by Steven Welch
The sand was getting in her eyes and hurting her face where it struck. She struggled to see. The air was thick with the sand storm and she didn’t know if it was day or night. Strange and horrible bolts of lighting struck and danced and crept like white fingers across the horizon. There was a deep red glow above that might have been the sun or might have been a full moon.
Tiny sparks erupted all around her, like fireflies.
She tried to touch one and got a painful shock, like when you are walking on carpet on a cold day and touch a friend on the shoulder.
Shielding her eyes she looked back at the Girl’s Garden. It was a skinny tower of rooms with the sides of the building shaved away, like the last piece of a big three layer cake, teetering, looking like it might fall at any moment.
And then it did.
The last of the Girl’s Garden came apart into a million pieces as it fell towards the street below, imploding then exploding in clouds of debris.
Was that a scream?
The roar of the old building’s death overwhelmed all for the briefest of moments then became a tumble of noise echoing across the island. Elise dashed away as the billowing waves of dust rolled over everything, whipping to and fro in the ferocious wind.
The old buildings continued to her left, just down the Rue Chanoinesse, past the smoking rubble where the school had once stood.
She ran and ducked into the first alley to get out of the storm.
The passage was dark but peaceful. She continued through past rusted garbage bins and piles of debris covered in sand.
“Notre Dame is this way. Towards the Seine. There must be people there.”
The relative calm of the alley allowed her to gather her thoughts as she walked.
“So I went to sleep. Middle of the night, big sandstorm hits, which is weird because wouldn’t the weatherman predict something like that? Guess they really don’t know what they’re talking about. Maybe a nuclear bomb went off and everyone is hiding to stay safe. The wind causes our old building to collapse. Good riddance.”
Faded posters lined the old walls, hard to see in the gloom. The air was still.
Reddish light at the end of the alley hinted at the street beyond and the Place du Parvis, the square at the mouth of the cathedral. This was Ground Zero for the city of Paris.
“Doesn’t explain the shadow that chased me. Or the blob of poo that looked like it might have once been Agnes. Doesn’t explain it at all.”
She pinched herself so hard she thought she might pee a bit.
I’m wide awake.
She picked up the pace and popped out of the alley into the fury of the sandstorm.
There she was. Our Lady of Paris. The cathedral of Notre Dame towered above the Place du Parvis and beyond her would be the great river Seine, the life of Paris, the flowing, wonderful, ageless river that brought the glory of a thousand years from the sea to France.
Elise loved the cathedral. Those great bells, Marie, Emmanuel and the rest, that rang out each morning like angel calls. Her gothic towering walls of countless sculptures telling stories of love, faith, sacrifice, and compassion. Her guardians, those great gargoyles with views unmatched of the city of light, those stone eyes forever open, always on watch against the end of days. The only place more magical than at the cathedral’s feet was in her, in the golden vast vaulted chamber of worship and hope where humanity’s genius for building things became one with our thirst for beauty and boundless imagination.
When the Allies and the resistance came to Isle de la Cite in 1944 to liberate her from the Nazis, it was the sound of Emmanuel that heralded liberty to all of Paris.
Elise had learned of this in her studies and what a glorious sound Emmanuel must have been.
She was a wonder, and Elise was not surprised to see Notre Dame still stood.
She will always stand, she thought as she ran from the alley, through the sandstorm, across the empty square, and up the steps to the cathedral of Notre Dame where the promise of shelter and sanctuary was sure to never be broken.
Here, in the heart of Paris, in the essence of hope and faith, there would be help.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE MARIONETTE MAN
ELISE STOOD ON tired legs at the entrance to the cathedral, The Portal of Last Judgement.
The freezing sandstorm howled at her back.
The portal was a wonder of carved wood and metal and Elise had entered the cathedral through that door many times since she came to The Girl’s Garden. Sunday mornings, of course, when the girls attended service, but also in those quick moments when she could sneak away and explore the neighborhood, if only for an hour or so.
Elise hesitated because the nave beyond the Portal of Last Judgement was dark. It felt unnatural. The cathedral had always called to her, and she had come to know her way around the vast gothic interior. There was always light, whether it was the sun coming through the rose windows or the hundreds of candles that brought a warm glow to the night, a necklace of stars tended to by the Priests and the faithful.
She mumbled a curse, felt guilty for blasphemy in a church, then moved into the gloom.
There must be someone in here.
It was so quiet. Our Lady of Paris kept the scream of the sandstorm at bay, as if telling it to “shut up, this is a place of holy purpose and we don’t need your noise here.”
Her eyes adjusted as she stood still just inside the cathedral.
There was a dim light after all, a crimson wash that played in from the stained glass windows high above and along the cloisters, and even from the great south rose window. Shafts of soft light revealed the rows of benches before the choir. Behind her were the mountainous organ and towering pipes. Even the sanctuary in the far distance was revealed in the bloody light. The buttresses high above her head remained in black, though, and the darkness was unnerving.
Anything could be lurking up there.
The sand had invaded even here, in Notre Dame. There was dust at her feet and sand the color of parchment was everywhere, sometimes in little dunes as high as her ankles.
She walked forward and deeper into the cathedral. Now that her ears were adjusted she could hear the wind, the ticking of sand against the windows, and soft creaks and groans from the lady herself.
There was no movement.
Elise had half expected and half hoped there would be a congregation inside, huddled in the safety of the great church, sharing food and water and stories of survival. If there was a place in all of Paris where people could be safe, this was it.
“Where are you? Is anybody here?”
Speaking above a whisper in the cathedral was rude, so her voice was timid and low.
Yes, but circumstances were weird. What if there’s something bad in here? If I call out like an idiot maybe there’s a friend and maybe there’s something else. Maybe me calling out is like ringing the dinner bell at The Girl’s Garden and all of these skeleton corpse zombie shadows will rise from the pews and come after me with a thousand eyes and teeth like knitting needles.
And maybe I should stop freaking myself out, she thought.
“Hello? Is anyone here?”
Louder.
“Is anyone here?”
Louder still and this time with tears as the fear and the confusion overwhelmed her.
The sound of her trembling voice echoed in the cavernous place, bouncing from wall to wall and beyond, then disappearing into the silence.
What if I’m alone?
There she was, Elise St. Jacques, a terrified speck in jeans and a sweatshirt standing alone in the cavernous heart of the cathedral of Notre Dame, washing in ribbons of bloody light and dancing motes of dust, a single frail child in an eternal space.
“I’m just a kid!”
She felt silly and stupid.
Who cares if I’m a kid?
Who cares?
Something moved above her in the blackness and it made a sound like bones grinding against rock.
El
ise looked up.
He came down from the ceiling on strings like a spider down a web.
Elise didn’t even have time to jump back. There was a giggle, a dirty smiling face an inch from her nose, breath like one of those awful sausages the ladies served on Thursdays, the kind made of innards stewed in the juices of a cow’s stomach.
Then, just as quickly, the man ascended back into the darkness.
Well that just happened, thought Elise.
Another giggle from the darkness above. An odd springy sound. Then, a shrill voice.
“Once more into the breach.”
He descended with a mad and ferocious howl. Elise stood her ground and he was there again, a dirty old man’s face with gums where teeth had once lived, smiling at her madly, white spittle flying from his thin lips.
“Bonjour, mon fil,” the old man said and then he was yanked back to the ceiling.
“I’m not French,” Elise shouted as he went.
There was a moment of silence.
“Neither am I.”
He descended slowly this time, tugging on a series of ropes at his waist that allowed him to control his speed. It made a creaking sound as he went. Elise studied him, afraid but too curious to run.
The man was dressed in a ragged and filthy blue suit. He wore a necktie. His hair was gone and his bald head was dark with soot. He was harnessed into a complex system of ropes. Wait, not ropes, really. They were ropes fashioned out of scraps of clothing, fabrics, even in some places plastic bags. These strings were attached to something hidden at the ceiling and he was attached to them like a marionette.
He was a marionette man, and he dangled a few feet above Elise, just out of reach.
“The guidebook said this would be a two hour walking tour,” the man said in a thick Liverpool accent, “English speaking guide, comfortable pace, ice-cream licking, and historical anecdotes delivered in a breezy and whimsical manner.”
The man scrunched up his face.
“Bollocks.”
“Who are you?” asked Elise.
“Clean as salt, fresh clothes, your own teeth, not scarred up with suction marks, the better question my dear is, who are you?”
“Elise St. Jacques.”
“You’re making it up.”
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“Stop it.”
“You’re not real,” the man said, “don’t think I know? Think I just tumbled out of the old turnip truck, eh? Just another spiteful little spirit, just another bit of undigested rat, there’s more gravy than grave to you, child.”
“That’s Charles Dickens.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Oh, no it isn’t.”
With that, the marionette man ascended and let out a rude fart as he went.
“Now you’re just being gross,” Elise shouted into the darkness.
“You want a gruyere with that chardonnay?”
“What?”
“You want cheese with that wine?”
The strange marionette man opened his arms wide as he descended and addressed the cathedral.
“Savior, why do you send me an idiot ghost when I’ve been so good at cleaning your house? Why do you vex me so, oh great and holy ghost in the sky what has done us a real trick?”
Once more he dangled inches from her face.
He tooted again.
Elise had been scared. Now, she was annoyed.
Besides, she thought, this old freak was so wrapped up in his own twine there was no way he could catch her before she got away.
“My name is Elise St. Jacques. I was trapped in the stupid Girl’s school down the street and now I’m no better off than I was before. I’m twelve years old and I’m not scared of you.”
“Well, good. No reason to be scared of me.”
“Well good. Now, why are you dangling from the ceiling?”
“Where else should I dangle? Safe as houses in here, and not a speck of wind or spark of lightning.”
“Where is everyone?”
The marionette man was startled by the question.
“What?”
“The people. What happened to the people? Where is everybody?”
“Not following you, kid. You mean, the people people?”
Elise was so frustrated that she could scream.
“What happened to Paris?”
“Oh. Where have you been, little one?”
The marionette man descended. There was concern in his eyes, but more than that there was wonder and fear.
Elise stepped back. The man didn’t unharness from his strange contraption but he was practically standing on the floor of the cathedral.
“Where did you come from, girl?”
Elise was silent.
“You don’t know where the people are? You don’t know what happened in The Great Turn? There are at least three thousand three hundred and thirty three odd and horrible things that have happened since my holiday went daft, and that’s just me. Multiply the odd and horrible by the twelve million people who lived in the city and by the seven billion people who lived in the world with their flat screens and Big Macs and iMacs and terrorism and refrigerators and video nasties and polar bears and Googles and hypermarkets. Odd and horrible to the infinite that’s what this is. They say the ocean just got sucked away like water down the bathtub drain. How can that happen? Where are the bloody people, you ask? Good bloody question, I say. What happened to bloody Paris? What happened to me? What happened to my Cecile? What happened to my family? What happened to YOU?”
His shout rang out like a gunshot through the cathedral halls. Elise waited for the echo to recede before speaking.
“I don’t know. I woke up. That’s all. I went to sleep, and I woke up and everything was changed. Is this a dream?”
The marionette man chewed on this for a bit, then he began to reel himself back up and away from Elise.
“Maybe it’s you. It’s been ten years gone, child. If what you say is God’s truth to my ear, if you went to sleep and woke up to this mess, you haven’t aged a day in all that bloody time. You’re a devil and God help us, maybe it’s you what done this to the world.”
Fear swept over his face as he lifted away. Elise had seen fear like that before, in her mirror after her Dad died.
“You go away from here, girl. You go away from here and leave me alone.”
Like a spider scurrying back into its web, the marionette man disappeared into the gloom above; the only sound the creaking of the pull that kept him aloft.
The red shafts of light from outside Notre Dame became brighter. Elise had no idea what time it was, but it looked as if the sun might be on the rise.
She needed a better look at the city and she knew just where to go.
CHAPTER SIX
THE CRAB AND LE BAT
HER LEGS WERE numb from the climb.
To the left of the front facade of the cathedral was a corkscrew stairway that had led Elise three hundred and eighty seven stone steps up past the giant bell and on to the top of Notre Dame’s South Tower.
Elise had been there many times, and she knew this was one of the best views of Paris, one of the best views of anything in the whole wide world.
The foul dust hadn’t drifted into the stairwell passage. Inside, it was clean and quiet and she felt somehow safe. The glow of the rising sun led her upwards.
Elise stepped out into the cold and onto the platform at the top of the cathedral of Notre Dame. The wind was dying down, and the dust wasn’t so bad. The lightning was gone. The sun was rising, huge and red, off to the horizon, and its light made the city the color of a fresh rug burn.
Oh, but she could see. She could see for miles. The sandstorm was just a whisper, and she pulled away the torn cloth that covered her mouth so that she could breathe freely.
Off to the north was Montmartre, to the south the towers of St.-Sulpice. Beyond was the Eiffel Tower, that iron and steel dagge
r aimed at the heavens. Elise walked along the rooftop observation area. The safety cabling that had been in place to keep you from falling was battered and bent and even torn away in some places.
The gargoyles and chimeras still kept watch over the city, but their skins had been scoured and pockmarked by the sandstorms. This made her sad. She wondered for a moment if she could gather blankets, climb out, and cover them up to protect the gargoyles from the storm.
Probably a bad idea.
Elise had named them on her many trips to the top of the cathedral. There was Edgar, and Ian, and over there was the chimera she called Ruth. Ruth the Truth, because in Elise’s imagination Ruth was the chimera who held all the centuries old secrets of the Isle de la Cite, of Paris herself.
Wait, that one’s new.
There was a sand covered something off the her left, far along the edge of the cathedral. It was stone still as any of the other gargoyles, but she recalled nothing ever being in that spot.
Sand drizzled from it as if it had moved. Elise froze. It shifted slightly.
Oh, it had definitely moved. This wasn’t a gargoyle at all. A bird? A bird covered in sand from the storm? No, not a bird. It was as big as Elise.
The thing shook like a dog shedding water after a bath and sand flew everywhere.
Elise ducked behind the wall of the roof and her heart felt as if it was going to jump out of her chest and run away.
She heard a clacking sound, like crab claws, and that was enough. Elise scrambled backwards and dove for the stairwell.
Before she ducked back down the steps she dared a quick look at what was perched on the edge of the cathedral.
It was a plump, red crab the size of a big dog and it had eyes on stalks that were looking right at her.
Elise ran out of Notre Dame at a sprint and into the street. She dashed past a bent and battered street light and around a corner. She ran hard, not looking at anything but what was ahead of her.