There’s a burst of protesting French from her housemates – mostly involving the word non, which even I can understand – but Luci ignores them. She takes a candle in a jam jar from the Sunglasses Kid, steps into the empty black doorway and turns back to look at me. She’s scared, but her eyes are challenging me to follow.
Something tells me I’m in for a very different guided tour to the one Frenchy gave earlier.
I turn for a bit of moral support from Si, but he doesn’t look back. He’s gone very thin and faint and is clutching his wig in his hands. It looks like he’s staring at something behind me.
I hate it when he does that.
‘Si?’ I say, my blood running cold at his expression. ‘Come on, buddy, you know there’s no such thing as Death, surely?’
‘Mayhap, Daniel,’ he says, his ectoplasm pooling on the floor beneath him like an embarrassing accident. ‘Mayhap. And yet…’
He lifts his trembling hand and points over my shoulder.
‘…how do you explain that?’
I revolve slowly. He’s pointing not into the dark doorway but at the back of the cellar door. I follow his finger. There are deep slash marks in the wood, as if someone has attacked the door in a frenzy, attacked it with some kind of deadly metal implement. An axe perhaps, or a spade, or…
I swallow.
…a scythe?
I look down into the dark as Luci descends, and wish I had something a little less prehistoric than a skull candle to light the way. I glance back at the others. The Sunglasses Kid looks back at me and shakes his head. There’s no confusion over what that means. I give them all my best here-goes-nothing look and pad down into the shadows after the girl.
The stairs go on for longer than I expected, and spiral slowly, so that by the time I turn to check behind me, the doorway is out of sight. When I reach the bottom Lucifane is waiting there. She’s clearly terrified, but trying hard not to show it. Si, on the other hand, is a gibbering wreck.
‘Daniel,’ he dribbles, ‘perhaps I should stay above and watch over the others…’
‘Man up and pipe down,’ I say. ‘You’re not wussing out on me this time.’
‘But, Daniel, if Death himself is lurking below…’
‘Come off it! You saw those slash marks on the door, Si. Nothing supernatural about those. But I’m going to need some paranormal backup either way. If only to deal with Jojo.’
‘Are you really talking with the smoky man we saw upstairs?’ comes Luci’s quavery voice. The cellar of the house is cavernous around us, with a vaulted ceiling the candlelight hardly reaches. The cobwebs are big enough to catch a pterodactyl.
‘Somebody’s got to.’ I shrug. ‘So, Jojo – he was your boyfriend?’
Well, I’m only asking.
A mascara-loaded tear rolls down Luci’s cheek and drops, leaving a perfect shadow of itself that even the best gothic makeup artist could never achieve.
‘He was my brother.’
I wasn’t expecting that. I’m just wondering what to say next when she steps closer.
‘Dan?’
Eyebrow up.
‘If you see him again, you will tell me, won’t you?’
Eyebrow down. I nod.
Lucifane turns then and walks decidedly into the dark, toward the back of the cellar. There I see tower upon tower of crusty old wine racks, though I’m guessing it’s years since anyone actually kept any Chateau Mouthwash down here. She stops beside one that is slightly out of place and puts her candle down. She heaves at it until the whole rack has swung back. Beyond is a gap in the brickwork like a scar in the wall.
‘If you really want to understand,’ says Lucifane, ‘I will ’ave to show you everything.’
10
The Caverns of Bone
I go through the gap in the wall first. Luci is so close behind me that we’re leaning on each other for support as we pick our way down the narrow flight of steps. The candles aren’t enough, so I ask Simon to turn his ghostlight up to max. He’s still muttering things like ‘the bowels of the earth!’ and ‘O, the infernal underworld!’ but at least he’s coming with me.
When we reach the bottom we have to duck through a tiny hole. And I see in an instant that we’re back in the catacombs.
‘You ’ave to know it is there,’ says Luci, pointing at the nearly invisible hole behind us. ‘This is why it is secret.’
‘You mean the cataflics don’t know about it?’
Luci holds up her candle and looks at me.
‘So, you ’ave ’eard of them? I am impressed.’
So am I. I never remember things like that.
‘The first to live in the squat,’ she goes on, ‘found this way in years ago. We ’ave used it ever since. Until…’
But she doesn’t finish. Instead she creeps forward into the dark. I quickly catch her up.
‘Luci, who owns the squat?’ I’ve been wanting to ask this for ages. ‘I mean, the actual building. Surely they’re trying to get you out?’
‘Some bank,’ she says. ‘In South America. The police brought letters from them for a while, telling us to get out. But we ignored them. They do not want anyone to live there, they ’ave boarded it up to keep as an investment. It is disgusting. These days Paris is just one big asset for bankers and businessmen.’
I say nothing. Politics is more Si’s thing than mine. But I can’t help wondering if these angry bankers, or whoever they are, might be doing more than just sending letters to the squat.
Then we reach a metal grill that blocks the way. I wonder what we’ll do now, but I hear a squeak of rust and find that one of the bars just swings out. I climb through after Luci. When I look back through the bars I recognise where we are. It’s the passageway I saw Jojo’s ghost emerge from on my school visit.
Now we’re walking through caverns I remember from earlier. It was all a bit spooky back then, but now, with nothing but candles and an ectoplasmic glow from Si, this place is pretty damn terrifying. Even for me.
Especially when the first skull looms out of the bone wall.
‘Look, something ’as changed,’ says Lucifane, pointing to the pile of spilt bones Baz and I knocked down earlier.
‘Yeah?’ I ask, as innocently as I can. ‘Er… where are we going again?’
Luci heads off down a side passage and once again we are up against a wall of bars that blocks it. She squeezes between two that are slightly bent, and I do the same, almost losing a button from the coat.
‘Now we ’ave left the public part of the catacombs,’ says Luci. ‘We must be careful how we step – it is less certain underfoot.’
We turn another corner and enter a long curving corridor, the walls of which are made up of more skulls than ever, in some kind of odd formation. And I swear they’re watching us. There’s a weird sound too, like a continuous echoing rustle. And that’s when I notice that the skulls in the wall are in the form of giant, deathly letters.
‘ET… IN…’ I spell out as we go. ‘ARCADIA… EGO? What does that mean? My French is, er… a little rusty.’
‘It is not French,’ says Lucifane. ‘It is Latin.’ And she shrugs.
‘Si?’ I say, looking at my sidekick. But if I’d hoped he’d be starting to pull himself together by now, I’m in for a disappointment. The sight of these words seems to have turned him into ghost jelly.
‘It means, “Even in paradise, I am there,”’ he quivers.
‘Who’s where? Come on, Si, quit dribbling and spit it out.’
‘Death!’ He turns to me. ‘This phrase is used of Death. We must be gone from this place, Daniel! We are in the realm of the Great Destroyer himself, deep in the darkest depths of the earth, where nary a beam of the sun above can ever penetrate…’
But I’m off before I can hear any more of this tosh, because frankly, I’m getting a bit sick of all this. Hollywood would kill for an atmosphere like the one Si and Luci are creating, but I’m starting to smell something a bit fishy in all this. Like a herring,
only redder.
As I approach the end of the passage, I finally recognize that weird babbling sound. It’s running water, echoing back up the passageway. And then we’re on the bank of a fast flowing and very pongy subterranean river.
It emerges from one slimy green brick archway and quickly vanishes into another. Two small boats have been dragged up one shore, secured with ropes. Spanning the river, forming the slightest of bridges to the passage beyond, are two lengths of chain, one at floor height, and another near my head.
Luci comes forward and stares down into the stinky flow. ‘Jojo?’
‘What were you doing on the other side?’ I ask, hoping to take her mind off the watery fate of her brother. ‘What’s over the bridge?’
Luci says nothing. She hangs the candle jar around her neck, grabs the upper chain, and then shimmies across in one cat-like motion. I glance at Si, and he gives an elegant shrug. Well, what choice do I have? I shimmy across after her.
11
Danse Macabre
I find myself in a vaulted cavern, even darker than Baz’s armpit. Then I start to see things.
At first it just looks like rubbish scattered about, but then I see that there are cushions down here. And some of the snack boxes aren’t empty, and is that a dead plant I see, with burnt out incense sticks stuck in it? In the centre of the cavern something pale is looming, and I edge forward to scope it out. A thick, ornate stone pillar appears before me, about my shoulder height, carved with cavorting skeletons. And there’s something on it.
It’s an ancient CD player.
I put the candle beside it and glance round. Luci is in the shadows, using her candle to light others, bringing some sense of life to this dead place.
So this is where the cataphiles come to party. There’s even a blood-coloured disco ball hanging above the pillar. It reflects the dancing light from the candles like a galaxy of red stars.
‘I haven’t been ’ere since it happened,’ says Luci. ‘We were dancing as usual. We were happy, celebrating. Then…’
‘You saw the rat?’
‘I saw him!’ And Luci points down in the darkness beyond the pillar. ‘I saw Death!’
I hold up the candle. Is that a further doorway, in a far wall?
I step forward but something gets caught up in my feet. It’s a rolled-up newspaper.
I pick it up, and see that the date is just a few days before. It’s a French newspaper, so that’s about all I can understand. I’m about to drop it when something catches my eye, and my glasses nearly leap off my face when I see what it is.
It’s a photograph of the Grim Reaper. Or rather, a still from some black-and-white film. And there’s a story attached. Even I can pick out the word catacombes in the first sentence.
‘Zooks, Daniel!’ Simon gasps in my ear. He turns up his ghostlight and the article becomes easier to see. Though not, of course, easier to understand.
‘Luci, what does this say?’
She takes the paper from me, screwing her eyes to read in the light of her candle.
‘We are not the only ones. Other cataphiles ’ave seen him too, word ’as got out.’ She looks up at me. ‘A body ’as been found!’
‘A body?’ I say. ‘You mean Jojo?’
‘No, it is someone else, a man. There are many who find their way down ’ere. He was murdered, it says, and someone else is missing too. This is proof, Dan. Now even the press are talking about Death beneath the city. You ’ave to believe it.’
‘Just because it’s in a newspaper, doesn’t make it real,’ I say. Or rather snap, because I’m starting to get annoyed again. ‘And how do they know he was murdered, this body they’ve found? It’s pretty lethal strolling around down here. Maybe he just fell.’
Luci hands the paper back.
‘He was killed,’ she says, putting her hands on her hips and meeting my gaze, ‘with a sharp metal blade. Like a curved sword.’
‘Or a scythe!’ Simon whispers.
I roll the newspaper up, slip it into my coat pocket and say nothing.
Then, and I’m not sure why, I reach up and press ‘play’ on the CD player. There’s still a bit of oomph in the batteries and for a moment some of the cool sounds I heard the first night I was in the squat boom and jangle in the dark. The noise is a shock after our whispered conversation. Luci and Si both look appalled.
I’m about to switch it off and say something else when movement in the dark attracts my attention. There’s someone there – a figure, emerging from the gloom, drifting above the ground. Trailing ectoplasm.
It’s the ghost of Jojo.
I study him carefully. He’s dripping with ghastly light as before but there’s something a little more alert about him now, as if he’s recovering his sense of who and where he is. And one thing is certain – he likes the music.
So I switch it off.
Deafening silence follows, and behind that the babble of the underground river.
Jojo turns to me. He moves closer and closer, until he’s right in front of me. He has Luci’s nose, I can’t help noticing.
‘Daniel,’ whispers Si. ‘You must tell Lucifane.’
But I don’t, not yet. Jojo looks like he wants to speak himself, but he’s making gasping sounds, like he can’t remember how to do it.
‘Go on, mate,’ I say, as encouraging as I can be in the wrong language. ‘Just tell me what happened. What did you see?’
Jojo’s ghostly face contorts with effort. He begins to form a word.
‘C’ét…. C’était…’ he says, in a voice like wafting silk that I can barely hear.
‘He’s here?’ Luci cries, suddenly realizing and rushing to me. ‘Jojo?’
I hold up my hand, but it’s too late – Jojo has stopped trying to speak. He turns towards his sister, and his face becomes anguished again. Lucifane holds her hand out, groping in the air.
‘Jojo?’
The ghost drifts towards her.
‘Lucifane…’
He holds his hand out to hers, and I see her flinch as the cold of it hits her. I’m about to intervene when Jojo opens his arms and engulfs Luci in a spectral hug that would, I’m sure, make even a snowman seem cuddly. Lucifane gasps, but stays where she is.
‘Jojo!’ she cries out, and you can tell by her voice she’s knows it’s true. The candle falls from her hand and goes out in a tinkle of smashing jar.
Then, as quietly as he appeared, Jojo fades, the effort to communicate too much. In no time at all, he is gone, leaving nothing but a tumble of ectoplasm and a tearful smile on his sister’s face.
‘I think it’s time to go,’ I say.
‘But we can’t just leave him!’
‘I think that’s exactly what he wants,’ I start to explain, but I stop when I see that she’s crying. For a moment I wonder about putting my arm round her. In fact, I’ve pretty much decided to give it a go, when something happens to snap us both out of our thoughts.
There’s a sound.
The sound of steps, coming from somewhere beyond the altar, from the dark where the candle won’t reach. And the steps are getting closer.
‘Listen!’ Luci grabs both my arms.
There’s another sound now, a sort of scrunch POCK, scrunch POCK as someone makes their way on the gravel, tapping.
Tapping?
‘I saw a documentary once, yeah? About how some rats can be really, really big…’ I start to say, but give up.
‘C’est lui…’ Lucifane’s voice is a hoarse whisper. ‘It’s him!’
‘Si, quick!’ I’m shouting now. ‘Light it up!’ I point into the dark where the sounds are.
Simon lifts a trembling hand and points, throwing his ectoplasmic glow down the chamber. I was right, there is a doorway there. And as I watch, a figure steps into that doorway.
He is swathed in billowing black, and his hood is deep. There is a curve of white metal above him. He steps into the room with the sound of scraping bone. Si gasps in terror as his light flickers and
goes out.
But not before I see the face that looks out of that hood.
It’s the face of a skull.
12
What’s the French for ‘Aaargh!’?
Thinking back, I’m not quite sure how we got out of there. Simon vanished pretty instantaneously, so I don’t suppose I ever had the chance to stand my ground anyway. Luci pulled me back, I do remember that, and somehow we both got across the chain over the river. And I remember hearing the chain rattle furiously, just behind us, exactly as if someone big was coming across. But we were already running down the corridor, back past the skull letters.
ET IN ARCADIA EGO, eh? Well, maybe freaking so!
All I know for sure is we don’t stop running till we’re up the stairs and back in the squat. We fling the cellar door shut behind us, and Luci rams the bolt home. The others are all there, looking wild at our sudden appearance, and they start piling the rubbish back against the door in a frenzy of fear.
Then Luci puts her finger to her lips, and we all freeze. Everyone is listening. And after a moment, there’s a sound. A rhythmic, throaty sound from the other side of the door.
Breathing.
Heavy, rattling breathing.
And the tap, tap, tap of bone on stone.
As we all stare in horror, the door handle turns.
We watch it slowly rotate till the latch disengages. The door presses inwards but the bolt and the clutter hold it, and the handle falls back. We look at each other, uncertain, then…
SLAM!
Something hits the door with enormous force. A point of metal is suddenly visible, flashing in the candlelight, splitting the wood. Then it vanishes as the blade – or whatever it is – is yanked out. A sound like slow, bony feet grows distant until, eventually, silence returns.
I turn and look at Luci, and find she’s already staring right at me, white as angels.
I adjust the specs.
‘Okay, maybe…’ I say, still panting from the run, ‘maybe it’s not a rat.’
Dan and the Caverns of Bone Page 5