Slick wet striping rippled eerily beyond the small pool of torchlight announcing their presence. The quartet halted as a single unit, breathing shallow, hands clammy, hearts beating triple time. In the distance, chary footfalls elicited echoes of whispery moans.
Forward? Rearward? A covey of nods, a single sharp indrawn breath, the torch's death hiss the last sound as darkness engulfed them. The square reformed and down the line, gauntleted hands communicated by touch. Forward.
Ahead, a cowl turned to stare unblinking into the following silence. Elation drained away, dread filling up the empty space behind. Beware! Danger!
Death yawned cavernously.
A/N: I've been fascinated with the Paris ossuaries since reading a book in which a prison rescue is staged via the catacombs and a well in a church courtyard during the French revolution. This little drabble is the result of reading that book + a chat challenge to write a mysterious and spooky drabble for Halloween.
For clarity's sake, the quarries of Paris did not become an ossuary until the 1780's when the Cimetière des Saints-Innocents was moved to the caverns beneath the Montparnasse arrondissement. I am imagining the quarries being an un-friendly place, even before they were filled with the bones of six million deceased Parisians.
