Maxime smiled at his sweetheart and gently put an arm around her shoulders. “These tunnels connect to our house. We’ll try to get back out that way.” He thought he’d heard the door slam shut behind him. They could give it a try, and if it didn’t open, explore these tunnels. There was no way this was all excavated in the week since he gave over the keys to the house. There must be another exit.
Before he could lead her out the door, he was blinded by a powerful flashlight. He saw nothing but white and felt Catherine stiffen under his arm. “What?” He held his hand up in an attempt to block the light, but it did no good.
The beam shifted up toward the ceiling and Maxime briefly saw the face of a furious woman towering a head above him before she brought the flashlight down on his head.
Catherine started screaming again.
The world went black.
***
Maxime crumpled at Catherine’s feet.
The woman who’d caught up with her in the street when she’d been on her way home from yoga glanced in contempt at Maxime, then focused on Catherine. “Who is that?” she yelled.
Catherine realized she was screaming and shut up. Instead of answering the woman, she crouched down and prodded the lump growing on Maxime’s temple. She felt for a pulse; thank God, it was steady. Before she could do anything else, the woman pushed Catherine to the side so she lost her balance and landed with her butt on the arm of a young black woman. She managed not to scream, but scrambled away until she was not in contact with anything dead.
The woman with the red highlights was inspecting Maxime. She pulled something out of her white lab coat’s pocket: a syringe.
Catherine stared numbly, still not in charge of all her mental faculties as the syringe was applied to Maxime’s neck and its content injected.
“What is that?” Catherine croaked.
“It will make him sleep,” the woman said businesslike. “He’s not supposed to be here.” She stared in accusation at Catherine, who felt the urge to say she hadn’t brought him here. Though she had no idea how he’d found her, Maxime no doubt came to save her. Because of Catherine’s hysterics, they hadn’t left in time.
“Who are you?” Catherine asked. It was as if Carrie had walked right out of Stephen King’s book and straight into these tunnels. “What do you want with me? Or him?” She pointed to Maxime, still in an ungainly heap on the floor. Carrie could at least have made him comfortable; he wasn’t going to feel his legs when he woke up if he stayed bent in half like that for any amount of time.
Carrie eyed Maxime with a frown. She answered Catherine, but her thoughts were clearly elsewhere. “Don’t you worry yourself with who I am.” She looked between Catherine and Maxime. “Has the drug lost its potency? You were supposed to be out for another twelve hours at the least.”
Catherine thought of the liquid she felt on her neck before passing out. It was possible she hadn’t gotten the complete dose, but wasn’t about to tell that to her captor.
Carrie came to a decision. “Well,” she said, bringing another syringe out of her pocket.
Catherine scrambled back another step until she couldn’t be any closer to the bodies without stepping on them. She was not getting stuck with that thing again!
Carrie didn’t turn to Catherine. She crouched down next to Maxime again and brought up the needle.
“What are you doing?” Catherine squeaked, but managed nothing more before the content of the syringe had joined the first in her ex-husband’s neck.
Throwing the syringe away toward the back of the room on the pile of bodies, determination was etched into Carrie’s forehead as she addressed Catherine. “I don’t need him and I don’t want him to wake up and make trouble for me. Now, you come with me.”
Despite Carrie’s orders, Catherine got down on her knees and crawled to Maxime. “Is he going to be all right?”
Carrie gave a dry laugh. “One dose makes you sleep so deep it’s impossible to wake you up for twenty-four hours. What do you think a second dose will do? Now come!” She took hold of one of Catherine’s elbows and started dragging her out of the room.
“No!” Catherine employed all her strength to hang onto Maxime’s torso. She was not leaving him there like that. “Maxime,” she sobbed as she hugged him. Her face close to his neck, she could see his pulse beating. It wasn’t going very fast. She was hardly an expert on medicine, but shouldn’t it be faster than that? Though Carrie continued to pull on her arm, Catherine held on and even managed to pull herself closer to Maxime’s neck. His pulse was definitely erratic and slowing down. Catherine could count twenty of her own speeding heartbeats between each of his. Then she lost count as she waited for the next one.
Carrie plied both of Catherine’s arms off Maxime. There was still no pulse. “He’s dying!” Catherine cried. “We have to call an ambulance.”
“Get a grip, woman.” The hard voice was behind Catherine’s ear and big hands took a good hold of her waist. “He’s gone. Here we go!” Catherine was lifted up into the air and thrown over Carrie’s shoulders.
Maxime’s form disappeared from view as she was carried back down the tunnel. All energy went out of Catherine and she let the tears run silently down into her hair.
Thirty-Six
Louis didn’t have much time to hide when he heard heavy steps coming down the tunnel. Praying Marie-Pierre wouldn’t study the room when she went by, he scrambled to the back of the group of dead bodies turned toward the empty pedestal, taking great care not to touch anything. He crouched down behind the tallest man in the group and did his best to stay perfectly still. Her steps hadn’t been that heavy before, so he wasn’t even sure it was Marie-Pierre.
The steps arrived at the crypt’s door and, to Louis’s horror, came into the room accompanied by a beam of light. Louis could only see the black silhouette of the head of the dead man in front of him. He didn’t dare move and fought to control his breathing.
“There,” said Marie-Pierre. She sounded out of breath. A thump, then she sighed with apparent pleasure. Another female voice groaned. Louis saw a hand and a forearm stretched out on the ground a couple of meters from the half-filled sarcophagus. The hand moved, but not much.
“I have a visitor to take care of,” Marie-Pierre said, voice businesslike. “You’re going to wait here for me and not touch anything. Understood?”
The female on the floor only hiccupped in reply.
Marie-Pierre enunciated each syllable. “Did you hear me?”
There was another thump and the hand on the floor disappeared. Louis had trouble wrapping his mind around this second personality of Marie-Pierre’s. One minute she was teary-eyed about her parents, who had been dead for thirty years, and apparently kicking defenseless women the next.
“Yes.” The answer was only a whisper, but it must have satisfied Marie-Pierre.
“Good. Now keep in mind that I had the humane solution in mind for you so I’d get a peaceful expression on your face. If you’re a good girl and don’t touch anything until I come back, I’ll give you the drugs before you go back in the dirt. If you don’t follow orders, I’ll make sure you’re nice and awake when I put on the last load of mud. Remember the face of Geraldine Hérault in that picture?”
Buried alive. That would cause an expression like the one on Geraldine’s face. Louis felt his heart speed up at the thought. Was this where she was killed? In one of those sarcophagi? The half-filled one was clearly for the woman being beaten by Marie-Pierre. She must have escaped somehow while Marie-Pierre was busy explaining her project to Louis. But what about the other sarcophagus? The one filled to the rim? Is there somebody in there?
Apparently happy with her captive’s obedience, Marie-Pierre’s flashlight illuminated her way out the door. When the door closed, the crypt was brought into complete darkness. Then a bolt slammed shut.
The sound of two scared people breathing filled the crypt.
***
Catherine brought a hand down to touch
her ribs. Something had been eating into her ribcage while she was slung over Carrie’s shoulder. Her fingers closed around a rectangular object. Maxime’s lighter. It had been in his shirt pocket when he covered her up. Now he was back there without it. But it meant she had light. Fishing it out in slow motion, she flipped it open. The sound was so familiar it brought tears to her eyes.
Carrie would be back again soon and Catherine was not going meekly back into that stone coffin. She had been instructed not to touch anything. Nothing was said about trying to get out. Catherine spun the lighter’s striker.
It was a small flame, but enough to see a couple of feet around her—no dead bodies in sight—and the outline of the central pillar. Now what?
A sound from the back of the room made her jump out of her skin. An image of the dead bodies actually being zombies came helpfully to mind, boosted by feet scraping on the floor. “Who’s there?” she squeaked in English, partially because her brain didn’t feel like working in French and partially because she knew she was jumping at shadows so would get no answer.
“Oh great, it’s you,” a male voice replied in accented English. Catherine’s heart skipped a beat. An English-speaking zombie.
A faint light came on at the back of the crypt. Catherine could barely make out the back wall. The illuminated screen of a phone came into view and Louis Saint-Blancat stepped carefully past the dead people. “I’m sorry I’m retarded,” he said. “I didn’t hear you were missing until this morning.”
Catherine’s mouth hung open. Her mind went over what he’d said several times before she could make any sense of it. She had to work the French part of her brain to crack the puzzle.
The idiot messed up the translation of je suis en retard, which meant “I’m late,” and used the English faux-ami. Despite the seriousness of the situation, it felt good not to be the only one tripping over words existing in both languages but not having the same meaning. “You’re retarded,” she cackled, then burst out laughing. Her laughter echoed around the cold room, failing to bring any light or warmth. It was purely hysterical.
Louis stopped by the sarcophagus she woke up in earlier, then turned his gaze and frowned at her. “What?”
“Nothing.” Catherine hiccupped a couple of times while trying to stop laughing. “Don’t mind me. I’m a little off tonight.”
“Today,” he corrected with a glance at his phone. “It’s noon.”
“Oh.”
Louis stepped over the sarcophagus and helped Catherine to her feet. “We have to get out of here. She’s going to come looking for me soon.”
So he was the guest. How had he managed that?
“Are you all right?” he asked with real concern in his voice as he eyed her ruined feet, mud-caked hair, and wild-eyed, dirt streaked face.
Catherine waved away his concern. “I’ll be fine so long as we get out of here before she comes back.”
A muscle worked in Louis’s strong, unshaven jaw, but he nodded and walked to the door. He tried to open it, but it was locked. He looked around the room. “Don’t suppose you have any tools we can use to dig our way out of here?”
Catherine pursed her lips and cocked an eyebrow at him, but didn’t want to draw undue attention to her state of undress.
“Right. What do we have?” He patted himself down and, though there was room for a surprising amount of things in the pockets of his leather jacket, only having old opera tickets, a wallet, a set of keys, and a plastic sheep would be of little help. She’d question him on the sheep later.
Sight of the lighter in Catherine’s hand inspired a whole silent conversation to take place, betrayed by his expressions. He looked from the lighter to the part of the room filled with dead people. A wince. His mouth opened and his tongue made a quick trip outside. Back to the lighter, then down at himself.
“What?” Catherine snapped. She had almost forgotten about the dead people. Now it was his fault that she was aware of them again.
“I think I know how we can create a diversion.” Louis stalked toward the dead people at the back of the room. “We need to move quickly. Marie-Pierre will be back any minute.” Eyes hard and jaw clenched, he stood before a dead blond man. “We need to collect their brains.”
Catherine closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, what?”
“It should be flammable and create a detonation. We can use that to distract her when she comes back.” He whispered something to the dead man, then toppled the corpse to the floor. With a wild look at Catherine, Louis asked, “What do you think is the most effective way of cracking open his skull?”
***
Hacking open dead bodies was the absolute last thing Catherine wanted to do. Yet here she was in an old crypt doubling as the setting of a horror movie doing just that. Louis had been happy to discover that the brains of the dead people were yellow and dry. He’d apparently expected it. So Catherine decided to trust he knew what he was doing, ignored her disgust, and followed Louis’s lead. They worked by the light of Louis’s phone propped up against the central pillar. It didn’t help in the least toward making the scene less morbid or scary. As the dead bodies toppled to the floor, their shadows flew across the walls of the crypt like haunted dark souls searching for escape.
Their only chance of getting out of there was to overpower Carrie when she came back. There were two of them and only one of her, but Catherine was still sluggish and had never been in a fight in her life, and that woman was huge.
If Catherine and Louis didn’t get out of there, Maxime’s death would be for nothing. Catherine might not be in love with her ex-husband anymore—probably never was, if she was being perfectly honest; she had been in love with France and everything French—but that didn’t stop her from caring. Maxime had always been a perfect gentleman and an all-round good guy. He deserved a proper burial and a decent resting-place. Not to be stowed away in a room with dozens of other dead bodies.
At first, Louis tried to open up their skulls with finesse, but with neither of them being particularly learned in the human anatomy and with no tools at their disposal, it ended up being a massacre. The heads fell off quite easily—a fact Catherine could have done without knowing—but cracking the skull open took a solid kick to the side of the head. Catherine tried on the ugliest man in the lot, as if that would make it easier, but couldn’t bring herself to kick hard enough. The poor man’s head stayed intact under her bare foot, separated from its body forever. She wasn’t even sure if they’d be able to match the bodies with the heads if they ever got out of here and could give these people a proper burial.
Catherine was infinitely grateful when Louis came over and helped her smash the dead man’s head in. It was easier with shoes on. She noticed Louis looked away while he did it, a grimace marring his handsome features and his white teeth bared on his otherwise dark face.
Not wanting to leave everything to Louis, Catherine helped with collecting the brains. Her entire body shivered on first contact. It felt like sawdust, all light and dry and feathery, but with her hand inside a dead man’s skull, it was impossible to imagine that’s all it was. They used Louis’s scarf—minus about ten meters of fuse which Louis ripped out while grumbling something about three scarves in less than a month—to collect the dried brains.
One brain wasn’t dry yet. The sticky, gelatinous stuff leaking out of a blond woman’s head made Catherine throw up in the sarcophagus and stalk around in the empty part of the crypt, trying to erase the image from her memory.
In the end, they had the equivalent of half a bucket of dried brains. The room looked like the aftermath of a genocide.
“That’ll have to do,” Louis said.
His jacket lay discarded on the floor. His jeans and gray t-shirt were covered in dirt, dead skin, patches of hair, and brain matter in various states. In the light from his phone, the pallor of his skin contrasted with more than his usual stubble and dark eyebrows. He looked like the instigator of the aforementioned genocide.
***
A key sounded in the door next to him. “Good luck,” he whispered to Catherine as he double-checked the lighter and fuse in hand.
The door swung open. A beam of light came into the room. It landed on Catherine leaning against the central pillar. Hair covered in mud, skin even whiter than usual, and wearing nothing but a man’s white-gray shirt, she could have been a modern marble statue. A trembling one.
“Is he here?” Marie-Pierre asked from outside the door.
Squinting into the light, Catherine’s voice was hoarse. “Who?”
“Don’t play with me, Englishwoman. Did the Saint-Blancat brat come through here?”
Louis had gone from valued colleague to brat in a very short time.
Catherine held on to the pillar behind her. Louis didn’t think she was faking her fear. He was near frozen with fright himself. “I didn’t see anyone,” she said.
Marie-Pierre’s silhouette appeared in the doorway. She wasn’t in the room yet, but getting closer. If she continued being so careful, she was going to spot Louis too soon. It was time to act. He waited for the next time Marie-Pierre spoke, then lit the lighter as silently as possible and set it to the fuse.
“Go to your sarcophagus, girl,” Marie-Pierre began.
Louis’s fuse hit the first pile of dried brains. Monsieur de Puymaurin from that old article thirteen year-old Louis found so fascinating had been right; it did catch fire. In fact, it perfectly illuminated one of the destroyed scenes in the back of the room. Louis saw arms and legs jutting out in all directions. Then, detonation.
It wasn’t very powerful, but in the silence of the stone crypt, it made Louis jump even though he’d expected it.
Marie-Pierre turned her flashlight on the back of the room bringing their destruction into light. “What have you done?” she yelled. “You back-stabbing, overzealous harlot! You’ve ruined years of work. You’re going to pay for this.”
The Red Brick Cellars: A Tolosa Mystery Page 21