Tunnel of Bones

by Victoria Schwab

  Adele nods thoughtfully. “Where do you think he went?”

  “That’s a really big question,” I say. “And to be honest, I don’t know. Somewhere we can’t follow. But the important thing is, he’s not trapped anymore. And he’s not lost. He’s free.”

  Adele smiles. “Good,” she says. “Thank you, Cassidy.”

  “I couldn’t have done it without your help,” I say. I look to Jacob. And yours.

  Jacob manages a sad smile but says nothing—he’s still acting strange.

  Adele plucks a lollipop from a jar by the chest of drawers and offers me one. I take it, unwrapping a bright yellow candy. Lemon.

  “I never liked lemon,” says Jacob, even though I know he’s just sulking because he can’t eat sugar.

  “More for me,” I say absently.

  Adele’s eyes widen. “Were you talking to Jacob?” She looks around. “Is he here with us?”

  And Jacob, in response, reaches out and raps his knuckles on the windowpane. It gives a tiny shudder, like a pebble hitting glass.

  Adele whips around, and I watch, half-amused, half-concerned, as Jacob fogs the window and draws his finger through the mist. A smiley face.

  Adele beams. “So cool.”

  “Anyway,” I say, pulling the photos from my camera bag. “I wanted to bring these back. I’m sorry they got a little dirty.”

  That’s an understatement.

  One has a dusty shoe print. Another is torn almost in two.

  Adele takes the photos, pressing them to her chest.

  “Thank you,” she says, before digging the pouch of sage and salt from her pocket. “I should give this back,” she says, holding it out.

  “Keep it,” I say.

  “Yeah,” adds Jacob, sniffling.

  Adele smiles and puts the pouch away.

  “I guess this is goodbye,” I say.

  “No,” says Adele. “À bientôt.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “See you soon.”

  She smiles, and I have the strange feeling she’s right.

  I find Mom and Dad across the street, sitting at an outdoor café, drinking coffee and eating croissants. Jacob trails a step behind me. He’s been quiet all morning.

  Though the truth is, he’s been quiet since the Catacombs last night. Since even before that. I know he can hear me wondering, worrying about his silence, but he doesn’t offer an answer, and I force myself not to ask. He’ll talk about it when he’s ready. I hope.

  I sink into the chair across from Mom and Dad, and reach for the last bite of croissant on Mom’s plate. She snatches it before I can get there and pops the bite into her mouth with a wicked smile. Then she hands me a paper bag with an entire pain au chocolat inside.

  I grin. “Merci,” I say around a mouthful of pastry.

  Dad checks the time on his phone. “We have one more place to go.”

  I’m confused. “But the film crew is gone. I thought we were done.”

  “This isn’t for the show,” says Mom. “No Inspecters today. We can just be a normal family.”

  At that, Jacob’s mouth finally crooks into a faint smile as he whispers:

  “Paranormal.”

  You can’t go to Paris without seeing the Louvre,” says Mom as we cross the palace courtyard. “It’s simply not allowed.”

  That’s where we’re going: the Louvre, that big museum marked by the glass pyramid at the end of the Tuileries.

  This place is massive. There are whole wings dedicated to different countries, different periods of time. There are statues and paintings, tapestries and tiles, sculptures and antiques. Fragments of the past. It would take weeks, maybe even years to see everything, but we only have a couple of hours, so we jump from one exhibit to the next with all the other tourists. In one room, a large crowd gathers around a tiny painting, and when we get close enough, I see that it’s the Mona Lisa. I always thought it would be bigger.

  Jacob walks next to me, not really looking at the art but past it, through it, somewhere else. For the hundredth time, I wish I could read his mind the way he reads mine.

  As we head downstairs, I can feel the tap-tap-tap of ghosts. The Veil ripples around me, but it’s not until we reach the Egypt wing that I learn why.

  “Do you see those marks?” asks Mom, gesturing to the inside of a sarcophagus. “Those are from a person’s nails.” She waggles her fingers. “It means they were entombed before they were dead.”

  “Nope,” says Jacob, and I have to agree with him, grateful when we move on to a hall of marble statues.

  “It’s important to take care of the past,” muses Dad as we walk between exhibits. “To revisit it, to study and learn. Understanding the past helps us move through the present and discover the future.”

  And remembering the past helps us move on, I think. Helps us let go.

  Jacob begins to fall behind, first one step, then two. Until I look over my shoulder and see that he’s not there. My parents, arm in arm, stop to examine a statue, and I drift away from them, promising I’ll be right back. For once, they let me go.

  I find Jacob, sitting on a bench on the other side of the room. He’s staring at piece of stone inside a case, the carvings on its face worn away to almost nothing.

  “Hey,” I say, coming to stand beside him.

  “Hey,” he echoes, keeping his gaze ahead.

  He’s quiet for a long moment, and then he lets out a shuddering breath.

  “Cass,” he says slowly. “I’m ready to tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “What happened to me.”

  I stiffen. I’ve always wanted to know, but I also accepted the fact that Jacob didn’t want to share. I couldn’t blame him for that, not really—who wants to think about the way they died, what they lost?

  “Are you sure?”

  His voice, when he answers, is so low I barely hear. “Yeah.”

  He looks down at his hands on his knees, and we both see it—the way his fingers rest on his jeans. He’s not as transparent as he used to be.

  “Jacob,” I say. “If you’re not ready, you don’t have to—”

  But he cuts me off. “I still remember. But I also know the only difference between me and Thomas is the fact I haven’t forgotten yet.”

  “But that’s not the only difference,” I remind him. “You also have me.”

  “Exactly,” says Jacob. “That’s why I’m telling you. So that if I ever start to forget, you can help me remember.”

  I exhale shakily. “Okay,” I say. “I’m listening.”

  He runs both hands through his hair, links them behind his head. It’s a pose I’ve seen him strike a hundred times, but his face has never looked like this. Serious and sad.

  I can’t help but think of the boy I saw in the shards of mirror, the other version of Jacob, lost and gray and floating. But this Jacob is different. He’s right here beside me, his eyes closed, his brow creased, his whole body tensed against the truth, even as he says it.

  “Ellis Hale.”

  “Who’s that?” I ask.

  “Me.” His eyes drift open. “I mean, that’s my name, the rest of it. Jacob Ellis Hale.”

  Jacob Ellis Hale.

  It’s so weird, but those two extra names, they make him seem … real. Which is insane, because Jacob’s always seemed real to me. But I’ve also only ever known him as he is now, with his messy blond hair and his superhero shirt and his jeans, constant, unchanging—

  “Dead,” he finishes for me.

  It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him use that word, and he scrunches his face up a little as he says it, as if it tastes bad.

  “I was born in Strathclyde—that’s in upstate New York—but we moved to Landing when I was eight.”

  Landing—that’s the town right next to mine, the one on the other side of the river.

  “Eight hundred and fifty-seven days. That’s how long ago it happened, if you keep track. Which I do.”

  I
don’t have to tell him that I keep track, too, that I count every day from the one I (almost) drowned. For me, that number is 392. I’m not even sure I try to keep track; I just wake up every day knowing.

  As for Jacob, I do the math in my head, or at least I try—I’ve never been all that good at math—and I’m still trying to carry the one when he says, “Two and a half years.”

  Two and a half years.

  That means, if he were still alive, he’d be almost fifteen. I knew he was older than me—he had to be. After all, we’re the same age, but he died before I drowned.

  “For what it’s worth,” he says, “I don’t feel any older. Maybe it’s the whole ghost thing.”

  “Maybe boys just mature slower,” I tease.

  He smiles weakly.

  “Sorry,” I say. “Go on.”

  He takes a slow, steadying breath. “Anyway, me and my brothers—”

  Brothers. Family. My mind goes to Thomas and Richard, to the strange weight that’s been hanging in the air around Jacob ever since we learned the truth of Thomas’s story.

  “You have brothers?”

  “Yeah.” A new light comes into his eyes then. His smile is sad and sweet at the same time. “Two of them. Matthew, he was sixteen, though I guess he’s older now. Probably off in college. And Kit, well, Kit drove me crazy. He was only seven when …”

  Jacob lets out a low breath, then inhales deeply, as if he’s about to dive into deep water.

  “Kit had this action figure he loved, Skull from Skull and Bones. I gave it to him for his seventh birthday, and he took it everywhere. To school. To bed. Even in the shower.” He laughs softly. “So we were at the river, and of course Kit had the action figure there, too. I told him not to take it into the water. I told him he’d lose it. But little brothers …” He shakes his head. “They don’t always listen. All it took was one good wave, and Kit lost that stupid toy.

  “I was swimming when it happened. I came up for air and saw him sitting on the bank, sobbing. I got out, thought he must be hurt or something. He was so upset. Threw a wicked tantrum. So I did what I had to do. I dove back in.”

  I close my eyes as he talks, and it’s weird, but I swear I can see it—the river, quick-flowing in summer. Jacob’s little brother, his knees drawn up on the bank. I don’t know if it’s just my imagination, or because we’re connected, but if it’s the second, this is the first time our mental link has gone both ways.

  The first time I’ve seen into Jacob’s head.

  The first time he’s let me.

  “The action figure was heavy,” he explains. “It had these weights in it, so you could make it walk along the bottom of a bathtub, that kind of thing. So I knew it was probably somewhere on the bottom of the river. It took three or four dives before I saw it, but when I dove down to get it, it was wedged under a stick or something. Took me a few seconds to get it free, and I almost had it when …” He clears his throat. “I don’t know, Cass. To this day, I really don’t. The current must have picked up. It did that sometimes. Churned up rocks and logs, sent them sailing low along the river floor. All I know is something hit me, something hard, and the world just … stopped.”

  Jacob swallows hard. “And that was that.”

  Four small words.

  The difference between life and death. My head spins, reeling. I don’t know what to say, but I have to say something, and I know better than to say something like sorry.

  I’ve only ever known Jacob the Ghost. What that really means is that I’ve only known Jacob from the point when he entered my story. I didn’t think so much about the fact that he had a story of his own. A whole life, short as it was, before we got tangled up, before he became my best friend.

  Now it’s like he’s filling out in front of me, becoming solid. Alive.

  “Did you ever try to go back to them?” I whisper.

  “You’re asking me if I haunted my family?” Jacob grits his teeth. “No. I … couldn’t. Not at first. I couldn’t leave the river.”

  Of course. It was his Veil.

  “And then, after I met you, and I could leave … I was— I guess I was afraid of seeing them without me. Afraid it would hurt too much. Afraid I would get stuck there. Like the Mirror of Erisorn.”

  I stifle a laugh. “Erised.” That’s the mirror in Harry Potter that shows someone what they want most, but Dumbledore warned Harry that people could waste away in front of it.

  Jacob manages a small smile. “Yeah. Like that.” He looks down. “I really should read those books.”

  “You really should.”

  We both go quiet after that.

  Jacob is done talking, and I don’t know what to say. I’m sad I didn’t know before. I’m glad that I do now. That he’s trusted me with this, his past, his truth, the pieces that add up to Jacob. And no matter what happens, I won’t let him forget who he was, who he is. What he means to me.

  I lean against him, just until the air blurs between our shoulders, and this time, when I feel the slight resistance of his body against mine, it doesn’t scare me.

  Your name is Jacob Ellis Hale, I think. You were born in Strathclyde, New York. Two and half years ago you dove into the river, and last year, you pulled me out.

  You are my best friend.

  In life. In death.

  And everything in between.

  Pauline is waiting for us back at the hotel, sitting on a plush seat beside our luggage and Grim’s carrier.

  She stands when she sees us, elegant as ever in a white outfit and dark heels. She hands me a small parcel. My photos, developed by her father.

  “Monsieur Deschamp sends his regards,” she says. “He says you have a special eye, and that you must have used some clever techniques to get the effects you did.”

  I press the envelope to my chest. The truth is, I have no idea if my camera still works, if the magic lay in a specific part, like the original lens I lost. Or if it’s special because it’s mine.

  Only one way to find out.

  I turn through the photos as Mom and Dad check out of the hotel.

  Among the “normal” photos is a shot of Mom and Dad in the Tuileries our first night, the carnival rising in the background, the light blurring faintly so it looks like fire. Then a picture of the two of them standing on a narrow street, admiring a window full of macarons. The crew setting up among the crypts in Père Lachaise, and Mom on a bench, hands spread as she speaks in the Jardin du Luxembourg. The opera, with its gleaming chandelier before it fell. A photo of Adele, beaming around the white stick of a lollipop on our way to Notre-Dame. And of course, our first trip to the Catacombs, the empty gallery leading to the tombs, and then the tunnels and tunnels of bones.

  I’m proud of these pictures. They’re exactly what Mom and Dad asked for, a look behind the scenes at the making of their show.

  But the paranormal shots, the ones I took beyond the Veil, are something else. Something more. I was afraid that the new lens wouldn’t work, but the magic of my camera clearly doesn’t belong to any one piece.

  If anything, the images are getting clearer.

  The Tuileries, the Catacombs, the cemetery at Père Lachaise—they show up in ghostly shades of gray, the images faint, underexposed but visible. The palace, traced with white from the searing heat of the fire. The tunnels, dark save for the faint glow of a lantern, the empty gaze of a skull.

  There’s also the series of shots I took from the bedroom window of my hotel room when Thomas appeared on the street below. I remember him vividly, standing there, his red eyes tipped up. In the photo, though, the street looks empty, the sidewalk marked only by the ghost of a ghost of a ghost, a shadow against shadows, so faint no one else would know.

  And then there’s the photo I took of Jacob, sitting atop the broken angel in Père Lachaise. The statue is striking in black and white, but the air over its shoulder is hardly empty. Instead, it bends like candle smoke, like the afterimage of a flash when you blink, ghosted onto the mottled branches
between the tombstone and the sky.

  It forms the shape of a boy, one knee drawn up, his face caught in the motion of turning away.

  There’s no question, Jacob is getting clearer, too.

  He moves toward me, and I tuck the photographs back in the folder before he reaches me. Pauline is coming, too. She kisses me twice, once on each cheek.

  “It was nice to meet you, Cassidy.”

  “Well, Pauline,” asks Dad, “did we make a believer out of you?”

  She glances at me, her mouth drawing into a small smile. “Perhaps,” she says. “I will admit, there’s more to this world than meets the eye.”

  We gather up our things, say goodbye to the Hotel Valeur (and the desk clerk, who seems particularly glad to see us go), and step out into the Paris sun.

  As we make our way to the Metro, I can’t help but look down at the sidewalk and remember how much history, how many secrets, is buried beneath our feet.

  “If you had to sum up Paris in one word,” says Mom, “what would it be?”

  Dad considers, then says, “Overwhelming.”

  “Enchanted,” counters Mom.

  “Haunted,” offers Jacob dryly.

  I think for a moment, but in the end, I find the perfect word.

  “Unforgettable.”

  As we wait for the train to the airport, Jacob wanders up and down the platform. I watch as he amuses himself by bobbing a child’s balloon, putting his hand through a musician’s amp as they lean against a pillar, playing guitar. He seems happier, lighter, after sharing his story. I feel a little heavier after hearing it, but that’s okay. That’s how friendship works. You learn to share the weight.

  I stick my hands in the pockets of my jeans and feel the edge of something solid and square. I draw it out and freeze. It’s the data card I stole from the footage case, the one marked CAT for Catacombs. My heart thuds as I look over at Mom and Dad, who are standing together and talking a few feet away. I walk over to the nearest trash can, dropping the card inside.

  That’s when I notice the man.

  He’s standing on the opposite platform, the gulf of the tracks between us, and the first thing I notice is how still he is amid the sea of people.