The Catacombs (A Psychological Suspense Horror Thriller Novel) Read Free

jealous if it were?”
    “Immensely.”
    “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