Catacomb

by Madeleine Roux

  Abby appeared around the statue, snapping photos as she went.

  “Ew, gross,” Jordan said, catching sight of the open grave. “Don’t tell me there’s a body in there.”

  “Nope, just a single bone,” Dan said. “From a kid. It looks like someone carved things into it.”

  “Oh, God,” Abby murmured, but she raised her camera and took a photo of it, then stopped, a strange, distant light coming into her eyes. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she said, holding her camera near her waist. “I don’t know why I did that, but I shouldn’t have. I’m going to delete it.”

  “Does anyone else get a weird feeling from it?” Dan asked.

  “It’s a kid’s jawbone, of course I get a weird feeling from it!” Jordan refused to look at the hole. He started to walk back in the direction of the car. The wan light shifted over the tree and Orsini’s monument, leaving Abby and Dan in a cooler swath of shadow.

  “We should cover it up,” Abby whispered. They shared a long look, neither of them moving nearer to the thing. Finally, Dan relented, shuffling closer and using his shoe to nudge dirt back over the bone. He glanced at it one last time, noticing that a string had been tied around one end. He didn’t want to know what that was for.

  Dan heard the quiet snap of a camera shutter and frowned.

  “I thought you weren’t going to photograph it,” he said, covering the bone completely.

  “I’m not,” Abby replied. And she wasn’t.

  Dan spun, tracking the soft noise to a clump of flowering bushes back the way they had come. He didn’t hesitate, tearing off toward the figure kneeling next to the bush. He was dressed head to toe in black again, slender and athletically built. Actually, up close, Dan couldn’t even tell if he was chasing a man or a woman.

  It didn’t matter. This time he would catch the bastard. He sprinted, narrowly dodging headstones, his lungs burning as he tried to keep up. The path back to the gate was vaguely familiar, but this stranger was fast. . . . Too fast. Dan persisted, hoping to at least catch a license plate or a better look at the motorcycle. It was the same person from the school—that much he knew for sure.

  He couldn’t keep up. Still he pounded across the cemetery, hearing Abby call after him as his target grew farther and farther away until he or she disappeared around the trees and hedgerows that flanked the cemetery gates.

  “Damn it,” he seethed, skidding onto the pebbly path that emptied out onto the street. He gulped down breaths, glancing left and right. The motorcycle was parked not far from Abby’s car, and Dan mustered a few more jogging steps, but the guy was already gunning the engine and swerving out into the street.

  Dan ran the last of the way leaning over, hands on his knees, catching his breath and staring down at a thick tire tread.

  “Did you see them?” Abby had caught up and Jordan wasn’t far behind. He heard their footsteps as they ran up to meet him.

  “No,” he muttered. “They were wearing that damn helmet the whole time.” He lifted his head and swallowed a lump. “I think it’s pretty clear, though. We’re being followed.”

  The pain was a whisper, dull and annoying, like a voice coming in from another room. He almost wanted more of it, wanted the voice to be louder. At least if he could figure out where he hurt, then he might be able to fix it.

  Dan twisted, flailed, but he was caught. He couldn’t do this again—he couldn’t be that vulnerable, caught, and outsmarted. First the Sculptor—no, Felix—and then Professor Reyes. He had to escape this time.

  His first wish was granted. Pain roared through his hand, his arm, his shoulder, so acute and terrible it burned behind his eyes. Then his eyes opened and he came awake, lurching up out of his seat with a drowned man’s gasp.

  “Everything okay? You fell asleep.” Abby glanced over at him from the driver’s seat.

  Dan grappled for understanding. Right. The cemetery, then a quick drive-through dinner. Now they were sailing through the night, and the last traces of metropolitan comfort were gone. They were so far south he wouldn’t be surprised to roll down the window and taste salt air.

  “Dan?”

  “I just had a weird dream,” he said, rubbing a hand over the patchy growth of whiskers on his face. He still couldn’t manage to grow even a half-assed goatee. “Where are we? I thought we were only a few hours from New Orleans?”

  “Well, we are still only a few hours from New Orleans, but here’s the thing. There’s this library I really wanted to see. It’s the last stop I want to make before Uncle Steve’s, I swear.” Her brows lifted, one half of her mouth curving up in what he knew was a hopeful, testing smile.

  “What did Jordan say?”

  It was then that Dan noticed Jordan snoring softly in the backseat, his music audible from the headphones slung around his neck.

  “I wouldn’t ask,” Abby said quickly, lowering her voice, “because I know Jordan is excited to see his uncle and move in, and we’re all ready to sleep in beds again, but they’ve got a whole box of stuff that belonged to Jimmy Orsini. It’s incredible it even survived.”

  “Him again?” Dan took a lukewarm soda out of the cup holder near his knee and took a swig. “Abby, do you really think telling the definitive history of some gangster guy is going to make things right with your parents?”

  He saw her stiffen at the cavalier way he described—or attempted to describe—her art.

  Abby relaxed her grip on the wheel a little, taking a deep breath. “It’s more than that now. I’m genuinely interested in this. I mean, these local people, people like Orsini—everybody we’ve met has had some scary story or something about him, but where does that all come from? He’s not like Bonnie and Clyde or Al Capone, where you can find all this stuff about him online. It’s like he’s a real urban legend or something. How does that kind of thing happen?”

  “Good question,” Dan said, yawning. “Yeah, maybe there’s something there.”

  “It’s okay, Dan, you don’t have to pretend to be interested. Just let me make this last stop and then I’ll try and shut up about it.”

  “I am interested, Abby, especially if you’re going to take a year off to really work on this,” he said. “It’s a big deal for you. I mean, it’s going to be your whole life soon, right?”

  She nodded, smirking. “One day I’ll educate you about all this stuff.”

  “Hey, I don’t make you read Goethe, right? I can like something about you without understanding it,” he said.

  Dan sank down into the car seat, staring off at the road ahead. He smiled a little, glad at least that Abby and Jordan were there to cheer him up. It was impossible to imagine going through the surprises alone. Sometimes he was 100 percent certain they were meant to be a trio, that somehow, they’d find a way to stay close next year, even after their new lives took them away to new adventures, new goals.

  “So where is this library, anyway?” Dan asked.

  “It’s in a city called Shreveport. It’s closed for the night, so we’ll have to pitch the tent again and go first thing in the morning.”

  Immediately, Dan wished he hadn’t asked. He knew the name Shreveport. It was the last city where Micah had lived before going to New Hampshire. He’d never returned.

  Jordan had been confused to wake up in Shreveport instead of in New Orleans, but he’d gotten over it pretty quickly.

  The city was beautiful, overlooking the Red River and teeming with culture—a welcome break from all the flat expanses they’d seen from the road. The library was in a neighborhood a few miles outside of the city proper, and the route took them past one historic mansion after another.

  Abby consulted the phone in her lap, then handed it to Dan. “Mind navigating? It’s already in the GPS.”

  “In a quarter mile,” he said, mimicking the robotic voice of the GPS app, “turn left onto Shady Oak Road. Your destination will be on the right.”

  She laughed, slowing on a street filled with old shops and restaurants before following his direc
tions. “That bakery on the corner looks cute. And oh, look! They have an ice-cream shop.”

  “It’s nine in the morning.”

  “Never too early for ice cream,” she said with an impish smile.

  They turned into a parking lot the size of a Post-it note, stopping right up against another squat brick building. Only one other car was there, a red Chevy truck in decent condition.

  “Jordan,” Dan said, turning to poke his friend in the shin. “We’re at the smallest library we’ve ever seen. You’re coming inside to keep me company.”

  “Mmf. Can’t I just stay in here and sleep?”

  “No,” he and Abby replied in strict unison.

  The nearby bakery let off a tantalizing perfume of baking bread. That was enough to perk up Jordan, who was promised a doughnut if he managed to stay awake for the duration of the library trip. Dan and Jordan fell into step, letting Abby race ahead, a Starbucks latte from earlier firmly in hand.

  Jordan’s phone buzzed as they passed through the doors of the library and into a thick miasma of dust and old, wet paper smell.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Jordan whispered. “That lady actually got back to me?”

  “Who?” Dan asked absently. He gazed around at dozens of display cases, most of them showcasing Civil War weapons and uniforms. At least seventeen different Confederate flags fluttered down from the crossbeams of the ceiling. A cheerful young woman in a flannel shirt and denim skirt greeted Abby, lapsing into chitchat with her immediately. She had an adorable, Dolly Parton twang.

  “The journalist, the one who wrote about your mom and dad? I did some Googling. She’s not working for the Whistle anymore, but she’s still in newspapers. I got her new email address from the Metairie Daily and told her we’d come across some old letters she wrote.” Jordan paused to read the message on his phone. “She says she wants to see them, but she’ll only meet in person.”

  “It’s something,” Dan said noncommittally, but his palms began to sweat. There was no denying it; he wanted to meet her as soon as possible. “We should set up a time to meet her when we get to town.”

  “Roger, I’ll ask about her schedule.”

  “Will you two be okay if I head back to the archives for a few minutes?” Abby asked, waiting with the library worker next to the reception and intake desk. “I swear I won’t be all day.”

  “We’ll behave,” Jordan promised.

  Abby smirked and followed the girl down the corridor and through a pair of swinging doors. Two open archways led off in opposite directions from reception. Dan drifted through the one on the right, hands in his pockets, his thoughts far away from the shelves upon shelves of musty-smelling books.

  A few limp puppets spilled out of a crate in the corner, surrounded by low, child-sized bookcases filled with suitably colorful titles.

  Dan went to the grimy window overlooking the parking lot. There was no sign of a motorcycle, just the quiet stretch of shops and one of the bakery assistants taking a smoke break on the back steps.

  “Man, the South is messed up,” Jordan muttered. Dan found his friend a few shelves away, perusing a glass-cased display of open photo albums and vintage books. “Like, what about that says fun to you? Revelers Take to the Streets in New Orleans. . . . I’m sorry, but I would not revel in an outfit like that. That is not an outfit for reveling.”

  Dan examined the photograph in question and its description, laughing quietly. The row of men in hoodies and primitive animal masks did, in fact, look less like a party and more like a horror show. He couldn’t make out anything behind the eyes of their masks—rabbit, cat, pig, fox—and the dead stares of the animal faces seemed to follow him as he slid away from the case.

  “What are you doing?” Dan said, noticing Jordan and checking to see that they weren’t being watched. Carefully, Jordan had plucked at the brass latch on the display case. It wasn’t locked, and the case swung open.

  “Nobody’s here, and anyway, I want to see if there are any pictures from around Uncle Steve’s house. He lives right there in the city. He’d get a kick out of it.”

  At least Jordan had the sense to handle the old book gingerly, drawing it out and placing it down on the next case over. Jordan turned each page delicately, revealing more photographs of “revelers” in the animal masks. Dan watched the descriptions of the photos go by—Jazz Festival on Bourbon Street Draws Record Crowd; Riverboat Runs Aground, Five Dead; Jimmy “Spats” Orsini to Hang on March 3 . . .

  “Whoa, stop.” Dan put his hand down on Jordan’s, forcing him to go back a page. “Abby will want to see this.”

  “Good catch.” After the briefest hesitation, Jordan tugged the newspaper clipping out of its little triangle clips, turning the pages back to what had originally been shown. “Nobody will miss this.”

  Dan hoped he was right. Framed photos on the walls watched them as surely as the hollow-eyed masks, Civil War soldiers staring out at them with blank eyes, as if sitting so long for the photographs had turned the men to stone.

  Dan lifted the book to tuck it back in its case, and a few loose pages shuffled free as he did so, fluttering to the ground. Dan swore, kneeling to pick them up. Just more photos, he realized, and a slip or two of newsprint. One scrap was folded into a tight square. He stood and handed Jordan the loose pages to fit back into the book, but curiosity got the better of him. Unfolding the square, he found another headline Abby might want to see.

  Two Witnesses in Orsini Trial Dead, One Missing

  The headline was the only part of the article he could read; the rest of the story was obscured by what looked like a handwritten poem.

  Dan read it aloud, squinting to make out the messy handwriting.

  Be not too happy nor too proud

  Beware your luck, crow not too loud;

  The Bone Artist steals and then he leaves:

  The page had been torn across at the bottom, the rest of the poem lost to the ages.

  “See what I mean about the South?” Jordan whispered, shaking his head. “What’s the matter with these people?”

  “I’m taking this for Abby, too,” Dan said. “Maybe she’ll know how to interpret it.”

  “I don’t know if I’m proud or disappointed that you stole this stuff for me.” Abby swayed a little, clutching the bottle of white wine Jordan had convinced some guy to buy for them outside of a Kum & Go. She had the news clippings spread out on the tent floor before her, as well as the notes she had taken while viewing the collection of Orsini’s possessions.

  “You can always mail them back if you get a sudden attack of conscience,” Jordan pointed out. He took the bottle from Abby, drinking deeply. “Now see, this is how I pictured this drop-off going. Merrymaking, you know?”

  “Stealing from libraries and drinking ill-gotten booze?” Dan asked. He didn’t feel like sharing in the wine, afraid it might make him emotional and less capable of holding back his eagerness to reach Maisie Moore. They could have been in New Orleans already, but Abby and Jordan had wanted to stay in Shreveport for the day and spend one more night in the tent.

  Uncle Steve had been cool with this. But Paul and Sandy were anxious for Dan to be off the road. At least Abby was pleased.

  “Yes! Yes. We’re going to turn this trip around yet, you’ll see,” Jordan crowed, beaming at him over the shiny bottle mouth.

  “Sorry for all the stops and the camping,” Abby said. “You’re saints for putting up with it. I think things will get a bit more exciting in N’Awlins. Or, well, hopefully the good kind of exciting.”

  “If we make it there,” Dan couldn’t help saying. He turned to Jordan. “Are you going to finish that before you pass out?”

  Jordan hugged the bottle tightly to his chest. “Of course,” he slurred. “I paid thirty American dollars for this crappy wine. I’m getting my money’s worth!”

  Thirty dollars, yes, although half of that had been the bribe that convinced the trucker to buy it for them in the first place.

  “Jus
t take it easy. You’re up first driving tomorrow.”

  Groaning, Jordan recorked the bottle and stored it near their small cooler in the corner. “Damn you and your logic.”

  “Good night, Jordan.” Dan rolled onto his side and then halfway down into his sleeping bag. Crickets and frogs chorused, a constant underlying chirp that sounded disconcertingly close. Dan was accustomed to hearing the same night music back home in Pittsburgh, but usually he had the benefit of a window and walls between him and the creepy crawlies.

  He hadn’t realized how exhausted he was until he woke up again, startled out of a light doze by the buzzing of his phone. Dan groped for his phone in the darkness, though it was hard to hear over Jordan’s snores and the sound of singing crickets.

  When he found it, Dan rubbed his eyes, jolted to greater alertness by the light of the screen. His skin felt drawn and itchy, tightness around his eyes signaling that he needed at least a few more hours to feel truly rested. But he was awake now, and he flicked the lock open on his screen. He stared down at the notification. Facebook. His gut clenched. Two in the morning. Nobody would be messaging him now, he knew that, and he knew what he would see when he opened the app. But he did it anyway.

  Micah had written again, this message more direct than the last:

  g et u p th

  e watch e rs wi ll find

  u

  The watchers?

  There was no time to reflect. Sudden pinpoints of light bounced along the taut wall of the tent. He shut off his phone, afraid to give off even the slightest glow. Somebody was coming. He recognized the up-and-down bounce of the flashlights moving in time with footsteps.