Tunnel of Bones (City of Ghosts #2) Read online

  “That’s fine,” says Dad. “I’m here for the history. My wife is the believer.”

  Pauline looks at me.

  “And you, Cassidy?” she asks. “Do you believe?”

  Jacob arches a brow in my direction. “Yes, do tell me,” he says. “What is your stance on ghosts?”

  I smile, and nod at Pauline. “It’s hard to believe in ghosts, until you see one, and then it’s hard not to.”

  A small crinkle appears, right between Pauline’s perfect eyebrows. “Perhaps.”

  The server returns with three of the smallest cups I’ve ever seen (seriously, they look like they’re from the tea party set I had when I was five) full of dark coffee.

  “And for the mademoiselle,” he says, handing me a mug of hot chocolate dusted with cocoa.

  He also sets down a basketful of pastries. I recognize the crescent shape of a croissant, but the spiral and the rectangle are a mystery. I reach for the rectangle and bite into it, only to discover that the center is filled with chocolate.

  Paris has just gone up a notch in my book.

  “Pain au chocolat,” explains Mom as I take another bite. Between the hot cocoa, which is rich and thick, and the pastry, I can feel my pupils dilating. Back home, I’m not even allowed to eat sugar cereal.

  Jacob sighs. “I miss sugar.”

  More for me. Buttery flakes rain down on the table as I take another bite.

  Pauline’s gaze flicks up toward the salon entrance and her expression warms. “Ah, the crew has arrived. Anton!” she says, rising to her feet. “Annette.”

  They turn out to be a pair of siblings. They have the same brown hair, pointed chins, and gray-blue eyes. But otherwise, they look like shadows at different times of day—Anton is as tall and thin as a skeleton, while Annette is short and square.

  Pauline kisses each of them twice, once on each cheek, then turns to my parents.

  “If you are ready, we should leave. We will start with the Catacombs.”

  “Yes,” says Mom, brushing sugar from her lap. “The ghosts of Paris await.”

  “What’s a catacomb?” I ask as we step outside.

  “It’s a kind of graveyard,” says Dad.

  “Like Greyfriars?” I ask, thinking of the hilly cemetery nestled in the heart of Edinburgh.

  “Not exactly,” he says. “It’s—”

  “Don’t ruin the surprise,” says Mom, which makes me intensely nervous. Mom’s idea of a surprise has always been less Happy birthday and more Look at this vaguely nightmarish thing I found in the backyard. “Just wait, Cass,” she says. “The Paris Catacombs are one of the most famous places in the world.”

  “At least she didn’t say most haunted,” muses Jacob, right before Mom adds, “And definitely one of the most haunted.”

  Jacob sighs. “Of course.”

  We take the Metro across the city and get off at a stop called Denfert-Rochereau.

  Outside, I notice a placard on a building’s stone wall that says 14e: the number of the neighborhood we’re in. As we walk, I keep my eyes peeled for a graveyard, but all I see are normal buildings. And yet I know we’re getting closer because I can feel the tap-tap-tap of ghosts getting louder with every step.

  The Veil ripples around me, and the beat shifts from my chest to my feet, a heavy bass drumming through the street. Haunted places don’t just call to me. They drag me in like a fish on a line. There’s no hook, only a thread, wisp-thin but strong as wire, connecting me to the other side.

  My parents, Pauline, and the crew come to an abrupt stop in front of a small green hut. It’s plain and inconspicuous, more like a newspaper stand than a place for the dead. In fact, it doesn’t look large enough to hold more than one or two coffins. At first I think we must be in the wrong place, but then I see the copper plaque nailed to the painted wood.

  ENTRÉE DES CATACOMBES.

  “Huh,” I say. “I thought the Catacombs would be … bigger.”

  “Oh, they are,” says Dad, pulling out one of his guidebooks. He shows me a map of Paris, and then turns the page in front of it. A filmy sheet of paper settles over the map, its translucent surface traced with red lines.

  Slowly, I realize what I’m looking at. I also realize why I felt so weird as we walked.

  The Catacombs aren’t in this little green hut.

  They’re under our feet. And judging by the map in Dad’s hand, they’re under a lot of people’s feet. The Catacombs are a coil of tunnels twisting back and forth on themselves beneath the city.

  We approach the door, but a sign on the wall announces that the Catacombs are closed.

  “Oh, too bad,” says Jacob. “We’ll just have to come back another time …” He trails off as a man in a security uniform appears, unlocking the entrance to the little green shack and ushering us through.

  Inside, there’s a pair of turnstiles, like the beginning of a roller-coaster ride.

  We pass through and find ourselves at the top of a spiral staircase wide enough for only one person at a time. It plunges down out of sight. The tunnels below seem to exhale, sending up a draft of cool, stale air, along with a wave of anger, and fear, and restless loss.

  “Nope,” says Jacob, shaking his head.

  This is a bad place, and we can both feel it.

  I hesitate as the Veil tightens its grip, calling me down even as something deep in my bones tells me to stay put, or even better, to run.

  Mom looks back over her shoulder. “Cass? You okay?”

  “Just tell them you’re too scared,” says Jacob.

  But I’m not, I think. I am scared, but there’s a difference between being scared to do something and being too scared to do it. Plus, I think, clutching my camera, I have a job to do. And I don’t even mean ghost-hunting. My parents asked for my help. I don’t want to let them down.

  And so I propel myself forward and take the first step.

  “Everything about this is terrible,” says Jacob as we descend, down, down, down into the tunnels under Paris.

  I used to have this one bad dream.

  I was trapped in a room, deep under the earth. The room was glass, so I could see the dirt on every side, pressing against the walls.

  The dream was always the same. First I would get bored, and then I would get nervous, and then, at last, I would get scared. Sometimes I would bang on the walls, and sometimes I would sit perfectly still, but every time, no matter what I did, a crack would form in the glass.

  The crack would spread and spread, up the walls and overhead, until bits of dirt came through and then, just as the ceiling shattered, I’d wake up.

  I haven’t thought of that dream in years.

  But I think about it now.

  The spiral stairs are a tight coil, so we can’t see more than a full turn at a time, and they just keep going, and going, and going.

  “How far down are the Catacombs?” I ask, fighting to keep the fear out of my voice.

  “About five stories,” says Dad, and I try not to think about the fact that the Hotel Valeur is only four stories tall.

  “Why would you put a graveyard underground?” I ask.

  “The Catacombs weren’t always used as a graveyard,” explains Dad. “Before they became an ossuary, the tunnels were simply stone quarries that ran beneath the growing city.”

  “What’s an ossuary?” I ask.

  “It’s a place where the bones of the dead are stored.”

  Jacob and I exchange a look. “What happened to the rest of them?”

  Mom chuckles. It doesn’t make me feel any better.

  “The bodies in the Catacombs were transferred here from other graves,” explains Pauline.

  Transferred.

  Meaning dug up.

  “Oh, I do not like this,” says Jacob. “I do not like this at all.”

  “Today,” says Dad, “the Catacombs are home to more than six million bodies.”

  I nearly trip on the steps. I must have heard him wrong.

  “That’s
three times the living population of Paris,” adds Mom cheerfully.

  I feel a little queasy. Jacob glowers at me as if to say, This is your fault.

  We finally reach the bottom of the stairs, and the Veil washes up around me like a tide, dragging at my limbs. I push back, trying to keep my footing as Jacob draws closer.

  “We are not crossing here,” he says, all the humor gone from his voice. “Do you hear me, Cass? We are not. Crossing. Here.”

  He doesn’t have to tell me.

  I have no desire to find out what’s on the other side of this particular Veil.

  Especially when I see what’s ahead of us.

  I’d been hoping for a large space, like one of those giant caves with stalactites—stalagmites? I can never remember which is which—but instead there is only a tunnel.

  The ground is a mix of rough stone and packed dirt, and the walls look dug by hand. Here and there, water drips from the low ceiling. Electric lights have been spaced out, casting dim yellow pools among patches of shadow.

  “Well, this is cozy,” says Mom.

  I swallow hard as we start walking. The only way out is through, I tell myself.

  “Or, you know, back up those stairs,” says Jacob.

  Come on, I think. Where’s your sense of adventure?

  “I must have left it up on street level,” he mutters.

  Mom and Dad walk on ahead, narrating for the cameras. I glance over at Pauline, who’s focused on where she’s stepping, careful to avoid the shallow pools of water, the muddy dirt patches between stones.

  I lean toward her and whisper, “I expected more bones.”

  “We haven’t made it to the tombs yet,” she explains, her voice echoing off the low ceiling. “These are only the galleries. Relics from the days when these tunnels served less grim purposes.”

  The tunnel twists and turns, sometimes wide enough for two people, and sometimes so narrow we have to walk single file. The Veil presses against my back like a hand, urging me forward.

  “You know the only thing worse than a haunted place?” asks Jacob.

  What?

  “One you can’t easily leave.”

  You don’t know it’s haunted, I think, sounding thoroughly unconvinced.

  “How can it not be?” he counters. “Have you forgotten George Mackenzie?”

  George Mackenzie was one of the ghosts in a cemetery back in Scotland. He didn’t start haunting the graveyard until some vandals disturbed his bones.

  That was one man.

  But maybe the stories are wrong. Maybe he was already restless.

  “And maybe they’re all friendly ghosts down here,” says Jacob, “just having a grand old time.”

  Mom pulls out a small box, its surface studded with lights. An EMF meter—a tool meant to register disturbances in the electromagnetic force. Also known as ghosts. She switches it on, but the meter only registers a muffled static as she lets it trail over the wall.

  We reach the end of the galleries, and the tunnel opens into a chamber, the walls lined with glass cases, like in a museum. The glass cases hold text and pictures, explaining how the Catacombs came to be. But the thing that catches my eye is the doorway on the other side.

  A stone mantel looms over it, the words carved in bold French type.

  ARRÈTE! C’EST ICI L’EMPIRE DE LA MORT.

  “Stop!” recites Dad, his voice bouncing off the close stone walls. “This here is the Empire of the Dead.”

  “Not ominous,” mutters Jacob. “Not ominous at all.”

  “In the 1700s,” continues Dad, addressing Annette’s camera, “Paris had a problem. The dead outnumbered the living, and the living had no place to put them. The graveyards were overflowing, sometimes literally, and something had to be done. And so the conversion of the Catacombs began.”

  “It would take two whole years,” says Mom, “to move the bodies of the dead. Imagine, a nightly procession of corpse-filled wagons rattling through the streets, as six million dead were ferried from their resting places into the tunnels beneath Paris.”

  It’s so weird, watching them like this. The way they transform in front of the camera. They don’t become different people, they just become sharper, louder, more colorful. The same song with the volume turned up. Dad, the image of a scholar. Mom, the picture of a dreamer. Together, “the Inspecters” look larger than life. I snap a photo of them being filmed as Dad goes on.

  “For decades,” he says, “the bones of the dead littered these tunnel floors, the remains piled haphazardly throughout the vast tomb. It wasn’t until an engineer by the name of Louis-Étienne Héricart decided to convert the grave into a place for visitors that the real transformation began and the Empire of the Dead was formed.”

  Mom gestures, like a showman pulling back a curtain. “Shall we go in?”

  “I think I’ll wait here,” says Jacob, suddenly fascinated by the glass cases.

  Suit yourself, I think.

  I follow the crew forward without looking back. And even though I can’t hear Jacob’s steps, I know he’s there, on my heels, close as a shadow as we step through into a world of bones.

  The bones are everywhere.

  They line the dirt walls, a sea of skeletons rising almost to the ceiling. They form patterns, rippling designs—a wave of skulls set on a backdrop of femurs, the morbid decorations stacked as high as I can see. Empty eye sockets stare out, and jaws hang open. Some of the bones are broken, crumbling, and others look startlingly fresh. If you squint hard enough, the pieces disappear, and you’re left with a pattern of wavering grays that could be stone instead of bone.

  Our shadows dance on the walls, and I take photo after photo, knowing the camera will only capture what’s here, only see the real. But right now, the real is strange enough. Strange, and chilling, and almost—beautiful.

  “And horrifying,” says Jacob. “Don’t forget horrifying.”

  We round a corner, and as if on cue, the EMF meter in Mom’s hand erupts from static into a high-pitched whine that echoes through the tunnels like a scream.

  Mom jumps, and quickly switches the unit back off.

  “Well,” she says, her voice a little shaky. “I think that says enough.”

  I shiver, unsettled.

  Even Pauline is looking tense.

  “Gee, what could possibly be making her nervous?” muses Jacob. “Is it the fact we’re five stories underground? Or that this tunnel is roughly the size of a coffin? Or could it be the fact we’re surrounded by six million bodies?”

  Six million—it’s a number so big it doesn’t seem real.

  Two hundred and seventy—that’s a better number. Still a lot, but countable. Two hundred and seventy is the number of bones you have when you’re born. Some of them fuse together as you grow, so by the time you’re an adult, you have two hundred and six (thanks, Science class).

  So, if the Catacombs are home to more than six million bodies, how many bones?

  Six million times two hundred and six is—a lot. Too many to capture in a photo. But picture this: It’s enough bones to stack five feet high throughout every one of the tunnels under Paris. An Empire of the Dead as large as the city, the bodies unmarked and unknown.

  Jacob begins to sing, and it takes me a solid thirty seconds to realize what he’s singing.

  “… the foot bone’s connected to the leg bone, the leg bone’s connected to the knee bone …”

  “Are you serious?” I whisper.

  He throws up his hands. “Just trying to have a sense of humor about this.”

  We wind our way through the tunnels, the locked iron gates converting the maze around us into a clear path. I wonder how easy it would be to get lost without those doors.

  “Do you see this line overhead?” asks Dad, the question directed at the cameras as much as us.

  I stare up and see a thick black mark painted on the ceiling.

  “Back before they installed lights and gates, that was the only way to keep people from g
etting lost.”

  I try to imagine coming down here before there was electricity, armed with just lanterns or candles. I shudder. The only thing that would make this place creepier would be being down here in the dark.

  Mom turns to the camera.

  “Over the years,” she says, “more than a few travelers have wandered down into these tunnels, to seek shelter, perhaps, or simply to explore, only to get lost amid the many halls. Many never found their way out again. At least, not while they were still alive.”

  The Veil leans heavy on my shoulders, urging me to cross over, but I manage to hold my ground. I feel like I’m the glass box in my dream, the world pressing in from every side. But I don’t crack.

  There’s no question Jacob is getting stronger.

  But maybe I am, too.

  “Over here,” calls Dad, his voice echoing. Here, here, here …

  The bone walls are interrupted every so often by stone plaques, their surfaces carved with quotes about life and death. Dad stops in front of one, and Pauline and I hang back so our shadows don’t cross into the camera shot.

  I glance sideways, and nearly jump out of my skin when a skull stares back, its empty sockets at eye level. Before I can think, I’m reaching out to touch the bleached white bone and—

  All at once the Veil bristles, rising to my fingertips. As it does, I hear the muffled sound of voices beyond: sad, and lonely, and lost. Someone is calling out, and I can almost, almost hear the words. I lean closer.

  “Hello?” calls a voice from the shadows, sounding scared.

  I look around, but no one else seems to hear it. My parents walk on, and Pauline looks straight ahead.

  “Cassidy,” hisses Jacob. “Don’t.”

  My hand falls away, but I can still feel the Veil, sliding through my fingers like silk.

  “… s’il vous plaît …” comes another voice from the shadows, this one speaking French, the words thin and high and faint.

  “… no one is coming …” murmurs a third. And then a fourth voice—

  “HELP!”

  The shout is so sudden and loud that I scramble backward. My heel catches a bit of rock on the ground and I stumble, unsteady. I reach out to catch myself, but this time, when my hand hits the wall, it keeps going, as if the surface is made of cloth instead of bone.