her shoulders, Emma meekly replied, “Yes.”
Sophie carelessly dropped Emma’s phone to the ground and stomped on it repeatedly, flipping glass shards, micro-boards, computer chips, and torn wires all over the place, with some flying bits soaring into the air. “Oops, it slipped.” Her cheeks drew up and in. Sophie’s eyebrows folded down, nearly touching multiple crumpled waves of skin atop her nose. She contrived a frown, shrugged her shoulders, and then eased her facial muscles into a smug grin.
Emma somberly eyed the pieces of her broken phone. She held a tearful, irate glare with Sophie, before realizing the true nature of her dire situation. “Wait! I have more money,” Emma pleaded. “Just take me back to my hotel room and I’ll give you as much as you want.”
“What do you take me for,” Sophie uttered an insulted, noisy huff, “a fool?”
“How’ll I get out of here without a flashlight?” Emma’s hands tremored like never before. Her fingers shook hysterically, quaking up into her arms, and then out to the rest of her whole body.
“Maybe they’ll help you find your way out.” Sophie bumped Maurice on the arm. The two of them flashed their lights up and over toward the walls at the distant end of the tunnel ahead, as well as all over the ground below, and up the near walls just inches from Emma and Killian. “Go ahead…Have a look.”
Emma, weary of turning on an aimed gun, swiftly glanced at her surroundings. However, Killian crossed his arms, refusing to turn, or look away. Rather, he stuck to his menacing, intense scowl as sketched lines, unnatural curves, and heated imperfections tainted his beautiful surface.
Sophie smugly beamed. “What, don’t you want to see, Killian? Or do you already know what awaits?” she said with a slight chuckle.
Emma froze and gasped. “Wha…wha…what is this place?” she stuttered. “Are those…? Are those…?”
“Yes, you moron,” Sophie snidely remarked. “THIS IS A TOMB!” she yelled. “And now, it’s your tomb.” Sophie aimed the gun at Emma. “Both of you are pointless, awkward bores, and you deserve each other.”
Shocked, Emma unconsciously peered down. The cracking under her feet was now in clear view. The chipped fragments of what seemed like eggshells were human bones, mixed with pasty mud, and grimy water with slithering insects. Cockroaches and rat guts slathered underfoot, and the rank, foul odor of thousands of years in the endless catacombs rose up into Emma’s prim nostrils. She choked and heaved. Death permeated Emma’s new reality, shutting out any hope wherever she dared look.
Maurice and Sophie turned out the flashlights, allowing Emma and Killian to sample the immense darkness, along with a final taste of the last light either one of them would ever see.
After a few moments of forlorn acceptance of the pitch-black dark, the lights were turned back on. Maurice tossed Killian’s flashlight in his backpack and clicked on his own, much-brighter light. He illuminated the tunnels ahead, and revealed a labyrinth of disturbing visions waiting for Emma and Killian in among the endless catacombs.
Emma, emboldened for unknown reasons even to herself, slowly turned her neck for a glimpse behind. “Oh, my god!” She slammed her lids shut, straining her neck, whipping it back around until her muscles stung with an aching lash. “No!” She frantically pleaded, “NO! NO! NO! Please don’t do this to me!”
“You like this flashlight?” Maurice, admiring the silver casing, flipped it close to eye level. “Yeah…it’s a quality piece all right. I snatched this baby off some other idiot last time we were down here.” He glanced over toward Sophie. “Hey…what do you think happened to that guy? You think he ever made it outta here?”
A poker-faced Sophie did not respond.
Killian never looked back or around. He was not even tempted, it seemed. Instead, he remained determined, facing Sophie and Maurice with a poised rebellion.
Emma did not wish to look at her surroundings again. Yet everywhere, the horrible sight of skulls and bones, maggots, and vermin, overwhelmed her desire to look away, so she unwillingly raked it all in as a tormented bystander. “Oh, my god! This place really is a friggin’ graveyard.” Emma wailed. “You can’t leave us down here like this! I wanna go home!” she cried out.
Sophie tightened her bottom lip. “You might want to drop and beg. It sometimes helps, but not often.”
Folding her hands together near her lips, Emma briefly glanced at the ground. She snubbed it, refusing to drop to her knees and beseech submissively.
Ignoring Emma’s plight, Maurice told a grand story about the human remains inside the catacombs. “These are the noble souls, who hundreds of years ago, fought and gave their lives in a forgotten war.” He picked a skull out from the wall and held it next to his head. He shined his light through its hollow base section, allowing spectral beams to radiate from the eye sockets, while the eerie cranium illumined as red as icy blood in his hand.
Maurice took a moment to venerate the prized skull, gawking into its deep, hollow eye sockets before continuing his tale. “These gallant warriors pushed back the horde of beasts known as Dwellers into these catacombs. These soldiers were slaughtered by the millions.” He gestured at the skulls, femurs, and rib cages stacked neatly, one on top of the other from floor to ceiling on both sides of the walls, and ahead as far as all of them could see. “They, along with the immortal knights, exterminated the Dwellers, banishing them to this underground realm, thus saving the world that we have come to know,” he said, holding a pause, “or so the immortal knights thought.” Maurice chortled sinisterly, “Bwa-ha-ha-haaa!”
Sophie cringed, and let out an agitated sigh. “You dunce! You blockhead! I told you to stop reading that ridiculous book. None of that is true!” En
raged, her voice moved loud and rapidly throughout the tunnels.
Terrified, Emma blurted out, “There must be like thousands of dead people’s bones down here.”
Maurice ignored Sophie and addressed only Emma. “That’s where you’re wrong! A thousand,” he repeated as he held his stomach and laughed some more. “You don’t listen very well. Try millions of skulls and bones, for these are the catacombs of the dead.” He raised both his arms in symphony, instantly flipping his delight into a dull, solemn, Shakespearean frown. He tilted his head downward, eventually staring up at Emma, but her head had sunken low with a hunched posture.
Maurice slowly curled the edges of his lips upward with a grim bliss. “Hey, it’s not that bad,” he kindly said. “Maybe I can help you.” He then belted a mean and sudden yell. “Look at me!” He clamped his teeth. When Emma faintly regarded him with a glimmer of faith, he flashed his bright light directly into her eyes. A harsh blindness stung her sight, yet darkened a rising callus upon her soul. Emma turned her head and winced. Maurice gleefully smiled with an oversized mouth of toothy amusement.
Emma shaded her eyes from the light. “Stop bullying me!” she barked at Maurice. She turned her face toward a passive Killian. “And why aren’t you doing anything to stop this?”
Killian shrugged. “What’s there to do?”
Pointing at Maurice and Sophie, Emma exclaimed, “He’s a creep, she’s a sadistic witch, but you’re just a disappointment.” A surge of disgust covered her face.
Killian tried to appease. “Emma, I…”
Emma planted her hands on her hips and turned away. “Don’t even. I hate you! I wish we had never met.” She half turned her body back toward his.
“Ah, a lovers’ quarrel,” Sophie interjected. “Thank you for all of your kind remarks toward me earlier, Emma, but this is where we take the crappy gifts you gave us and leave.” Sophie flipped her hand backward, while turning the opposite direction. “So long, losers. Enjoy your time down here in hotel oblivion.”
“No!” Emma hysterically squeezed her hands, recoiling into a wobbly shell of herself. The room spun. Her chest tightened. Her head felt light, and her arms and feet tingly. Yet before Sophie left, Emma threw one last distressful gaze in hopes of compassion. “Please…don’t leave me down here like this. I beg you,” Emma said with clutched and folded fingers.
“What about him?” Sophie mocked. “What about your boyfriend?”
“I don’t care about him. I just want to see my ma…” Emma abandoned her sentence, ending short of saying “mom.” “My…home and friends again,” she finished.
Maurice liked the begging and chuckled. “Go ahead, get on your knees and put your face in the mud, and maybe, just maybe I’ll think about helping you outta here.”
Bent in on herself, Emma looked back and forth between Maurice and Sophie. “What?” She narrowed her eyes in disbelief.
“The Dwellers are coming,” Maurice taunted. “I can hear them.” He cupped his hand to his ear. “The catacombs are their home. Can’t you hear them coming?” He smiled, shining the flashlight toward the endless, double-sided row of skulls and bones. “And remember, when you hear an unexpected scream, it’s a warning that you’re next.” He pointed at Killian and Emma. “The Dwellers whisper to each other, and when the whispers turn into one voice, it means they’re close, and a horrible end for you is near.”
Emma closed her eyes and placed her hands over her ears. “No, stop it!” she yelled.
Killian silently lowered his head and glared up at Maurice. “Knock it off.”
But Maurice garnered enjoyment from their fear, so he continued. “The screams foreshadow the end, but it’s not a quick end, it’s a slow, painful end.” He rubbed his stomach. “They’ll brutally tear you apart, limb from limb like a savory morsel. They eat your intestines while you’re still alive. If you’re lucky, the Dwellers will find you edible, and thus unworthy of being turned into one of them—doomed to live for an indefinite time between life and death, down here, rotting forever in the quagmire of darkness.”
Sophie grumbled at her partner. Without warning, she hit him upside his head with the gun. Maurice winced, moaning from the sharp knock and pain that followed. He felt a cold sensation on his head. He instantly reached up where the gun hit. His eyes wide, his mouth gaping, his lower lip quivered. His hand quaked, and he nearly fainted at the blotchy sight of his own blood dabbed on his fingertips.
“Are you crazy?” Maurice shouted at Sophie.
“Stop it! Just stop it,” Sophie snapped at Maurice with bored agitation. “Give her those.” She tapped a small pocket on the side of the backpack.
Sophie and Maurice started loudly arguing in French, but Maurice halted when Sophie aimed the gun at him. With a frown, he begrudgingly reached into the small side pocket, tossing a used, worn-out matchbook toward Emma.
The matchbook spun like a square Frisbee, ricocheting off the tips of Emma’s outstretched arms and fingers. She held a gasp as they fell upon the moist ground.
Emma got on her knees and ran her hands with outspread digits everywhere along the muddy debris until the matches were found. She stood up, and held them tightly. She eagerly opened the pack, reading the letters above its worn cover. A cute, green fairy winked from the matchbook cover at her. “Spectacular-Spectacular,” Emma said to herself, briefly glancing down and then up again. “This was the club we passed on the way here tonight.” After a moment, she opened the matchbook. “Hey! There’s only five matches here!” Her forehead compressed layers of rippled skin.
“Yes, and I suggest you use them wisely,” Sophie callously replied.
“But wait…” Emma extended a mucky hand.
“Like I said, that’s all I can do.” Sophie cut into her words.
Maurice, dazed, with rapidly blinking eyes, turned the opposite direction. He leaned on Sophie while holding his bloody head, and together the two walked down the tunnel from the direction they had come.
Sophie, without another word, trod backward, holding the gun on them, switching it between Emma and Killian, and once she was far enough away, she simply uttered, “I’m sorry.” Sophie hinted honest regret. But she, along with Maurice, promptly turned, fading into the choking darkness until they had disappeared from view.
When Sophie left, so did all remnants of any light. A hopeless dark reigned over Emma and Killian, stifling all thought, crushing even the happiest of memories, and raiding the senses until misery finally had its long awaited company.
As an unlimited black plague of darkness engulfed her, Emma yelled one more time, “No…wait!”
Killian nudged her arm, putting his hand on her shoulder. “It’ll be all right. We’ll get out of here, and they’ll get what they deserve.”
The early stages of panic attacked, rushing in with burning sternal pain. “What?” Emma panted, while rubbing at her upper, middle chest. “You mean like stupid Karma, or something?” She yanked her shoulder away, claiming it back from Killian’s comforting, rested hand.
“Yeah, I guess, kind of like Karma,” Killian evenly replied.
Emma barked at him, “Don’t be so dumb!” Her anxiety rose as her breaths shortened. “Karma doesn’t exist!”
A dark so thick enclosed the tunnels like a noose around her neck. The black, unholy darkness choked and erased even Emma’s own hands from her view. She waved them back and forth in front of her face, feeling only the movement of air, without any sight of her own limb. Now annoyed, frustrated, and fearful, her once pleasant tone inflected angry dirges upon Killian. Expressions the darkness had taken from her face, lent to her voice having a considerable uptick in anger and fear.
“Listen, I’m sorry,” Killian said. “But we really should try to focus and find our way out of this hellhole as you like to say.”
“Go away! I hate you!” Frightened anxiety surrounded and trapped Emma. She
felt locked in a restricted, festering, waterlogged doom. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” Her frame tensed as each breath constricted worse than the last. “And after I get out of here, I never want to see you ever again.”
Killian stayed silent, he just took her hand and started walking along side. Emma pulled back her control, and began running her fingertips along the bumpy walls instead.
Killian could hear her fingernails gliding against the tunnel wall. “You shouldn’t do that,” he simply said.
“Why?” Emma kept her slow, steady stride, while her fingertips read the wall for directions. “It’s not like you’re any help,” she snapped back.
“If you follow the walls to get out, you’ll just end up in one of the many small antechamber rooms off the main path.” Killian’s somber gist resounded experience and truth. “You’ll never get out, but instead, you’ll just walk around in circles until you collapse.”
“I’m doing this my way, and I don’t need you!” Emma shouted.
Killian inflected willing reluctance. “All right.”
After a few silent minutes of denial, Emma sighed a bothered, yet resigned puff of air. “Okay, I want to go that way then.” She pointed ahead into the solid darkness, forgetting that she could not see her own hand. “We should follow those two…ugh!” She wanted to scream rather than utter Sophie and Maurice’s names. Emma calmed herself with a deep inhalation before finishing. “And if we go back the way we came, I know we’ll get out of here.”
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