by Jeremy Bates
“I do not believe you.”
“I would be.”
“You know, Will, I thought we had a good time on Friday.”
“We did.”
“Then why…I have the feeling you…regret it.”
I looked at my cigarette. “I don’t regret it.”
“Then why are you acting so strange?”
I was about to tell her I wasn’t acting strange, but I held my tongue. I suppose I was.
I took a final drag on the smoke and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “Look, Danièle. I like you. But we have been friends for a while now. And then…you know, just like that. Boom. I—it’s a bit overwhelming.”
She considered that, nodded. “Okay, Will. I understand. You just tell me when you are ready.”
I studied her. The delivery was so pokerfaced I couldn’t discern if she was being sincere or sarcastic.
“Anyway,” she said, “that was Pascal.”
“Speak of the devil,” I said, happy to change topics. “What did he want?”
“He is confirming our plans tonight.”
“What are you guys doing?”
“We are going into the catacombs.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Seriously?”
“Why is that surprising?”
“Only the two of you?”
“No, someone else is coming as well. You see, tonight, it is very special. I have something I want to show you.”
She moved her chair around the table, so she was sitting beside me, our knees brushing. I could smell her perfume, a light citrus scent. She extracted her laptop from her handbag and set it on the table before us. She opened the lid and pressed the power button.
While we waited for it to boot up I said, “In what world do people use the semi-colon more than the full-stop?”
She frowned. “Huh?”
I nodded at her keyboard. “Don’t you find it a pain you have to press the Shift key every time you want a period?”
“Hmm. I never thought of that. Perhaps you should have brought a computer from your country, Will.”
“It was stolen, remember.”
“Yes, you left it on the table when you went to use the restroom. That was very foolish of you.”
The computer finished loading. Danièle used the trackpad and navigated to a folder filled with thumbnail-sized videos. She opened the last one in a media player and resized it to fill the screen.
A point of view shot appeared: a video camera light illuminating a grainy corridor the color of slag iron. The ceiling was low, the walls smooth stone. The crunch of footsteps was the only sound.
“That’s the catacombs,” I stated, surprised.
Danièle nodded. “This woman is very far in, very deep.”
“How do you know it’s a woman?”
“You can hear her in the other video clips. She mumbles a few times.”
The woman stopped at a side passage and looked inside. It was a small room. She played the camera over the floor. It was scattered with a half dozen different sized bones.
A shiver prickled the back of my neck.
“Those are all human bones,” Danièle told me. “There are rooms everywhere like this one. She has already passed several others.”
The woman continued along the corridor, but stopped again to film an arrow on the ground. It had been formed using three bones. Ten feet later she came to another bone-arrow.
“Who made those?” I asked. “Other explorers?”
“Yes, maybe.” But she didn’t sound convinced.
The woman pressed on. More grainy gray walls and crunching footsteps. She arrived at a T-junction and paused.
“She is confused,” Danièle told me. “She obviously does not know this part of the catacombs well.”
“Why would she go down there by herself?”
“We do not know she went by herself. Perhaps she went with others and became separated and lost.”
The woman chose left and followed a winding passageway. She stopped for several seconds to examine a wall painting of some sort of stickman. It was at least six feet tall, painted quickly, almost frantically, the limbs spread eagle.
Danièle said, “Watch closely now. She becomes very scared. Maybe it is this painting that scared her. Or maybe she heard something. But, look, she has begun to walk faster.”
Indeed, the woman was now moving at a trot. The footage became jumpy. Her breathing was loud and fast.
Not from exertion, I thought, but fear.
Twice she whirled around, as if to see if anyone was behind her, the camera moving with her.
“She keeps going, faster and faster,” Danièle said in a soft voice, “deeper and deeper, and then…”
All of a sudden the woman dropped the camera. It landed with a bang and kept filming.
“…she just drops it. See! She does not stop to pick it up. You can see her feet disappearing, splashing in the puddles. And then—nothing.”
The footage continued to roll, filming a close-up of pebbles and the ripples in the nearby puddle.
“What happens next?” I asked.
Danièle held up a finger: wait. She used the trackpad to skip a slice of footage and pressed Play. The image was exactly the same.
“What—?”
“Listen.”
A harrowing scream erupted from the tinny speakers. It sounded distant, coming from deep within the black tunnels. It escalated to a banshee-like fever—
The screen went blank.
“What happened?” I demanded.
Danièle looked at me. “The camera went dead. That is it.”
Chapter 2
“What do you mean, ‘That’s it?’” I said, frowning.
“You saw,” Danièle said. “The battery died.”
“And?”
“And nothing.”
“You don’t know what happened to her?”
“How could I? Nobody has ever seen her again.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, I do not,” she admitted. “But she left the camera there. She never came back to retrieve it. And you heard her.”
I sat back. My stomach felt unsettled, as if I had just downed a shot of paint thinner. “Is this for real?”
“Of course, Will.”
“How did you get the camera?”
“Pascal found it.”
“Why was he so deep in the catacombs?”
“That is what he does. He explores, even more than me. He has visited the catacombs hundreds of times before.”
I looked at Danièle, then the laptop, then Danièle again.
“So you weren’t with him?” I said.
“No, I was not.”
“Where’s the actual camera?”
“Pascal has it. I copied the files to my computer.”
“Maybe he’s playing a joke on you?”
“Why are you so skeptical, Will?”
“Why? Because this seems like something out of The Blair Witch Project.”
“Pascal did not make this up.”
“Then maybe the woman did.”
“Why would she do that? The catacombs are very large. As I told you, the camera was in very deep. The chances of someone finding it were small. Also, there is no footage of her. Not on any of the video clips. Just her voice. The camera could never be traced back to her. She would never have any idea who found it, if someone did. Why would she make a joke like that?”
“She was running, right?” I said. “At the end she was running. She was scared. She thought something was coming after her. But she keeps filming? Would you do that? They only do that, keep the tape rolling, in those found-footage movies.”
“No, Will. She was not filming. She was using the video camera’s LED light to see ahead of her. If she turned the camera off—it is perfectly dark down there.”
I chewed on that. “So what do you think happened? She believed someone was behind her. Did someone run past the camera in pursuit?”
“N
o.”
“So who made her scream?”
“I have no answer for that.”
I knew Danièle well enough to discern whether she was pulling my leg or not. Looking at her now, I didn’t think she was. Right or wrong, in her mind she was convinced this was genuine footage. A woman had gotten lost in the catacombs, and she had the unfortunate luck to run into someone who had done something terrible to her.
And why not? I thought. Why was I so adamant this wasn’t the case? Bad shit went on in the world every day. A lot of bad shit. Some truly horrible shit. You could pretend it didn’t, but you would only be fooling yourself.
“Have you given a copy to the police?” I asked.
“The police?” Danièle’s eyes widened in surprise. “Of course not.”
“But if this is real, then something happened to that woman. You need to tell the police.”
“And what do you suppose they would do, Will?”
“I thought you told me once that there are police who patrol the catacombs?”
“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 très 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.