The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel)

by Jeremy Bates

  “My room?” She frowned. “But—I thought you would let me go? I will not tell—”

  “And what of your friends? You’d leave them behind?”

  “No… But, I mean, when they come to, you will let us go?”

  “When they come around, we will talk. We will come to some sort of arrangement.”

  Her frown deepened. “What kind of an ‘arrangement?’”

  “I don’t know,” Zolan said, and that was the truth, for he only knew that none of them would leave the underground alive. He went to the door, opened it. “Are you coming?”

  Danièle stood hesitantly. “In this room—are you going to chain me up again?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he told her. “You are my guest. You are free to do as you wish.”

  Chapter 51

  A ball of searing light was trapped inside my skull and wanted out. That’s what it felt like when I opened my eyes. I remained still and prayed for the pain to subside. It didn’t, but the white stars cleared from my vision, and I was relieved to find I wasn’t in total darkness. A soft yellow glow came from my right. I turned my head. A half-melted candle and—

  I started.

  Seated on the ground next to the candle was the girl who had visited Danièle and me before. She held a large green book in her hands. Over the top of it emerald eyes studied me attentively. They were utterly captivating.

  For a moment I hoped against hope that this nightmare might be at its end, that the girl’s face would be whole and beautiful, but even as these thoughts flashed through my mind she lowered the book, revealing her cruel disfigurements.

  I focused on her eyes. “Elle…” I mumbled.

  The girl—she couldn’t have been any older than thirteen or fourteen—set aside the book. She put a finger to her ghastly mouth, indicating that I not speak, then picked up a glass of water. She held it to my lips, using both hands to tilt it. The water was cool. It trickled over my tongue, down my throat. I wanted to take the glass in my hands so I could drink faster, but I found my arms were once more secured behind my back.

  The water filled my mouth, poured over my cracked lips, spilled onto my chest. When there was no more, I looked at the girl, wanting to thank her, but my eyes were pulled to her mutilations. She noticed and tilted her face to the side, almost as if she was ashamed, or bashful.

  “My friend?” I said. “Danièle? Where…?”

  “Your friend is sleeping,” she told me.

  I stared. “You speak English?”

  Her cheeks dimpled, as if she was smiling. She nodded.

  “How…why?” I said.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Who taught you?”

  “I taught myself.”

  I must be dreaming, I thought. This couldn’t be real. I was not lying here conversing in English with this hideous thing that spoke like a ventriloquist without moving her lips because she had no lips. “Who are you?” I asked.

  “My name is Katja.”

  “Do you live here…in the catacombs?”

  “I should go,” she said abruptly, and pushed herself to her knees. “I’m not supposed to speak to you.”

  “Why? Who told you that?”

  “My father. But I cannot—”

  “Who’s your father?”

  She became visibly anxious. “I must go.”

  “Wait!”

  She paused in a half crouch.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Don’t go. Please. I…I just want some company.”

  She watched me for a moment, then retook her seat on the ground. She didn’t say anything, and neither did I. I was trying to get my head around this madness. She could speak English. So could they all? No, I doubted that. The others had been different. This girl…she didn’t smell like them or act like them. In fact, she seemed downright civilized.

  So what the hell was she doing living with them?

  I decided to treat her as I would a regular person.

  “My name’s Will,” I said.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Will.”

  Like out of a phrasebook. “Katja’s a nice name.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I won’t tell your father that you were here.”

  She appeared anxious again.

  “I promise,” I reassured her. “I promise. I just want to talk though. I don’t know what’s happening.”

  “You are safe here.”

  Safe? Maybe she was mad after all. “My friend is dead.”

  Her face fell. “I know that. I’m sorry. I should have tried to stop them. But Hanns, he does what he wants. He doesn’t listen to me.”

  “Is Hanns your father?”

  “He is my uncle.”

  “He’s the one who killed my friend?”

  She nodded.

  Hanns. I recalled his yellow eyes. They had been filled with a lunatic hate for me. “I hurt him,” I said. “I don’t think he likes me. I don’t think I’m safe.”

  “No, you are safe now. My father is back. He won’t let anything happen to you or your friends.”

  “You said my friend is sleeping?”

  She nodded.

  “She is okay?”

  Another nod.

  “What about my other friend?”

  “He is there,” she said, and pointed into the darkness where I had last seen Rob.

  “Is he breathing?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  I swallowed. “Why are we chained up, Katja?”

  “So you don’t leave.”

  “We won’t try to leave.”

  “You might.”

  “Is your father like you? Does he speak English?”

  “He speaks English and French and German,” she said proudly.

  I recalled that harsh back-of-the-throat language I’d heard before Jaundice—Hanns—knocked my lights out with the bone.

  German.

  The Painted Devil?

  “What does your father look like?” I asked.

  “Like you.”

  I blinked. “Like me?”

  She touched my nose, my lips. The gestures were oddly intimate.

  “I understand,” I said. “But what does he look like.”

  “Like you.”

  I swallowed my frustration. “Does he control your uncle and the others?”

  “Everyone listens to him, yes.”

  “You mentioned he was away before. Where did he go? To the surface?”

  Her eyes brightened. She leaned closer, conspiratorially. “Have you been to the surface?”

  I wasn’t sure I heard her right. “Have I been?”

  “Have you seen it?”

  “That’s where I’m from, Katja. I live there.”

  She seemed stunned by my response. Her brow knit. “You are not telling me the truth.”

  “Yes, I am. I live there. My friends too—”

  “You’re a liar! No one lives on the surface.”

  “Yes—”

  “No!” She snapped to her feet.

  “I can show you, I can take you—”

  “You’re a liar! My father told me you would try to lie to me. That is why I am not supposed to talk to you.”

  “I’m not lying, Katja. Your father is lying to you—”

  “Stop it!”

  She scooped up her candle and dashed toward the exit.

  “Katja!” I shouted desperately. “Don’t go! Come back!”

  She didn’t.

  I lay awake in the dark for a long while. I didn’t bother to test my restraints. I didn’t have the strength to. Instead I focused on the questions buzzing around inside my head. Why were Katja and Hanns and everyone in her so-called family carved up like they were? Why was Katja so different than the rest of them? Who was her father, and why had he told her nobody lived on the surface? Where did she think I came from if not the surface? Why did the mention of her father instill such fear in her? Why had she come to see me if she was forbidden to do so? Why h
ad Danièle been moved to a different room while Rob and I remained here? Was Danièle really okay? Was Rob really still in this room? Was I really safe for the time being? Was any of this really fucking happening?

  I took a deep breath. It came out shaky. I took another and another until I was breathing evenly. I rolled onto my side to relieve pressure from my burning shoulders. This proved extremely uncomfortable, so I returned to the supine position. I closed my eyes, opened them, closed them, opened them. I felt as if I were floating. I felt as if I were in eternity. I closed my eyes and imagined I was in deep space, floating, as light as a feather, floating through space, floating with no worries, floating, no up, no down, no direction whatsoever, floating and floating and floating…

  I was inside my bedroom closet in the fraternity house. Danièle was with me. We were hiding, but from what I didn’t know. Neither of us spoke, and the silence dragged on. Then I heard movement. It was Danièle. She was moving closer to me. I wanted to tell her to stop making so much noise, but my mouth wouldn’t work. She placed her hand on the top of my thigh. She left it there for several long seconds before moving it onto my crotch. I became aroused. This embarrassed me because I wasn’t sure Danièle knew where her hand was. It was dark. Maybe she thought her hand was on my knee, or on my hip. If she realized I was turned on, she would likely think I was a depraved pervert. This wasn’t the time or the place for sex. We were in danger, we should be focused on survival—

  Her fingers worked the button of my jeans. They were strong, dexterous, efficient. They pulled down the zipper. They gripped my erection and moved up and down, slowly at first, experimentally, then faster and with more friction, faster until my heartbeat raced, faster still, faster until I groaned—and that sound shattered the dream, because it hadn’t come from the dream.

  I opened my eyes and discovered Katja bent over me, her fist pumping quickly.

  I cried out and jerked away from her. She yelped herself and fell backward onto her rear.

  “What the fuck?” I blurted, my breathing coming in gasps.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought—” She seemed about to flee.

  “Wait, it’s okay,” I said, keeping the revulsion from my voice. “I was just surprised, that’s all.” I wiggled myself to my elbows, then rocked forward, so I was sitting upright. My shirt draped my genitals. “I’m glad you came back,” I added just as genially as if we’d bumped into each other in the park.

  “I thought you would like that,” she said. Her teeth were white in the candlelight, in contrast to the bubblegum pink of her gums. She wore the same too-large Icelandic wool sweater and charcoal tights.

  “I did. I do.” I cleared my throat. “I—I was just surprised. I was dreaming.”

  “Do you want me to finish?”

  “No, not now. Maybe later.” Maybe later? “Where did you go earlier?”

  “I returned to my room.”

  “Did you go to sleep?”

  “I tried to, but I couldn’t.”

  “What time is it? Do you have time here?”

  “Of course we do.” She pulled up her sleeve, revealing a yellow Timex wristwatch. “It is four thirty in the morning.”

  “That’s a nice watch.”

  “My father gave it to me,” she said happily. “Do you have time where you’re from?” She folded her legs beneath her, planted her elbows on her knees, and cupped her chin in her hands. A sweet farm girl from a Norman Rockwell painting—on Halloween night.

  “Yeah, I do,” I told her. “What time does everyone here wake up?”

  “Whenever they want to.”

  “You have a rooster? I heard it…yesterday?”

  “His name is Colin. Have you read The Secret Garden?”

  “No… Have you?”

  “Yes! It is one of my favorite books. There’s a girl in it, her name is Mary, who has to go live with her uncle Archibald Craven at his home called Misselthwaite Manor. When she’s there, she hears someone crying in the middle of the night. It turns out this is her cousin Colin. He has some problem with his spine that causes him a lot of pain and to cry out. When I read this, I thought of the rooster, which always makes noise in the early morning. That’s why I named him Colin. We also have six hens. We had seven, but one died last week.”

  “I…okay.” I couldn’t think of anything to say. This was too bizarre. “So you eat eggs for breakfast?”

  “Sometimes. Do you?”

  “Sometimes. Katja?”

  “Yes?”

  “What’s going to happen when your father wakes up?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Is he going to want to speak to me?”

  “I imagine so. But remember, you can’t tell him I visited you. You promised.”

  “I know. I won’t say anything. Do you know what he will want to speak to me about?”

  “Where you came from, probably.”

  “Where—where did I come from?”

  Her brow knitted. “I do not think you are well. I think you need to rest.”

  I licked my lips. “Katja, I think I lost my memory when your uncle hit me in the head. I…I can’t seem to remember anything before I arrived here. I’m really confused.”

  She issued a high-pitched sound, and I realized it was laughter. “That is why you thought you lived on the surface!” She clapped her hands.

  “Yes…so…can I ask you some questions? They might sound strange, but they will help with my memory.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  “What year is it?”

  “I’m not sure exactly.”

  “Can you guess?”

  “Twenty ten? Twenty fifteen?” She shrugged.

  “Why do you live underground?”

  “For the same reason you do.”

  “Why is that?”

  She gave me a skeptical look. “You really don’t know?”

  “I told you, my memory…”

  “Paris was destroyed in the war.”

  “What war?”

  “World War Two, by nuclear bombs. No one can live there. Acid rain falls from the sky, and the air is filled with radiation that is invisible, but it can kill you in minutes.”

  “But it doesn’t kill your father? You said he goes to the surface.”

  “He has a special suit.”

  I nodded. A special suit. Why the fuck not. But at least it was all starting to come together—well, some of it. “Haven’t you ever wanted to see the surface for yourself?”

  “The suit is too big for me. But my father promised me he will find a way to take me one day.”

  “Katja, what would you think if I told you Paris wasn’t destroyed in World War Two by nuclear bombs, there is no acid rain or radiation, and there are in fact several million people living there right now?”

  Her eyes sparkled with amusement. “I would think you really need to rest.”

  “You said you read The Secret Garden,” I said. “What other books have you read?”

  “Oh, too many to count. I have a bookcase full of them.”

  “What kind of books?”

  “Mostly novels. But I have a lot of language books too. My father says learning languages is one of the best ways to pass the time and keep your mind sharp.”

  “Were any of these books published after 1945?”

  “1945?”

  “After Paris was destroyed.”

  “Of course not. That would be impossible.”

  “But have you checked?”

  “How would I check?”

  “Inside each book there is a publication date on one of the first few pages.”

  “Really? I have never seen those. But, no, none of my books would have been published after 1945. Like I said, that would be impossible.”

  I eyed her wristwatch, thinking of telling her it was less than ten years old. But there was no date stamped on it. To her, that was simply what watches were like pre-1945.

  I ground my jaw in frustration. How
did you convince someone, without any physical proof, that an entire alternate history existed?

  I said, “How did World War Two end?”

  “The United States developed the nuclear bomb and dropped a lot of them on Paris.”

  “Why would they do that? The French were on the Americans’ side.”

  “But the Germans were in Paris and they wouldn’t leave. It was the only option.”

  “So what about the rest of the world?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The entire world wasn’t destroyed, right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “How could I? I can’t go check.”

  “You father could with his suit.”

  She shook her head. “It only protects him for a short time. He wouldn’t be able to leave Paris.”

  I wasn’t getting anywhere with this line of reasoning. The worldview fed to her presumably by her father was a simple one, but the logic was sound. My only option, it seemed, was to tell her the blunt truth. Only how would she react to this? Accuse me of lying again and run off? I couldn’t afford that. I needed her. She was, I believed, my only chance of escape. She painted her father to be a just man who would keep me safe, but just men didn’t live underground with murderers and disfigure and brainwash their children.

  I said, “Katja, can I tell you a secret?”

  She leaned forward. “Yes?”

  “Do you promise me you won’t call me a liar?”

  She knitted her brow suspiciously. “I don’t know…”

  “I promised you that I wouldn’t tell your father we’re speaking. You can at least promise me you won’t call me a liar.”

  “Well, okay, I guess.”

  “Not all of Paris was destroyed in the war. Most of it was,” I added quickly. “And you can’t visit it without a suit because of the acid rain and radiation. You’re right about that. I remember all of this now. But I also remember there is another part of Paris where the radiation isn’t bad and you can see the sun and you don’t even need a suit. Not many people know about it. Your father probably doesn’t know either. But my friends and I found it. We’ve seen it.”